Was the Holocaust Inevitable? ( Patrick J. Buchanan )

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.

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.

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.

"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 ... ?"

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."

I have already said that the casualties of Polish Christians and Jews cannot be compared in absolute #s. Jews were nearly wiped out. Poles in Poland remain plentiful. The Nazis did not try to exterminate Poles; they wanted to enslave and eventually expel the bulk of their population to Siberia.

Like other European countries occupied by the Nazis, Poland had both collaboration and resistance.

Some Polish forces that escaped their defeat continued the fight. No one denies that.

The heroism of Zegota and other “righteous Gentiles” does not make everyone else a saint.

Many Jews who survived owed their lives to the Soviets.

While there were some Jewish officials in Soviet Poland, it is ridiculous to blame Poland’s Soviet era on Jews, which is what you do seem to imply. The Polish masses lived with Communism and provided the great bulk of its leadership for 45 years.

I don’t see how the souls of 3 million POlish Jews weigh mor than 3 million Polish Christians. Clearly, the Jewish community - in the US, Argentina, the USSR, England, etc- was never threatened with extermination. And yes, the Nazis tried to exterminate both peoples. If you want to argue that a Jewish life is worth more than a Christian life, OK.

Poles collaborated with the Nazis. And (some) Jews collaborated with the Soviets. I’m not implying it; I quoted the people who were there. Ignore them, OK.

The heroism of Zegota, the righetous, the millions killed, the millions exiled, the fourth largetst allied army, the first to fight doesn’t make everyone a saint. But it counts (except to you, apparently).

The mass of Communist leadership in 1945 - 1968 was Jewish. Read the book. But I’ve defined collaboration — when the Poles wouldn’t support the Soviets, they found people who would.

Can’t you deal with these facts, and not your urban myths?

You again.

Obviously, the Nazis could not kill Jews in countries they did not occupy. However, they did attempt to eliminate all Jews in the countries they did occupy in Europe. If they counquered the countries you named, there would be very few Jews left today. They were not trying to kill all Poles. If you were a Polish Catholic in Poland, you would have stood an excellent chance of living through the war. Polish Jews stood an excellent chance of being murdered. It is absurd to claim, as you do, that the two experiences are equivalent.

Jews who “collaborated” with the Soviets had an excellent reason to do so: the Soviets saved their lives. The Soviets liberated Poland from Nazi rule. Communism is oppressive everywhere, but someone living in safety in 2008 does not have the right to criticize Jews who survived the Holocaust in Poland and who were grateful for the arrival of the Soviets, which saved them from certain death. As we have seen, many Poles continued to murder Jews after the war was over, which is why most of the surviving Jews left anyway by 1948. There were a few prominent Polish Jewish Communist leaders like Berman and Minc, but you seem to think that this means that the Jewish community was ruling and victimizing Poland. That is ridiculous antisemitic conspiracy thought. There was barely any Jewish community. Most of those people were dead; most of the few who were not had fled. Jews were an extremely tiny fraction of the population. The Soviet Union forced Communism on Poland. If no Poles supported or tolerated the Soviets, what do you think would have happened? The Hungarians revolted in 1956; the Czechs had the Prague Spring in 1968; the Poles did not make real trouble for Moscow until Solidarity.

I do not deny that Zegota was heroic, but that is not the larger picture. We have gone over how meaningless it is that you keep saying that Poland was the first to fight, since it was not a fight that Poland started or ended. Some Poles who escaped volunteered, but after 1939 the “Polish war effort” is a historical footnote or part of other countries’ war efforts, just as with every other country that was quickly occupied by blitzkrieg. The U.S. and Russia stopped the Nazis. Poland was mowed down by the Nazis.

You are the one who can’t deal with facts because they interfere with your heroic, romanticized conception of Poland. Unfortunately, all sources indicate that Poland during the war and after was more black and gray than white.

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