1942 'Life' mag issue ‘imagined Hitler’s plan to invade America’

Experts had predicted that Hitler might try to invade the US from the East Coast with the help of their allies, according to a 1942 issue of a magazine.

After the Luftwaffe launched a devastating attack on the British fleet, Hitler’s ships race across the Atlantic and with the help of 5th columnists invade America.

This is just one of the nightmare scenarios imagined by the Life magazine in 1942 when the threat of a Nazi invasion seemed all too real, reports the Daily Mail.

Created in the months after Pearl Harbour, the March 2 issue featured a series of maps showing how experts predicted German might try to annex the US.

The maps shows detailed plans of how the Nazis could work with their allies to take over America.

One scenario imagined by the magazine sees the Germans invade the US from the East Coast. But first, they would have needed to take out the British fleet, rescue captured Vichy France and Italian fleets, and have help from 5th columnists in the US.

According to these plans, the Nazis would launch an assault on Norfolk, Virginia. First, the Germans would rendezvous with the ‘Jap fleet’ via the Azores, Madeira and Canaries

Its purpose was to serve as a warning to readers that America was no longer just an observer of the Second World War.

The varied diagrams show different options, which would have been available to the Germans from invasion across the Atlantic to the East Coast to the imagined bombing of the Panama Canal before launching at attack via Japan from the West.
 
The maps were created by Life as a follow-up to an article by science fiction author Philip Wylie, who had written a controversial article imagining an American defeat in the war.