Tom Clancy's "The Bear and the Dragon"

oringo said:

A little correction. Hitler didn't declare war on US. US declared war on Germany after some U-boats sunk a few American convoy ships to UK. Hitler didn't declare war on USSR either; he just directly started attacking Russia. IMHO even if he didn't invade USSR, Stalin would've probably opened war with Germany eventually. The secret treaty between Germany and USSR were only temporary, and they both knew it.

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I was taught that Nazi Germany had a policy of appeasement toward the US to prevent US from entering the war, then Hitler decided to declare war agains the US 4 days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor?

I think, if we were explore an "alternate history" fiction where Hitler was more reasonable and listened to J. Goebbels and R. Hess instead of H. Goring, things would've turned out very differently. Also, in the event that Germany was able to make a cease fire agreement with UK, and the Soviets decided to attack, I think Nazi Germany on the defensive with full force would've infliced severe punishment on the Soviets on a far bigger scale than the Russo-Finnish Winter War.

adeptitus said:

I was taught that Nazi Germany had a policy of appeasement toward the US to prevent US from entering the war, then Hitler decided to declare war agains the US 4 days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor?

I think, if we were explore an "alternate history" fiction where Hitler was more reasonable and listened to J. Goebbels and R. Hess instead of H. Goring, things would've turned out very differently. Also, in the event that Germany was able to make a cease fire agreement with UK, and the Soviets decided to attack, I think Nazi Germany on the defensive with full force would've infliced severe punishment on the Soviets on a far bigger scale than the Russo-Finnish Winter War.

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You are right. I was thinking WWI. However, I think that if USSR had attacked Germany first, things would've been different. The reason why Germany was able to inflict so much damange on USSR at the beginning of the war was because they took the Russians by supprise. The Russians knew that the Germans were getting ready for an invasion, but they thought the Germans would at least get some winter gears first. While the Russians were slowly mobilizing their troops, the Germans suddenly attacked USSR without equipping their troops with winter gears, hoping that they would finish the major battles before winter arrives. A famous story was that USSR intel was monitoring the price of lamb to determine when the Germans would attack (Germans would have needed to kill lots of sheep to make winter gears for their troops, and coincidentally the lamb price would fall).