Did Hitler Want War?
On Sept. 1, 1939, 70 years ago, the German Army crossed the Polish frontier. On Sept. 3, Britain declared war.
Six years later, 50 million Christians and Jews had perished. Britain was broken and bankrupt, Germany a smoldering ruin. Europe had served as the site of the most murderous combat known to man, and civilians had suffered worse horrors than the soldiers.
By May 1945, Red Army hordes occupied all the great capitals of Central Europe: Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Berlin. A hundred million Christians were under the heel of the most barbarous tyranny in history: the Bolshevik regime of the greatest terrorist of them all, Joseph Stalin.
What cause could justify such sacrifices?
The German-Polish war had come out of a quarrel over a town the size of Ocean City, Md., in summer. Danzig, 95 percent German, had been severed from Germany at Versailles in violation of Woodrow Wilson's principle of self-determination. Even British leaders thought Danzig should be returned.
Why did Warsaw not negotiate with Berlin, which was hinting at an offer of compensatory territory in Slovakia? Because the Poles had a war guarantee from Britain that, should Germany attack, Britain and her empire would come to Poland's rescue.
But why would Britain hand an unsolicited war guarantee to a junta of Polish colonels, giving them the power to drag Britain into a second war with the most powerful nation in Europe?
Was Danzig worth a war? Unlike the 7 million Hong Kongese whom the British surrendered to Beijing, who didn't want to go, the Danzigers were clamoring to return to Germany.
Comes the response: The war guarantee was not about Danzig, or even about Poland. It was about the moral and strategic imperative "to stop Hitler" after he showed, by tearing up the Munich pact and Czechoslovakia with it, that he was out to conquer the world. And this Nazi beast could not be allowed to do that.
If true, a fair point. Americans, after all, were prepared to use atom bombs to keep the Red Army from the Channel. But where is the evidence that Adolf Hitler, whose victims as of March 1939 were a fraction of Gen. Pinochet's, or Fidel Castro's, was out to conquer the world?
After Munich in 1938, Czechoslovakia did indeed crumble and come apart. Yet consider what became of its parts.
The Sudeten Germans were returned to German rule, as they wished. Poland had annexed the tiny disputed region of Teschen, where thousands of Poles lived. Hungary's ancestral lands in the south of Slovakia had been returned to her. The Slovaks had their full independence guaranteed by Germany. As for the Czechs, they came to Berlin for the same deal as the Slovaks, but Hitler insisted they accept a protectorate.
Now one may despise what was done, but how did this partition of Czechoslovakia manifest a Hitlerian drive for world conquest?
Comes the reply: If Britain had not given the war guarantee and gone to war, after Czechoslovakia would have come Poland's turn, then Russia's, then France's, then Britain's, then the United States.
We would all be speaking German now.
But if Hitler was out to conquer the world—Britain, Africa, the Middle East, the United States, Canada, South America, India, Asia, Australia—why did he spend three years building that hugely expensive Siegfried Line to protect Germany from France? Why did he start the war with no surface fleet, no troop transports and only 29 oceangoing submarines? How do you conquer the world with a navy that can't get out of the Baltic Sea?
If Hitler wanted the world, why did he not build strategic bombers, instead of two-engine Dorniers and Heinkels that could not even reach Britain from Germany?
Why did he let the British army go at Dunkirk?
Why did he offer the British peace, twice, after Poland fell, and again after France fell?
Why, when Paris fell, did Hitler not demand the French fleet, as the Allies demanded and got the Kaiser's fleet? Why did he not demand bases in French-controlled Syria to attack Suez? Why did he beg Benito Mussolini not to attack Greece?
Because Hitler wanted to end the war in 1940, almost two years before the trains began to roll to the camps.
Hitler had never wanted war with Poland, but an alliance with Poland such as he had with Francisco Franco's Spain, Mussolini's Italy, Miklos Horthy's Hungary and Father Jozef Tiso's Slovakia.
Indeed, why would he want war when, by 1939, he was surrounded by allied, friendly or neutral neighbors, save France. And he had written off Alsace, because reconquering Alsace meant war with France, and that meant war with Britain, whose empire he admired and whom he had always sought as an ally.
As of March 1939, Hitler did not even have a border with Russia. How then could he invade Russia?
Winston Churchill was right when he called it "The Unnecessary War"—the war that may yet prove the mortal blow to our civilization.
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Here we go again. How enlightening to know that World War II was not brought about by Hitler but by a "junta of Polish colonels," i.e., the people who had kept the Communists at bay. Ever heard of the Hitler-Stalin Pact? The question was not one of traditional maneuvering among the great powers. The question was National Socialism---a totalitarian ideology,armed to the teeth, boasting of conquest, and contemptuous of the right to exist of small nations.
I recommend to Mr. Buchanan or anyone else to read what genuine German traditionalists and Christians had to say in 1939. For instance THE REVOLUTION OF NIHILISM by Hermann Rauschning, a genuine leader of the Danzig Germans. This is not a good road for American conservatives to travel down.
Dr Wilson conveniently ignores the Soviet Union, a bigger menace than Hitler's Germany could ever be (in 1941 the Red Army had a minimum 3:1 advantage of men and equipment over the Wehrmacht and was poised for a massive assault on Europe). The British war aim (subsequently endorsed by the USA) was the destruction of Germany (NOT just National Socialism). Thus we had the terror bombings,the demand for unconditional surrender, the refusal to work with anti-Hitler Germans in the overthrow of Hitler, the starvation of millions of Germans AFTER the end of combat, the dismantling of the remains of the German economy, the refusal to allow food aid into Germany while millions starved and, of course, the slavishly pro-Soviet Allied policies (allowing them hegemony over half of Europe, handing over a large part of Poland (whose territorial integrity was the ostensible reason for the British declaration of war) and even sending millions back to Stalin's GULAG (Operation Keelhaul). Nemesis has not forgotten us. We have paid for this folly in blood and treasure for almost 70 years and counting. The British lost their moth-eaten empire for which they fought the war.
Since Dr. Wilson specifically mentions the Hitler-Stalin pact, it can hardly be said that he ignores the Soviet Union. Hitler allied himself with the Soviets before the US and Britain did, an alliance which gave the Soviets a free hand to gobble up their share of Poland, Finland, and Rumania and all of the Baltic republics. Hitler may not have wanted war against France at that moment and may have wanted Britain as an ally, but it can hardly be contended that he did not want war at all. He just wanted it against those countries too weak to fight back effectively. Buchanan is right that Britain should not have given guarantees to Poland, but that is simply because of Britain's national interest, which was to keep Hitler busy in the eastern part of the continent. It's not because Hitler did not want war; war was his main desire and obsession, even more so than his obsession with the Jews.
Hitler wanted war but got more than he bargained for. He wanted land to the east and was predisposed to an eventual war with Soviet Russia. He did get his war with Russia but also war with Britain and the USA to boot and that combination finished him off but not after 50,000,000 perished. Hitler may not have wanted war with Britain or the USA in 1939 but that is what his reckless policies earned.
And Hitler came very close to winning a Germanic empire stretching from Western Europe to the Russian steppes and perhaps beyond. Had Lord Halifax, the choice of King George VI and the Conservative Party, been made Prime Minister in May 1940 instead of Winston Churchill, the war between Britain and Nazi Germany may have had a negotiated peace with Germany a European colossus and Britain humiliated, isolated continentally, with a loss of empire inevitable. And, in the summer of 1941, had not Hitler spent a month bailing out Mussolini in Greece and smashing Yugoslavia, thus delaying the invasion of Russia by two months, it is a great possibility that Moscow may have fallen before the Russian winter set in in December. World War Two was a time of monstrous destruction, a very sad time, but it was fitting that Hitler became part of the destruction which was of his own creation.
You folks live in Neverland. Great Britain was impoverished and lost its empire as a result of WW II (with an able assist from WW I). Even Churchill wised up ("We have killed the wrong pig"). You have also cast down the memory hole the prodigious crimes committed by the Allies in their holy war (I listed some of them but I could go on).
The Bohemian Corporal did indeed want war, albeit, a splendid little war (10,000 German dead in six weeks of fighting) to unite the masses with him in blood, an Original Sin sort of thing, like the yahoos still running around declaring that Saddam had WMDs--really he did, Bush/Cheney 2004!
Rove gets it.
The NSDAP government had its SS folks fake an invasion (imagine when government had to bother with such distasteful things as actually going through the motions of appealing to just war's grip on the psyche!)
And the defense guarantee is nonsense--the French and the English, though they promised, hadn't delivered on military loans for over a year, since the Poles embarrassed the Allies at Munich; the politicians didn't dare. France and England could have easily let it slide, as they say.
The explanations for the events is forced through the prism of defending, at any level, democratic-nationalist systems when it was nothing more than a result of cynical electoral calculations aka game theory. The whole nonsense would have collapsed eventually; the history specialist, Der Fuhrer was a strange sort of fellow as an Anglophile--German nationalists in the First World War appealed to a traditional Europe against the Pirate Colony (not an unreasonable characterization of Mother England) for her tricks and manipulations over many centuries--Vampire of the World I believe was the battle cry.
England played her usual game; the Continent played her part, as she always does, with a heavy dose of fatalism.
The only question is how my country got mixed up in that mess.
From Neverland. Mr. Van O., as usual you are not thinking historically. None could foresee fully in 1939 all the consequences that you point to and they certainly did not want or expect them. Besides, there is something morally obtuse about dwelling on atrocities to the Germans. Yes, the Allies did not conduct themselves as Christian powers, but the German war of agression and its accompanying atrocities certainly called for response. In 1939 Russia did not pose an effective threat to Western Europe---Hitler did. I agree with Mr. Bowen that it is a shame that our country got mixed up in the mess, but that is a different question. There is something very unseemly about Americans identifying with a totalitarian state in central Europe. Not surprising, though, considering all those proto-fascist German immigrants that were essential to the destruction of the original American Union in Lincoln's war of conquest.
Prof. Wilson,
There is no one here who is "identifying with a totalitarian state in central Europe." No one.
Buchanan wails "where is there evidence of Hitler's desire for war?"
Try every chapter and line of Mein Kampf.
To Mr. Bowen above, your country got mixed up in WWII because Hitler declared war on the US.
If Russia did not pose a threat to Western Europe in 1939 it was because Germany stood in her way.
Did Hitler Want War? On September 1, 1939 Hitler's Germany attacked Poland hence he was the aggressor. It seems clear to me someone in Germany wanted war.
Let's not forget that Herr Hitler and Comrade Stalin's pact let the Soviet Union's military forces help regain strength after the 1930 purges. And let's not forget it was the Polish Army in 1920 that defeated the Soviet forces.
Hitler and Stalin were madmen. Hitler's insane ambition caused him to attack in every direction. Stalin was more psychotic. He killed off his best generals and anybody else who seemed more worthy than himself. It's almost pointless to look for rational reasons for the war when such men as these were the key players.
The Poles had been ethnically cleansing Germans (Wendish) from the Danzig corridor throughout 1939, the straw that broke the camel's back for Hitler's staff was the massacre of 5500 Germans in the town of Bromberg. This work was done by bolsheviks with the approval of the Polish army. Most victims were women and children. Mnay of the men were little more than peasant farmers. Germany moved on Poland to protect ethnic Germans living there.
Don't expect this tidbit to show up on any holohoax websites.
Europe's fate was sealed when Prussia became the premier Power in Central Europe and expelled Austria from the German Confederation, and in fact, modern German conservatives have expressed their extreme discontentment, in the writebacks to this web site if I am not mistaken, with the "traitor" who moved the capital from Bohn to Berlin after reunification. France was idiotic for abandoning Austria, but what do you expect from such a godless lay Republic as the Third? (Nevertheless, the eventual Pétain presidency aside, admirable French nationalists were violently anti-German.) As for U.S. involvement, yes, Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and FDR were insufferable, but geopolitical isolationism has been a frontiersman's myth for quite some time.
Buchanan's heart is in the right place, but it is futile arguing that World War II should not have happened. It is a waste of the energy we will need to tear down everything our enemies have done using the war as a pretext and to rebuild what they have hacked to bits... if someday we have the chance.
Churchill called it the "unnecessary war" because, as he made clear in his 6 volume history of WWII, the French and the British lacked the political will to stop Hitler and his build-up of the German army time and time again after 1933. The allies were exhausted after the Great War whereas the Germans and Austrians were fueled by outrage at what had been done to them at Versailles and the imposed-upon-them Weimar "democracy". WWII was planned by two of the most evil men in history but it was sparked by Chamberlain's monumental stupidity (one yearns for the political acumen of a Machiavelli or Cardinal Richelieu at times like these). After WWII Europe was a spent force with millions dead and millions more in internment center or concentration camps in the USSR. Hence the plummeting birth rates, the coming of the foreign workers from Turkey and North Africa and the cradle-to-grave socialism that saps the will to work and rebuild a nation.
It's decidedly unpleasant to see the wise Dr. Wilson shilling for the war that paved the way for Eastern Europe to be taken over by Stalin, the much more evil and dangerous belligerent in the affair than Hitler. I do believe Pat goes too far by making Hitler out to be a poor oppressed victim of the illogical distrust of Germany by the rest of the Western world, but if you maintain that Hitler and not Stalin was the big threat in WWII, then you buy into a myth perpetrated by the left-wing politico-media establishment.
And also Dr. Wilson, Rauschning's THE CONSERVATIVE REVOLUTION. Mr. Buchanan's understanding seems to be very much influenced by A.J.P. Taylor's THE ORIGINS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR. Taylor suggests that the Hossbach memorandum, based on a Hitler talk to senior military officers, indicating his desire to go to war,was merely a kind of posturing for effect.
Mr Gervaise @13: the Bromberg Bloody Sunday occured on Sept 3, two days after the invasion, so how could it be the straw that broke the camel's back? Also, my map shows the Wends (Sorbs) to have been in southeastern Germany but the Danzig corridor was north along the Baltic, wasn't it? That would have been Pomerania. I'm open to correction but would like to understand this aspect.
Pat's case would be more convincing if Germany had just made a grab for the corridor, and Russia and Germany didn't once again partition the whole of Poland.
German conduct in 1939 hardly looks like a Wilsonian effort to reunite ethnic Germans in one polity, and then stop. It looks much more like the Teutonic Drang nach Osten, as advertised.
Pat Buchanan needs to stick to his trade, which is not history. I think this about the worst piece by him I ever read, sorry to say.
Let's say you agree with his conclusion, fine. The piece is constructed(?) like a piece of incendiary rabble rousing, throwing out post-hoc questions that beg their answers concerning a large and chaotic war, the results of which were hardly forseeable by any player. At the center, a couple of homicidal maniacs in charge of major powers. And a shallow assumption, that Adolph Hitler had definable "wants" and "aims."
The real question is what are Buchanan's own wants and aims, in throwing out a stinkball like this. Frankly, it doesn't look like he himself -- certainly a verifiably saner soul than Hitler -- even knows.
Did Hitler want war? Yes, he did.
Pat Buchanan's arguments in this column are intended to give the answer "no" to the question he asks in the column's title. This makes it most unfortunate that that question is "Did Hitler Want War?" For a "no" answer to that question would seem to suggest that Hitler was some kind of peacenik that was no threat to anybody. I don't believe for a second that that is actually what Pat Buchanan is trying to say though. Hitler obviously wanted a war. The question is did he want the war that he ended up getting, against the enemies he ended up fighting? His war against Russia had been planned for a long time - I don't think anyone would argue against that. But I think it is highly doubtful that he wanted a real war against Britain and her Empire or the United States of America.
Granted that all the guff about "The Good War" is absurd and repulsive. It is actually an element of the multicultural, melting-pot mythology promoted after the war by people who did not fight but knew how to take advantage of public emotions.
I admit that I am little interested in all the great power diplomatic jousting that led to war. It is something Americans should be less interested in and emotionally involved in than many here seem to be. In the last analysis, who was the aggressor who destroyed the peace?
Britain is our Mother and at the end of the day rightly had our sympathy. The free constitutional confederation known as the United States could not have been created by other than Britons. Our Founders perfectly understood that even though they chose to leave home and set up on their own. The influx of all later groups have resulted in deterioration. Britain, for all her sins, which are many, was a positive cultural force in the world in countless ways.
If you want to take a deep historical perspective, I would say that the primary cause of World War II was the insane American entry into World War I. The Northeastern elites who ruled the U.S. made that decision.
[quote]As of March 1939, Hitler did not even have a border with Russia. How then could he invade Russia?[/quote]
The answer is quite simple. There was only one country between the USSR and the III Reich.
Hitler needed Poland either to enter his Anti-Komintern Pact (abouth which the author of this article simply forgets - btw Poland was proposed to enter this Pact, but refused) or to be conquered. Then he could invade the USSR.
[quote]Because Hitler wanted to end the war in 1940, almost two years before the trains began to roll to the camps.[/quote]
First concentration camps were built yet in 1933 (Dachau, Oranienburg, Berlin, Papenburg, Sachsenburg, Lichtenburg, Esterwegen, Drrgoy, Kemnath, Sonnenburg) further ones were built in 1936 (e.g. Sachsenhausen), 1937 (Buchenwald), 1938 (Mauthausen, Flossenburg), 1939 (Ravensbruck).
Yet between 1933 and 1939 over 170,000 prisoners were transported to these camps (by trains).
[quote]Because Hitler wanted to end the war in 1940[/quote]
[i]De facto[/i] he ended the war in 1940 (only small, negligible Britain left). And started a new one in 1941.
[quote]On Sept. 1, 1939, 70 years ago, the German Army crossed the Polish frontier. On Sept. 3, Britain declared war.
The German-Polish war had come out of a quarrel over a town the size of Ocean City, Md., in summer. Danzig, 95 percent German, had been severed from Germany at Versailles in violation of Woodrow Wilson’s principle of self-determination. Even British leaders thought Danzig should be returned.[/quote]
What is remarkable is that the German army captured Free City Gdansk yet on 01.09.1939. Why didn't Hitler stop his armies then and tell the world: "I've taken what I wanted, that's enough"? Britain and France declared war on 03.09.1939 - Hitler captured Free City Gdansk yet on 01.09.1939.
There was enough time to stop the conflict before it became worldwide.
"Britain is our Mother and at the end of the day rightly had our sympathy. The free constitutional confederation known as the United States could not have been created by other than Britons. Our Founders perfectly understood that even though they chose to leave home and set up on their own. The influx of all later groups have resulted in deterioration. Britain, for all her sins, which are many, was a positive cultural force in the world in countless ways."
This is the mark of an educated gentleman from the United States. It says everything that needs to be said, both good and bad, about who, what, when and where concerning the hisory of our particluar nation. Those who understand it will understand themselves, those who don't, will never understand anything about our politics, culture, history, or religion. To know this is to know why the experiment was successful and what the results have actually proven, to ignore it is to deny the existence of reality which is not only delusional but, as all of us can witness, eventually suicidal
"I would say that the primary cause of World War II was the insane American entry into World War I. The Northeastern elites who ruled the U.S. made that decision."
Not only do they enter wars, they are too stupid and politically inept to finish them. Had Wilson acted like a man and had the U.S. and allies occupy and rip apart the successor state to Prussia, as the latter's counterbalancing Austrian Empire was gone, and had he had the nerve to insist that we finish off the Reds further East before declaring victory, that would have been the end of it. Since then, we have neglected to finish almost every war--Korea, Vietnam, Iran, Iraq--and have betrayed our allies or people who should have been our allies. (That is why all this talk about "losing honor" if we pull out of Iraq is a crock--there is none left to lose!)
Dr. Wilson, though I have done everything I can to Latinize my mind, I have to confess that I too have a certain fondness for the British Empire (I am an American of Norwegian and Austrian descent) and a bit of nostalgia for the fast-fading ambiance of it's legacy. I do appreciate your willingness to acknowledge that she did both good and bad; however, on account of my race, my family, and myself, I must wholeheartedly disagree with your judgment that I and my kind are the dregs of the U.S.: "The influx of all later groups have resulted in deterioration."
Yes, Britain did much good, but she also did much evil, as you acknowledge, and her chief sin was undoubtedly to sow the social and ideological seeds of the destruction of her own fruit even while it blossomed. It was the degenterate Unitarian-Congregationalist coalition ruined the country, not the Irish, Italian, Polish, and German (nor even Mexican) Catholics they invited in to serve as pawns in their cat-and-mouse game. But so long as we remained unassimilated, I must assert that the portions of the country we settled (northern) only benefitted from our presence and I daresay needed this Hiberno/Continrntal makeover.
Our sin was envy: the burning desire to become WASP, and to allow the WASP to make us WASP in all but name (sometimes in name as well). The Kennedys are the perfect personification of this. The result is not pretty: a conspicuous display of everything that is wrong with both Irish Catholic and Anglo-Calvinist societies like such a disgusting warm red pimple on the tip of the nose. In the last half of the twentieth century, the outlawed Cosa Nostra was probably the most purely Catholic institution with any real power in America (that's saying a lot), and whether it or the WASP political elite was the less decent is a question I am not qualified to answer.
The assimilation is ever-encroaching, on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. Nowadays even decent Catholics and decent Southerners fall prey to post-Puritan evangelical sentiment and vote Stupid Party in the general elections. We are all doomed unless we can extrapolate from our minds the toxic venom generated by one Elizabeth Rex...
Maybe we have more in common than it seems.
Nicholas,
You pretty much hit the high points of what the experiment has proven for Catholics and WASP alike. The Catholics were a tolerated minority while the Protestants have pretty much destroyed themeselves. Yet,when a determinate number of Catholics became milk sops and the Protestants had nothing substantial to protest against, it was a total loss for both sides.So much so that we even talk of absurdities today such as a "Secular Right" Some of these Catholics though that like to run around and carry on about "Masonic" origens, "good" English Catholic literature, the horrible and peculiar institution of slavery, and all the rest are simply modern type idiots howling at the hellish winds of change they worship. The best American and English literature is about Protestant culture with few exceptions. (unless you go all the way back to the English Classics of Chaucer and Shakespeare and exclude the talented puritan, Milton) You can't blame the bad theology and philosophy of the enlightenment on current protestants, and when you get down to those who have any traditional imagination left they are usually ex-patriots like yourself who have left the flashy, temples of commerce in America for the ancient ruins of our old religion in Europe or England. The whole thing is sick and getting sicker, so much so that this conversation is hardly worth raising.
Andrew Bacevich is correct that rearguing WWII is a fruitless and counterproductive effort. (It cannot gain a fair hearing and makes--unfairly--legitimate conservatives sound like StormFront crackpots.)
Far more productive is to point out that WWII differs vastly from every conflict that followed it for the US in order to fight off the neocon manipulation of WWII. For them, every tinpot dictator is a new "Hitler" and every skeptical view of military force in the Third Word is a new "Munich."
Preventing the manipulation of history for interventionism that harms our country is a much better use of WWII scholarship among political conservatives. (BTW, for historians accurately exploring historical events--regardless of political imperative--is its own proper goal.)
Dr. Wilson's analysis is corrupted by his reflexive anti-Germanism (proto-fascist German immigrants!) and his British Empire loyalism. Great Britain was the country from which we broke away and fought two wars against. Thereafter, British statesmen assumed a hostile stance that didn't end until they decided that if they couldn't beat us, we should join them (aka,"let the suckers help us fight our wars). We have no mother country but the USA: we have no friends, we have interests (American interests). Involving ourselves in wars between competing imperialist/totalitarian powers is not in our interest. Mr. Buchanan renders us a service in forcefully reminding us of the consequences of this foolishness.
"We have no mother country but the USA: we have no friends, we have interests (American interests)."
If one would simply substitute the word, German, for the words, USA and American, one can readily see why civilized historians of the Western world are always and rightly suspicious of German motives. General Patton understood what needed to be done for "American interests" in the Second World War -- first defeat the Hun, then push further East for the Whole Hoggers called Bolshevics. Of course he was a citizen of the USA and therefore, had no lineage,no friends only interests?
As it happens, I began reading David Hackett Fischer's "Albion's Seed" while at the North Carolina seashore last week. Fischer's study is an exploration of the roots of British America. Yes, perhaps only a quarter of Americans have British bloodlines today but it can't really be denied that Britain is not our mother country. European-Americans, from Germans to Poles to Italians to Jews and dozens of other ethnicities, have added to America's culture yet nearly all accepted the British-American traditions that came before them.
#23. Mr. Moses, there is much ov value in what you say.
#24. And you too, Robert II.
#26. The German 48ers who made up a solid core of Lincoln's supporters and political shock troops were indeed proto-fascists or proto-communists (it amounts to the same thing). They were responsible for shifting the American regime from legalistic accommodation into ideological authoritarianism. All you have to do is read their own words to know this.
#26. You must believe that America is not a product of Western civilisation but somehow grew without planting and cultivation. Perhaps a proposition nation?
"I would say that the primary cause of World War II was the insane American entry into World War I. The Northeastern elites who ruled the U.S. made that decision."
Hear, hear. I believe Pat Buchanan himself has made that very point before.
"We have no mother country but the USA"
I don't even understand how anyone could assert this in seriousness. American culture is no more independent of British culture than a tree limb is independent of the trunk. America was founded by British subjects, and it would be easier to list the components of American culture that do *not* have their roots in England than those that do.
Forgive me for ranting too far off-topic. I started out to put in a good word for my own and finished in an epic. Still, there are many who want to understand but for whom the final leap is just out of reach... it is perhaps at least worth keeping on the record where we went wrong.
(By the way, there aren't as many of us expatriated as one might think--or at least I have yet to meet them.)
Thank you, Mr. Wilder, for articulating what I had tried to say earlier but with a more specific productive way forward. Regrettably, I have the feeling we are not done with this one.
“I would say that the primary cause of World War II was the insane American entry into World War I. The Northeastern elites who ruled the U.S. made that decision.”
Uh-huh. Read the first chapter of Tindall's contribution to the LSU history of the South series. William Gibbs McAdoo. Josephus Daniels. Carter Glass. David Houston. Thomas Gregory. Albert Burelson. All members of the Wilson team-all of them from the South. Sure there were some Southerners who stood against the war but let's not kid ourselves that it was all the fault of the Yankees. Most of the South stood for empire and war in 1917-just like most of it did in 1846, 1968 and 2003.
The problem with all this is that "Good War" court history has created a kind of equal and opposite reaction, a counter history. So while I agree with Dr. Wilson that most American's natural affinity should have been for England, and that much of this counter history ends up sounding like an apologia for Germany and Hitler, I don't think the counter historians are motivated so much by Teutonophila (although some are) as they are by a desire to distinguish themselves from the other guys. The argument has caused polarization and as is often the case, the truth lies somewhere in-between.
And while I agree that it is unhelpful for anti-war conservatives to make WWII counter history a main trust, some countering of the court history is essential. I for sure would gladly stop talking about it and move on if the other side would as well, but the subject come up incessantly in interventionist vs. non-interventionists debates. Often as the second or third point, as Bill Wilder said above, you get some reference to Hitler, Munich, Chamberlain, appeasement, etc. followed by a "We ALL KNOW what happens when you don't stop dictators in their tracks."
Funny when you bring up Washington's Farewell Address to interventionists we are constantly reminded that it is the year 2009 and "things have changed." But yet it is forever and always the year 1939. I wish these folks would make up their mind.
#40. Rob. Yes, Wilson's administration was full of Southerners who went along with him, not surprising since they had been so long shut out of any influence prior to his administration. However, it was the Morgans and Rockefellers and their ilk who were decisive. Teddy Roosevelt was no Southerner. Plenty of Southern Congressmen were strong against the war. Being for war on a particular occasion does not necessarily mean that you are in favour of Empire, either.
Rob @40:
1) The Mexican-American War does not qualify as an imperial war.
2) Yes, Southerners today do have trouble distinguishing between support for the military - which stems from their natural inclination toward honor, duty, courage, and patriotism - and support for the wars which the military fights. But managing and orchestrating wars of imperialism are an exclusive province of the Yankee establishment, make no mistake about it.
I don't know, maybe Poland insisted upon keeping Gdansk (oops, excuse me, Danzig!)because they wanted an outlet on the sea and didn't want to be a landlocked country depending upon the Germans to charge them an arm and a leg for imports?
The problem was not Polish demands, it was the treaty that ended World War I and divided Europe up after the war and created all these ethnic messes (and giving the Poles a German city, port or no port, was a ticking time bomb) that ultimate led to Hitler and World War II. Pat should be asking whether the great tragedy of the West could have and should have been avoided, not saying Hitler was misunderstood. Because anyone reading Mein Kampf or anyone who studied the German Question knows that German nationalists had their eyes on Lebensraum which would have included Poland and much of Russia. Remember the "World Island?"
And by the way, what does Pat have against the Polish colonels? Arch-Catholic and authoritarian, one would have thought they would have got along great. All they were doing was their duty, which was defending their homeland against aggressive invaders. If wasn't for the Poles, the Soviets would have conquered Central Europe. How can anyone condemn them for protecting their Mortherland?
It is distressing to once again read this kind of thing from so learned a historian as Mr. Buchanan.
I am a student of German history, and of German (Prussian) ancestry. As an Army Officer I admire the Germans' undisputable military prowess.
However, there is no question, in my mind, that Hitler wanted war, and in the worst way. As others have said, his entire plan was laid out in Mein Kampf some years before. A "drang nach Osten" followed by a reckoning with France.
Hitler had been planning war as early as November 1937, when he laid out his plans to a stunned General Staff. When Chamberlain flew to Munich in late September of 1938, Hitler was secretly furious, and is said to have remarked "that man cost me my entrance into Prague!" To write off the German partition of Czechoslovakia to self-determination is absurd. The "protectorate" of Bohemia-Moravia was pillaged and utterly raped by German rule, and Slovakia was nothing more than a puppet state.
The "Peace Terms" offered by the Germans in July 1940 were predicated upon the British allowing the Nazis a "free hand" on the continent. No self-respecting government could have accepted, and the British are a proud people.
Also, Hitler declared war on the U.S.A on 11 December 1941; it was not the other way around. He was not bound to do so by the Tripartite pact, as Japan had effectively abrogated the terms by not declaring war on the U.S.S.R in June, 1941. A declaration of war by the U.S on Germany would have been no sure thing- one of the interesting historical "what-ifs."
To illustrate the problem I mentioned above, here is a comment that was posted today at another website.
"and Fortress America blew up with the Arizona at Pearl Harbor, and had a ghastly reminder disintegrate on the Lower West Side of Manhattan on Sept 11, 2001."
This was said in direct response to a post that mentioned (not favorably) Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan. WWII is the go to all purpose justification for any and all interventions. We have to be able to respond to this. Even if we would like to just let the WWII discussions die, we have no choice.
Off course Hitler wanted war, not with the West but certainly with the Soviet-Union: het wanted to conquer lebensraum in the east and destroy communism in the meanwhile. The Polish people (like the Russians and all other Slavic nations) where considered whorthless subhumans who should perish in the process. If the UK would not have declared war in 1939 than we would not have had a war here in Western-Europe and no occupation that's for sure... and there would be no more Polish people and Germany's borders would now be expanded from the North Sea to the Bering Sea...
I agree with Dr. Phillips that countering the abuse of WWII by interventionists and other Leftists requires some correction of popular mythology about WWII.
For one thing, WWII reflects (Buchanan's criticisms notwithstanding) a defensive war, even in Europe. (PJB has made the point that the war with Japan was defensive occurring only after the attack on Pearl Harbor.) It does not model "preemptive war."
Another point, the enemies in both theaters of WWII reflected expansionist empires that had conquered and occupied Allied territory (France, China and the Phillippines, for example, leaving aside Poland. Sorry, Sean.) It was not a war in which the Allies simply sided with one party in an effective civil war (Korea, Vietnam and Bosnia) nor one in which we attacked another nation based on its internal conflicts (Serbia, Iraq and Sudan if we're not lucky.)
So correction of "court history" is certainly appropriate. (And I suspect Dr. Wilson, who has repeatedly inveighed against shallow "historians" and called for rigor in the academy, would heartily agree with that.)
Even Pat's point about the "Polish colonels" can be a good one if it is framed in the context that a "great power" must not cede control of its warmaking to an ally, no matter what the virtues or vices of that ally may be.
So Pat would be better served by framing his discourses on WWII toward preventing the abuse and manipulation of history by cynical ideologues and to informing the public (in his much more accessible style, apologies to Dr. Lukacs) of the actual events/nature of WWII, rather than veering off into speculations of motive and potential outcomes that can never be known.
Has Pat Buchanan's honesty become too much for Human Events? There are no links to Pat's current column or to the archive of his previous ones at their website.
Way too go, Pat! You were to honest for their republicrat masters.
Thanks for the kind comments from Brock H and Dr. Wilson. I do not know if the war with Mexico was the result of imperial dreams though certainly some constitutionalists (Calhoun, I suppose Alex Stephens but I have mixed thoughts on him) thought so. I will say the result of the war certainly led to more empire (and that could have been worse had not Nicholas Trist, a protege of James Madison, been there).
True TR was from the North. If memory serves, during the same war, the CSA's own Fighting Joe Wheeler headed down to Cuba. Shades of Southern imperialism of the John Quitman and William Walker varitey?
When the South returns to the politics of Bryan, perhaps we can blame imperial wars on just the Yankees. I think the heartland stood against American involvement in Mr. Wilson's war and the South, as Richard Weaver reminds us in "The South and the Revolution of Nihlism", was supporting American involvement in WW2 quite early-more so Weaver claims than any other region in the country.
Sure George W. Bush and his dad may have been Yankee imperialists. But Southern votes pushed them to the creaky throne of the West.
This post is regretfully late; I didn't discover the discussion until now.
Hitler intended to wipe out whole populations of Orthodox peasants in Ukraine and elsewhere if he had won the war in the east. I think this makes the Nazi regime well worth trying to destroy. I am a descendant of German landowners in Russia, so I have no axe to grind in this respect.