As Pearl Harbor Tours explains, 15 out of the 102 ships stationed at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, were lightly damaged. Eleven ships received moderate to severe damage, and seven ships sunk. Much more importantly, the attack left over 3,500 people wounded or dead. Japan didn’t just attack Pearl Harbor, though. On the same day, the nation attacked Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and U.S. military bases in Guam and the Philippines. All in all, it was precisely the type of sudden, overwhelming blitzkrieg — “lightning war” tactic — that Germany itself employed in World War II’s early days to shock and terrify opponents.
The move came as a shock to German leadership, including Adolf Hitler. Nazi press chief Otto Dietrich broke the news to Hitler. At the time the Nazis were reeling from a failed attempt to march on Moscow during Operation Barbarossa, as the Imperial War Museums outlines.
When Hitler received the intercepted radio broadcast about Pearl Harbor, Military History Now says that he muttered, “Is the news true?” before bursting out of the building and running without a hat and coat to a nearby bunker to pass along the news to his military commanders. Commander Wilheim Keitel reports that this was the only time he’d ever seen Hitler so excited. “I had the impression,” he said, “that he felt as if freed from a heavy load.”
