Hitler and America by Klaus P. Fischer (review)

Most previous historiography has assumed Hitler's ignorance about America. Klaus Fischer's "fresh approach" offers "a more detailed and balanced account" (p. 7). According to Fischer, Hitler held a "split image" of the United States: on the one hand, he saw a colossus, a land of the future whose potential rested on a thriving industrial capacity and a creative Nordic population. On the other hand, Hitler also imagined a degenerate and materialistic Amerika, based on alleged Jewish control and racial "mongrelization." Both images had deep roots in European thought, but much of Hitler's information came from second-hand sources: visitors to America (primarily Colin Ross, Ernst "Putzi" Hanfstaengl, and Kurt Lüdecke); what he read in newspapers, magazines, and favorite books (Karl May); and German officials such as the German military attaché, Friedrich Bötticher, and Fritz Wiedemann, Hitler's personal adjutant and later consul in San Francisco.

During the 1930s, with the United States mired in the Great Depression and isolationist in outlook, Hitler appeared not to fear it. Nevertheless, he paid it attention. Continually he tried to calculate when the United States might take specific actions, such as providing his opponents with armaments or even direct military support. Bötticher's reports influenced the dictator's plans for unleashing war in 1939. At the moment, the attaché observed, the United States was not dangerous because of its neutrality laws. Bötticher argued that the United States could not make a significant military difference to Nazi war aims for at least two years. By that time—Hitler concluded—his plan to master Europe would be completed. When he unleashed the war, he still subscribed to the image of a decadent and materialistic Amerika, controlled by Jews and other racial inferiors who had degraded the fiber of transplanted Germans. "Transplant a German to Kiev," he said, "and he remains a perfect German. But transplant him to Miami and you make a degenerate of him—in other words, an American" (p. 98).

Differing with other scholars (primarily German), Fischer argues that Hitler had no preconceived plan for world domination but rather only continental ambitions. Yet, when discussing Germany's declaration of war on the U.S., Fischer notes the crucial role Hitler's intense hatred of the Jews played in the decision. In Hitler's Reichstag speech justifying his action, he alleged that the "international" Jew controlled both the U.S. and Russia. The Nazi leader had always viewed "the Jew" as a worldwide, not solely European, enemy. If Hitler had won the war, would any Jew on Earth have survived? Wouldn't Hitler's goals, in that sense at least, have been global?

On the other hand, Fischer links the German declaration of war on America to the unfolding of the Holocaust in Europe. "Four historic world events," he writes, "took place during the first twelve days of December: the Russian counterattack on the Moscow front (December 4-5); the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (December 7); Germany's declaration of war on the United States (December 11); and Hitler's final directive ordering the annihilation of European Jewry (December 12)" (p. 152). On the last point, although later Fischer clarifies what he meant, one could quarrel with his "final directive," a questionable phrase since no such order has yet been proven to have existed.

Hitler had made repeated public threats, like those uttered in the Reichstag on January 30, 1939, and again on January 30, 1941, that in case of war he would eliminate the Jews. This made clear his conviction that he was waging both a conventional military and a racial-biological war, and that "if he could not win the former, he would certainly win the latter, because he had most of the Jews of Europe under his control." Fischer contends that Hitler "sensed that the entrance of the United States into the war would cost him his ultimate victory, perhaps even guarantee his defeat." Accordingly, during the first days...