Pat Buchanan’s new book Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War”does an excellent job of demolishing the myths surrounding World War II, commonly called “the good war” in American public school textbooks. Here are some of the major points Buchanan makes in the book:
1. World War II was actually a continuation of World War I, a war that involved a total waste of American life, which is why U.S. officials, not surprisingly, don’t like to talk about it. Despite the fact that America’s Founding Fathers had warned against U.S. involvement in Europe’s endless wars, President Wilson intervened in the war with two objectives: to make the world safe for democracy and to end all future wars.
After the war was over, it increasingly became clear to the American people that neither of these goals had been achieved, to say the least. In fact, America’s intervention, which brought about the total defeat of Germany, produced the brutal and vengeful Treaty of Versailles, which then prepared the ground for Adolf Hitler and World War II. If America had not intervened in World War I, the opposing sides would have had to work out a negotiated peace rather than have an unjust peace treaty imposed on the defeated and conquered side.
2. Embracing the same arguments that many Westerners, including John Maynard Keynes, were making with respect to the unjust parts of the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler was able to rouse support among the German people for himself and the Nazi Party.
3. Perhaps the most important point made in Buchanan’s book is regarding the Polish guarantee. After Hitler absorbed Czechoslovakia, Great Britain issued a guarantee to Poland promising to declare war on Hitler in the event of a German attack. Yet, the guarantee was worthless because Britain lacked the military means to reverse a German attack. Knowing that they had the guarantee, Polish officials refused to negotiate a revision of that portion of the Treaty of Versailles that had removed a major German city, Danzig, from German control, a provision that many Westerners also considered unjust.
Among the ironies of the Polish guarantee was that when the Soviet Union invaded Poland a few days after Germany invaded Poland, pursuant to a pact between Stalin and Hitler, Britain declared war only on Nazi Germany and not on the communist Soviet Union. This was despite the fact that ever since the Communist Revolution, Great Britain had condemned the Soviet communists, and rightfully so.
4. Britain (along with the United States, France, and other Allied nations) ultimately entered into a partnership with the Soviet communists, who were actually no better than the Nazis. When the war ended, the Polish people (and East Germans, Czechs, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, and others) — the people to whom Britain had issued its guarantee — were under Soviet communist occupation (as compared to German Nazi occupation) and remained so for the next 45 years. That’s because of the deal that Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin entered into, a deal in which Churchill and Roosevelt knowingly and intentionally agreed to deliver Eastern Europe into the clutches of Stalin and the communists.
5. Then, the Soviet communists — the partners of Great Britain and the United States — became the new official enemy, which began the Cold War, which served to maintain and expand the U.S. military and military-industrial complex for the next 45 years.
The aftermath of World War II not only produced Soviet communist control of East Germany, Eastern Europe, the Baltics, and elsewhere but also communist control over China, hot wars in Korea and Vietnam, and a Cold War all over the world.
Of course, some people argue that victory in World War II brought freedom to Great Britain and France. But Great Britain and France were free before the war. Don’t forget: It was Great Britain and France that declared war on Germany, not the other way around.
In fact, Buchanan destroys another long-held myth — that Hitler intended to conquer the world, including the United States. As Buchanan carefully documents, Hitler was looking east, not west for expanding the German Empire. Just as Western politicians would do during the 45 years of the Cold War, Hitler viewed communism, not Great Britain, France, and the United States, as the real threat. After all, if Hitler were looking to conquer the world, as the interventionists argue, isn’t it interesting that he lacked the naval power to even cross the English Channel and conquer England, much less the naval power to cross the Atlantic Ocean to conquer the United States?
Some people argue that World War II was necessary because the world could not have survived Hitler and the Nazis. Nonsense. If the world could survive Stalin and the communists, it could have survived Hitler and the Nazis because Stalin and the communists were worse, or at least as bad, as Hitler and the Nazis.
With respect to the Holocaust, Buchanan documents how it was the war itself that brought it about. Prior to the war, Hitler’s objective had been to evict the Jews from Germany. Once Hitler realized that he was going to lose the war, he implemented his Final Solution. One thing is certain—by the time the war was over, most of the European Jews were already dead.
Pat Buchanan has done a masterful job in challenging the many myths surrounding both World War I and World War II. His book is a must-read for anyone concerned about the moving our nation in the direction of the non-interventionist, non-militarist, anti-empire philosophy of America’s Founding Fathers.