| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Richard F. Hill. Hitler Attacks Pearl Harbor: Why the United States Declared War on Germany. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner. 2003. Pp. vii, 227. $49.95.
Richard F. Hill's book aims to show us that the commencement of formal hostilities between the United States and the Third Reich has been fundamentally misunderstood. We all believe that Adolf Hitler declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941. Scholarly attention has focused on the Fuhrer's motives, since he had deliberately avoided an outright rupture with the U.S. throughout 1941. Furthermore, the terms of the Axis alliance required Germany to declare war only in case Japan was attacked. Given that Hitler did declare war, historians have viewed the American response as a mere formality. Hill contends otherwise.	1
Hill argues that Americans at all levels quickly came to believe that the Germans were responsible for the Pearl Harbor attack and very likely had led it as well. Such beliefs produced an outpouring of anger toward the Nazi regime, reversing almost overnight the longstanding public aversion to full-scale war against Germany. Moreover, Hitler did not in fact declare war on the United States during his speech to the Reichstag on December 11, as a clarification issued by Berlin the next day established. Therefore "the German declaration was actually of little or no real importance in deciding U.S. foreign policy in December 1941." Instead the momentous decision to become a full belligerent rested on mistaken perceptions about Germany's connection to the raid.	. . .

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