Buchanan and World War II: The Unnecessary Book

Patrick Buchanan’s A Republic Not An Empire (1999) was a stimulating and valuable book on the wise and far-seeing national policy initiated by President Washington and followed intelligently and consistently by his successors throughout the nineteenth century. However, in the latter part of the book Buchanan veered into a wacky discussion of World War II, in which he argued that Britain and the United States should not have fought Hitler. His view was summed up in the following passage (p. 269) where he described approvingly Hitler’s own ambitions:

In this analysis Hitler saw the world divided into four spheres: Great Britain holding its empire; Japan, dominant in East Asia; Germany, master of Europe; and America, mistress of the Western Hemisphere.

To Buchanan, a Nazi-controlled Europe would have been acceptable. From this point, I began to have grave doubts about Buchanan, until, in April 2002, when he wrote that Israel was the “mirror image of Hamas and Hezbollah,” I wrote “An Open Letter to Patrick Buchanan” at FrontPage Magazine, in which I condemned him for his bigoted hostility to Israel and his attempt to rationalize and normalize Muslim terrorists.

And now, as though Buchanan had not already done enough damage, to himself and to the traditional conservative movement of which he was once a leader, he has expanded the Hitler-loving section of A Republican Not an Empire into an entire book, entitled Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World.

The perversity of Buchanan’s agenda is apparent in the title. The phrase, “the unnecessary war,” comes from the epigraph of Churchill’s The Gathering Storm, where he recounts how President Roosevelt once asked him what this war should be called, and he immediately answered, “the unnecessary war.” What Churchill meant, of course, was that the war was unnecessary because Hitler could have been easily stopped before he had gained the ability to conquer Europe. Buchanan has appropriated Churchill’s phrase and twisted it into the idea that even after Hitler had conquered Europe, fighting him was unnecessary.

John Lukacs, reviewing the book at The American Conservatives, makes clear his disgust with Buchanan’s failure to see that Nazism was a much greater and more immediate threat to Western civilization than Communism.

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Philip P. writes:

I remain absolutely convinced that a Nazi empire covering much of Europe and large swaths of Africa and the Near Asia would have posed serious threats to the stability and security of America. I also remain convinced that destroying one of the most vile manifestations of murderous statism ever to arise was, ultimately, a valiant and proud effort. For all of its flaws (and there are many), I find liberal 21st century Europe a far cry better than the Third Reich and its genocidal mania, perverse pagan-statism, and uncontrollable bellicosity.

Yes, this book depressed me. I have long respected Mr. Buchanan as a unique thinker and inspiring social and and political voice. I have found myself nodding in fervent agreement with his work numerous times before. However, he seems to have at long last “jumped the shark.” (I sort of saw it coming…)

The Second World War featured immoral and unsavory action on both sides, and it clearly aided Soviet expansionism. That much is undebatable. We did things that warrant apology, sure. But, undeterred, Hitler’s regime would have dealt irreparable damage to the West’s finer features, particularly its underpinnings: Judeo-Christian morality and political freedom. And, given Germany’s location in the heart of Europe, the Fuhrer would have had prime real estate for doing so, for extinguishing a hard-won tradition of liberty and individualism.

Plus, could our free republic really have survived in any recognizable form in a world where Europe was gone to fascism and Nazism, Russia and Asia to totalitarian Communism, and Africa and the southern Americas to a dysfunctional combination of both? Doubtful, doubtful.

There has always been a whiff of nuttiness—not to mention anti-Anglo and anti-Semitic prejudice—about Mr. Buchanan. Now, the stench can hardly be ignored. What a pity.

The Second World War: not a “good” conflict, but unarguably a necessary one. At least for me, the case is closed.

LA replies:

That’s really funny that you said, “jumped the shark,” because I used that phrase as I was drafting the post and then somehow it fell away without my intending it to.

However, while we’re in agreement on the main points, I think you understate the destruction that Nazism would have caused. The reign of Nazism over Europe would not only have brought about irreparable damage to beliefs and traditions such as “Judeo-Christian morality and political freedom.” It would have brought about the total destruction of actual concrete societies and peoples—not just the Jews (all the Jews in Europe and Russia would have been killed, and all the Jews in Palestine), but Britain, which the Nazis had plans to reduce to slavery, and the Poles, whom he intended to eliminate after finishing the liquidation of the Jews. The non-German peoples of Europe would have been slaves forever. Also, his treatment even of Germanic peoples whom he conquered such as the Norwegians was very harsh.

Jack S. writes:

Buchanan and his Jew-hating think-alikes at Stomfront see the world through the prism of their hatred.

In their view, if only their hero had been allowed to complete his task the world would have been such a wonderful place.

LA replies:

Buchanan has never attacked the Jewish people as such, and therefore I have never called him an anti-Semite (though I have called him a bigot against Israel and an excuser and supporter of terrorists who seek Israel’s destruction). At the same time, it is impossible to defend him from the statement that “In Buchanan’s view, if only his hero had been allowed to complete his task, the world would have been such a wonderful place.”

Bob S. writes:

“And now, as though Buchanan had not already done enough damage, to himself and to the traditional conservative movement of which he was once a leader, he has expanded the Hitler-loving section of A Republican Not an Empire into an entire book, entitled Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World.”

The phrase “Hitler-loving” seems to me unjustified and hyperbolic (not unlike recent reaction to Hillary’s assassination gaffe). Insufficiently Hitler-fearing is not the same as Hitler-loving. Let’s not get carried away.

LA replies:

I’m frankly undecided on his whether you’re right or not. On one side, I want to agree with you and concede that my phrase “Hitler-loving” (as well as my saying that Hitler was Buchanan’s “hero”) was hyperbolic and unjust to Buchanan. On the other hand, given the nature of Hitler and what he did and would have done to the world if he had been able to, for one to say, as Buchanan says, that one would have had absolutely no problem with a Hitler-controlled Europe is so shocking that it does suggest at least a latent support for Hitler.

LA continues:

On further thought, to call Buchanan “Hitler-loving” and to say that Hitler is his “hero” are not correct and I retract them. More accurate descriptions of Buchanan would be “Hitler-accommodationist,” “Hitler-excuser,” “appeaser,” “Quisling,” “person who is indifferent to the destruction of Europe by Nazi barbarism,” and expressions of that nature.

KPA writes:

This article on VDARE which I believe Buchanan wrote as a preview of his new book surprised me for this particular part:

A fourth British blunder [that turned two European wars into world wars] which Neville Chamberlain called the “very midsummer of madness” was the 1935 decision to sanction Italy for a colonial war in Ethiopia. London destroyed the Stresa Front of Britain, France and Italy that Mussolini had forged to contain Germany, and drove Mussolini straight into the arms of a Nazi dictator whom he loathed.

There are a lot of factual errors, or parts that require more clarification, which perhaps his book will do better since this whole incident was a prolonged and international affair to which such a short article cannot do service.

But, what surprised me specifically was how he described a basic outright Italian invasion of another sovereign nation as a “colonial war.”

Firstly, he seems to confuse invasion with colonialism. Colonialism, to me, is the gradual entrance of foreign powers into a region, usually through trade and other peaceful missions, leading to more administrative and economic control, and at the behest and support of some (usually the more important) of the natives.

Secondly, (in a slightly contradictory and condescending fashion) by calling this invasion a colonial enterprise, he’s agreeing with Mussolini’s drive to acquire new land. After all, Mussolini just wanted his “place in sun,” just like the other European nations (who did not invade other nations for their “place in the sun”).

So, for all his anti-war stance against the U.S. and the allied forces for entering a defensive war, he seems to have no problem with offensives and invasions by fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.

LA replies:

Those are very interesting points. But, apart from the factual and moral errors that KPA notes in the passage, is it possible Buchanan—at least in a Machiavellian, power-analysis sense—is onto something here? What I’m suggesting is that the sanctioning of Italy over its invasion of Ethiopia played a role in European history similar to that played by America’s slapping down of the French-British-Israeli invasion of Suez. The humiliation of France (according to some historians) broke Western unity vis a vis the Moslem world, and the French began looking for their own sphere of influence, independent of the Americans, among the Arab states, with disastrous consequences culminating in today’s Eurabia. Similarly, says Buchanan, Britain and France broke their unity with Italy over Ethiopia, and so Italy, looking for other spheres in which to expand its power, aligned with Nazi Germany, with disastrous results.

The idea being, if you want to keep a common front against a common adversary or Other, such as Nazi Germany or the Arab world, don’t screw your allies. That’s what the U.S. did to France and England in Suez, and what France and England did to Italy over Ethiopia. Again, I’m not speaking here of the morality of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia (and maybe it was so bad that it had to be opposed), but of the calculations of power politics aimed at maintaining common security.

Alan Levine writes:

I have not read Buchanan’s book, but I did read his column in VDARE of May 19 which seemed to sum up some of its arguments. There, Buchanan seems to praise Munich and appeasement, saying that it preserved peace, then he talks about the evils of fighting in defense of Poland. (If I remember rightly, he also smeared the Polish military junta as fascist, which it was not.) He conveniently hops over the point that within six months Hitler had violated the Munich agreement by invading the rump of Czechoslovakia. It is that, not Churchill’s silver tongue, or some other mystical cause, that led to the reversal of appeasement and the British decision to guarantee Poland.

His second falsehood, or omission, is to lead the reader into thinking that the issue was Danzig (actually even HItler, in public, maintained that it was the whole “Polish Corridor” and the treatment of Germans in Poland). In private, Hitler repeatedly ridiculed this idea and made clear the stakes were bigger. Third, Buchanan leads his readers to think that Hitler intended, after disposing of Poland one way or another, to attack the USSR, leaving the Western powers alone. Apart from the question of what the Nazis would have done after they disposed of the Soviets, the same question Churchill and others asked and answered by swallowing the distasteful idea of an alliance with the Soviets, it is well known that leaving the Western powers alone WAS NOT Hitler’s intention. Rather, at least since November 1937, he had planned to deal with the Western Europeans BEFORE attacking the Soviets [LA adds: which in fact he did, between May 10, 1940 when he invaded the Low Countries and France, and June 22, 1941, when, to Stalin’s shock, he invaded the USSR]. This was well known to Soviet intelligence, by the way, which is one reason Stalin felt comfortable dealing with Hitler. [LA replies: But Mr. Levine is leaving out the British-French declaration of war on Germany over the invasion of Poland, which came as a shock to Hitler and forced him to make war with the West, which he didn’t want to do, at least not at that point. Presumably, absent the British-French declaration of war in September 1939, Hitler would not have invaded the West in May 1940, but instead would have attacked the USSR, as Buchanan argues. Buchanan’s whole point (which I read in A Republic Not an Empire) is that the British under Chamberlain made a terrible and unnecesseary mistake in declaring war on Germany over the invasion of Poland. Where Buchanan goes fatally and absurdly wrong (and Mr. Levine says the same above) is in his notion that after Hitler had defeated the USSR, he would not then have attacked the West. That’s a true appeaser for you!]

I was not impressed with Lukacs’ review. Apart from his failure to deal with the issues I mentioned above, he merely repeated his usual hobby horses about the American empire. (Am I alone in asking, what empire?) He pretends that this empire—bases, etc, only started with Eisenhower(!) as though we had not had enormous commitments under Truman.

I thought Lukacs’ remarks only relatively preferable to Buchanan’s.

I thought much of his argument against Buchanan was dubious or flatly wrong ideology, not a serious examination of what was wrong with Buchanan’s views—note that he implicitly accepts the idea that the USSR would have been attacked after Poland. [LA asks: Is Mr. Levine saying that even if France and Britain had not been in a state of war with Hitler, Hitler would have invaded the West prior to conquering the USSR? Why would Hitler do that?] E.g. that Germany was part and parcel of European civilization and Russia was not——not true, and so what? For that matter, it is arguable that Nazi ideology is considerably farther from European norms than Communism. That is probably true, though it arguably has little to do with the problem. He also says that Nazi brutality was unprecedented, but “Russian” brutality was not. Apart from the interesting element here of Central European contempt for the Russkies, that is not true either, It is ridiculous to compare the atrocities of Ivan IV with either Stalin or Hitler, they are not remotely alike in kind or scale. We also get his usual rant about “nationalism being more important than Communism.” The man was never more than weakly anti-Communist, and that makes him sound basically weak when attacking views like Buchanan’s, just as Buchanan’s views about the Nazis would make him sound unconvincing attacking Communism.

They’re both a pair of damned fools.

LA replies:

I have always considered Lukacs a deeply unsound, even perverse thinker on matters of the Cold War and foreign policy

Alan Levine replies:

You are correct in saying that Hitler was shocked by the Anglo-French declaration of war in September 1939 and he did not want war with the Western Europeans at that time. He wished to deal with the Poles and Anglo-French separately. and the latter perhaps not until 1942or so. It is however, incorrect to assume as you and Buchanan both do (it’s the only thing you have in common!) that if Poland had been left alone to face Germany in 1939 he would have then gone on, as his next step, to attack the Soviets. He had decided, no later than November 1937, that, once East-Central Europe was under his domination, he would tackle the British and French BEFORE launching the final drive for lebensraum to the east.

That sounds strange, but makes sense once you realize that, while his most important objective was indeed the conquest of the USSR and its colonization by Germans, he thought the main obstacle, the most powerful enemy, was not the Soviets, for whose power he had contempt up to late 1941, but the Western Europeans. The latter, not the Russians, had defeated Germany in WWI, and he, and most Germans, feared the French, not the Soviet army. It was necessary to dispose of the Western enemy, which he conceived of as primarily the French army, before getting entangled in the east. And, once you beat the French and British, the Soviets would be easy. This explains a great deal, including Hitler’s willingness to attack the USSR in 1941, and the design of the German armed forces, which were oriented toward the kind of problems one would face in the West, not the special needs of a campaign in Eastern Europe. These points are gone into at great length in Norman Rich’s Hitler’s War Aims and Gerhard Weinberg’s two volumes on “The Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany.”

LA replies:

This is incredible. You’re saying that even if Britain and France had not declared war in September 1939, Hitler after conquering Poland would have still attacked them before attacking Russia. I wonder what his publicly stated pretext for this would have been? And also, why would he see them as a threat, given that, even when he invaded and conquered Poland (under this scenario), they did nothing? If they did nothing against his conquest of Poland, they would do nothing against his invasion of the USSR.

Alan Levine writes:

It isn’t “incredible,” that’s just the way Hitler thought as was outlined in the Hossbach memorandum in November 1937. In his view, the French, and, probably, the British, no matter how weak and appeasement minded they might seem or even be for some interval, must inevitably contest a German hegemony at some point, so they could not be trusted not to attack if Germany was involved in the East, even if they could be tricked into writing off this or that country, as he still hoped they would write off Poland. I do not contest your logical objection that if they did nothing about Poland, they would hardly lift a finger to help the Soviets. But he did not think like that.

I don’t think he was much worried about pretexts for such an action, as the ones he usually used were pretty feeble anyhow.

I think it is pretty clear that he aimed at conquering Western Europe as well as Russia, although he regarded Russia as the more important in the long run since it was there that Germans would settle. The German programs for a naval buildup and long-range aircraft show his orientation toward fighting the West, even eventually the US.

LA replies:

Well I didn’t know this.

This really shatters Buchanan’s thesis, if it weren’t already shattered.

Mark W. writes:

I think it’s a mistake to treat Buchanan as a serious thinker. Most of his controversial positions can be traced back to his family background, not to serious reflection.

Item. His controversial visit to Confederate—but not Union—cemeteries was motivated by his father’s family’s slaveholding past.

Item. His palpable hatred for Poland (note: in the 1990’s he expressed support for German irredentist groups seeking a return of the Sudetenland and Western Poland to Germany) is motivated by the fact that his mother was German.

That’s all you need to know to evaluate him. The rest is all rationalization and downright meanspiritedness (as in his attitude toward the Italian “colonial war” in Ethiopia).

LA replies:

Well, that was my view of him after I read his book, “Right from the Beginning,” in 1988. I read the book eagerly, because I thought very highly of Buchanan at that time and saw him as a major leader of the right. The book was a big disappointment. He had no world view, no thought out positions. His “conservatism” seemed to consist of just what you said, his family background, his feelings. From his family background, he had a liking for McCarthy, so he liked McCarthy. His views came down to instincts and feelings, not a reasoned position he explained reasonably. There was no basis for a politics here.

However, I didn’t think of your point, that literally everything he says and has said over the last 20 years comes from such a basis. But I think you may be on to something.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 29, 2008 01:57 PM | Send