XPost: soc.culture.jewish, talk.politics.guns, can.politics
by Patrick J. Buchanan
“What Would Winston Do?”
So asks Newsweek’s cover, which features a full-length photo of the
prime minister his people voted the greatest Briton of them all.
Quite a tribute, when one realizes Churchill’s career coincides with
the collapse of the British empire and the fall of his nation from
world pre-eminence to third-rate power.
That the Newsweek cover was sparked by my book “Churchill, Hitler and
The Unnecessary War” seems apparent, as one of the three essays, by
Christopher Hitchens, was a scathing review. Though in places
complimentary, Hitchens charmingly concludes: This book “stinks.”
Understandable. No Brit can easily concede my central thesis: The
Brits kicked away their empire. Through colossal blunders, Britain
twice declared war on a Germany that had not attacked her and did not
want war with her, fought for 10 bloody years and lost it all.
Unable to face the truth, Hitchens seeks solace in old myths.
We had to stop Prussian militarism in 1914, says Hitchens. “The
Kaiser’s policy shows that Germany was looking for a chance for war
all over the globe.”
Nonsense. If the Kaiser were looking for a war he would have found it.
But in 1914, he had been in power for 25 years, was deep into middle
age but had never fought a war nor seen a battle.
From Waterloo to World War I, Prussia fought three wars, all in one
seven-year period, 1864 to 1871. Out of these wars, she acquired two
duchies, Schleswig and Holstein, and two provinces, Alsace and
Lorraine. By 1914, Germany had not fought a war in two generations.
Does that sound like a nation out to conquer the world?
As for the Kaiser’s bellicose support for the Boers, his igniting the
Agadir crisis in 1905, his building of a great fleet, his seeking of
colonies in Africa, he was only aping the British, whose approbation
and friendship he desperately sought all his life and was ever denied.
In every crisis the Kaiser blundered into, including his foolish
“blank cheque” to Austria after Serb assassins murdered the heir to
the Austrian throne, the Kaiser backed down or was trying to back away
when war erupted.
Even Churchill, who before 1914 was charging the Kaiser with seeking
“the dominion of the world,” conceded, “History should … acquit
William II of having plotted and planned the World War.”
What of World War II? Surely, it was necessary to declare war to stop
Adolf Hitler from conquering the world and conducting the Holocaust.
Yet consider. Before Britain declared war on him, Hitler never
demanded return of any lands lost at Versailles to the West. Northern
Schleswig had gone to Denmark in 1919, Eupen and Malmedy had gone to
Belgium, Alsace and Lorraine to France.
Why did Hitler not demand these lands back? Because he sought an
alliance, or at least friendship, with Great Britain and knew any move
on France would mean war with Britain — a war he never wanted.
If Hitler were out to conquer the world, why did he not build a great
fleet? Why did he not demand the French fleet when France surrendered?
Germany had to give up its High Seas Fleet in 1918.
Why did he build his own Maginot Line, the Western Wall, in the
Rhineland, if he meant all along to invade France?
If he wanted war with the West, why did he offer peace after Poland
and offer to end the war, again, after Dunkirk?
That Hitler was a rabid anti-Semite is undeniable. “Mein Kampf” is
saturated in anti-Semitism. The Nuremberg Laws confirm it. But for the
six years before Britain declared war, there was no Holocaust, and for
two years after the war began, there was no Holocaust.
Not until midwinter 1942 was the Wannsee Conference held, where the
Final Solution was on the table.
That conference was not convened until Hitler had been halted in
Russia, was at war with America and sensed doom was inevitable. Then
the trains began to roll.
And why did Hitler invade Russia? This writer quotes Hitler 10 times
as saying that only by knocking out Russia could he convince Britain
it could not win and must end the war.
Hitchens mocks this view, invoking the Hitler-madman theory.
“Could we have a better definition of derangement and megalomania than
the case of a dictator who overrules his own generals and invades
Russia in wintertime … ?”
Christopher, Hitler invaded Russia on June 22.
The Holocaust was not a cause of the war, but a consequence of the
war. No war, no Holocaust.
Britain went to war with Germany to save Poland. She did not save
Poland. She did lose the empire. And Josef Stalin, whose victims
outnumbered those of Hitler 1,000 to one as of September 1939, and who
joined Hitler in the rape of Poland, wound up with all of Poland, and
all the Christian nations from the Urals to the Elbe.
The British Empire fought, bled and died, and made Eastern and Central
Europe safe for Stalinism. No wonder Winston Churchill was so
melancholy in old age. No wonder Christopher rails against the book.
As T.S. Eliot observed, “Mankind cannot bear much reality.”
https://buchanan.org/blog/pjb-was-the-holocaust-inevitable-1016
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