1 - Hitler’s Pre-War Assessment of the United States and Japan

Summary

This chapter intends to address how Hitler’s views on the US and Japan had evolved in the years prior to 1941. Despite the fact that his assessment of the USA in particular can be examined through a multitude of sources, many historians have chosen to limit themselves to a number of well-known value judgements from public wartime speeches. Unsurprisingly, these dwell extensively on the supposed “racial inferiority” of contemporary Americans and on the “Jewish influence” in the American centres of power. In similar fashion, his value judgement of the Japanese are usually reduced to his supposed “infatuation” with the Japanese warrior culture. A more extensive analysis of the available sources (speeches of the 20’s, records of private conversations, manuscripts from his own hand) quickly reveals a more complex picture. The Americans are regarded as the future rival of the new Germany, but also admired for their technological prowess, economic muscle and racist legislation. The Japanese, on the other hand are not accorded the same unstinted praise; his interest in them develops only in close synchronicity with every step Japanese governments of the 1930’s take which appears to indicate a lasting antagonism with the Anglo-American powers.