How Hitler tried to get out of speeding fine.

@CWO:

Intereting hypothetical question.  One amusing aspect is the idea of Hitler, with his long track record of breaking treaties and of attacking other countries without warning, expressing shock over Japanese treachery – though I guess it’s not unimaginable, since the same track record basically shows that he was quite capable of changing his foreign policies in any way that he felt served his interests at any given time.  And relations between Germany and Japan were not always cordial.  For instance, Germany supposedly expressed shock over the Rape of Nanking and offered itself as a mediator between China (with whom I think it had a degree of military advisory relations) and Japan.  And Japan was highly annoyed when Germany signed the August 1939 nonaggression pact with Japan’s old enemy, Russia.

Even taking Hitler’s impulsive and erratic nature into account, however, it’s pretty hard to fathom why he’d declare war on Japan in December 1941.  The two countries were partners under the Tripartite Pact, whose bottom line was, frankly, that Germany and Japan agreed to stay out of each other’s way as each nation pursued its expansionist policies on opposite sides of the globe.  A war between the two countries, even if it had been declared, would have been virtually impossible to wage since German and Japan were separated from each other by vast stretches of land (notably the USSR, which was unfriendly to both countries) and ocean.

It’s even harder to fathom why Hitler would offer support to the US in December 1941, since the Americans were actively supporting its enemy Great Britain.  I can understand Britain’s wartime partnership with the USSR against Germany, on the principle that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, but Hitler’s support of the US would have been a case of “the friend of my enemy is my friend”, which makes no sense.

Just for argument’s sake, however, I’d guess that if Hitler had inexplicably offered to the US a wartime alliance against Japan, the Americans wouldn’t have accepted it.  Nazi Germany was, to put it mildly, neither liked nor trusted by the Roosevelt administration, and its reaction would probably have been to treat a partnership proposal from Hitler like the offer of a bottle of poison.

it’s pretty hard to fathom why he’d declare war on Japan in December 1941.

I don’t want to speak for Gargantua. But it’s possible that the goal of this declaration of war would be for Germany to distance itself as much as possible from Japan’s Pearl Harbor attack. The underlying objective would be to make the political climate in America less favorable for going to war against Germany.

Nazi Germany was, to put it mildly, neither liked nor trusted by the Roosevelt administration, and
its reaction would probably have been to treat a partnership proposal from Hitler like the offer of a bottle of poison.

The goal of Stalin’s foreign policy was to foster war between Germany and the Western democracies. Stalin hoped to achieve this goal by promoting “anti-fascism.” The Soviet Union would stay neutral in this hoped-for war. This war would weaken both Germany and the Western democracies. Ideally it would be like WWI, and bleed both sides white. That war would set the stage for Soviet expansion westward into Europe. The first stage would be at the expense of Germany and Eastern Europe. The second state would be at the expense of France and possibly other Western democracies.

FDR was extremely eager to embrace the pro-Soviet, anti-fascist foreign policy Stalin envisioned for Western democracies. I don’t see anything Hitler could have done to change that. He didn’t begin to have the kind of penetration into the FDR administration Stalin had. Nor was there any readily available way for him to achieve that penetration. FDR hated Nazis and other Germans, but was very intrigued by communism and by Stalin. It was this mindset which allowed a number of outright communists to achieve positions of great influence in his administration, while anyone with right wing views was either excluded entirely or eased out of any real policy-setting role.

But FDR did not work in a vacuum. Had it been up to him, the United States would have declared war on Germany back in the '30s. The fact it did not do so was because due to strong isolationist forces. While FDR and his allies in the media were working diligently to weaken those forces, even by December 1941 they were still strong. Had Germany declared war on Japan in December '41, it would have been a clear, simple statement. Even FDR and his allies would have found it difficult to distort that statement into something which made war with Germany seem necessary.

By the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, the American pro-war faction had built up too much political momentum for a German declaration of war against Japan to stop them. Sooner or later, the pro-war faction would succeed at getting America into the war; much like it had succeeded in WWI. Even over the short-term, the pro-war faction would still have been able to send large quantities of weapons to Stalin and the Soviet Union, as well as to Britain.

Let’s say that declaring war against Japan would have bought Germany two years of nominal peace with America. While Germany would still have had to deal with large numbers of American made weapons during that two year period, at least it wouldn’t have had to face American soldiers. That two year grace period would have allowed Germany to concentrate more of its military force on its eastern front, instead of having to use as much strength defending against potential or actual Anglo-American invasions elsewhere. (Though they would still have had to defend against the Anglo half of that threat.)

That concentration of force against the Soviet Union would undoubtedly led to a more favorable situation on Germany’s eastern front. More victories, more Soviet soldiers captured, more conquered Soviet land. But I do not think that this alone would have been sufficient for Germany to win the war in the east. In the absence of other factors helping Germany, the German objective on the eastern front should (in this scenario) have been to grab what land it could in the western U.S.S.R., including at least some of the Caucasus oilfields, and then negotiate peace with Stalin. The more successful Germany was on its eastern front, the more presumptively likely Stalin would have been to negotiate an end to hostilities.

This peace treaty would by no means have represented the end of the war. It would merely indicate Germany had survived the first phase of the challenges ahead of it.

My favorite line from any of them is Hitler saying “I always loss at D-day for some reason”

Sun Tzu is famous for stating that the battle is often won or lost before your troops even engage the enemy.
Alliances were key before the start of war.

I would have

1  Find a way to ally with the USSR for at least a decade  ( hard to do since Ger, Ity and Jpn were joined by treaty in the Axis as an anti-communist effort)

1A Invite the USSR to attack the British through Persia.

1B Concentrate resources to wrestle Arabian oil away from the British and their allies .

2  Leaving the Mediterranean sphere to Italy was a disaster
and I would have ended earlier.

3  Italian troops should have gotten upgraded training before they were lost in the early going.

4  I would have started joint military war games/exercises in Austria and Czechoslovakia with the German, Italian, and other axis troops to get them all up to par.
This would get them all used to German close air support and combined arms tactics that worked so well in the french blitzkreig.

5.  Invited the Japanese admiralty (especially Yamamoto) to inspect the European fleets soon after signing the Axis Tri party agreements

6.  Yamamoto was opposed to the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo  Tripartite Pact.
I would Court Yamamoto and win him over in a way similar to how Hitler got support from the Asters in the UK.

7.  Sponsor alliance ready, facist-type, organizations in Egypt, Cyprus, Ireland, Norway, Iceland, etc… who would at least be neutral to the UK.  Whoever the Axis can use to gain leverage over the UK.

8.  What worked so well in Norway should have been done in Egypt near the Suez Canal and/or Cyprus.  Before the Norway invasion.

This one looks more like it was “coloured” …  Makes Hitler kinda look like a Cartoon:

For someone with years of preparation, skill, and determination, What an idiot.

He deliberately goes to cross the border, with the BOMB making plans, his communist membership card, and everything needed to convict himself.  Then he tells the story whilst there.

He could have easily said nothing, and been denied entry - sent back to Nazi Germany, with likely no questions asked.  Or just stayed in Germany, planning his next attempt, no one would have caught him, or figured it out.

Too much Bone instead of Brain.

@13thguardsriflediv:

@UN:

I disagree; his flaw was that he was too soft on the conquered. If he had any obsession it was an obsession to have peace in Europe so he could focus on his responsibilities as a statesman.

He essentially humiliated Prussia by keeping French forces stationed there, at Prussia’s expense (financially). Prussia had ambitions to unite Northern Germany (ie without Austria) under Prussian banner and Napoleon knew it, and wanted to prevent it.

Perhaps, but Prussia knew very well what it was getting into. Despite Napoleon’s personal plea, Fredrick Wilhelm did nothing to prevent the Prussian court from being dominated by the war party.

I disagree. Napoleon greatly offended the Russian court (Alexander found himself lambasted when he returned to court in St Petersburg) and his ‘construction’ of the Duchy of Warsaw was seen as the greatest offense, since the Russians feared it would kindle hopes in ‘Russian’ Poland for unification with the Duchy of Warsaw, which Russia was dead set against, because if Polish could harbor hopes of loosening from Russia, so could other nationalities. Furthermore, he greatly underestimated Alexander who started distancing himself from Napoleon not long after Tilsit, mostly under pressure from Russia’s aristocracy, his mother and also the British.

Which makes me sad that Alexander I came to power, period. His father would have been much more adept at guaranteeing peace in Europe and probably wouldn’t have been so influenced by anti-Napoleonic forces.

He was in no position to be harsher because he wanted Russian support for the Continental system.

He wanted Russian support, but again, he still had the power to create a march larger Poland at the expense of Russia, but he didn’t, partly because he was so despertate to forge a lasting peace, and partly because he wanted Russian support in the Continental System.

And he was poor at diplomacy because he generally imposed many things on the states that he directly or indirectly controlled rather than negotiate as an equal.

I both agree and disagree. In many instances (prominent among them the formation of the Confederation of the Rhine, which I’ll explain in a moment), Napoleon was very touchy about where he drew borders and was interested in what the heads of state of the vassal and allied states would have to say. On the other hand, he needed to guarantee the security of France, and, again, hated inefficiency and corruption, which often led to him being very imperious, as you said.

Friedrich Karl of Baden, Ludwig of Hesse-Darmstadt, Friedrich of Württemberg and Maximilian of Bavaria all owed the expansion of their realms to Napoleon.

That’s true, but none of them were inefficient rulers (with the possible except of Ludwig).

Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia had been humiliated at Tilsit and was only kept on by Napoleon because Alexander asked it of him.

Yeah, Fredrick got off easy. If Napoleon was the “19th century Hitler” that he’s frequently portrayed as I doubt Prussia as a nation would have even existed after Tilsit.

Napoleon casually moved areas and provinces from one kingdom to another.

Might you cite specific examples?

Napoleon imposed French as an official language on several areas of German states.

That doesn’t necessarily mean he wanted to ban German as a language, unlike the Japanese in Korea, who basically wanted to destroy Korean culture and language.

The number of people that resented French rule in German areas increased with time.

This is true; but remember why, in the first place, Napoleon demanded more resources and troops from the German states, because of the irreversible hatred of the European monarchies, Britain especially. If anyone’s at fault it is the British, who financed coalition after coalition to let Continental troops die for British interests, and who would threaten or outright bombard cities that did not abide by what His Britannic Majesety wanted (i.e. Copenhagen, Lisbon).

No, people like Benjamin Constant and Madame de Stael. The latter wrote a book criticizing the French treatment of Italy. She also wrote a book on German culture which contained so much implicit criticism of Napoleon that he had the book banned.

Let me show to you a segment from a book that talks about Stael:

Germaine de Stael, born of Genevan parents and Swedish by marriage, only became French when Geneva was annexed to France in 1791. Intelligent, ambitious and brilliant, this woman was totally lacking in any moral sense, and her love life would make a racy novel. She was a tireless and dazzling writer, but one who often showed poor judgment. Unfortunately lacking in physical charm, with a rather mannish appearance, she initially felt an ardent passion for the young General Bonaparte, the conqueror of Italy, and she wrote that he was “the most intrepid warrior, the most reflective thinker, the most extraordinary genius.” She even took it into her head to become an Egeria to her hero, after having dreamed of playing that role for Mirabeau and then Robespierre.

Through Talleyrand, Stael finally managed to get herself introduced to Napoleon. Slipping into the circle of people gathered around him, she called out to the First Consul, asking him who was in his eyes “the greatest woman in the world, living or dead”. “The one who has the most children, madame,” he answered. The interloper made a face but was not flustered, and pointed out to her unwilling conversational partner that he had a reputation “of not liking women much”. He replied, “Pardon me, madame, I like my own very much.”

Stael was unrelenting, and she laid siege to her idol, a siege Napoleon on St. Helena recalled with amusement: “She almost took me by the pants in my little house on rue Chanteraine. She followed me one day as I went into my dressing room. ‘But madame, I’m going into my dressing room,’ I said. ‘It’s all the same to me,’ she answered. ‘I’m an old woman.’ She said the Empress Josephine was a silly woman who was not worthy to be my wife and that only she, Stael, was right for me. She was crazy about me.”

The crazy woman wept with vexation after the coup d’etat of 18 Brumaire, which gave France a leader but also, through the favor of the First Consul, gave her lover, Benjamin Constant, a position. She pushed Constant to make a speech against the Consulate regime “of servitude and silence”. She was a fierce Calvinist in spite of her life of debauchery, and when the Concordat was signed with the Holy See she went over to the opposition and began dreaming of the overthrow of the regime with all the determination and malice of a wronged woman. As if to open hostilities, she published Delphine, a defense of divorce, Protestantism and England. She chose her time well! “I hope her friends have warned her not to come back to Paris,” exclaimed Bonaparte, “I would have to have her taken back to the border by the police.”

He did not need to say this twice. She was seen in Germany, spreading invective against the man who was to become Emperor and plotting against him in all the courts, even with the Bourbons. But she continued to reside at Coppet, near Geneva, where the prefect of the Emperor, the “tyrant”, turned a blind eye to her activities. She was even seen in some regions of France, still trying to get close to Paris. She soon published Corinna, a novel in praise of the emancipation of women, in which the French hero is a good-looking fool and the British hero a beautiful, deep, generous spirit. This further enraged Napoleon, and on St. Helena he said, “I cannot forgive Madame de Stael for having made fun of the French in her novel.”

Fallen under the influence of a German who was carrying on anti-French propaganda in Austria, the novelist finally brought down upon herself the official wrath of the Emperor, who in 1808 wrote to his minister of police: “Madame de Stael has an ongoing correspondence with a certain Gentz and has become involved with the clique of low characters in London…This relationship with this individual can only be to the detriment of France. You will make it known that until now she has been regarded only as a crazy woman, but that today she has begun to get involved in a clique that is contrary to the public peace.”

The guilty woman returned to Coppet, still without suffering any “persecution” by the authorities of the department, and started to write her major work, Germany, which gave her an excellent opportunity to exercise her bias against French literature, supposedly mired in classicism, and praise German genius in all its forms. She took a notion to have this volume published in France and went there, but the police seized the manuscript and ordered her to leave the territory. The minister Savary sent her a rather stern letter: “It appears the air of this country does not suit you at all. Your last book is not French; I have stopped it from being printed. I regret the loss to the booksellers, but it is not possible for me to allow it to be published.”

Can Napoleon really be blamed for approving this measure and refusing to permit the publication of a French book that was offensively pro-German, a book that would lead to a reawakening of the desire for dominance in Austria, only a few years after the dominance of the Holy Roman Empire, and cause the greatest damage to a precarious peace?

At the same time, Stael, who was now taking opium, secretly married a friend of her son 21 years her junior and, fleeing the discreet surveillance that had been established around her chateau in Coppet, set off on the roads of Europe. She was next seen in the Russian court when Napoleon entered Moscow; she pushed the tsar to make an alliance with Sweden, which she took it upon herself to drag into the war by exerting pressure on crown prince Bernadotte, who was her friend. She dared to write, “The good of France required that it suffer a reversal.” Then she was in London, where she was given a triumphal reception, since she was the embodiment of resistance to Napoleon’s “tyranny”. During the Hundred Days in 1815, assuming that Napoleon would relax his surveillance, she rushed to Paris to claim payment of two million francs loaned by her father, Necker, to King Louis XVI. Could it be that she had changed camps?

One might believe this when reading what she wrote to Joseph Bonaparte: “The return of your brother is extraordinary and surpasses all imagination.” But this was nothing but an act to gain a position for her son and obtain payment of her two million francs, because she maintained contacts with the enemies of the “tyrant”. One can easily get lost trying to follow the intricacies of her schemes.

Was Napoleon wrong to check the torrent of words from a woman who worked to set Sweden, Prussia and Austria against France? And could Madame de Stael, who hated Napoleon and her adaptive country with equal force, complain because she was not allowed to publish her book in France? This is the objective perspective from which the issue must be looked at.

He was a great man in history, but one with many flaws.

True; but then again, no great leader in history has no flaws.

@Imperious:

No he died of old age in Baltimore. He spent his last days riding the bus back and forth talking about the ‘good old days’.

I hear they saved his Brain and used it in a movie as a prop. So perhaps he still lives in B- Movie glory.

thats kind of disturbing