The Decision That Cost Hitler the War
The Decision That Cost Hitler the War HITLER’S AMERICAN GAMBLE Pearl Harbor and Germany’s March to Global War The world probably changed more between Dec. 5 and Dec. 12, 1941, than in any other week in history. In early December German forces stood close to Moscow, and it seemed the Soviet capital would soon fall. Japan was at war in China but retained diplomatic relations with other world powers. The United States, despite the new Lend-Lease program, was as far from entering the military conflict as ever — so much so that Winston Churchill was starting to despair that America’s military power would never come to his hard-pressed country’s aid. Churchill knew that “dragging the United States in,” as he put it, was Britain’s only possible path to victory. And then, on Dec. 5, the Soviets opened an enormous counteroffensive in front of Moscow that grew into a mortal threat to the exhausted German forces. On the evening of Dec. 7, as the British historians Brendan Simms and Charlie