Text: English     International Military Tribunal "Blue Series," Vol. 3, p. 398
		10 Dec. 45 The same day, 11 December, the fourth anniversary of which is tomorrow, the Congress of the United States resolved: "That the state of war between the United States and the Government of Germany which has thus been thrust upon the United States, is hereby formally declared." This declaration is contained as Document 272 in the official publication Peace and War, of which the Tribunal has already taken judicial notice as Exhibit USA-122. The declaration itself has been reproduced for the document books as our Document 2945-PS. It thus appears that, apart from their own aggressive intentions and declaration of war against the United States, the Nazi conspirators in their collaboration with Japan incited and kept in motion a force reasonably calculated to result in an attack on the United States. While maintaining their preference that the United States not be involved in war at the time, they nevertheless foresaw the distinct possibility, even probability, of such involvement as a result of the action they were encouraging. They were aware that the Japanese had prepared plans for attack against the United States, and they accepted the consequences by assuring the Japanese that they would declare war on the United States should a United States-Japanese conflict result. In dealing with captured documents of the enemy the completeness of the plan is necessarily obscured, but those documents which have been discovered and offered in evidence before this Tribunal show that the Japanese attack was the proximate and foreseeable consequence of their collaboration policy and that their exhortations and encouragement of the Japanese as surely led to Pearl Harbor as though Pearl Harbor itself had been mentioned. I should like to read the Ciano diary entry for 8 December, the day after Pearl Harbor: "A night telephone call from Ribbentrop. He is overjoyed about the Japanese attack on America. He is so happy about it that I am happy with him, though I am not too sure about the final advantages of what has happened. One thing is now certain, that America will enter the conflict and that the conflict will be so long that she will be able to realize all her potential forces. This morning I told this to the King who had been pleased about the event. He ended by admitting that, in the long run, I may be right. Mussolini was happy, too. For a long time he has favored a definite clarification of relations between America and the Axis." The final document consists of the top-secret notes of a conference between Hitler and Japanese Ambassador Oshima on 14 December 398
		Text: English     International Military Tribunal "Blue Series," Vol. 3, p. 398     Last modified: October 10, 1998 Copyright © 1998 The Mazal Library and The Holocaust History Project. All rights reserved. Technical/administrative contact: webmaster@holocaust-history.org Find a typo? Let us know.