[Clintonfatigued]

It wasn’t necessary for Japan to bomb Pearl Harbor. How does Buchanan rationalize that?

[Cicero]

The one worst thing about the Second World War is that we saved Stalin and handed Eastern Europe over to him. This led in turn to the rise of Mao and the Communist states in Vietnam, Laos, Cuba, and so on.

Yet it’s hard to see what else we could have done. Maybe what Hanson suggests is correct—that we should have stepped into Germany and straightened them out. But not easy to do.

And meantime, Lenin was busy in Russia. Should we have stepped in there, too?

Certainly it was a mistake to give Hitler a piece of Czechoslavakia, and Chamberlain’s error has been almost universally recognized, by left and right alike.

Could Britain have kept its empire? Were the people in Africa better off under imperial rule? Who knows? But what Hanson suggests might have led to a better turning point in history—occupying Germany earlier than we did—is certainly suggestive. At least it puts into question what I confess I never questioned before—that it was all the fault of the French for imposing a debt burden on Germany that they couldn’t pay. Maybe so, maybe not.

[dighton]

Hitler vs. Churchill, as spelled out by Pat Buchanan

[yarddog]

I haven’t read the book but I do recall Churchill saying something similar. That we went to war to save Poland but at the end, we were in worse shape than before. Poland and all of Eastern Europe in the hands of the Communists.

[nkycincinnatikid]

Hanson plays very fast and loose with many facts. I hope due to ignorance, not mendacity.

[Atlantic Bridge]

The mistake instead was not occupying all of imperial Germany after the first war in 1918-19. That way, the Allies would have demonstrated to the German people that their army was never "stabbed in the back" at home, as the Nazis later alleged, but instead defeated by an Allied army that was willing to stay on to foster German constitutional government and its reintegration within Europe. The Allies later did occupy Germany after World War II -- and 60 years without war have followed.

The problem would have been that the German army in 1918 was not at the total end. Therefore a occupation would have taken a few million more death allied soldiers and millions and bazillions of money for the occupation forces. Therefore such was no desirable solution in that time. The post-WWII occupation of Germany might had its positive effect for the US (although this was also a quite expensive operation), but something similar was not thinkable in 1918.

It is indeed true that the treaty of Versailles promoted Hitler and his buddies in Germany. Versailles and the bad economic situation in the 20ties were the trigger for the problems of the young and unstable German "Weimar"-democracy and let to its collapse. Therefore it would have been smarter to be more generous. Espechially those who imposed the heaviest burdens on Germany, -the French- had to pay the highest price for their pettiness in 1940.