01 Sep Pat Buchanan: If Terrorists Take Over, It’s World War II’s Fault (UPDATED)
David Bernstein and I agree about one thing: Pat Buchanan is a very stupid man.
But if Hitler was out to conquer the world — Britain, Africa, the Middle East, the United States, Canada, South America, India, Asia, Australia — why did he spend three years building that hugely expensive Siegfried Line to protect Germany from France? Why did he start the war with no surface fleet, no troop transports and only 29 oceangoing submarines? How do you conquer the world with a navy that can’t get out of the Baltic Sea?
If Hitler wanted the world, why did he not build strategic bombers, instead of two-engine Dorniers and Heinkels that could not even reach Britain from Germany?
Why did he let the British army go at Dunkirk?
Why did he offer the British peace, twice, after Poland fell, and again after France fell?
Why, when Paris fell, did Hitler not demand the French fleet, as the Allies demanded and got the Kaiser’s fleet? Why did he not demand bases in French-controlled Syria to attack Suez? Why did he beg Benito Mussolini not to attack Greece?
Because Hitler wanted to end the war in 1940, almost two years before the trains began to roll to the camps.
Hitler had never wanted war with Poland, but an alliance with Poland such as he had with Francisco Franco’s Spain, Mussolini’s Italy, Miklos Horthy’s Hungary and Father Jozef Tiso’s Slovakia.
Indeed, why would he want war when, by 1939, he was surrounded by allied, friendly or neutral neighbors, save France. And he had written off Alsace, because reconquering Alsace meant war with France, and that meant war with Britain, whose empire he admired and whom he had always sought as an ally.
As of March 1939, Hitler did not even have a border with Russia. How then could he invade Russia?
Winston Churchill was right when he called it “The Unnecessary War” — the war that may yet prove the mortal blow to our civilization.
Get that? The Holocaust is our fault, because we didn’t let Hitler have France. Priceless.
Not a single commenter to David’s post at Volokh Conspiracy — yes, he’s David when I agree with him, Bernstein when I don’t — has defended Buchanan. I agree with the first comment: “Long story short: it’s guys like this that give American conservatives a bad name.”
UPDATE: MSNBC has removed the editorial from its website. Now if it would only remove Buchanan from its roster of pundits. Why it believes a pro-Nazi anti-Semite like Buchanan deserves a national platform is beyond me.
For the benefits of those of us whose knowledge of European history is very limited, perhaps you could point out the inaccuracy of the alleged historical facts and the flawed reasoning.
That would quickly undo any negative effect of the message in the duplicated text.
perhaps you could point out the inaccuracy of the alleged historical facts
That’s been done at <a href=”http://edgeofthewest.wordpress.com/2009/09/02/i-read-pat-buchanans-column-on-hitler-and-my-eyes-are-bleeding/”>this post</a> and its comment thread, by yours truly and others.
Thanks, Anderson!
The only “counter” fact mentioned in the aforementioned link is that Hitler wanted to conquer Russia.
Surely, more than this can be done who claim that the article is funadmentally wrong-headed. No one claims that England and the U.S. were forced into WWII to save Russia.
The only “counter” fact mentioned in the aforementioned link is that Hitler wanted to conquer Russia. Unfortunately, that is not true, and interested persons should examine the linked blog post and comment thread. I’ll quote one of my own comments, dealing with a Buchanan-friendly interlocutor, and beginning with what concessions may be made to Buchanan: No, Hitler was not “ready” in 1939. Or, arguably, in 1940. Ernst May has argued pretty plausibly that, were it not for a world-class intel failure on the Allies’ part, Hitler would’ve gotten his ass handed to him in May 1940. And sure, Hitler hoped that Britain wouldn’t really go to war over Poland. (See Kershaw, 2 Hitler 223: “Hitler had led Germany into the general European war he had wanted to avoid for several more years.”) The bottom line, however, is that Hitler was determined to conquer an inoffensive neighbor, Poland, and subjugate its people as if they were natives in an African colony (cf. Mazower, Hitler’s Empire). Buchanan, however, argues that the Allies should not have guaranteed Poland, because it was absurd to suppose that Hitler had any further territorial demands. And saying that “Hitler had never wanted war with Poland” is simply… Read more »