Buchanan and Churchill
Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, by Patrick J. Buchanan. New York: Crown. 544 pp. $25.95
A Review published in The Wanderer . Since this is my unedited text, any errors are the fault of the author and not of The Wanderer. Check out their website at http://thewandererpress.com/.
In his latest book, Patrick J. Buchanan has confronted one of the dominant historical myths of the 20th century, the myth of “the last good war” and the heroic British Prime Minister who not only rallied his nation to victory but, unlike Franklin Roosevelt, refused to be taken in by the schemes of Joseph Stalin. In describing this consensus of history teachers, editorialists, and History Channel watchers as a myth, I do not mean to say that it is entirely or even predominantly untrue. Myths usually include more than a little truth, but myth-makers whittle and polish the rough edges of reality in order to produce a fable that can be easily learned and repeated. Inevitably, reality is further distorted with every retelling until we are left with a simplistic morality play in which virtuous Yankees defeat wicked Confederates, or high-minded cowboys and frontiersman defend their women from murderous thieving redskins—though this latter example, like so many American myths, has been turned upside down, converting the thieving redskins into peace-living Native Americans, whose superior civilization was destroyed by greedy and violent capitalist exploiters.
[amazonify]030740515X[/amazonify]According to the myth of the World Wars, the United States entered World War I to stop two evil and militaristic German Empires from conquering and subjugating the peace-loving peoples of Europe. The noble Woodrow Wilson, at the end of the war, proclaimed the lofty principles of world peace and self-determination that were invoked to destroy the Prussian war machine and break up the Austro-Hungarian Empire into happy little states inhabited by contented peasants. Ignored in the blissful recitations of the myth are several inconvenient facts: Neither Slovak nor Croat peasants were especially content to be included in states run, respectively, by Czechs and Serbs; the Prussian war machine was no more a threat to world peace than the war machines created by their enemies; and many European and American statesmen viewed the Versailles Treaty as the direct cause both of the rise of Hitler and the second World War. Equally ignored is the Wilson administration’s shaky legal basis for entering into a conflict that appeared to concern the United States very little and in which both sides were guilty of violations of international law.
In this wonderful book, which should be read by all Americans who love their country, Patrick Buchanan has launched a devastating attack on the myth. Because the author makes no assumptions about the historical literacy of the United States, people who have not recently boned up on the history of 20th Century can use this volume as a refresher course that narrates the big events and portrays the leading figures. Buchanan makes the period come alive, as he highlights the ambiguous character of many eminent statesmen of the 20th century. The central figure, of course, is the brilliant and mercurial Winston Churchill, who changed sides so often that hardly anyone trusted him. Rejoining the Conservative Party in 1924, which he had abandoned for the Liberals 20 years earlier, Churchill quipped, “Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain ingenuity to re-rat.” Churchill was nothing if not ingenious.
Buchanan is quite right to emphasize the political influence of Churchill’s family—he was directly descended from John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough--but he might well have devoted a few pages to pointing out that Marlborough was a glory-seeking general and statesman, who betrayed the king who had relied on him and spent much of his career jockeying for power. Winston, who wrote a massive biography of his famous ancestor, modeled his own career on Marlborough’s.
The Churchills tended toward melancholy and dissipation: Winston’s father Randolph was like his son an unreliable maverick, whose irregular habits may have caused the illness (probably syphilis) that took his life at an early age. Winston’s son Randolph is best remembered as the binge-drinking companion we meet in Evelyn Waugh’s diaries. It is remarkable that Winston, who suffered from his family’s predilection for alcoholism, accomplished as much as he did.
Unlike many revisionist historians, Buchanan does not demonize Winston Churchill or deny his excellent qualities: the keen intelligence that early on discerned the Soviet menace, the battlefield valor that would be translated into the moral courage to take unpopular positions, and the political astuteness that enabled him to hold the reins of power throughout most of the War.
He does, however, draw up a formidable set of charges against him: recklessness as the First Lord of the Admiralty who clamored for war with the German empires, folly in arguing for military retrenchments in the dangerous period between the two wars and in urging capitulation to U.S. demands to put and end to the alliance with Japan, an action that served to justify the Japanese attack on Britain’s far-eastern passions, arrogance in securing sanctions that gave Mussolini, by now fearful of Hitler, no choice but to cement his alliance with Germany, obtuseness in writing the entirely unnecessary blank check to Poland, guaranteeing her security and making the Second World War inevitable and giving international legitimacy to Stalin, and finally, his stubborn intransigence toward Nazi Germany that prevented any possibility of a negotiated settlement that would have eliminated or reduced the slaughter of the war and possibly saved the lives of millions of European Jews. When these charges are added to Churchill’s apparent inability to understand Stalin’s plans to take over Eastern Europe, they make a serious indictment of an allegedly great statesman’s career.
The net result of Churchill’s blundering and blindness was the loss of the British colonial empire, the enslavement of Eastern Europe, and a Cold War the weighed heavily on American taxpayers for four decades. Churchill does not bear the burden alone. It goes without saying that equally grave mistakes were made by colleagues like Anthony Eden and by Franklin Roosevelt and his successive cabinets, but the debunking of Churchill’s infallibility is an important step toward recovering a sane and balanced view of the world wars.
Buchanan has made a strong case for the prosecution, though he may not have quite secured a conviction. It is not easy to evaluate Hitler’s motives, and, while he might have been content to have left Britain alone, it is in the nature of ideological empires to expand. One emergency after another is required to justify the assumption of so much power, and the wealth brought by conquest is the fuel that permits the total state to continue functioning. Mussolini may have allowed himself to be driven into the Fuhrer’s arms, but he had his own imperial ambitions that would have sooner or later dragged Italy into imperial adventures the Italian army was not prepared to sustain.
Sober or drunk, Churchill made more than his share of mistakes, and while his admirers have painted altogether too flattering a picture of their hero, one should beware of trusting too much to the judgment of his sometimes envious rivals. David Lloyd-George and Stanley Baldwin had good reason to be suspicious of Winston, but neither Lloyd-George’s hysterical bellicosity nor Baldwin’s pacifism, in retrospect, evince much deeper wisdom or patriotism than Churchill’s own ad hoc approach to foreign affairs, as helter-skelter as his policies sometimes seems. In his diary Count Ciano, who was Mussolini’s son-in-law and foreign secretary, compared the Duce with Churchill, and envied the British their possession of a prudent diplomat who (unlike his own boss) did not make a fool of himself in his public performances.
Mr. Buchanan’s title would suggest that the scope of his book is limited to what historian John Lukacs has called “the duel” between Churchill and Hitler. In fact, half of the book is devoted to events that took place before the outbreak of the war and nearly one fourth to the origins of World War I, the conduct of the war, and its aftermath. While this broader canvas permits the author to paint his anti-myth with broader strokes, it means that he cannot go into the documentary details that would render his arguments more persuasive to careful readers of history. On the other hand, by beginning his tale in the early 20th century (apart from a few broad references to earlier decades), he is unable to set the Great War in its proper context, which certainly includes France’s burning desire to get revenge for her defeat in the Franco-Prussian War.
These are minor quibbles. Buchanan is not an historian but a journalist and polemicist, using an historical backdrop for contemporary political debate. He states his aim directly, even bluntly in the introduction:
"There has risen among America’s elite a Churchill cult. Its acolytes hold that Churchill was not only a peerless war leader but statesman of unparalleled vision whose life and legend should be the model for every statesman, To this cult, defiance anywhere of U.S. hegemony, resistance anywhere to U.S. power becomes another 1938. Every adversary is “a new Hitler,” every proposal to avert war “another Munich.” Slobodan Milosevic, a party apparatchik who had presided over the disintegration of Yugoslavia—losing Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, and Bosnia—becomes the Hitler of the Balkans for holding Serbia’s cradle province of Kosovo. Saddam Hussein, whose army was routed in 100 hours in 1991 and who had not shot down a U.S. plane in forty thousand sorties, becomes “an Arab Hitler” abut to roll up the Persian Gulf and threaten mankind with 'weapons of mass destruction.'"
So, to undermine the neoconservative campaign for U.S. global hegemony, Buchanan has set out to destroy the myth of the “necessary war” that justifies our latter-day imperialism. It is a bold thesis, one that needs stating, and it would be churlish, probably, to point out that when Slovenia seceded from Yugoslavia in June of 1991 and Croatia in September, the President of the Federal Executive Council was a Bosnian Croat Ante Markovic, not Milosevic, who was then only Prime Minister of Serbia. And, while Sadddam’s war machine may not have amounted to much in the second Gulf War, he had provoked the Iran-Iraq War in which he used chemical weapons that killed vast number of Iranian civilians. If Saddam represented no direct threat to the United States, he was, nonetheless, a violent dictator who threatened not only Iran but also Israel.
I cite these two examples, especially the former, to give some idea of the difficulty of writing historical essays without a very firm grasp of the evidence. If there is a serious flaw in Buchanan’s book, it is the heavy reliance on secondary sources—recent biographies and history books—and the neglect of primary sources, even when they are easily available in published form. An egregious omission is Warren Kimball’s edition of the Churchill/Roosevelt correspondence, but the correspondence and papers of most of the major statesmen he discusses are accessible. These are minor matters, perhaps, and they should not distract us from Buchanan’s accomplishment.
In examining the career of Winston Churchill, Patrick Buchanan has made a highly valuable contribution to American political debate. In praising and recommending the book, I should be less than candid if I did not acknowledge my friendship with the author and my profound agreement with his overall point-of-view. When Christian conservatives seek to understand the revolution that has devastated the world of their fathers, they cannot do better than to turn to Pat’s spirited defense of old republican principles and his relentless attack on the sacred cows who have too long monopolized the pastures of the American conservative mind.
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Could some dear, kind soul please point out two or three of the half-truths in Pat's book that are so horrible and destructive? I fear that even after reading it I will be none the wiser, since I am not a historian. I thank you in advance for helping someone who could not possibly have figured it out without your help, and is loath to go around spreading half-truths himself. Thank you.
I am an English Tory who is in general sympathy with Chronicles, and most of what Mr Buchanan has to say about current world events.
But I am sick and tired about hearing that Churchill and FDR "gave" Eastern Europe to Stalin at Yalta.
The Red Army won Eastern Europe from Germany in the most savage and bloody war of modern times. Between two thirds and three quarters of German forces were engaged on the Russian front from June 1941 until the end.
Only because of these circumstances was the Anglo-American-Canadian campaign in the West 1944-45 possible.
Without intending to, Stalin played a vital role in the liberation of western Europe. Since his pact with Hitler in August 1939 made possible Hitler's campaign in the West in 1940, there is a kind of brutal historical irony working hear.
It is not possible, even in theory ,for anyone to be more hostile to communism and socialism than I am, but facts are facts. I have only just started Mr Buchanan's book. I much admired his autobiography and A Republic Not An Empire. I may offer more comment, if you will allow it, later.
If one could criticize Buchanan for anything is his referral to the Polish government of that time as being "neo-fascist". One would have thought a good Catholic like Pat would be supportive of the steeply Catholic Polish government of Padewerski and Beck. Authoritarian it may have been but it certainly wasn't "neo-fascist" whatever that phrase means.
#49 - Most of those war dead referenced by nbf were in wars entered into by Truman, Kennedy and Johnson, who are generally not thought of as being anti-communist hysterics of the political right. And that out of control military/industrial/state security apparatus which is destroying our liberties and sucking us dry financially got off to its start in the anti-fascist hysteria promoted by people like Dr. Lukacs' idol Churchill. And that particular hysteria cost us around 400,000 war dead.
Sean Scallon makes a good point. Not every authoritarian or Catholic regime is fascist--quite the contrary. And neo-fascist is an absurd term to refer to a regime contemporary with Mussolini. This is something an editor should have caught, but most editors today are 20-somethings whose reading is confined to text-messages and comic strip bubbles. I also appreciate Mr. Harrington's corrective. I do think FDR was far too generous in interpreting the motives and goals of his friend "U.J.," but too many of us (American and British) refuse to acknowledge both the successes and the sufferings of the Russians during WWII. I must confess, though, I do not understand his real shock over my summary of Buchanan's view of Churchill and Poland. I hope that a reviewer does not have to be saying at every turn, in summarizing a book, "the writer says," "the writer argues," and "according to the writer."
I have already said what I had to say about the book. As a friend of both Buchanan and Lukacs, I have no desire to enter into these polemics. The book, as I have suggested, is a provocative essay. If Sam Francis were alive and able to read the ms., I feel sure he would have made a number of suggestions, which would include a reading of some of the primary sources--letters, diaries, memoirs--and a less black-and-white presentation of his position. Part of any successful rhetorical strategy is the careful consideration of the other side's positions. This was not done. Most popular authors today hire young research assistants to do much or most of their reading for them. The result is passages pulled out of context and used, often, to defend a thesis that the authority being quoted believes he has already refuted. This is one of many reasons why I do not read books aimed at the best-seller list. PJB's latest has all the problems associated with popular historical writing in America--books by people like David McCollough or Richard Brookhiser. Buchanan's great advantages are his intelligence, his political savvy, and his ability to frame and push to the limit his argument. The weakness of this approach is that it cover up all the little details that make history, so far as I am concerned, worth reading.
The arguments against John Lukacs seem to come down to: A) You don't like his position on X, Y. or Z and therefore he must be not only wrong but evil, and B) He should not have attacked Buchanan. As for the set of A arguments, I must say they are childish. One may disagree with a man on a host of issues, as I do with virtually every living writer I respect and admire, and yet retain respect for him. But this is what movements are for: to divide the world into big-enders and little-enders and then spend the time throwing spitwads in the gigantic elementary school classroom that is the conservative movement. As to B), why? A man believes something strongly, is asked to review a book, and condemns it roundly--isn't this what a healthy intellectual debate is all about.
Oh yes, I know, he compared Pat with David Irving. So what? It is true that Irving is clearly an unbalanced kook with an ax to grind, as Lukacs noted, but part of the comparison is based on the assumption that Pat is not a kook. Thus, JL is genuinely puzzled and a bit suspicious. Despite his kookiness, Irving is actually a self-taught documentary historian who has contributed a great deal to our understanding of WW II, and when his information and arguments are important, JL has cited him--as Pat, for reasons I refuse to understand, does not. Let me confess: I posted my review for one reason only: I hoped that, by showing that a friendly and positive reviewer could find grounds on which to criticize the book, I could defuse some of the ill-considered, fatuous, and repellant attacks that have been made against prof. Lukacs. As I told one of Pat's good friends, a man who has worked seriously with Buchanan in his political career, the twerping bloggers attacking Lukacs have once and for all forfeited their right to be included in any discussion that includes men of learning, principle, character, or virility.
In looking at some of the writebacks, I wonder if it is about time to close discussion. The first thing I saw this morning was a ridiculous insistence that someone knows Prof. Wilson's mind better than Prof. Wilson and thus it is perfectly acceptable to include him and others in the "Anglosphere" camp. Anyone who knows Clyde Wilson will be amused.
"The simple fact is that the civilised world would have had to confront German and Japanese aggression sooner or later..."
So we should have launched the Third World War against Stalin after he encouraged his N Korean allies to invade the South? Or maybe earlier during the Berlin Blockade?
When I was younger I used to read a lot of WW2 histories. I no longer do so because the accounts of the slaughter and degradation sicken me. Was this obscene slaughter really necessary? The NS regime was such a bizarre historical anomaly that I think a reasonable policy of containment and subversion (along with a massive arms buildup by the Anglo-Americans) would have caused it to moderate (or even fall ) rather quickly. How long could Hitler have kept up the hysteria if he wasn't given his war? Maybe his war with the SU was inevitable, but it started going badly for Hitler even before significant amounts of Lend-Lease Aid arrived. The Wehrmacht bled white in Russia would have been in no condition to pursue further aggression.
Read Hitler's secretly taped discussion with Mannerheim in June 1942:
http://www.wargamer.com/articles/bdvisit2.asp
"Without intending to, Stalin played a vital role in the liberation of western Europe. Since his pact with Hitler in August 1939 made possible Hitler’s campaign in the West in 1940, there is a kind of brutal historical irony working hear."
****
The West's selling out of Czechoslovakia to Hitler, Poland and Hungary in 1938 made it easier for the Nazis to attack the USSR.
In point of fact, the USSR offered the West a joint alliance against the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. This offer was rejected. The West was no doubt hoping that the Nazis would just stay East. Recall Truman's wish to see both regimes bleeding each other to a pulp.
All this is said with the understanding and revulsion that Stalin's regime was brutish. It nevertheless had a reasonable basis for making its own deal with the Nazis. One that was encouraged by how the West chose to address the Czechoslovak matter in 1938.
Re-Mr Averko,
I very much doubt whether Russia was really ready to go to war with Germany over Czechoslovakia. To judge from the records and books I have seen Hitler was not very worried about Russia. What Stalin said when it was clear there would be no war is another matter.
Chamberlain's mistake was to get involved in the Czech crisis, something his predecessor Stanley Baldwin would not have done in a month of Sundays. If you look at British Conservative opinion at that time, British public opinion in general, the state of British armaments and the view of the chiefs of staff, not to mention opinion in the Commonwealth, it is as obvious as one of the great mesas in Monument Valley that Britain was not going to go to war with Germany in 1938.
I would only simply write that I admire both Pat Buchanan and Professor John Lukacs. Just as Tom Fleming and Sam Francis didn't agree on every issue, one can not expect two vigorous thinkers like Lukacs and Buchanan to hold the same views on all issues. It is good to have a dust-up now and again.
Maybe this will "make it" before the discussion is closed.
The review that begins this discussion is a good one, and the central points it makes about Buchanan's book are in my mind very valuable ones: first, "it is a wonderful book that should be read by all Americans who love their country"; secondly, "Pat is not an historian but a journalist." "A wonderful book that should be read. . ." to me means that the points it makes are arresting and should be further investigated by the general public, which according to my knowledge of the late unlamented WWII is a very accurate read; and "not an historian but a journalist" is a good thing to keep in mind when reading the book and following up on its findings; however, saying this does lower the the journalist's stature as a fact-finder in the reader's mind, and it should be followed with a note to the effect that there is a place for so-called "popular histories" - histories which do not attempt to present all or most of the facts, but rather to raise the salient points and with luck guide the reader to investigate further. And perhaps another point needs to be made, one that should be lapidary: manifestly, there are historians, and then there are historians. Historians, too, perhaps most of them, have biases and agendas, sometimes open and sometimes not. So, being a "historian" does really not mean that the product of the work done is better; this is easily provable.
I am indebted to Kirt Higdon for providing the links to the Lukacs review of Buchanan's book, and his link to the Lukacs discussion of anti-Communism.
I find the Lukacs review to be less a review of the book than a review of Buchanan, but book reviewers are free to take that approach, just as I am free to deliver this assessment. That said, I think that Lukacs' most apt criticism of Buchanan is in his review's third paragraph, where he chides Buchanan because Buchanan has supported the drive for much of American imperialism undertaken by Republicans over the years. However, that criticism does not allow for Buchanan's thinking to have "grown" such that if he were allowed to repeat his earlier conduct, he would not do it. The ninth paragraph in Lukacs' review is something I do not understand: why not make comparisons between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia? The most valid way for Lukacs to have made the point I think he is driving at would have been to state, as one of my old (now dead) history profs said during his course on the Nazis: "The Germans didn't do anything that we all have not done, in reality: the thing was that they 'knew better.'" (That is, they had a fully-developed, Western Christian civilization.) However, this brings into question the basic Christian humanity of the eastern peoples, which would disturb and I think anger Solzhenitsyn. He readily compares his Russia under the Soviets to Germany under Hitler, and clearly understands (see "The Solzhenitsyn Reader") which of them was the most barbarous.
Lukacs' essay on anti-Communism and "anti-anti-Communism" is to my view best answered - not by Buckley, of course - but by Robert Conquest, himself a recognized Kremlinologist with the credentials of a historian and credentials gained "on the ground", with the Russians in WWII. My own view is that Lukacs is right about some of the things anti-Communism "did" to this country, but that doesn't diminish the fact of the existence of some highly-placed paid Soviet agents in our government. This was a scandal unlike any other, and it needed to be made known and well-understood by the general public. Public opinion in this country is not a tea-room discussion, and broad strokes are often needed to get a point across (was the "collateral damage" acceptable? might make a good debate topic). The public needed to know the extent of Soviet penetration of the councils of government, and to understand it, and though it is easy to dismiss the (Soviet) "accomplishments" of some of these people IN HINDSIGHT, the hindsight should be recognized for what it is, and the question considered: what if these "Soviet Americans" - and their ilk - had not been rooted out? Speculation, true; but it is equally valid that we must recognize that only hindsight allows us to say any of them were "not that all effective." Read the "Yalta Papers", and except for the briefing papers presented by lower-level staffs, you will find that the "Papers" consist of the notes of three high-level men assigned to take notes in those meetings between the "Big Three": Stettinius, Mathews, and Alger Hiss.
"Churchill the Great Statesman": the review by Dr. Fleming captures the man pretty well. He made one helluva lot of mistakes, and Buchanan is right to challenge "the Churchill cult." However, I would come at it from a different angle. I will say that Prof. Ralph Raico's characterization some time ago of Churchill as a "man of blood" is the most accurate I have seen, and I don't think it can be successfully challenged. How can we call a man who ordered so many deaths of innocents "a great statesman?" Note that I do not make a distinction between killing innocents at point-blank range (the Nazis - and the Communists) from killing innocents from 25,000 feet (the British especially). As the English historian Martin Middlebrook observes, the British pilots were told they were bombing military targets; "Bomber" Harris, planning their raids, knew better. Churchill knew this, and pushed for it, but facing the uproar over the greatest of these atrocities, Dresden, he posted a "minute" about the conduct of the bombing offensive which began "It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed. . ." In other words, he not only identified it for what it was, he tried to back away from his responsibility for it. The authors of "The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany, 1939-1945" (the official English history published by Her Majesty's Stationery Office), Sir Charles Webster and Dr. Noble Frankland, go on to note "this was perhaps the least felicitous of the Prime Minister's long series of war-time minutes . . .It . . . seemed to overlook the fact that after encouraging the Air Staff, and more directly the Commander-in-Chief, Bomber Command, in the policy of area attack upon large German towns for the past four years, the Prime Minister had himself . . . suggested the application of this principle to the great eastern cities of Germany in somewhat peremptory terms and that he had . . . been informed by Sir Archibald Sinclair that Dresden was among the targets which had, in consequence, been selected" (pgs. 112-113 of Vol. III "The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany, 1939-1945"). "Least felicitous . . .": delicate wording, eh what? This one example among many that could be used to establish that Churchill was "a man of blood".
But Churchill demonstrated many times that he was capable of some penetrating insights, and I believe that the lack of such perspicacity in our own leaders is the thing Dr. Wilson anguishes over. And I am with him, on that point (and a lot of others, in both books and articles).
Enough. Churchill was a great man, but a flawed statesman, and - beyond quibble - "a man of blood."
Howard Sitton
I thank Mr. Sitton for his useful insights. I would add that if Churchill was a man of blood--as he certainly was--it is also true that my old friend Ralph Raico is a libertarian pacifist who opposes all war per se, which is as dangerous a position as Churchill's bellicosity.
M.J. Harrington
What I said on that subject is a matter of record.
The West didn't take the Soviets up on that proposal. The reasoning for that decision seems to be reasonably based on what I said.
The typical comeback from many aware of that proposal is that the Soviets couldn't have done much at the time. By themselves, this is probably true. In alliance with the West: not as true.
At the time, I suspect that some conservative Western anti-Communists were a bit ticked off at the Czechoslovak government for having relatively good ties with the USSR.
Michael Averko
What is on the record is what the Soviets said they would do, and I do not believe it. Had the policy advocated by Churchill for several years--a Grand Alliance of England, France, and Russia--been pursued with energy and determination by the Western governments, of course the situation in 1938 would have been different.
If,however, you look into the culture of English Conservatism at that time--I know far less about France--you can see what an impossible project that was for a regular Conservative government.
Regular Conservatives did not look on Churchill as a great man. Far from it. His ideas were considered to be dangerous. Not until about the middle of the war did they come round, and his present reputation started to grow.
When Churchill died in January 1965 A.J.P. Taylor said (I am quoting from memory) : "When the attack on Churchill's reputation comes, it will not come from the Left : It will come from the Right."
So it has proved.
M.J. Harrington
The bottom line is that the West refused the Soviet offer. Instead, choosing to appease the Nazi, Polish and Hungarian dismemberment of a Soviet friendly state.
That act no doubt encouraged the Soviets to make their own deal with the Nazis. I recall a Soviet diplomat around that time being quoted with saying as much.
At this thread, I brought this matter up in reply to a stated point about how the Soviets made a deal with the Nazis that violated the borders of a nation. The Soviets can't be legitimately accused of initiating a deal with the Nazis that violated the borders of a nation.
Since it finally sunk into my consciousness that something funny was going on when Bruno Gollnisch, EU MP and NF politician from France, faced legal sanction for publicly asking a rather mild question concerning the Holocaust, it occurred to me that, maybe just maybe, it might be worthwhile to look at what some of the Holocaust revisionists had to say. Now I have, and I can say that, while I'm by no means an expert on the subject, many serious doubts as to *some* aspects of what we've all been told happened have been raised. I recommend highly that everyone see the film, "One Third Of The Holocaust," which is really very impressive in how it shows some of the testimony relied upon by people such as Raul Hilberg is quite specious.
While Hitler may have been enthralled by a diabolical weltenschaung, that fact and threats of violence and imprisonment shouldn't prevent people from trying to find out * for themselves * what really happened in the concentration camps in WWII.
Perhaps John Lukacs might moderate some of his positions if it did turn out that the numbers of deaths in the camps were far fewer than what we've been told.
Much unlike some of the casualty numbers claimed in the recent wars in Bosnia and Kosovo (some of which have been soundly debunked), I think the numbers on that particular have been pretty well established.
The mentioned situation during WW II. had a coldly calculated aspect to it.
Michael Averko
I don't blame Stalin for the deal with Hitler he made in August 1939.It was a smart and cynical move in the Russian national interest.
The strange thing is that a man as paranoid as Stalin actually trusted Hitler. In 1941 he would not believe intelligence which suggested that Hitler was planning an invasion. Churchill sent a long written warning to Stalin which Stalin dismissed on the ground that Churchill wanted to get Russia into the war. True of course, but Churchill was not deceiving him.
Why did Stalin trust Hitler? Was it because he admired him?
I'm sure there must have been an admiration factor at work.
Those kind have a tendency to admire each other.
Admiration doesn't always necessarily mean trust.
Ceaucsecu was known to marvel at Nazi propaganda film clips of Hitler.
Stalin was like you said paranoid. Somewhere down the line, he know doubt figured a Soviet war with Nazi Germany was inevitable.
He quite possibly felt what you suggested: convenient propaganda to get him to go to war with Nazi Germany.
He also might've calculated that Germany would next move to a different target other than the USSR.
TJF
Re: 65
Slovaks appear mixed on the "velvet divorce," which had no referendum on the matter.
Many Croats were big union with Serbia enthusiasts. Overall, this Croat enthusiasm changed when that union (in the form of a Serb monarchy) took effect. Yet, I've run into my share of nationally conscious Croats, who haven't totally escaped from the Yugoslav concept.
Yes, I spoke with Slovak businessmen and friends who had mixed feelings. One told me that exchanging Magyar oppression for Czech domination was not a big improvement, nor was Russian domination that much worse than the Czech-Slovak state that followed and they had little confidence in the Mechiar's Slovak nationalist government that gained independence. The Croats had been among the architects of Yugoslavia, but in the first election held, Radic's Croatian Peasant Party almost immediately started agitating for secession.
Then Czech PM Klaus felt the less economically developed Slovakia was a burden on Czechia.
In turn, the Communist turned nationalist Slovak government at the time preferred their own fiefdom, where they would dominate.
Kind of reminds me of what happened in Montenegro. A matter which is somewhat related to why the current Moldovan government isn't so keen on reunifying with Romania.