Thanks for your reply. My favorite historical topic is the Second World War. The permutations and probabilities of this titanic, never before or since eclipsed struggle beggar belief, and are both endlessly fascinating and horrifying.
Hitler’s had a near schizophrenic image of America: America and Amerika. Hitler would maniacally denounce the United States as feeble, decadent nation while simultaneously referring to it as an industrial colossus worthy of imitation. Or he would belittle America in the vilest terms while at the same time looking at the latest photos from the United States, watching American films, and amusing himself with Mickey Mouse cartoons.
America was a place that Hitler admired—for the can-do spirit of the American people, which he attributed to their Nordic blood—and envied—for its enormous territorial size, abundant resources, and political power. He saw that the largest single ethnic group in the US was people of Germanic descent, and in his Aryan addled Darwinistic viewpoint, that very Germanic blood was comprised of the very best ethnic stock, German “pioneers” who were adventurous and daring enough to leave their country and forge a new destiny in a foreign nation that did not have a Bismarckian welfare state. I think that he saw this reality as an added threat from the US for his visions of world hegemony, even as he sought ways to harness this genetic/ethnic Volksdeutche resource toward German victory.
Given the proliferation of German descended command leadership (Nimitz, Eisenhower, King, Spaatz, Eaker, Arnold, Eichelburger, and the lists of awardees of the Medal of Honor of German descent), his fears were largely realized. .
Amerika, however, was to Hitler a mongrel nation, grown too rich too soon and governed by a capitalist elite with strong ties to the Jews, and infected with a mongrelized culture.
A nation with an international and mercantile trading foundation must be able to project power in order to protect those interests. We are not going to renounce international trade routes and commerce for isolationism.
One more thing, the western allies only had to face about 20% of the German Army in the West. I shudder to think what the casualty lists would have looked like if the US had to face just 50% of it. My father fought on the Gothic Line in Italy. Witness the slaughter of US troops at Kasserine, Salerno, the Rapido River, Anzio and Cisterna, the Gustav line, Omaha Beach, the Normandy hedgerows, the Huertgen Forest, the massacre of heavy bomber crews in the fight for air supremacy over the Reich, and the 1944 Ardennes offensive.
I do not think that I would be alive were it not for the Eastern front, where almost 80% of the German Army was engaged with the Soviets.
Hitler had that same schizophrenia towards Britain, on the one hand he saw that as fellow Anglo-Saxons, and greatly admired how they build the British Empire, and he wanted Germany to have the same qualities the Brits had to build that Empire.
He really felt Britain would be a natural ally when he took power, because Britain was no fan of Bolshevism, and would be happy to align with Germany against Russia.
When Britain refused, Hitler was so upset that he swore from that point to destroy Britain, or at least neutralize it.