“The Führer was surprised — he clearly had no foreknowledge of the date and time of the attack — and ecstatic.” 

By Brendan Simms

AFTER A long run of victories which had given him control over most of continental Europe, things were not going well for Hitler by Dec. 7,1941. He was wrestling with a British offensive in North Africa, falling sinkings by his U-Boats in the Battle of the Atlantic, the steady increase of American ‘Lend-Lease’ shipments to Britain and the stagnation of the eastern campaign against Stalin, who had just started a major counter-offensive before Moscow. The German dictator was not yet aware of the full gravity of the situation, but that evening, just after 7 p.m., he was told that the key North Russian railhead of Tikhvin, which he had previously demanded should be “held under all circumstances,” would have to be given up. He took the news very badly, shouting into the phone at the responsible commander, Ritter von Leeb.

Hitler and Himmler sat down to dine and discuss the future of the Waffen-SS in the Wolf’s Lair, his headquarters in Rastenburg East Prussia. This was followed by tea. Together with the secretaries, liaison Walter Hewel and a number of others, they talked about the impact of the winter crisis, especially the need to provide warm clothing for the men on the Eastern Front. Some were aware of the trouble brewing in East Asia but none had any idea of the magnitude of the storm that was just about to break. That changed at 7:40 p.m. local time — 7:10 p.m. in London, and 1:10 p.m. in Washington, D.C.

Hitler’s press chief, Otto Dietrich, was at the Wolf’s Lair that evening monitoring the news wires when he picked up a wholly unexpected bulletin from Reuters East Asian radio: the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii was under attack by Japanese warplanes. With details of the raid only just emerging, Dietrich raced off to inform Hitler of the news. As he waited to be admitted to the Führer’s presence, Dietrich heard independent confirmation of the attack.

Already exercised by the bad news from Russia, Hitler received his press chief coldly, obviously fearing tidings of another catastrophe. But when Dietrich cut him short by reading out the message, Hitler reacted with astonishment.

“Is the news true?” he asked.

Dietrich insisted that it was. Germany was Japan’s closest ally, and news of the attack came not from a message from Foreign Minister Togo, Emperor Hirohito, or Japanese Ambassador Oshima, but from an intercepted enemy radio broadcast!

Grabbing the piece of paper from Dietrich, Hitler rushed out of the building without his usual cap and coat and ran the hundred or so meters to the OKW bunker to pass on the news to his military commanders in person. He burst into the room excitedly, the only time Wilhelm Keitel remembered Hitler doing so during the entire war. All accounts of his reaction agree that the Führer was surprised — he clearly had no foreknowledge of the date and time of the attack — and ecstatic.

“I had the impression,” Keitel recalled, “that he felt as if freed from a heavy load.”

With Japan and the United States at war, Hitler recognized that Germany would have to deliver on its draft treaty commitments to Tokyo; it was in his vital interest to prevent his ally from going down to defeat on its own. Besides, as far as Hitler was concerned the Third Reich was already effectively at war with the United States — American warships had been clashing with his U-boats in the North Atlantic for months. In the coming hours and days, he would express relief that Japan’s actions would tie down substantial Allied resources in the Far East. And this time, unlike in 1917, Germany would not wait to be openly attacked by the United States. Hitler would strike first.

News of Pearl Harbor seems to have taken slightly longer to reach Berlin. The press section of the Foreign Office picked up the news while monitoring the BBC. Its head, who was dubious about the veracity of the report, conferred quickly with Franz von Sonnleithner, a young diplomat on Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop’s personal staff. It was decided to fetch the foreign minister from the “home cinema” of the Foreign Office. Ribbentrop himself was not only surprised but initially skeptical.

“It is probably another propaganda trick of the enemy,” he remarked, “which has once again duped my press section.”

While the minister was still reading the message, the phone rang. Hitler was on the line. Both men agreed that the news was good. But when Sonnleithner tried, on Ribbentrop’s instructions, to claim Tokyo’s actions as a victory for German diplomacy, Hitler bridled.

“Tell the foreign minister,” he retorted, “that such a great people as the Japanese do exactly that which they believe to be right and will not be influenced by us in the slightest.”

Hiroshi Oshima, the Japanese ambassador to Berlin, heard the news of Pearl Harbor around 11 p.m. local time, also via the BBC, and immediately made contact with Ribbentrop. He worried that the Reich might no longer have an interest in concluding a ‘no-separate-peace’ agreement now that Japan was firmly in the war. He also wondered if Berlin might renege on its promise to commence open hostilities with the United States. To the Japanese ambassador’s certain relief, the German foreign minister stated unequivocally that “Germany and Italy’s immediate participation can be assumed to be a matter of course.”

As updates continued to come in that night, Hitler monitored the escalating Soviet attacks on the Eastern Front, approving some withdrawals on a “case-by-case basis.” Otherwise, there was no sign of acute anxiety on his side about the situation in Russia. As far as Hitler was concerned, he was simply winding down the campaign there for the winter in preparation for delivering the final blow against Moscow in the spring. His main attention was on the extraordinary news coming in from the Pacific and the implications it had for his future conduct of the war.

The German high command received the news of Pearl Harbor with some satisfaction. They were delighted to see that the American president was now, in their view, getting his comeuppance. The naval leadership, for example, noted that Roosevelt “now has the war he has always wanted, but probably in circumstances and at a time which does not suit his calculations.”

The outbreak of hostilities in the Pacific was not yet widely registered on the Eastern Front. One of those who drew broader conclusions was Wolfram von Richthofen, whose Eighth Air Corps was bearing the brunt of the aerial operations on the central front.

“With Japan,” he wrote in his diary, “all British, American and Russian hopes are dashed for the next few years. It would be great.”

Then, Richthofen continued: “Local setbacks (so long as they stay local!) here [in Russia] or in Africa can be contemplated.”

It was clear that in his mind, as in the minds of the German military and political leadership generally, Japanese successes would compensate for recent German setbacks.

As the evening drew to a close, the German naval leadership took stock of what had been a momentous day.

“Few states,” its war diarist ventured, “would be able to escape being caught up in a war that now embraced all the “global and great powers of the world.”

December 7, 1941, in short, “marked not only a new phase in the military operations,” but also opened a “global and pan-continental window onto the future order of the world.”

In that, he was certainly right.

Four days later, on Dec. 11, Adolf Hitler would declare war on the United States. This eventually brought the full might of America down on his head and led to the complete destruction of the German Reich.

Brendan Simms is the co-author of Hitler’s American Gamble: Pearl Harbor and Germany’s March to Global War. A professor in the history of international relations and fellow at Cambridge, he is the author of many books, including Europe and Hitler. He lives in Cambridge, UK.