The drift of the conversation, as Wiedemann remembered it, was positively American friendly (amerikafreundlich). The harmony did not last; before long, Hitler was upset that the view of the German pavilion was partially blocked by another building. “It is an outrage (Unveschämtheit) to offer us such a spot.” Funk’s interjection that the contract had already been negotiated left the führer cold: “I don’t care, gentlemen,” he said, “see to it that you get out of this business.”47 He then stormed out and left his guests sitting there.
What, if anything, should Hitler have learned from his America experts? What he actually learned from them is, of course, another question. Judging from his writings and speeches, Hitler was well aware of the potential threat of U.S. intervention in European affairs, and he said so in several passages in Mein Kampf. In his second (unpublished) book, discovered after World War II by the historian Gerhard Weinberg, Hitler referred to the “hegemonic position” of the United States, warning that the United States would shift its expansionist energy from the Western Hemisphere to the entire globe.
His experts all agreed that Germany should do everything possible to avoid a war with the United States. Hanfstaengl claimed that he warned Hitler repeatedly that Germany could not afford to antagonize the United States, and reminded him of what had happened in World War I. In the early 1920s he said to Hitler, “Well now, you have just fought in the war. We very nearly won in 1917 when Russia collapsed. Why, then, did we finally lose it?” “Because the Americans came in,” responded Hitler. “If you recognize that we are agreed and that is all you need to know.”48 A decade later Lüdecke said that Hitler was very receptive to the idea of winning the goodwill of the American people. Even when he touched upon the anti-Nazi propaganda in the United States, which branded Hitler as a megalomaniac, Hitler waved him off: “Not credible.” “He already wanted to hear no more of that.”49
The goodwill of the American people was of interest to Hitler because he knew that they were strongly isolationist in the postwar period. It was in Germany’s interest to encourage this isolationism, but if this should fail, he wanted enough time to keep America out of the war until all of Eurasia was his. This is why, with the outbreak of war, Bötticher’s reports appear to have influenced his war plans.50 There is evidence that Bötticher’s reports about America’s military preparedness had a strong bearing on his timetable. What Hitler wanted to know from his military attaché, as previously mentioned, was how soon America could militarily intervene in Europe. The technical information Bötticher supplied was excellent but lacked political context—that is, sound knowledge of how American democracy really functioned. When Hitler said that he liked Bötticher’s reports because they demonstrated a real insight into the American mentality, he meant that he liked them because they reflected his own stereotypes of America. Neither Hitler nor Bötticher understood the American mentality, just as they failed to understand the psychology of other nationalities. What both did understand were the military strengths and weaknesses of other nations. Their cultural and political ignorance, combined with a German tendency to overestimate their own superiority, made them less intelligent about the potential of their enemies.
From all the available evidence, it appears that Hitler’s image of America was generally positive until the mid-1930s—the time when he became aware of the fact that the United States would oppose his expansion. By the spring of 1938, he realized that Roosevelt might be a determined supporter of the Western democracies. Hitler’s pronouncements, both private and public, became more anti-American; yet his view of the world was substantially cast in stone by the late 1920s. As previously argued, Hitler’s picture of America (Amerikabild) was and would remain split: positive and negative stereotypes alternated, even though, when America once more tipped the scales of war, he found emotional satisfaction in his abusive rants against “the society that was “half judaized and half negrified.“51 Hanfstaengl was right when he observed that Hitler was really not anti-American; there were many things about America that he admired. He marveled at its size and material wealth, and he was impressed and envious of its industrial power. When visitors touted America’s astounding technical achievements, he would always reply defensively and boastfully that he would build bigger highways, better automobiles, taller skyscrapers, and sturdier, more modern housing developments for German workers. In short, Hitler was envious of the United States, an envy that contained as much admiration as it did contempt. Whether Americans were decadent or not was important to him only in connection with their ability or inability to resist German power. One historian, James Compton, claims that Hitler had mental blocks to any realistic attitude toward America.52 While this may have been true about many aspects of American life and culture, which Hitler, like many Europeans, saw in terms of popular stereotypes, it was decidedly untrue when it came to a fairly realistic understanding of American economic power. As will be seen, Hitler put up with frequent American violations of neutrality and gave repeated orders to his military chiefs not to engage the Americans in a conflict and, when attacked, to make sure that the first shot was fired by the Americans. Even after he declared war on the United States and gave Joseph Goebbels carte blanche to unleash anti-American propaganda on the German public, he did not want this to be so overdone so as to make America, and Americans, look like a negligible power. In the spring of 1942 he ordered the German press to engage in a broad polemic against America that highlighted the enemy’s cultural deficiencies. The press, he ordered, should expose America’s distasteful worship of film stars, addiction to sensationalism, grotesque female boxing, mud wrestling, and gangsters. It would be entirely false, however, Hitler insisted, to ridicule America’s technological progress. The press instead should emphasize that Germany was building better roads and faster automobiles, and that its scientists were making greater strides in discovering synthetic products that would ensure the triumph of German economic power in the world.53
The German ambassador to Italy, Ulrich von Hassell, observed that Hitler and the Americans spoke such an entirely different language that an understanding between them was almost impossible.54 Yet there were all too many Americans who shared Hitler’s racial and anti-Semitic views. After all, the United States practiced segregationist, anti-immigration, and anti-Semitic policies. Hitler spoke a language that resonated with more Americans than is commonly admitted by historians. “Lots of people out here [in America],” a telegram to the White House read, “think Hitler is alright. We’d just as soon have him as Roosevelt.”55 Another read, “Many persons who detest the mention even of Hitler’s name, are in favor of Hitler’s manner of dealing with the Jews.”56 Right-wing critics of Roosevelt, such as Fritz Kuhn, Father Charles Coughlin, and William Dudley Pelley, to name just a few pro-Fascists, ceaselessly inveighed against the Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy that had allegedly insinuated itself into the highest government circles, including the White House. The Germans also found numerous right-wing fellow travelers and subsidized their anti-Roosevelt and isolationist campaigns.
America’s greatest hero of the 1920s, aviator Charles Lindbergh, had considerable influence among isolationists and admired the Nazi military, especially its air force. The “Lone Eagle” was a member of the America First Committee and made prominent radio broadcasts and speeches opposing Roosevelt’s anti-Nazi policies. He also accepted the highest decoration given by the Nazis to a foreigner—the Service Cross of the German Eagle with Star, later prompting Roosevelt to tell Henry Morgenthau: “If I should die tomorrow, I want you to know this—I am absolutely convinced that Lindbergh is a Nazi.”57 Lindbergh was not a Nazi, but he was impressed by Germany’s technological progress and its growing military power, and he warned the American people to stay out of European conflicts. There were many critics of Roosevelt’s internationalism who agreed with Lindbergh’s sentiments.
Roosevelt’s Image of Germany
Hitler and Roosevelt, coming as they did from entirely different worlds, spoke a different political language, but they understood each other as being implacable enemies. Roosevelt never thought Hitler was a Charlie Chaplin caricature but believed him to be a deadly threat to the United States. He read Hitler’s Mein Kampf in the original German, something very few statesmen
