The stupidest thing he ever did : declaring war on the USA when it had no intention of doing the same to him...A previous post mentioned that probably the majority of the world’s territories were not actually free to decide whether to be Allied, Axis or Neutral : they were - legally - dependent colonies and protectorates.
But was Egypt, for example, really free to decide? There was a lot of grey areas where the formal - nominal - power to choose was totally constrained by real world politics.
Of course, as soon as the warring powers began invading, they added a lot more grey into the situation.
Poland was quickly divided into three legally different zones : France into two.
Was Vichy France really a willing partner in New Order Europe ?
Was Iceland and Greenland really eager to be occupied by Britain ?
And how willing were countries like Finland and Bulgaria to be co-belligerents with the Axis ?
After May 1940 in Europe and May 1942 in South East Asia it got much harder to be a genuine Neutral.
The time to display truly independent action was probably much earlier when both sides were more even.
I firmly believe that if neutral Sweden had a treaty with Poland, France and the UK to defend Poland from war aggressors, Hitler would not have invaded Poland and also that Stalin would have walked away from any plans to share conquered Poland with Hitler.
Sweden’s large and close land mass was the only real way Britain and France could directly intervene in Poland, not merely annoy Germany’s outer edges to the West.
Spain on the Allied side and Turkey on the Axis side were big enough to alter the war’s course. Noway actively on the Allied side might also have altered the war’s course.
The biggest Neutral of them all : America, could have decidedly altered the war completely if it had entered the war in September 1939 : even better, threaten to in August 1939...
Despite Hollywood producing a Trumpworld like definition of the truth about America in WWII, the USA would NEVER have entered the European war, until Hitler first declared war on them.
America’s largest ethnic originating group, far and away, are Germans and 1941’s Congress & Senate simply won’t have voted to declare war on Germany, Pearl Harbour or not...
Hitler and his government were surely aware of the strategic debates within the Japanese high command regarding updated war aims after the catastrophic Japanese defeat in the Soviet-Japanese War of 1939. Search using the term “Nomonhan” for the full story. Furthermore, as Germany would also have known that the Japanese considered themselves betrayed by the timing of the Stalin-Hitler Pact, the post–Pearl Harbor declaration of war against the USA might have been an attempt to smooth troubled waters. But ultimately, that would have been marginal when compared with the incontrovertible evidence that the USA had been cooperating with Britain in actively prosecuting the war against Germany. Thus, the Rainbow Five Plan, which outlined the terms of full US military, air, and naval mobilization in a presumptive conflict with the Axis powers, was widely believed in Germany to be clearly indicative of FDR’s intentions—as indeed it was.
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