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Comment by castratikron | Hacker News Reader

US had declared war on Japan but not Germany. Germany declared war on US a few days later.

My memory of the details is a little fuzzy, but Great Britain played a role in all that as well. As I recall, they had a mutual defense pact of some sort with the US, to the point that they declared war on Japan before the US did, in response to the Pearl Harbor attacks. The US then declared war on Japan shortly afterwards. The Germans apparently saw all of this as "the writing on the wall" and realized that US entry into the war in Europe was inevitable, and so declared war on the US.

Something like that anyway. It's been a while since I read up on all of this.

Japan declared war and invaded Asian British colonies simultaneously with the attack on Pearl Harbor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_declaration_of_war_on...

OK, I found the bit I was remembering:

The UK actually declared war on Japan nine hours before the U.S. did, partially due to Japanese attacks on Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong, and partially due to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's promise to declare war "within the hour" of a Japanese attack on the United States.[1]

I had forgotten the part about the attacks on Malaya, etc.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor#Afterma...

Hitler had a mutual defense pact with Japan. But he didn’t have to declare war on the US. It was one of his greatest blunders. Had the US not declare war on Germany, or delayed it for a year or two, Germany might have been able to finish off the Russians and cement their control of Europe.

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