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Originally Posted by shakran
We must remember, though, that Germany DID declare war on us. That gave us more justification to fight than we ever had in the current situation.
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Sorry to hijack a little, but that in itself was an empty justification. Germany was required by treaty (the Tripartite Pact) to declare war on us after we had done so on Japan. There is considerable evidence that this fact was actually one of the reasons that the American government "encouraged" Japan to start a war with us in the first place. The American public didn't want to get involved in the European war, but the government did. Getting Germany to declare war on us by default was a convenient way to change their minds.
Interestingly, the US had been committing acts of war (by most definitions) against Germany long before war was declared. Despite that, Hitler had given explicit orders that American shipping was not to be attacked if it could be at all avoided. America could have stayed out of WW2 for quite a while (indefinitely?) without being attacked, but I think we'd all agree that that would have been a bad idea.