Actually, on Dec. 11, 1941, Germany declared war on the U.S. first. The U.S. responded by declaring war on Germany.
I am aware of that. However, United States policy was declared that day, and it was "Germany First." Allowing Germany to declare war first on the United States was a political maneuver. In fact, the United States had already clandestinely begun convoying - escorting with U.S. Navy destroyers and battleships ostensibly only on exercises and coincidentally in the vicinity, a Roosevelt stratagem - military shipments to Great Britain. This was an act of war, but Hitler bore it because it was not in his interest to declare war on the United States at that time. The Pacific Fleet lay in ruin so the United States directed most of its military force upon the European front, while attempting to hold off the numerically superior Japanese Imperial Navy, which it did magnificently during the Battle of Midway, June 3-6, 1942, when heroic naval aviators under the command of Rear Admiral Raymond A. Spruance sank three enemy aircraft carriers and, against enormous odds at that time, turned the tide of war in the Pacific. |
