| Funny note: under the Tripartite Pact, because Japan was the aggressor in Pearl Harbor, Germany didn't have to declare war on the USA. Of course, politics overrides contracts. Hitler wanted close relations with Japan, and gave them his word that Germany had Japan's back on Dec. 4th. So Japan used that to attack the USA (knowing Germany would help). Germany, much like Japan, underestimated the strength of the USA and didn't expect them to be a big deal. But WW2 could have just had US vs Japan, but kept "neutrality" vs Germany ... if circumstances lined up just right. Apparently there were many German advisors who were trying to push for this scenario, and didn't think Germany had anything to gain for keeping its verbal agreement with Japan. We can imagine an interesting parallel-world where maybe some Advisor managed to convince Hitler of this plan and Germany going down this path instead. ---------- USA wouldn't get first-hand witness accounts / pictures of the Holocaust for years. The Holocaust was happening, but US citizens wouldn't know about it. (The first whispers of the Holocaust were given to the US State department in 1942, but were written off/ignored) New York Times had the Holocaust discussed on its 10th page in December 1942. (Not even front-page material). So once again, news of this genocide was largely met with a shrug. War-plans to bomb concentration camps were discussed, but pushed out as a low-priority. Some rescues happened, but it was clearly not a focus of the war effort. I think people greatly underestimate the USA's capability to be isolationist. Yeah, we play the world's policemen at times, but we also don't like doing it. In any case, by the time our soldiers found the concentration camps and gave first-hand accounts of them... the Holocaust was largely accepted as fact. But we weren't exactly proactive at stopping it. |