Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World | 
 enlarge | Author: Patrick J. Buchanan
Publisher: Crown
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $17.43
You Save: $12.52 (42%)
New (43) Used (13) Collectible (1) from $17.22
Rating:  119 reviews
Sales Rank: 11344
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 544
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.9
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.8
ISBN: 030740515X
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.5311
EAN: 9780307405159
ASIN: 030740515X
Publication Date: May 27, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Were World Wars I and II—which can now be seen as a thirty-year paroxysm of slaughter and destruction—inevitable? Were they necessary wars? Were the bloodiest and most devastating conflicts ever suffered by mankind fated by forces beyond men’s control? Or were they products of calamitous failures of judgment? In this monumental and provocative history, Patrick Buchanan makes the case that, if not for the blunders of British statesmen—Winston Churchill first among them—the horrors of two world wars and the Holocaust might have been avoided and the British Empire might never have collapsed into ruins. Half a century of murderous oppression of scores of millions under the iron boot of Communist tyranny might never have happened, and Europe’s central role in world affairs might have been sustained for many generations.
Among the British and Churchillian blunders were:
• The secret decision of a tiny cabal in the inner Cabinet in 1906 to take Britain straight to war against Germany, should she invade France
• The vengeful Treaty of Versailles that muti- lated Germany, leaving her bitter, betrayed, and receptive to the appeal of Adolf Hitler
• Britain’s capitulation, at Churchill’s urging, to American pressure to sever the Anglo- Japanese alliance, insulting and isolating Japan, pushing her onto the path of militarism and conquest
• The 1935 sanctions that drove Italy straight into the Axis with Hitler
• The greatest blunder in British history: the unsolicited war guarantee to Poland of March 1939—that guaranteed the Second World War
• Churchill’s astonishing blindness to Stalin’s true ambitions.
Certain to create controversy and spirited argument, Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War” is a grand and bold insight into the historic failures of judgment that ended centuries of European rule and guaranteed a future no one who lived in that vanished world could ever have envisioned.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 114 more reviews...
 Churchil / Hitler December 21, 2008
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
Pat Buchanen has hit it right but for most people they cant handle the truce. Its to bad because they are running through life with their head in the sand like an ostrich. Often the truce hurts but one can not get away from it.
At least now I know that I am not the only one who things that way
Herb Voigt
Stirring the Pot December 20, 2008
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
Buchanan stakes out some pretty controversial positions here. But, agree or not, he raises questions seldom dealt with in public, and ones that go to the heart of the West's presumed moral authority in its two wars with Germany. Crucially, his is not an apologia for Hitler or the Third Reich. Their wretched horrors during WWII are acknowledged without reserve. Rather, it's an effort to put the diplomatic moves preceding WWII into a more balanced and accurate perspective than the American public is accustomed to. The results amount to a much more ambiguous mix than the history books usually allow, and should come as an eye-opener, particularly regarding Churchill's punitive role.
Churchill is often treated as a god, and not a minor one at that. A reckoning with the British politician's career is long overdue. I doubt that any non-American head of state has been more lionized in our press than the former prime minister. Of course, the focal point of hagiography is Churchill's undeniable role as a wartime leader. It's a role the author Buchanan doesn't dispute. What the author does dispute is the wider context, particularly Churchill's vaunted reputation as a statesman. It's here within an unfolding sixty-year period that Buchanan lays bear the actual record--and contrary to legend, a dismal one it is. From the British politician's earliest service through 1955, the author records again and again gross errors of judgment that helped propagate WWI, instigate WWII, facilitate Soviet expansion, and finally terminate the British Empire. It's a sobering account, to say the least, darn near the equivalent of saying Jesus erred on the Mount of Olives. Nonetheless, it's an account that can't be ignored.
Then too, Hitler is viewed less as a demonic force than as a rabid nationalist intent on retrieving German lands wrongfully expropriated by the treaty of Versailles, and as a dictator ultimately backed into a corner by Britain's reckless guaranteeing of Poland's 1939 borders. Contrary to received wisdom, Buchanan asserts that war with Hitler's Reich was not made necessary by mad global designs, the usual formula for blame. Instead, primary blame is laid on a series of British missteps originating at the ministerial level. The author's thrust here depends on accepting the view that the German Chancellor was interested only in extending influence eastward as a bulwark against the Reich's true enemy, the Soviet Union, leaving the West and their colonial holdings basically intact. This too amounts to a revisionist account and a more difficult one to substantiate. Nonetheless, the author forces a key question usually passed over as an article of faith, viz. was war with the Reich in some sense inevitable or rather the unfortunate result of diplomatic blunder.
Now, all of this would remain academic were it not for the lessons drawn from that 40-year period. Most notably, Britain's empire collapsed from accumulated reversals brought about by blundering diplomacy and the two global disasters that resulted. Britain could no longer support her maritime holdings, resulting in a loss of global primacy and a junior partnership with an ascendant USA. Pivotal in this chain is a myopic vision of where Britain's vital interests lay. They certainly didn't lie in meddling in the disposition of Central Europe, the traditional sphere of Russo-German rivalry. Yet Britain fought two debilitating wars over that disposition, when a truer view of vital interest would have counseled a more detached policy. Wisdom here would appear to lie in being able to separate the essential from the inessential, a distinction apparently muddled by several generations of British leaders.
Now, Buchanan draws lessons from this for American policy. Is meddling in such non-traditional spheres as Central Asia, Russian border regions, and across the Mid-East, producing a distinctly American brand of imperial over-stretch. A pretty strong case is made for viewing America's strength as resting on the wisdom of her forefathers in avoiding foreign adventures. It's not a return to isolationist policy that he's advocating; rather, I take it as a return to separating essential interests from non-essential and not confusing the two in fits of bravado or imperial hubris. Certainly the disastrous adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan suggest an over-stretch with the ominous consequences that follow. Nonetheless, the distinction raises the complex question how to define `vital interests' and how to calibrate them in a world of perhaps unprecedented flux following the Soviet collapse. Add to that an economic dimension surely a big part of vital interest and we glimpse the quandary of current American policy.
Understandably, the book doesn't take up the economic dimension. On the other hand, sacrificing commercial factors remains a pitfall for any purely diplomatic history such as Buchanan's. In short, to what extent were the blunders of the book the result of economic imperative rather than the ministerial myopia emphasized here. After all, a financial dimension has the potential of converting the seemingly reckless into the understandably rational, particularly where national self-interest is at stake. Nonetheless, the author has produced a provocative and worthwhile work, deserving of wide readership.
 Generally Excellent and Thought-Provoking December 18, 2008
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
I've read enough about WWII and National Socialist Germany to know that Mr. Buchanan is well-informed on these subjects. He has done his work in researching Churchill's history, especially as regards diplomatic and military decisions. The result is not flattering to Winston.
He has definitely made his case that WWI was unnecessary, avoidable, and a disastrous blow to Western Europe...with the most significant damage accruing to Germany. He documents how it was not the Kaiser's intent to have a war of conquest, and he clearly shows how a not-at-all-funny comedy of errors resulted in the greatest military catastrophe the world had known to that time.
His treatment of the course to the Second World War is similarly well-documented, and his arguments are clear and coherent. One of the major points developed by Mr. Buchanan is that Hitler's ultimate decision to annihilate the Jewish "race" was only arrived at in 1942, at the time Germany was locked in struggle against the Soviet Union. Up to that time, there had been a significant range of viewpoints within the Nazi party, even including some support for a Zionist homeland.
He goes over this understandably sensitive matter at some length, because he argues not only that WWII could have been avoided, but that even a more limited conflict did not have to draw in other European powers. It is his view that Hitler, far from having a Grand Plan that he implemented once power was his, operated very much as an opportunist, responding to whatever situations presented themselves. His attitude towards the East (meaning, Russia) as the natural "living space" for Germans did not constitute a plan, and the actual time and circumstances of the attack upon the Soviet Union were not optimal for the Nazi regime. Again, it was circumstances that decided many of Hitler's actions, rather than priciples set in stone.
Finally, and most tellingly, Mr. Buchanan devotes his last, shortest, chapter to comparing the United States today with the Great Britain that was losing its empire. A theme he has developed in other volumes--such as A Republic, Not An Empire--is that the United States was neither founded nor foreseen at its inception to have a de facto empire with military bases all over the world...with resultant entanglements in almost every location. This, he argues, is a prescription for national disaster, one that we would do well to avoid by learning from the example of what happened to an overstretched United Kingdom.
It's long over due. December 16, 2008
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
I appreciate Mr. Buchanan's courage and straightforwardness in describing in an unbiased manner the various factors and people who played an important role in bringing about both the First and Second World Wars. The tendency has been to oversimplfy the causes of both conflicts, and to minimize the influence the harsh conditions imposed on the vanquished nations of World War I had in bringing about the second conflict. It was a horrible tragedy for our entire civilization that these 'civil wars' as Mr. Buchanan terms them ever took place. Thanks, Mr. Buchanan, for a very readable and courageous book! By the way, I'm Walt, Joyce's husband ~
 WHAT ABOUT HITLER'S ATOM BOMB? December 3, 2008
7 out of 11 found this review helpful
I assumed I would give this book only one star until 1) I read the book, 2) I saw Buchanan's discussion of the book on C-Span2's "Book TV" and 3) saw the fascinating 40 minute C-Span2 follow-up visit to his home where he explained his library and writing process. I now believe that this is a necessary book to read if one is seriously interested in political history of the 20th century. The book presents an aggressively contrarian view of the history and consequences of WW I and WW II. Unless, however, Buchanan's cherry-picked references and spin are much more off base than I believe to be the case, his masterfully presented thesis must be considered. Buchanan suggests that Churchill was one of the most misguided and amoral leaders of the 20th century. Traditionalists may gag, but Buchanan's various bottom lines are compelling. His ultimate bottom line may be that great powers (both good and bad) fall through errors of leadership. Towards the end of the book, he draws worrisome parallels between errors in WW II and recent American policy errors. All that said, I think his book contains a fatal flaw: no discussion of the potential for Hitler's Atom Bomb. Thus, only three stars for an otherwise five star book.
As I write, Amazon reviews of the book are up to 114. I only found two references to the question of what would have been consequences of a German atom bomb. Unless I missed it, I found nothing in Buchanan's book of this possibility. I wish he had considered the following thesis:
The British have the wisdom to not go to war over Germany's dividing Poland with Russia in 1939. In 1940 or 1941 as the west stands aside, Germany executes Hitler's original plans and invades Russia. With no resources lost from pointless war with France and England (and the USA), and without Hitler's fatal decision to split his forces just before taking Moscow, the war ends in 1942 as Germany announces its expansion is finished. Russia is conquered. England, France and also the USA relax. Nobody likes Germany, but the equally feared threat of communism is gone. There is a problem, however, that the west ignores or doesn't recognize. Even before WW II, and even after the exodus of many top scientists, Germany almost certainly has conceived of nuclear weapons and has the scientific horsepower to develop them. Unlike during the real war, in this hypothetical situation, Germany has vast new resources from all the land east of Germany. Germany starts its own secret Manhattan Project. Because the USA is not engaged in war with Germany, and even if a war with Japan has started, the USA can't rationalize allocating resources for our Manhattan Project. By 1945 or 1946 Germany is the first and only country with an atom bomb. At that point, Germany goes after the rest of the world, either because that was Hitler's plan all along or, more likely, because Germans see the need to totally dominate potential rivals. Germany demonstrates its bomb, perhaps on a rebellions Russian city. And Germany demands enough control over other major countries to prevent them from developing their own atom bombs.
Would Buchanan say that a victorious, nuclear armed Germany in the mid to late 1940's would have still been preferable to the risk of nuclear holocaust we all faced during the real cold war and fifty years of the Soviet Union? Maybe. But I believe that Buchanan's failure to explore this question in his otherwise profound book is a fatal flaw.
As we Americans slide further into what is probably an historical decline, Buchanan wants us to revisit 20th century history to minimize the damage already done by our American failure to learn from history. If we retain, or perhaps regain, our predominant world and historical position, it will be for our example and ideals, not our raw power. At the end of WW II, 130 million Americans could dominate 3 billion world citizens. Today, too many Americans suffer from a delusion that 300 million Americans can dominate almost 7 billion world citizens. If we fail to apply history's lessons to our current situation, we risk loosing the achievements of 500 years of western civilization since the Renaissance.
Finally here are a few quotes from the book that are blunt but revealing:
pg 292 "For that war (WW II) one man bears full moral responsibility: Hitler." but 1 paragraph later, pg 293 "But this was not only Hitler's war. It was Chamberlain's war and Churchill's war and it is the conduct of British statesmen that concerns us here"
pg 301 "Had Britain never given the war guarantee (to Poland), the Soviet Union would almost surely have borne the brunt of the blow that fell on France." and "A Hitler-Stalin war might have been the only war in Europe in the 1940. Tens of millions might never have died terrible deaths in the greatest war in all history."
pg 373 "To Churchill, the independence and freedom of one hundred million Christian peoples of Eastern Europe were not worth a war with Russia in 1945. Why, then, had they been worth a war with Germany in 1939?"
Pg 383 In defeating Germany, "all three of the great causes of his (Churchill's) life--keeping socialism from Britain's door, preserving his beloved empire, and preventing any single hostile power from dominating Europe--had been lost."
Pg 399 "The ferocity with which Churchill pursued war against civilians can be traced to his convictions. He was less a Christian than a pagan in the Roman tradition."
pg 407 "Full of honors, late in life Churchill must have realized the depth of his failure. For had not he himself written, 'Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.' Yet statesmen have done both: Washington, Wellington, Bismarck, and Macarthur come to mind"
Finally, readers can read the last line of the book to see Buchanan's scathing, rhetorically brilliant lesson not learned by our own President Bush.
|
|
|
