in the War Department, with whom he exchanged ideas and information and made close contacts. In his efforts to gain insight into American military preparedness, Bötticher was assisted by a first-rate technical advisor, Peter Riedel, a daredevil glider pilot who held several world records. The Bötticher-Riedel partnership yielded some very fruitful insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the American military establishment. By invitation of the War Department, they inspected all sorts of plants scattered across the country and pored over U.S. government statistics and reports. Bötticher had daily contact with the highest-ranking officers of the War College and the War Department. He found the company of U.S. officers quite congenial; his U.S. counterparts were openly anti-Semitic, favored restrictive immigration laws, and supported better U.S.-German relations. General Douglas MacArthur was on friendly terms with Bötticher and allegedly told him in 1933 that he agreed with Hitler’s policy of seeking military parity with France and Britain.39
What Bötticher did not understand was that the relatively small circle of officers he met was not representative of the whole U.S. military establishment. The men he was particularly close to, notably Lieutenant Colonel Truman Smith, were anti-Roosevelt and anti-New Dealers. Some of them were also anglophobic. Bötticher thought he knew them better than he really did. All his U.S. military contacts were of no use when, after the outbreak of war, secret joint military staff meetings were held between British and American military officials to discuss methods of defeating Germany. Bötticher had no inkling that such plans were afoot. On the other hand, he never had any illusions about America’s military capacity, making it clear on numerous occasions, “I warn against overestimating the weaknesses and underestimating American efficiency and the American determination to perform.”40
In February 1939, Bötticher returned to Germany to attend the annual attaché conference, during which he was invited, along with others, for lunch with the führer. As he sat to the right of Hitler, the dictator turned to ask him about President Roosevelt’s alleged Jewishness, claiming that he had reliable evidence that the American president was indeed Jewish. He told Bötticher that he might reveal this little tidbit to the rest of the world. Bötticher responded by telling Hitler that such evidence was patently false and that revealing it was politically very unwise. Hitler then abruptly turned away from him and spoke not another word to him during the luncheon.41 What Hitler really wanted from Bötticher was neither confirmation of Roosevelt’s Jewishness nor his attaché’s knowledge of American life and culture. What he wanted to know was America’s military capacity. This is why Bötticher was so important. What could Bötticher tell Hitler about the time the United States would need to mobilize its forces and gear up its industrial system so that it could seriously challenge the Reich? If war broke out in Europe, when—not how or on what side—would the United States intervene? It was all about timing. Hitler needed to keep the United States out of the war that he knew would happen because he wanted it to happen. In the initial stages of the war, he wanted to keep the United States at arm’s length. This could be done through a variety of tactics: scrupulously avoiding hostile encounters with the United States; encouraging American isolationism; diverting America’s attention elsewhere, such as the Pacific; discouraging the United States through alliances with other Fascist powers (Italy and Japan); and so forth. In this sense, Bötticher’s thinking ran parallel to Hitler’s, for both wanted to keep America out of a potential conflict with Germany. The difference between them was that Bötticher did not want war with America at all, whereas Hitler had no qualms about engaging the United States eventually. Hitler fully expected the United States to enter the war against Germany in the long run, but it was the short run that he was concerned about. How long could he keep the United States at bay? If he could keep America out of the European war until Germany had conquered the continent, the United States could no longer defeat Germany. Bötticher’s critics may have been right in saying that he sent flawed reports that misjudged the political situation in America. All Hitler wanted from Bötticher were accurate military projections. Bötticher obliged and did so accurately, telling his führer that America could not seriously challenge the Reich for at least two years after the commencement of hostilities in Europe, if then.42 Bötticher had the figures in black and white. In 1939 American troop strength was less than 200,000, and the country had mobilized less than 10 percent of its industrial capacity. At the time of Pearl Harbor the picture was not much better.
Besides Karl May, Ernst “Putzi” Hanfstaengl, Kurt Lüdecke, Colin Ross, and Friedrich von Bötticher, Hitler also picked up scraps of information about America from party members who had visited the United States and who usually told him what he wanted to hear, namely that the country was decadent, mired in depression, and militarily unprepared. This negative image was the party line, but Hitler was too shrewd to swallow his own propaganda. He was willing to learn from the people he trusted. The problem was that he relied too heavily on unorthodox “experts” of the sort just mentioned, bypassing the professionals, especially those in the Foreign Office, whom he did not trust. His former superior and adjutant of the List regiment in World War I, Fritz Wiedemann, visited the United States in 1937 and returned from his tour with a healthy respect for the United States. In his Memoirs he pointed out that, among party members, knowledge of America was abysmal. Hitler shared many misconceptions about America with his party cronies and encouraged the dissemination of negative reports about the United States. When a well-known woman journalist embarked on her visit to America, according to Wiedemann, she remembered her chief editor sending her off by saying, “Don’t forget to send us only negative reports.” “But suppose the weather is beautiful? Am I not allowed to report this?” “No,” said the editor, “even the weather has to be bad.”43 Wiedemann pointed out, however, that the Americans often contributed to the negative stereotype of their country by exporting countless gangster films that gave a wholly misleading impression of the United States. Hitler watched many American gangster films, but he also amused himself with big musical productions from Hollywood. At times Hitler seemed to believe that the majority of Americans lived more like the Okies depicted in Grapes of Wrath, a movie he saw on several occasions. King Kong, we are told, was his favorite movie. Wiedemann probably had little success in correcting Hitler’s misconceptions. When he came back from his visit, whose purpose was not entirely clear, he tried to set Hitler straight on America, just as Lüdecke, Hanfstaengl, and Ross claimed to have done.44 Knowing that Hitler liked art and architecture, Wiedemann gave him thirty illustrated books about American buildings and bridges of all sorts. Hitler purportedly was very happy to receive them; he perused the books and then remarked that Germany would build even more monumental marvels. After looking at the Golden Gate Bridge, Hitler promised to build an even more colossal one over the Elbe River in Hamburg—a bridge perhaps not as long; the width of the Elbe did not permit it—but much wider so that it could accommodate more traffic running in both directions. He told Wiedemann that he would build huge skyscrapers in Hamburg.
One day, between Christmas and New Year’s Day 1938, the führer took Wiedemann aside: “Well, tell me some more about your impressions of America.”45 Wiedemann proceeded to take Hitler on an imaginary tour of the Empire State Building, all the way to the top, describing the panoramic view of New York and its incredible forest of skyscrapers at dusk. After recounting the gradually setting sun and how the surrounding buildings disappeared in the gray haze of twilight, he invited the führer to descend to street level in the elevator and then, amid the traffic noise of the city, experience the magic of witnessing the largest skyscraper in the world light up, from the bottom to the top, like a draping pearl necklace. What had previously appeared as a dark and powerful mountain dissolved into a shimmering filigree of light. Wiedemann told his boss that he hoped he would someday have the opportunity of showing him in person the setting sun from the Empire State Building.46
Wiedemann wanted to use Hitler’s receptive attitude about America to convince him that Germany should participate in the 1939 World’s Exhibition in New York. Hitler declared himself in agreement with the plan as long as the cost was right. Walter Funk, the Reich economic minister, who happened to be staying down the mountain at Berchtesgaden at the time, eagerly supported the project. Coincidentally, Hitler was hosting the actor Emil Jannings, who had starred along with Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel. The actor
