Originally Posted by Lost Soul

Show me where I am wrong.

Originally Posted by O'Sullivan Bere

That's spinning it recklessly. If a declaration of war is the definition of an enemy, then Iran is not an enemy because there is no declaration of war with it. You (and/or Boortz) can't have it both ways like that.

The US relations with Japan steadily deteriorated with Imperial Japan long before Pearl Harbor. It got really bad following the Rape of Nanking and the invasion of Indochina, which led to the US cutting off oil that Japan needed for its war machine, leading to the war.

Hitler wanted to keep the US out of the war, at least until Europe was secured. Long term he pondered it, as he disliked the US as a capitalistic society of Jews and mongrels in his eyes. FDR supported the British in things like the Lend-Lease Act, leasing ports, giving anti-submarine information to the Allies, etc. That aggravated Hitler, but he still wished to bide his time with the US.

What got Hitler into the war was his stupid Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, who made a reckless boasting comment to the Japanese embassador to Germany where he promised that if Japan attacked the US that Germany would likewise declare war. He made the promise without obtaining a reciprocal promise that Japan would declare war on the Soviet Union.

Japan then negotiated a neutrality pact with the Soviets to free its hand to attack the US, which in turn it did and called upon Germany to live up to its promise. The German charge d'affairs in Washington, Hans Thomsen, wired Germany following Pearl Harbor stating that much sentiment existed to fight only Japan to avoid a two front war, but Hitler rejected that counselling, feeling that the US had antagonised Germany long enough and that the time was right to put the US down by also declaring war on it. Hitler was wrong, though, as the two front war actually hurt him more than it did the US given the situation on the battlefields and Germany's location vis-a-vis the US geographically.

In both cases the Japanese and the Germans declared war on the US, not the other way around.