Posted on 06/09/2008 10:45:11 AM PDT by prolifefirst
The war Buchanan speaks of is both WWI and WWII lumped together as a great Western Civilazion civil war that:
1) left something like 75 million dead
2) left 1/2 of Europe and a big chunk of the rest of the world subject to horrilbe communist tyranny for 50 years
3) caused a collapse of Western culture
With results of the World Wars so catostrophic, it’s suprising that nobody on this thread is interested in exploring the possibility that there was another way.
Yea Pat, we should have left Hitler alone until he got nukes. Then it would have been too late.
Since when has a speech writer, or even a communications director, ever made such decisions?
If you want to discredit his point of view, fine, but stick with what's actually true, not just cheap shots.
Try reading books from the era sometime.
Why don’t YOU make an argument if you have one to make? I told (in brief) why I do not consider PB worth the time to discuss. I despise him and his vacuous Hitler-friendly views.
If you have an intelligent argument to offer here then there is something to discuss. Otherwise, you are just a publicity flack for the contemptible Pat Buchanan.
As opposed to leaving 40% subject to Communist tyranny, 60% to the tyranny of the 1000 year Reich. Apologies to those who don't consider the Reich tyrannical, to whom Europe under Hitler's thumb would make complete sense, Hitler, the savior of Western culture.
You have not responded to my question. You claim you are pro life by your screen name. The Jews were being rounded up by the millions and sent to their deaths in gas chambers or starved to death intentionally. Old people, young people, children. Women and men. Was this okay with you? How would have this been stopped, if no one intervened to fight Hitler and the Germans?
A suggestion, make your case that a Hitler dominated Europe would have “saved” Western culture.
I wanted more knowledgable people to help me evaluate Buchanan's arguments, but it's hard to get that from someone who hasn't read the book.
Imagine had Hitler's motivation been only world domination, not genocite, much of the Manhattan Project would have been in Berlin, not Chicago and New Mexico.
And now before us stands the last problem that must be solved and will be solved It (the Sudetenland) is the last territorial claim which I have to make in Europe, but it is the claim from which I will not recede... - Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Berlin, September 26 1938, just prior to the Munich conference.
A few months later his army occupied the bulk of the Czech lands. A few months after that Hitler made a claim on Danzig and the Polish Corridor.
This was an indication that Hitler couldn't be trusted to keep his word. Hitler wasn't an old-fashioned nationalist statesman, like Bismarck, and his actions later proved how dangerous he was to Europe.
Although I haven't read Pat's book, his columns show the kind of rhetoric used to justify the Hitler-Stalin pact: Hitler's claims are regarded as just and his policies as sensible, while other countries of Central Europe, like Poland or Hungary, are condemned as "reactionary" or fascist dictatorships. But really Hitler's tyranny was the worst of the lot.
If you want to say that Stalin was actually worse, I won't object, but who was willing to make a deal with Stalin? Hitler.
Many of Pat's ideas come from A.J.P Taylor's 1961 book, The Origins of the Second World War, so if you look up the controversy over that book, you'll get a clear idea of the arguments for and against Taylor's -- and Buchanan's -- view.
Hitler was a pathological dictator with detailed plans to take over Europe and get rid of Jews and other “undesirables”. Case closed.
Well somebody could have put a bullet into Hitler's brain pan right around 1932.
Haven’t read it. The war was definitely avoidable, but does that mean it wasn’t necessary? That’s an important difference.
-Wm Tate,
http://www.atimelikethis.us/
No joke.
A disturbing fact that proves this point were the prominent Jewish fascists in Italy —— Mussolini was a terrible man, motivated by greed and hatred and the desire for domination -— but he ORIGINALLY had nothing against Italians who happened to be Jewish. Hence, many Italian Jews were swept along with the fascists movement, just like so many others.
If Hitler was not motivated chiefly by antisemitism -— he would have had a huge scientific advantage -— and we'd probably be dead.
No one really wanted WWI, the alliances and treaties between the powers caused countries to act outside of their normal self interests. It took so long and was so difficult to “mobilize” that once a country made the decision it was nearly irreversible.
IMHO, the problem with this type of analysis is:
1. Hindsight is usually 20/20
2. There is no promise that history would have turned out better if things were different. Germany has aspirations beyond its border, Russia was heading toward communism, Britain wanted a divided continent.
Is what happened worse case?
schu
Thanks for the post. I appreciate it.
So much information has come out following WW2, that it is somewhat disconcerting. We were fed a steady diet of BBC black propaganda in that war. The London Daily Mirror and other newspapers fully co-operated in that propaganda. Orwell conceded it was so. Orwell said that Fascism was so evil, it just could not be fought fairly. Orwell always had a twinge of regret though. His services were enlisted.
As I have not got the book, but will do so this very afternoon by order, I should not rush in. I would like to pose three views though. Bearing in mind a little known fact. Germany declared war on America, a country with a powerful anti-war lobby, with regards to Europe. What fools declared this war?
My two views:
(1)Churchill, unlike Chamberlain was not the English gentleman. He loathed Hitler and knew Hitler lied twice. His epithet: "That guttersnipe". Could anyone have safely negotiated with a guttersnipe?
(2)Hitler was a bully. He trembled (so it is said) when the world was to react against the invasion of the Sudaten Land (Czechoslovakia). "What now? he is supposed to have said. When nothing happened, (thank you League of Nations). Inner sources later claimed Hitler became puffed up with his own invincibility. Poor Chamberlain is now damned.
(3) The Nazi's were completely corrupt. Offers were made through neutral embassies. Money, money and more money. (I agree this is heresy). The documentation evades me and I am on shaky ground.
Could the European Jews have been bought freedom on enormous payments. Monies that Germany claimed that France had wiped out post WW2?
I will never know in my now later years, if this was the case.
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