Joachim C. Fest, one of Hitler's biographers, has argued that Hitler's decision was "really no longer an act of his own volition, but a gesture governed by a sudden awareness of his own impotence. That gesture was Hitler's last strategic initiative of any importance."[1] Historian Ian Kershaw characterizes Hitler's decision to declare war on the US when he wasn't required to as "[A] typical Hitler forward move, attempting to seize the initiative ... [b]ut it was a move from weakness, not strength. And it was more irrational than any strategic decision taken to that date."[33] In his biographical analysis, The Meaning of Hitler, journalist Sebastian Haffner said of Hitler's decision "There is to this day [1979] no comprehensible rational explanation for what one is tempted to describe as an act of lunacy. ...