Pat Buchanan: Hitler Didn't Plan to Kill the Jews

Hey, way to go, Townhall.com. Why not publish Pat Buchanan’s Holocaust revisionism? After all, he’s a real conservative, isn’t he?

"Although England, France and Germany were all exhausted, Germany did have the upper hand, and worst case scenario, France would have had to surrender territory in a negotiated ceasefire."

If the US had not intervened, Germany would have won the war, period.

A victorious Germany would have stretched from the Ukraine and Baltic countries (see 1918 Treaty of Brest Litovsk) to the trench lines in France.

A victorious Germany would have bankrupted France and Britain, forcing them to default on loans from the US. Financial collapse would bring on the Great Depression in the 1920s.

A victorious Germany would have destroyed democracy not only in Germany but in most of Europe.

Finally, with all of Germany's neighbors destroyed or crippled, there was nothing to prevent Germans from taking anything and everything they wanted -- just indeed as Hitler did, when he had the power to do so.

In short, over time, Europe would disaappear.
There would only be left the German Empire.

Our great grand parents considered that eventuality utterly, completely and absolutely unacceptable -- and were willing to die in their millions to prevent it.

I see no reason to question their judgement on the matter.

All,

Since I’m actually reading Buchanan’s book, I’m having a hard time reconciling the contents—which are provocative and discomfiting at times, for obvious reasons, but fascinating and thought-provoking—with the sheer white-hot Olbermann-style hate being posted here.

As for the Left, I care not a whit what they think of him, or of anything, for that matter.

But for so-called conservatives to be so quick to throw around ad hominems in order to shut down a topic that makes them uncomfortable (just as the Left would call someone opposed to illegal immigration “racist”), that saddens me.

Perhaps if we spent more time debating the specifics of what people say and do and think, and less time demonizing them, we’d be a hell of a lot better off as a body politic.

I’m not down with anti-semitism. I am not down with Naziism, neo- or otherwise. If PJB is, that’s unfortunate. Thus far the worst thing I’ve heard out of him are seeming codewords that seem of that ilk, but they are passing and few. He does not impress me as a Nazi. So put that word away and save it for an appropriate occasion.

I, like others, think it may well be a mite more important to figure out why the 20th Century was such an ongoing nightmare slaughterhouse, than to pat ourselves on the back for having saved the world, quoting Churchill all the while as if he was the chief savior. He most certainly was not.

Michael Patrick Tracy

LOL. We are getting a little off topic but the bleeding Limeys were itching for war. They wanted any excuse to start one in order to destroy the German navy which as threatening their supremacy. The froggers of course were more than eager to get stretches of land from Germany and believed they could do it. The German government made the hapless mistake of giving a blank check to Austria. Germany at that time wanted anything but war. They knew the were in no shape to engage in one.

The only guiltless party was likely the Americans who had every right to protect their shipping.

"I’m not down with anti-semitism.
I am not down with Naziism, neo- or otherwise.
If PJB is, that’s unfortunate.
Thus far the worst thing I’ve heard out of him are seeming codewords that seem of that ilk, but they are passing and few.
He does not impress me as a Nazi.

So put that word away and save it for an appropriate occasion."

I've said that Buchanan's words are bunk and that he is sucking up to neo-Nazis. Read through my arguments above, and you'll see a number of specifics.

In summary, Buchanan's words are bunk because he is highly selective in the facts he chooses for argument, and flat wrong in some of them. One example we discussed here was his claim that the Holocaust didn't start until Hitler began to lose the war. The truth is, the Holocaust, in one form or another was there from the beginning.

I've said he is sucking up to neo-Nazis because -- as you admit -- he uses their code words, and he even uses some of their arguments.

And the bottom line here is that Buchanan has joined the legions of those working to blame western allies for two wars and tens of millions of deaths that were clearly, obviously started by Germany.

Why?

"We are getting a little off topic but the bleeding Limeys were itching for war.
They wanted any excuse to start one in order to destroy the German navy which as threatening their supremacy.
The froggers of course were more than eager to get stretches of land from Germany and believed they could do it.
The German government made the hapless mistake of giving a blank check to Austria.
Germany at that time wanted anything but war.
They knew the were in no shape to engage in one."

Sorry, but you are not even close.

The western allies were not "itching for war," but they were determined to PREVENT another German military victory such as happened in the previous Franco-Prussian war.

The German government alone truly WANTED WAR, and took the necessary actions to start it.

The Kaiser wanted war, because that's what Kaisers do -- it's their function in life, to win wars, and he was well into middle age without winning anything.

And the Kaiser had already backed down from the brink of war several times prior to the summer of 1914. When his friend, the Austrian archduke was assassinated, the Kaiser was determined: this time he would not back down again.

In short, the Kaiser from day one knew perfectly well that his actions must lead to a Europe-wide war. Indeed, he guaranteed it with the Schlieffen Plan.

And the Germans thought they could win a war in 1914, but possibly not if they waited too long, because the Russian economy especially was growing at a very rapid rate.

The bottom line is this: in 1914 the Germans ACTED and all the rest of Europe REACTED to prevent yet another quick and easy German military victory.

And the Germans came very close to winning that war, both in 1914 and again in 1918. Had the US not intervened in 1918, the Germans would have won and the world would be a very different place.

I am none too found of Germany, but I guess we both have a different take on historical truth here. The British went as far as to stuff the Lusitania with munitions in the hope that U-boat attack would draw the US into war. The Brits have American blood on their hands.

I may concede that some elements in Germany wanted war, but sure as heck disagree with your “defensive” stance of the allies. Not even close. The French and English were itching, itching like crazy for a fight. Germany was kicking Britain's technological and economic ass. They were bringing online warships far superior to what the UK had. The Brits had to stop that. Russia even more so. They so desperately wanted that access to an Atlantic harbour. They hoped to carve it out of whomever got in their way while “rescuing” Serbia.

The Franco-Prussian war was meant as a war of unity for Germany. Germany had no ideas of territorial expansion, except its legal rights to Alsace-Lorraine, but to unite all German provinces. That was accomplised by the Franco-Prussian war. After that they wanted to rebuild their economy and their fledgling military, which was far to small and inadequate to hold onto any gains they would ever gain in a continental war.

The damn French just couldn't let it go and were determined to punish the Germans for the war at Versailles. If Hitler had only invaded France I would have been terribly happy about that outcome.

Germany occupied large sections of northern France, but conditions withing Germany were bad. Also, and this isn't reported to any great detail, the release of troops from east to west was not as successful as predicted or hoped. Unexpectedly, large numbers of troops were needed for garrison duty - and the expected flow of food and supplies from the east never materialized to any great degree.
Germany could muster enough strength for one last throw of the dice (much as it did at the Battle of the Bulge) and did. But conditions in Germany were serious. The financial tensions within a federal state that lacked the right of direct taxation were severe and fissures between Prussia and the rest of Germany were increasing, not to mention the problems between labor and capital, not to mention between Catholics and Protestants.
Despite all the bluster, it is doubtful if Germany could have fought another year. Of course, the German Army had a great advantage: it occupied France. French generals were maniacal about getting the Boche out. A wiser policy would have been for the German Army to stand on the defensive and allowed the British and French to squander the remainder of their strength, rather than launch the last bleeding bull rush in the West.
A defensive policy implies a willingness to accept a stalemate, and no one (on either side) was willing to accept that all the slaughter of the previous four years was for nothing.

Calculated and premeditated, hardly. No reputable historical research supports that conclusion.
That Germany had drawn up the Schlieffen Plan proves nothing. If France had accepted the settlement of 1871, it is unlikely the Schlieffen Plan would have been developed. Even the existence of the Plan is unremarkable. Before Pearl Harbor, the US Navy had a detailed plan to defeat the Japanese. The plan was followed almost exactly, when war did break out.
I never denied that the Kaiser should not have given the Austrians support, but the conflict between Austria and Serbia was bound to come. The foolishness was the treaty between Russia and Serbia. The Russians had an emotional interest in the Balkans, but to bind itself to a state as prone to initiating conflict as the Serbia was an act that was bound to cause conflict, especially as the Russians never disputed that the Austrian interest in the area was paramount.
The war came in 1914 because neither side realized that modern states possess a staying power that makes any hope of a short victory an illusion.
Your truths may be obvious to your but they are serious flawed in the light of an unemotional examination of the facts.

So what about the first to be killed enmasse, the handicapped?

I think Buchanan was saying that under certain circumstances you'd get a Holocaust -- about six million Jews killed or dying in four to six years -- and under other circumstances you wouldn't.

That's what I got from the controversy -- that having a global war helped to make such a result more likely than it otherwise would have been -- but there are so many comments and different angles that I scarcely know what to make of the topic any more.

It's impossible to say what would have happened if things happened differently, and it's certainly possible that had Hitler gotten his way, sooner or later you'd have seen the same kind of genocide that actually happened. I was just trying to make clear what I understood Pat was saying.

The Einsatzgruppen, a special unit of the SS, began operating in June 1941.
http://www.einsatzgruppenarchives.com/documents/introduction.html

The Holocaust did not start when Hitler was losing, but when he was winning. World War 2 is not an excuse for the Holocaust, but the means by which Hitler would cleanse Aryan lands and exterminate the racial enemies of the Germans.

This was no murder, or even an individual mass murderer. It was an organized and mechanized plan of extermination.

Germany FIRST backed Austria's unprovoked declaration of war against Serbia.
WTF?

The heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was assasinated by a Serb nationalist working for the Black Hand, a faction of Serbian Military Intelligence. AH police capture the assassin and many of his co-conspirators, who admit this.
The Austro-Hungarian Emperor makes repeated diplomatic overtures to Serbia to hand over the Black have and to Germany and Russia for aid. The Russian Emperor, a bloodthirsty imbecile who had lost to Japan and who proper up his faltering autocracy using Slavophilic violence, is forced to support Serbia instead of negotiating.
On July 23rd, in despration, the Austro-hungarian empire sends an ultimatum to the Serbia calling for the Black Hand officers, some contested territory, and an indemnity. Serbia looks to Russia, and Nicholas II chooses to join Serbia's war. On July 28th, the Astro-Hungarian Empire invades the renaged Serb regime.
France and Russia then mobilize against both Austria-Hungary and Germany. The Germans, trapped by their adherence to the Schlieffen plan and by Italies betrayal in refusing to aid them in the south, invade France through Belgium.

In 1915 Britain induces perfidious Italy and land-hungry Romania to go to war with Austria-Hungary, in a blatant land grab.

Kaiser Wilhelm II was certainly not a good man, but the hands of his cousin Czar Nicholas and others were equally incarnadine.

This is my source & reference.

Quoting the first Amazon review:

"From Publishers Weekly The world of nihilistic terrorist conspiracy, paranoid empires and diplomatic opportunism that Fromkin (In the Time of the Americans) describes in this terrific account of WWI's underpinnings will seem eerily familiar to 21st-century denizens...

"The view (most influentially stated in Barbara Tuchman's Vietnam-era Guns of August), that the war, unwanted by all, was the result of an unfortunate series of accidents, is neutralized by the clearly presented evidence of careful premeditation and planning on the part of Germany and Austro-Hungary, as is the more recent assertion of Niall Ferguson's The Pity of War that if only the rest of Europe had acceded to Germany's imperial ambitions, the whole business might have been avoided.

"The enormity of the horrors unleashed in that fateful summer—and the culpability of all sides in exacerbating them—has made laying blame for the war squarely at the foot of the German and Austrian leadership unfashionable, but the evidence assembled by Fromkin is strong.

"His pictures of a Germany feeling itself (without real cause) surrounded, convinced of an imminent national demise from which only war could save it and of the Kafkaesque Austro-Hungarian empire lurching toward Armageddon are pitiless and sharp.

"Readers who ate up Margaret MacMillan's account of the war's aftermath, in Paris 1919, shouldn't miss this equally accomplished chronicle of its beginning."

Somewhere around here I also have Tuchman's "Guns of August," and I'm a huge fan of Nial Ferguson.

But on this question, I think Fromkin got it right, where Tuchman and Ferguson (et al) did not.

Everyone had war plans. Until recently, the US had war plans to invade Canada. It proves nothing.

The Germans did want to deal with what they saw as the Franco-Russian threat, fueled by French revanchism and Russian Slavophilia. Given France's national obsession with retaking Alsace and Lorraine, Germany had reason to fear.

Did the cripple Kaiser do all that he could to prevent war; no. But Russia made war inevitable when it backed Serbia and asked for French help.

I’ve read Ms Tuchmanâ€™s account of the outbreak of war: she details with great skill the opening movements of the armies, but her account of the diplomatic history is less complete, as is her understanding of the motivation of the players. The quotation itself lack definition: all armies plan; what makes the German plans any different from those of dozens of other plans completed by every nation on earth? Premeditated in what way? If one premeditates a murder, one plans and acts decisively to bring that plan to fruition; no one in Europe could have predicted that the assassination of the Archduke would precipitate a war. Britain had every right to oppose German plans, especially as the British felt threatened by the Kaiser’s fleet; but for the British to tie themselves to the French desire to regain Alsasc-Lorraine is madness. And to accede to the Czar’s demand for Constantinople is a betrayal of every liberal principal of the British empire. Great Britain was the greatest nation on earth, and as such the responsibility on her was greater than anyone else. She should have done all in her power to reconcile France and Germany. More than anything else, GB should not have allowed herself to be dragged into a war so the French could satisfy their desire for revenge. I read Ms MacMillian’s account: not very convincing and replete with posthumous justifications.

This is my problem too. BroJoeK, thanks for the polite argument and it has made me think and relook at what I know about WWI. I will certainly put that book on my Amazon wish list. But my problem is I am not ready to absolve the French or the Serbians in this matter. I just don't trust how I was taught history, which laid all the blame on Austria, and to this day is why I don't trust the Serbs. Serbia was an aggressor nation in the Balkan region. Not content with nipping at the heals of Turkey it attacked Bulgaria. It then set its designs on a part of Austria, and thanks to Woodrow Wilson walked away with a huge empire.

"But my problem is I am not ready to absolve the French or the Serbians in this matter"

Here's the problem:

1). The Serbian "Black Hand" was responsible for the murder of Austria's Archduke Ferdinand.

2). The Austrians themselves didn't much like their archduke, and didn't really morn his assassination.

3). Kaiser Willy DID like the archduke, and was p*ssed as h*ll over the assassination. The Kaiser pushed the Austrians to issue Serbia the ultimatum, and then not accept Serbia's quite reasonable response.

4). The Serbs appealed to their Russian allies for help, and the Tsar began a partial mobilization.

5). The Kaiser appealed to his younger cousin, the Tsar, to stop his mobilization. The Tsar said, no, we're only going to defend our friends, the Serbs.

6). Germany then declared war on Russia, and as their Schlieffen plan called for, first invaded France through Belgium.

7). Neither Russia, nor Belgium nor France declared war on Germany. Nor did the western countries begin their mobilizations until after Germany acted.

That's why I see no way to blame anyone other than the Kaiser for the war which he initiated.

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