Chapter 3
Yamamoto at Pearl Harbor
A military man can scarcely pride himself on “having smitten a sleeping enemy”; it is more a matter of shame, simply, for the one smitten.
—Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto
Following his accession to power in 1933, Hitler inherited the task of rebuilding Germany’s armed forces. While Hitler, like Napoleon before Trafalgar, doubted that the British could be defeated on the open seas, just like Napoleon was before Trafalgar, he lent his support to an aggressive shipbuilding program in order to provide Germany with highly efficient pocket battleships and submarines. When World War II broke out, German U-boats nearly succeeded in severing the artery between England and the United States, just as they had attempted from ...
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