Pat Buchanan: Knave and Fool

September 1 marked the 70th anniversary of the beginning of World War II. The day was marked with solemn remembrances from governments and survivors. They recalled the unprovoked German invasion of Poland that led to Britain and France honoring their defense guarantees, which plunged the planet into its second great conflict in as many generations.

Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan acknowledged the day a little differently.

“Pitchfork Pat” wrote a column in which he reiterated his long-held contention that Adolf Hitler did not want to start a general war, that he was only trying to unite the German-speaking peoples of Europe, and that he was generally misunderstood in his intentions toward France and Great Britain.

He has also insisted over the years that we’re missing something about the Holocaust. What we’re missing is that the whole thing was just a big mistake. The Nazis didn’t mean to kill millions of Jews; it just kinda happened accidental-like:...

"Not until midwinter 1942 was the Wannsee Conference held, where the Final Solution was on the table."

The reason for the final solution in the first place was to find a more efficient way to kill all the Jews. There were just too many of them to be doing it by execution squads. Also, a lot of the regular Army did not want to be involved with the mass executions. Buchanon's implication is that there was no mass killings of Jews before the final solution which is just plain false. It just was not done as proficiently as the extermination camps would make it later on.

Hitler had an intense grudge with German Jews because he was a WW I veteran and scapegoated them for starting Marxist insurrections in the southern provinces toward the end of the war, as the reason the Germans were so humiliated. In his distorted, evil mind, he considered them congenital traitors and, thus, worthy of extermination.

So, his hatred of the Jews was not because of circumstances that unfolded during his march across Europe. That hatred was seething long before.

It might also be said, that, toward the end of the war, while watching the German population refuse to throw their own bodies in front of the Allied juggernaut to protect the Fatherland, Hitler decided his own people were traitors, allowing them to be carved up by endless bombing and destruction, instead of surrendering when it was clear Germany was doomed. Many innocent men, women, and children in Germany died because their own leader blamed them for his own stupid decisions that cost them the war. So, Hitler had a pattern of being ruthless towards perceived betrayers - first of which, in his mind, were the Jews, and later on, his own gentile population.

Long story short, Pat Buchanan is off his rocker. Hitler’s initial motive was probably, indeed, to reunite German-speaking peoples and lands - to emulate Bismarck in a sense. But he became drunk with power when he saw how easy it was to roll through Austria, Poland, and Belgium, and it seemed like his “master race” could exceed historic German lands. At that point, attacking Russia became necessary for protection of his earlier conquests. And he would have defeated had it not been for the fatal mistake of letting his pride divert the German army from an earlier invasion of Russia to quell the Yugoslavian rebellion. If they had marched into Russia as originally planned, they would have taken Moscow well before winter set in. And then the allies would have had to fight on three different fronts: the Pacific, the Atlantic, and the Mediterranean/Baltic. Ultimately, we would have ended up dropping an atomic bomb on Berlin, or Germany would have sued for peace after watching us drop it on Japan.

Pat Buchanan likes to present himself as much more knowledgeable about history than the rest of us average schmoes.

If Pat is correct, then all I have read about Hitler's ingrained hatred of the Jews, his love of the military, his taking of lands belonging to other countries, his lying to Chamberlain and others, is what?---a huge error on the part of other historians?

There has been much said about O's following Hitler's pattern of megalomania, propaganda, his take over of every aspect of mfg., banking, and trying to take health care and much of it looks true.

The one thing different from Hitler and O is Hitler's love of the military. Hitler actually served in the military and did some things, supposedly, that should have earned him promotions. He just had that little something that was different, and turned the military off promoting him--isn't that amazing? He was not considered worthy of being promoted above corporal, but was later adored as a great leader. O , like the Clintons, despises the military.

vaudine

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