Why did Germany declare war on America during WW2? | History Matters | History Teacher Reacts

This was perfect timing when I was going through my videos and the channels I like and thinking, what have I not covered recently? What came to my mind was history matters. So I go look on their channel and saw that they had just uploaded a new video. And it's one I think you all are going to like. It's called Why did Germany declare war on America during World War Two? Okay, please support them. Their videos are so short. Make sure you give it a view, like, subscribe. The link is down in the description and like this video if you liked it. All right, let's get started. Hey, real quick, if you're watching this very soon to when I released it, we are about to have the next presidential election here in the United States. And for the first time ever, I'm going to be live streaming the night's events. So make sure to come over to my channel on Tuesday night, November 5th and come hang out with some other history fans. All right, what do we got here? After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, the U.S. declared war, thereby dragging them into World War Two, only in the Pacific theater. Yet four days after this, Germany declared war on the United States when it didn't have to, thereby bringing the United States into the world. I mean, they were, you know, doing a part of their the tripartite act, right? The you had this access powers, right? You had Japan. You had Italy. Then you had Germany. You had the Pearl Harbor attacks, of course. But yeah, the United States declares war on Japan. It is not a clear war on the other powers because the United States wasn't fighting in that war yet. Yes, the U.S. was dealing weapons. You got land lease. You got all that kind of stuff going on, but it was not against the Germans there. So what the Germans were doing was, I guess you would say, supporting their ally. And we're also pretty sure, you know, kind of like in World War One that eventually the United States was going to join in the German. The Germans perceived the United States as an enemy in that way because, again, they were allied with Germany's enemies. So that's why Germany is also going to declare war. But yeah, they didn't wait very long. They literally did it like the day after the declared war on the United States or the day after the United States declared war on Japan in theater and thus making things considered. Didn't have to thereby bringing the United States into the European theater and thus making things considerably harder for Germany as a result. Sure. Raises the question, why? Why did Germany declare war on the United States when it could have just let it deal with Japan? So that's you know, I gave you my kind of thing. We'll see what they say there. The United States was already indirectly involved in the war as well. If you want to go a little bit deeper, you're going to have to get into some more like like no no German philosophy that eventually they're going to go after, you know, the United States. And then you get into the whole like man in the high tower kind of thing. So to begin, not everyone in Germany wanted to declare war against the United States. Joachim von Ribbentrop, Germany's foreign minister, Same guy that's going to make the deal with with the Soviet Union, right? Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. By the way, I've been covering that recently. If you want to hear more, a lot more about that. I covered Hakeem's video. He's a socialist and was giving kind of a Soviet perspective and trying to bring up some what he thinks are misconceptions about it. That actually did just last night, a whole two and a half hour live stream with noted anti-communist fat electrician. Check that out, by the way. I've left that up. And if you want to hear a lot more about that. Between the two nations, von Ribbentrop, Germany's foreign minister, recommended against doing so. The defensive pact between the two nations only required Germany to join the war in the event of Japan being the victim of aggression. His belief was that without an excuse to fight in Europe, the Americans would focus on Japan, which was which was true to Britain and the USSR in order to use them in the Pacific. So the first reason why German leaders, specifically one German leader, made the declaration of war was that he saw America fighting in Europe as inevitable. The US was already supplying Germany's enemies at this point. You know, what's interesting about that is Mr. Mustache Man got to start using those terms because we get flagged otherwise for monetization and ad suitability and age restriction. Mr. Mustache Man was trying to correct the wrongs that he believed Germany did in World War One. One of those definitely would have been, you know, the United States entrance in World War One was kind of a nail in the coffin. And trying to keep the Americans out of the war was important. But again, I guess you would have to decide if, you know, the interaction that the United States did have with the allies, with, you know, shipping materials and stuff like that was big enough a grievance to want to actually declare war on the United States. Or, you know, again, would it have been smarter just to be like, well, I guess they're going to deal with that. We'll try to blockade some stuff and whatever. But like, remember how in World War One, that's what happened. Germany was like, all right, the Americans are obviously going to do their stuff. What we'll just try to do is blockade things. And then you turn into things like Lusitania and unrestricted submarine warfare and all those things that eventually are going to bring the United States into the war. But it's one of those things that they're not going to be able to keep the Americans completely out. But yeah, you wonder if they hadn't declared war, what happened? Because yeah, I do think at least at this time, the United States would have just focused on Japan. Now, would that have meant though that, you know, they wouldn't have joined in Europe later? I don't know. That's hard to say. I mean, maybe if they wanted help from, say, the Soviet Union with Japan, which is something the United States did want, Roosevelt and Stalin were kind of coming to that agreement. But it was on the conditions that, from Stalin's perspective, that if the Americans wanted help with Japan, then they're going to have to help in Europe. So in a way, maybe a mustache man was right, that the United States was going to eventually get involved in Europe because you can't really distinguish or separate the war going on in Asia with inevitably what would be going on in Europe. And Washington's plans for war in Europe had been leaked shortly before this. As such, it was decided that better to be the one to declare war and maintain the initiative than wait for the Americans to pick their moment. The second reason was the hope that Japan would reciprocate. Japan was facing- Well, the thing is, what can Germany do really, though? Okay, they're going to declare war. And now what? Now try to be more aggressive and the Atlantic and stop shipments and stuff like that. You know, what could they do? They're obviously not going to be doing an invasion of the United States. Their hands are very, very full. So, you know, what did Germany gain out of this? A really powerful enemy. Other than being a good support of their friends, you know, Japan, who, by the way, they'd only recently signed that agreement with. But Germany's, and I guess also Italy's, help would prove valuable in dividing America's attention. As a result, Berlin expected that Japan would pay them back by declaring war on the USSR. The problem with this was that the Japanese had no interest in fighting the Soviets. Reason three- Well, they did fight for a little bit, but that actually ended pretty quickly. They made a deal. But yeah, no, they actually were engaged at the very beginning of the war, Japan and the Soviet Union. But they ended up getting a deal to stop that. Soviet Union's also going to break that because they are going to then make that deal with the United States that basically does D-Day. Then Soviet Union will push against Japanese possessions, which they did and started doing. But it was only a few days before the bombs were dropped. United States did at that point, it really did not want to see the Soviets actually really help with Japan. It's kind of interesting how that ended up turning out. It was that German leaders- Okay, number three. The Japanese had no interest in fighting the Soviets. Reason three was that German leaders believed that declaring war on the United States would force Europe's neutral nations into picking a side. Countries like Turkey, Sweden and Spain traded with the United States and a war with Germany meant that their trade may decline. The hope being that these countries would then turn to Germany and its allies for any needs from there. Well, I guess I was going to say that you also risk then not being able to deal with the United States, but United States doesn't like what's going on in Spain with Franco. You've got the Turks and stuff. That relationship is going to grow, but that's going to be after the war where Turkey will end up joining NATO recently and United States wanted to use Turkey, especially as a place with close proximity to the Soviet Union, who was perceived to be the new enemy after World War II. So yeah, I don't know. It doesn't seem like a great reason. And from there, they could be coerced into joining the war. This wasn't exactly a logical plan, but this was due to reason number four. The Germans thought they were about to win. From the war's beginning, Germany was on a bit of a winning streak. True. And since the invasion of the USSR earlier that year, the German army had advanced all the way to here. Ah, context. They were cocky. They were like, all right, Soviet Union's going to be going down because, yeah, I mean, look how far they pushed in. And finally, after like Stalingrad and the turning of the point in the war in the east, it finally goes back. But I mean, they had lost against the British, at least were unable to do their invasion that way. That's interesting. I hadn't really thought of it in that context that they were just really cocky at this time because they had been so successful. That's a pretty good point. It was assumed that the Soviet Union was a mere few months from complete collapse, at which point those troops could be moved to reinforce the West from any U.S. invasion. And in case you're wondering, the Italians also declared war on the U.S. because they didn't want to upset the Germans. As you know, this decision was not the best, since Roosevelt believed that defeating Germany was the priority, which of course meant bad news for them. Interesting, because Japan, Pearl Harbor. I hope you enjoyed this episode with the special thanks to- All right, final thoughts. Wow, I've been covering so many like 30 minute plus videos. I forget how short those history matters videos are. But you know what they do is they really do a good job of packing that in, packing in that detail to just a few talking points. And obviously what works great, you can sit on the toilet and watch a whole video. It's good for that kind of format. So anyway, I made my points throughout the video. I'm still not really convinced, at least by any of those reasons, that they were necessarily good reasons for Germany. Adding the last thing about they were just kind of cocky. I mean, I think that's very true. Their confidence level was so high at that point and thought they were totally in the right that, yeah, maybe that ends up blinding them. When again, so much of the success that Germany was having and in the lead up, even in the 30s, was learning from the mistakes of World War I era Germany and the Weimar Republic. And then you start actually getting into repeating a lot of mistakes and those are going to end up backfiring. And of course the Germans are going to lose in this. So I don't know. What do you guys think about the reasons Germany declared war? Trying to look at it from like a, I don't know, a strategic point of view or something. What was the value, if any, do you think that Germany had by actually declaring war on the United States? All right. With that, we'll see you next time. Bye.