(Ebook) Hitler’s Fatal Miscalculation - Why Germany Declared War On The United States by Klaus H. Schmider (Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst) ISBN 9781108870405, 1108870406

(Ebook) Hitler’s Fatal Miscalculation - Why Germany Declared War On The United States by Klaus H. Schmider (Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst) ISBN 9781108870405, 1108870406

Adolf Hitler's decision to declare war on the 'Neutral' United States has baffled generations of historians. In this new history of those fateful months leading upto the Imperial Japanese Attacks in the Pacific and elsewhere, Klaus H. Schmider seeks to uncover the chain of events which would incite the German leader to decide that there was now a need for Nazi Germany to declare war on the United States in December 1941. He provides new insights not just on the problems afflicting long term German strategy, foreign policy and war production but, crucially, how the Americans were perceived at the time at the top levels of the Third Reich. Schmider sees the 1941 declaration of war on the United States not as an admission of defeat, nor as a gesture of solidarity with Japan, but as an opportunistic gamble by the German leader. This move may have appeared an excellent choice in the short term as it now freed the Wehrmacht to respond to increasing acts of aggression by in particular US Coast Guard and US Naval Escorts and Aircraft. These escorts were by 1941 escorting British and Canadian Convoys all across the Atlantic, before handing over at a midway point in the voyage, to a waiting RN or RCN Escort Group.  The Long Term consequences of this decision would ultimately doom the Third Reich to destruction by English and North African based Air Fleets of long range heavy bombers, who with RAF Bomber Command, from 1942 commenced 'round the clock' (nightime and daylight) Bomber Operations. From mid to late 1942 it soon became apparent that a now inevitable defeat of the Reich in the long feared 'two front war', was no longer just a possibility it was well on its way to becoming a horrifying reality."Historians have argued for decades over the question of why Adolf Hitler chose to declare war on the United States. Klaus Schmider has now written the first fully authoritative history of that decision, setting it firmly in the context of German domestic and military policy. This will become the definitive account''. - Richard Overy (Author).Klaus Schmider received a Ph.D. in history from the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, in 2001. His doctoral dissertation, “Der Partisanenkrieg in Jugoslawien 1941-1944” (Partisan Warfare in Yugoslavia, 1941-1944), was published by Mittler & Sohn of Hamburg in 2002. Since 1999, Dr. Schmider has lectured in the War Studies Department at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, England. In 2000, he co-authored Volume 8 of the semi-official History of Germany in the Second World War published by the Bundeswehr’s Historical Research Institute (Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt).