You should get and read a recently released book titled "Wilsons War". Yes, it is talking about President Wilson but no, it is not talking about WWI. The author is Jim Powell. He writes extremely well, uses a ton of very good research and his arguments are very well thought out.
Today's discussions of Germany at war in the 1930s tend to ignore that WWI was not only a military defeat for Germany, the WWI treaties turned it into an economic basket case for decades; they carved up German territory to the benefit of the Poles, the Czecks, the Russians, Hungary and others; they prohibited Germany from having "overseas" territories (like both France and Britain continued to have) and they required Germany not only to disarm but to help France rearm. On top of that, it seems, from Mr. Powell's point of view, that without U.S. intervention in the 11th hour of the war, it simply would have stopped with a stalemate, with no one having gained or lost much territory, without massive and disproportionate economic burdens on Germany alone, with a healthier democracy and economy in Germany and less carving up of Eastern Europe. Mr. Powell goes on to demonstrate many other critical events that, possibly, may not have grown out of a western Europe where no one won WWI.
I am not at the point of agreeing here with Buchanan, on how we should or should not have gone to war against Hitler, but Jim Powell's book does make one question whether or not WWII was inevitable, as an outcome of our helping end WWI, at the time and in the way we did. I can see, carrying Mr. Powell's arguments a step further, that there might be room for an argument that Germany may have been at war with France and England, by the late 1930s, without Hitler or the Nazis or the Holocaust, simply due to how WWI ended. We have constantly tended to view both wars through the prism of France and Britain; while their views gloss over their own contributions to what Germany became.
Get Mr. Powell's book. It may not bring you to agree with Buchanan, but it should change how you view Europe and particularly our "allies" of two wars over there.
He ends his book with some broad conclusions about what he sees as parallels in our time. I disagree with him over how much today's circumstances differ from the 1940s, in kind and in substance. His book is still a good read; especially now when the configuration of Europe is changing so much as is our choices of allies and partners over there.
[T]he WWI treaties .... carved up German territory to the benefit of the Poles, the Czecks, the Russians, Hungary and others;
I think Mr. Powell (if that's the one cited) is way off base here. First, the Russians and Hungarians lost HUGE amounts of territory after the war: the Soviet Union ended up ceding much of what had been the Russian Empire -- in particular Finland and the Baltic states (which became independent); and a good chunk of Belorussia and Ukraine (which became part of Poland after Poland the USSR stopped fighting each other in 1920). The Hungarians likewise were forced to give up territory whose inhabitants were predominantly Hungarian-speaking, such as Transylvania (to Romania) and Voevodina (to Yugoslavia).
Also, during tentative negotiations between Germany and the Wilson administration in 1918, Germany had agreed that a Polish state would (re-)emerge afte conclusion of the war, and would include a corridor to the sea. However, most of what became Poland in 1919 was taken from Austria or Russia.
[Giving the Sudetenland, which had been part of Austria-Hungary and was almost completely German-speaking, to Czechoslovakia WAS a major bonehead move, for which Wilson among others, deserves scorn].
[I]t seems, from Mr. Powell's point of view, that without U.S. intervention in the 11th hour of the war, it simply would have stopped with a stalemate, with no one having gained or lost much territory ....
Mr. Powell is naturally entitled to his opinion. I think he's wrong. Assuming America stayed out of the war, the unlimited submarine warfare waged by Germany would have weakened Britain to the point that it couldn't continue the war. France, for its part, was even experiencing mutinies on the front lines. In the east, the Bolsheviks had sued for peace, which freed up a great deal of troops and resources for Germany to use on the Western front.
IMO, the Germans would have won in the West absent American intervention.
With regard to losses/gains of territory had the US not entered the war, it is worth noting that as early as 1915, Germany was planning to annex Belgium (or at the least, turn it into a satrapy of Germany). More to the point, did Mr. Powell consider the terms imposed by Germany on the Soviet Union via the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk? Namely, the Baltic states, Belorussia and Ukraine were taken by the victorious Germans, some of it outright and others to be turned into "protectorates."
All that proves, I suppose, is that land-grabs by the victorious countries were inevitable after years of bloody warfare. However, it is wrong for Mr. Powell to say that absent US intervention, the war would have ended in stalemate and, territorially at least, a return to the status quo ante August, 1914.
Maybe I should get Powell's book, if only to see whether he even mentions the Zimmermann telegram, in which the German government (in Jan. 1917) offered Mexico, in return for its fighting against the US if the US declared war on Germany, the return of the "lost territories" of Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico upon successful conclusion of the war.
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