Buchanan's Provocation

Had Britain not given a war guarantee to Poland in March 1939, then declared war on September 3, bringing in South Africa, Canada, Australia, India, New Zealand, and the United States, a German-Polish war might never have become a seix-year world war in which fifty million would perish.

That's Pat Buchanan in Churchill, HItler, and the Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World. The basic argument seems to be that Britain and France could have (and should have) employed a kind of policy of "dual containment" vis-a-vis Hitler and Stalin. I don't think I share Buchanan's rosy assessment of Hitler's intentions. I probably won't finish the book, but anyone interested in the conservative anti-imperialist tradition may be interested to know that people do really believe this stuff.

Comments

And 3 million Jewish Poles and 2 million Catholic Poles would have been safely killed, as they were, without anyone even noticing.
The Nazis pretty much managed to kill all the Polish Jews but had only started on the Christian Poles (intellectuals, leftists, socialists, resistance. So there were many more of those left to kill.
Additionally, the 200,000 "Aryan" looking Polish children who were stolen from their parents and shipped to Germany might have had their numbers significantly augmented.
And Auschwitz could still be in operation not a damn museum.
What a beautiful world Pat envisions!

Posted by MJ Rosenberg | March 24, 2008 9:27 AM

Maybe Buchanan has a point? Had Britain stayed out of it, initially, then Hitler would have still attacked the Soviets eventually, presumably. Then Hitler and Stalin would have bled each other for years.

Posted by Juan | March 24, 2008 9:29 AM

He also believes that black people in America are ungrateful to the whites that brought them here on slave ships. People think this guy is a deep thinker? And buy his books?

Also, were people aware that Hal Turner (neo-Nazi du jour and a former friend of Sean Hannity) also ran part of Buchanan's 1992 presidential campaign in New Jersey? Serious neo-Nazi. Like, kill all the brown people kind of Nazi. And so even though Hannity and Buchanan have no problem associating themselves with people like Turner, MSNBC and Fox decide that's not problematic in hiring them. And people like you purchase his books. Well done!

Keep hate alive!!

Posted by Craig | March 24, 2008 9:31 AM

Wow! So...Neville Chamberlain had the right idea--appeasement-- but he was overruled by interventionists eager for an unnecessary war! I'd...never thought of that before!

The only surprising thing about this calculatedly contrarian, and unarguably counterfactual, thesis is that I'm not reading it in Slate.

Posted by James Gary | March 24, 2008 9:35 AM

And 3 million Jewish Poles and 2 million Catholic Poles would have been safely killed, as they were, without anyone even noticing.

Since, as you point out, that happened anyway, was it worth it to transform the U.S. into a permanent imperial power? Matt seems to miss part of what animated early opposition to entering the war in America: the memory of the effects of World War I and previous American expeditionary adventures, and the realization that jumping into Europe's second massive war in 21 years would permanently transform America from a still largely-agrarian republic with a small standing army to a permanently militarized one.

Posted by Juan | March 24, 2008 9:36 AM

The difficulty with Mr. Buchanans' thesis is that it is based on the assumption that Hitler and Stalin would have fought to a draw, exhausting both. That is certainly a possible outcome but, in making assessments of the actions of the British and French governments, one must also consider the other two possibilities.

1. Suppose that Hitler had won and the Communist Government of the former Soviet Union had been overthrown and replaced with a puppet government, say in 1940. Given Hitlers' megalomania, I think there can be little doubt that he would have carried out the attack on France in 1941 and the result would probably been the same as actually happened in 1940. The difference would have been that an isolated Great Britain would have faced Germany alone with no Soviet Union to attract 100 German divisions away from the Western front.

2. Suppose that Stalin had won. In such an event, there is every likelihood that the forces of the former Soviet Union would have ended up on the Rhine with a puppet government in Berlin and most of Germany under Soviet occupation. Also not a salubrious development for the West.

Posted by SLC | March 24, 2008 9:40 AM

Maybe Buchanan has a point? Had Britain stayed out of it, initially, then Hitler would have still attacked the Soviets eventually, presumably. Then Hitler and Stalin would have bled each other for years.

I'm guessing Buchanan isn't a fan of Lend-Lease, either. In the absence of military aid to the Soviets, and in the absence of diversions like North Africa, garrisoning Western Europe, etc., there's a decent chance the Germans would have smashed the Soviet Union in 1941 or 1942. At which point militaristic expansionist genocidal fascism would have dominated central and eastern Europe and controlled its own oil supply.

And, since Buchanan also believes that defending France and Britain was not sufficient reason for the United States to enter the war, this strengthened Nazi empire would have taken on the western European democracies without having to worry about American intervention.

In other words, Buchanan advocates a policy which would have allowed Hitler to continue, in Churchill's words "the process of destroying his enemies one by one, by which he has so long thrived and prospered."

Alternatively, the Soviets might have toughed it out and, with greater loss of life, defeated the Germans. At which point a heavily-militarized and brutal Soviet empire would have controlled all of Europe east of the Rhine (Buchanan has a point that the Soviets ended up oppressing eastern Europe anyway, but both the war and Soviet domination in Europe could have been a lot worse).

Or, least likely, they might have fought for a few years, reached a stalemate, and called a truce. At which point there would have been a Nazi-Soviet Cold War on the European continent, and the western democracies would end up having to choose sides anyway.

Something tells me Pat Buchanan would have been a leading advocate of detente with Nazi Germany, and a leading apologist for its crimes--which were, after all, committed in the name of anti-Communism.

Posted by JB | March 24, 2008 9:47 AM

Wow! So...Neville Chamberlain had the right idea--appeasement-- but he was overruled by interventionists eager for an unnecessary war! I'd...never thought of that before!

More or less AJP Taylor's argument in The Origins of the Second World War. See the wikipedia article for surprisingly decent detail. (Usually Wikipedia is awful on historiography) Buchanan seems to be going further than Taylor does, though.

Posted by John | March 24, 2008 9:47 AM

The avoidable war for the British Empire was WWI - the German Empire of 1914 was no better or worse than any of the others of the Europe of that era.

The mistake in 1939 was in recognizing the threat too late; action when the Germans went back into the Rhineland could have saved the entire world a whole lot of trouble.

Posted by James Robertson | March 24, 2008 9:51 AM

Well, it was Neville Chamberlain's idea to provide the security guarantee to Poland.

Suppose that Stalin had won. In such an event, there is every likelihood that the forces of the former Soviet Union would have ended up on the Rhine with a puppet government in Berlin

This is precisely correct. We don't remember it much today, but in the immediate aftermath of the Russian revolution, the idea was the Moscow was a temporary center of the Communist movement until it spread to what would really become the worldwide center of Communist revolution, Berlin.

I can't help but think that the reason that Buchanan and his cohorts keep to the "Germany and the Soviets would bleed themselves dry in a stalemate" line of thinking is because so many post-WWII alternate history books portray it this way ("Fatherland", "1945", and "In the Presence of Mine Enemies" to name a few).

Posted by Tyro | March 24, 2008 9:53 AM

"Suppose that Stalin had won. In such an event, there is every likelihood that the forces of the former Soviet Union would have ended up on the Rhine with a puppet government in Berlin and most of Germany under Soviet occupation."

Which is what happened anyway, right?

"I'm guessing Buchanan isn't a fan of Lend-Lease, either. In the absence of military aid to the Soviets, and in the absence of diversions like North Africa, garrisoning Western Europe, etc., there's a decent chance the Germans would have smashed the Soviet Union in 1941 or 1942."

A decent chance? Really? Considering that the Soviets' main battle tank, the T-34, was better than the Germans' MBT, and that the Soviets were producing 3 or 4 times as many tanks as Germany was, that seems unlikely -- especially since Stalin's tank factories were way out in the Urals, not at much risk of being destroyed by Germany. Also, even if Britain stayed out of the war initially, she (alone or in concert with the U.S.) could have later decided to give aid to the Soviets if they appeared in danger of losing the war.

Posted by Juan | March 24, 2008 9:54 AM

1) It always struck me that Europe's Jews were used by Hitler as HOSTAGES -- to deter US entry into the War.

Hitler thought that US Jews had a strong influence on Democratic President FDR -- just as the British had used the Balfour Declaration to enlist the support of US Zionists (Frankfurter, Brandais,etc) in 1918 into pushing Democrat Woodrow Wilson to support a desperate Great Britain at a critical moment in WWI.

2)The Final Solution didn't really kick into gear until US entry into WWII. Prior to that, the people sent to the concentration camps had largely been political enemies of the Nazis --Social Democrats, Communists,etc.

3) The head of British Intelligence in the USA --William Stephenson -- gloated in the book "A Man Called Intrepid" over how he had manipulated Hitler into declaring war on the US --via leaks to a pro-German Member of Congress that FDR was going to attack Germany. Britain was terrified after Pearl Harbor that the US would focus on fighting Japan in the Pacific.

4) I concur that Hitler and the Nazis needed to be exterminated -- but it would have been far better to have prevented the birth of the Nazis by restraining the greed of our bankers at the Versailles Conference.

At that Conference, John Maynard Keynes warned of the starvation and great poverty that would arise in Germany under reparations --see his "Economic Consequences of the Peace".

5) Plus the propaganda put out by the Zionist movement after the Balfour Declaration in 1918 -- openly calling upon German Jews to betray their country -- did much to alienate Germans who had welcomed the Jews and had given them sanctuary against Russian pogroms in the previous 100 years.

Posted by Don Williams | March 24, 2008 9:56 AM

jumping into Europe's second massive war in 21 years would permanently transform America from a still largely-agrarian republic

I'm not a fan of the national security state, but the idea that it was World War II that ripped the United States out of its agrarian idyll is a bit of a stretch. The 1930s weren't exactly banner years for the US economy, but America was still the world's leading industrial power when World War II broke out.

We could have avoided the national security state in the aftermath of World War II simply by deciding that, while Nazi domination of Europe was unacceptable, Soviet domination of Europe was something we could live with.

Strangely, appeasing the Soviets bothers Buchanan a lot more than appeasing the Nazis.

Posted by JB | March 24, 2008 9:58 AM

No massive American military involvement. No Manhattan Project. Germany nuclear weapons. German global domination. Hundreds of millions of deaths.

It's easy to play If Only. There's no rules.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | March 24, 2008 9:58 AM

psst Juan... guess where many of the materials for those T-34's came from?

I'll give you a hint: It rhymes with Rend-Rease

Posted by NM | March 24, 2008 10:00 AM

The mistake in 1939 was in recognizing the threat too late; action when the Germans went back into the Rhineland could have saved the entire world a whole lot of trouble.

The two ideas are not mutually exclusive. Britain and France certainly would have been better off by stopping Hitler's incursion into the Rhineland. The certainly would have been better off without the Munich agreement.

Whether or not they (and the world) would have been better off agreeing to defend Poland is a completely separate question. I would not dismiss it out of hand. Sometimes the "immoral" or "cowardly" action, from a short-term point of view, ends up being better from a long-term point of view. Its just hard to say.

Posted by Jim W | March 24, 2008 10:00 AM

Re "Whether or not they (and the world) would have been better off agreeing to defend Poland is a completely separate question "
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Dumbshits who charge TANKS with CAVALRY don't make the best military allies.

Poland had always been the buttboy for nations to the East and West --since the days of the Huns at least.

Posted by Don Williams | March 24, 2008 10:04 AM

The certainly would have been better off without the Munich agreement.
[...] Sometimes the "immoral" or "cowardly" action, from a short-term point of view, ends up being better from a long-term point of view. Its just hard to say.

Just not with Munich? It sounds like theoretical appeasement isn't as nasty as actual appeasement.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | March 24, 2008 10:08 AM

"Suppose that Stalin had won. In such an event, there is every likelihood that the forces of the former Soviet Union would have ended up on the Rhine with a puppet government in Berlin and most of Germany under Soviet occupation."

Juan replies:

Which is what happened anyway, right?

Juan, the western border of East Germany was not the Rhine. That's why there was an "East" Germany.

Posted by JB | March 24, 2008 10:11 AM

It should be pointed out that Buchanan’s thinking on this is hardly a personal eccentricity and reflects the larger worldview of the anti-communist right. From 1939 to 1940 conservatives throughout the English-speaking world (ranging from Lord Halifax to Herbert Hoover to H.L. Mencken to the very young William F. Buckley) thought that making war with Hitler was a mistake. They believed, as Buchanan still does, that Britain should have let Germany rule Europe and be a bulwark against communism, which would allow the English-speaking world to continue to dominate Africa and Asia. (Funnilly enough, many of these same characters would later use the rhetoric of the dangers of “appeasement” and “Munich” whenever they wanted to oppose any attempt to negotiate with the Soviet Union and Communist China).

David Irving represents an extreme version of this sort of anti-Churchill right-wing thinking but there are many moderate conservatives who share (in modified form) the idea that the war against Nazism was a mistake: the late Maurice Cowling (who taught at Cambridge and contributed to the New Criterion)was an apologist for appeasement. John Charmley also falls into this camp.

The problems with this line of thinking are manifold but error in particular should be pointed out: it’s absurd to thinking that the life of the British empire could have been extended more than a decade or two. By the 1930s you already had a full-fledged nationalist movement in India and embryonic stirrings throughout the empire. It’s inconceivable that Britain could have held on as a global power.

In a nutshell: World War II was caused by Britain’s weakness and not the cause of Britain’s weakness.

Posted by Jeet Heer | March 24, 2008 10:14 AM

The problem with Munich, from what I've read, is that it gave up Checkoslovakia without a fight. This is a country with well-gaurded borders. Hitler had a plan to invade, which may not have succeeded, or at least would have been very costly. The point is, that was a better place to make a stand from a military point of view, than Poland.

From a diplomatic and psychological point of view, the way things worked out are very understandable, and seem like a probable outcome, given what Hitler's ambitions were. That's why I'm not all that interested in counterfactuals in terms of how the allies responded. Their responses seem pretty rational and mainstream, in my opinion. I mean, there was widespread public support for the Munich agreement.

Posted by Jim W | March 24, 2008 10:15 AM

I just barely skimmed the comments. No need to read. I've seen the "grown men waste hours reconfiguring the WWII chess pieces and disagreeing about what might have/should have happened, and how much bigger/smaller the body count would have been" threads way more times than I would have liked to. You should all get jobs as talking heads for The History Channel.

Posted by JH | March 24, 2008 10:21 AM

It's perhaps worth pointing out that Buchanan, despite his Celtic last name, is more German than anything else. His father has half-Irish, half-German; his mother completely German. So Buchanan's thinking on this matter is influenced to some degree by his ethnic identity. Which makes it all the more hilarious that he thinks that Hispanics and blacks are insufficiently loyal to the United States.

Posted by Jeet Heer | March 24, 2008 10:23 AM

I'm not a fan of the national security state, but the idea that it was World War II that ripped the United States out of its agrarian idyll is a bit of a stretch. - JB

Even considering it an idyll is a bit of a stretch. If you were of the de facto gentry it may have been an idyll, but I'm sure the rural poor, both black and white, who fled to the industrial cities whenever they had the chance, would have considered their existance in the rural, agrarian parts of our country far from idyllic.

The longing for an agrian idyll amonst many sectors of the neo-feudalist conservative movement of today is frankly disturbing and certainly ignores the Rawlsian veil of ignorance: these people assume that if we go back in time, they'd be of the gentry and not (as would be more statistically likely) of the rural poor.

Posted by DAS | March 24, 2008 10:25 AM

Also: you all have small penises, as well as bellies that obscure their view when you look down.

Posted by JH | March 24, 2008 10:27 AM

Re Juan

The fact of the matter is that the German army came perilously close to defeating the former Soviet Union in 1941. Nearly 100 Soviet divisions were taken off the board in the initial months of Operation Barbarossa. The former Soviet Union was saved from defeat by the many strategic blunder committed by Hitler, the most egregious of which was the division of forces on the approach to Moscow. The capture of Moscow in 1941 would not only been a psychological defeat for the former Soviet Union but also a strategic defeat because the lateral railways in that country all ran through the capitol. Holding Moscow in 1941 would have prevented the former Soviet Union from moving forces laterally to oppose the Caucasus offensive in 1942. Capturing Moscow in 1941 would have prevented the Stalingrad disaster in 1942.

Posted by SLC | March 24, 2008 10:28 AM

The basic argument seems to be that Britain and France could have (and should have) employed a kind of policy of "dual containment" vis-a-vis Hitler and Stalin.

Actually, a vigorous policy of containment (such as that which Truman, et al., began after WWII against the Soviets) was exactly how the WWI allies should have responded to Hitler in the first place: keep Hitler's power contained as required under the conditions of Versailles (with a carrot that we'd renegotiate the remaining onerous terms with a democratic Germany) -- no reoccupying the Rhineland, etc. And offer safe haven to refugees from Germany (which would have prevented the Holocaust).

Hitler was able to rise to power in part because he was seen as a bullwork against communism and as righting the wrongs of Versailles. If he couldn't do the latter (but it were clear a liberal leadership could), the German people would have gotten rid of Hitler before it was too late.

OTOH, our buying into the reactionary frame that the choice in WWII was between Buchanan-approved appeasement and war-war-war is to, well, buy into the same frame that brought us "if you are against going to war in Iraq, you must be an appeaser".

Let's be careful into which frames we buy. And that we know exactly what real containment would have looked like in the 1930s.

Posted by DAS | March 24, 2008 10:35 AM

Re Don Williams

I really get a kick out of how Mr. Williams likes to blame the International Zionist Conspiracy for all the ills of the world. In particular, he blames the Zionists for the US entry into WW 1. I guess the German declaration of unrestricted Uboat warfare had nothing whatever to do with the US entry. Obviously, if the Zionists had just kept quiet, President Wilson would not have raised a peep over the sinking of American merchant ships.

Posted by SLC | March 24, 2008 10:38 AM

Jeet Heer,

Wasn't just conservatives who were against us jumping into the war. The antiwar group America First started as a Yale student organization. Founding members included Gerald Ford, Potter Stewart, Kingman Brewster and Sargent Shriver (his future brother-in-law Jack Kennedy joined later).

Posted by beowulf | March 24, 2008 10:43 AM

Re SLC's comment "Obviously, if the Zionists had just kept quiet, President Wilson would not have raised a peep over the sinking of American merchant ships"
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Were those the merchant ships secretly loaded to the gunwales with war material (Ammo,etc) for Britain?

Actually, the Zionists were just one campaign donor..er.. actor in US politics in 1918. I'd actually put the House of Morgan and its financial interests as the greater advocate for supporting the British.

Posted by Don Williams | March 24, 2008 10:47 AM

I'm not necessarily saying that Pat Buchanan has serious psychological problems when it comes to blacks and Jews, but...oh, who the hell am I kidding.

Posted by Richard | March 24, 2008 10:56 AM

On the fortunately rare occasions when I see signs of Buchanan (unburied dung, small, frightened goats, illiterate graffiti), I realize yet again that the man is simply a pompous ass with sweaty dewflaps.

Posted by morzer | March 24, 2008 10:57 AM

However, I think Zionist extremists for the past 100 years have been pretty ruthless in writing checks that the Jewish people have had to cash.

Did the Zionists check with several million German Jews before putting out wartime propaganda pamplets appealing to the German Jews as a Fifth Column. Could Nazi Anti-Semitism have ever gained traction if not for the help of the Zionist movement?

As I've noted before, Israel was not founded in reaction to the Holocaust -- rather, the Holocaust was partially a reaction to the Balfour Declaration that founded Israel.

A declaration that was crafted by the British for BRITISH --not Jewish --interests and in fact was opposed by some British Jewish Leaders like Lord Montague.

Posted by Don Williams | March 24, 2008 10:59 AM

The Final Solution didn't really kick into gear until US entry into WWII.

Not true. They started the mass shootings in June 1941, when the invasion of Russia started. The Extermination camps were being built in fall 1941. Every historian I'm familiar with tends to make Barbarossa as the key turning point from a policy of internment to one of extermination.

The mistake in 1939 was in recognizing the threat too late; action when the Germans went back into the Rhineland could have saved the entire world a whole lot of trouble.

The problem was the virtually nobody thought reoccupation of the Rhineland was a valid cause for war. And, really, the Allies would have come off pretty bad if they'd launched a new European war over the Germans reoccupying "their own back yard" (as British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden put it). Hindsight is 20/20. There was nothing about Hitler's activities in 1936 that could have really prepared people for how awful he was going to be.

A possibly useful point in the Taylor argument is that the lack of a British and French guarantee to Poland might not have resulted in an actual German-Polish War. Rather, without western support, it's possible the Poles would have folded, and yielded to German demands. War would probably have come later, but not in 1939.

That being said, the British gave the guarantee to Poland for pretty good reasons - Hitler's occupation of Prague in March 1939 convinced them that Hitler was ultimately bent on war, and that his demands were not limited to securing sovereignty over ethnic Germans. In retrospect, this should have been obvious earlier, and giving up Czechoslovakia without a fight was foolish, but doing so proved Hitler's bad faith in a way that nothing else could, and thus was more or less necessary to get the western powers to eventually stand up to Hitler.

Dumbshits who charge TANKS with CAVALRY don't make the best military allies.

This is just a troll, right? From wikipedia:

Although Poland had 11 cavalry brigades and its doctrine emphasized cavalry units as elite units, other armies of that time (including German and Soviet) also fielded and extensively used horse cavalry units. Polish cavalry (equipped with modern small arms and light artillery like the highly effective Bofors 37 mm antitank gun) never charged German tanks or entrenched infantry or artillery directly, but usually acted as mobile infantry (like dragoons) and reconnaissance units and executed cavalry charges only in rare situations against enemy infantry. The article about the Battle of Krojanty (when Polish cavalry were fired on by hidden armored vehicles, rather than charging them) describes how this myth originated.

The Poles were outnumbered and had a basically impossible strategic task, but they didn't do all that badly, on the whole. The Poles fought as well or better than the French did, and even the French fought nowhere near as badly as later legend credits them - they failed to envision an attack through the Ardennes, but that was because, well, an attack through the Ardennes was really difficult, and nearly failed.

There's kind of a myth of brilliant German leadership and ridiculously incompetent opposition, but mostly the Germans got lucky. Certainly their success had nothing to do with Polish cavalry charging tanks.

Posted by John | March 24, 2008 10:59 AM

I'm no fan of Buchanan, but the fact is that he's basically correct on this point. Hitler never much wanted to fight the West, and made no secret of this --- the real enemy was always in the East.

As for the weepy tales above of all those dead Polish Jews, yeah, right, that's what drove the war. The fact that Jews before the war found it pretty much impossible to get the relevant papers from the US or UK to get to Palestine, let alone the US or UK, is just a random strange fact that doesn't really bear on this question?

For a book that comes to basically the same conclusion, and from an impeccable lefty, you might want to look at Nicholson Baker's latest book. Human Smoke (which is a departure from his usual style in more ways than one, clocking in at 550 or so pages).

Posted by Maynard Handley | March 24, 2008 11:02 AM

Re DAS

"Hitler was able to rise to power in part because he was seen as a bullwork against communism and as righting the wrongs of Versailles. If he couldn't do the latter (but it were clear a liberal leadership could), the German people would have gotten rid of Hitler before it was too late"

Mr. DAS is living in a dream world. Once Hitler took power, the only force which could have ousted him was the German General Staff. In fact, as German historian Walter Goerlitz has written, the German General Staff was preparing a coup d'etat in 1938 believing the Hitlers' aggressive tactics were reckless. Chamberlain bailed out Hitler by agreeing to the Munich surrender. Had the former stood up to Hitler, the coup might have gone forward and WW 2 prevented.

Posted by SLC | March 24, 2008 11:05 AM

John at 10:59:

Well said.

Posted by Jim W | March 24, 2008 11:12 AM

SLC,

(should I be a snob and insist that it's Dr. DAS? ;) ).

You are disagreeing with me how? If the coup could have happened in 1938, how much more likely that it could have happened (and with more capacity for popular backing and restoration of a democratic government post-coup) in the mid-1930s if the allies would have stood up to Hitler on the issue of Rhineland remilitarization?

Posted by DAS | March 24, 2008 11:13 AM

Hitler never much wanted to fight the West, and made no secret of this --- the real enemy was always in the East.

No, by 1939 Hitler was certainly convinced that his real enemy was Roosevelt and his Jewish backers. Read Hitler's Jan 30, 1939 speech to the Reichstag. He was pretty clear on the subject. By 1939 both Britain and US armament production were already setting a pace that Germany could never hope to match without reliable access to natural resources like coal, oil and wheat - all of which happened to be conveniently located next door in the USSR. The East wasn't so much an enemy to Hitler as an obstacle. Hitler's goal was to turn the USSR into Germany's Wild West - and eradicate the native populations the same way the US wiped out the Indians clearing the way for a Grossdeutschland. He didn't view the USSR as his #1 enemy because he never took the Soviets' capabilities seriously enough. Hitler always believed the "Jew dominated" US was the real obstacle to Germany becoming a world power.

If anyone really cares about this subject I highly recommend Adam Tooze's The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy - it lays out in convincing detail Germany's economic and industrial constraints in the 1930s and how those motivated a lot of Hitler's actions.

Posted by vanya | March 24, 2008 11:19 AM

AJP Taylor's argument was not that appeasement would have been the proper course; in fact he was actively against appeasement at the time. His argument was that the vacillation between appeasement and resistance that was the actual policy of the French and British governments was most likely to produce war in the end. His book was an attempt to understand why such vacillation actually occurred.

It had been the policy of British governments for centuries to not allow any one power to dominate Europe. I think it very unlikely that Britain and Nazi Germany would not have been at war at some point.

Posted by Robert Levine | March 24, 2008 11:24 AM

Jeet-

Thanks for a useful and intelligent comment. However:

it’s absurd to thinking that the life of the British empire could have been extended more than a decade or two. By the 1930s you already had a full-fledged nationalist movement in India and embryonic stirrings throughout the empire. It’s inconceivable that Britain could have held on as a global power.

... seems to miss the point a bit.

As you you write, the real interest of this strand of conservatism is not in the British Empire per se but that "the English-speaking world to continue to dominate Africa and Asia." And this was absolutely a possible future of the world circa 1939.

In retrospect we think decolonization, a world of sovereign states, and the economic rise of Asia was inevitable. But eif the British Empire has lost its preeminence, it might well have been succeeded by otehr empires -- many on both sides of the Atlantic thought this was exactly the role for the United States.

World War II really did overthrow and discredit trational ruling classes all over the globe, and give a tremendous boost to the ideas of democracy and inequality. The Right, which stands for hierarchy, tradition, and privlege, is correct to regret this.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | March 24, 2008 11:45 AM

Another conservative who hated Churchill for waging war against the Nazis: Alan Clark, who was an advisor to Margaret Thatcher.

Posted by Jeet Heer | March 24, 2008 11:46 AM

Oops -- WWII gave a boost to the ideas of democracy and equality; that's what the Right regrets.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | March 24, 2008 11:53 AM

AJP Taylor's argument was not that appeasement would have been the proper course; in fact he was actively against appeasement at the time. His argument was that the vacillation between appeasement and resistance that was the actual policy of the French and British governments was most likely to produce war in the end. His book was an attempt to understand why such vacillation actually occurred.

This puts it rather weakly, though. If that had been all Taylor was doing, the book wouldn't have been so controversial. Basically, Taylor loved trolling, and The Origins of the Second World War was a book length troll, and perhaps his greatest troll. Like any good troll, it contained enough truth and enough good argument as to be difficult to dismiss out of hand. But it also contained a lot of disingenuousness and contrarianism for the sake of contrarianism. Taylor was a brilliant guy, and anything he wrote is worth reading, but it all needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

Posted by John | March 24, 2008 12:00 PM

Re DAS

As Mr. John pointed out in his comment, the Rhineland was actually German territory and it would have been difficult to make a case for starting a war over its occupation by German troops. Clearly, by the time of the Czechoslovakian issue in 1938, the designs of Hitler were obvious to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear. As the aforementioned Walter Goerlitz has argued, Germany at that time was unprepared to engage in a general war against Britain and France, which was well known to Frisch and Von Blomberg of the German General Staff who were the ones behind the proposed coup d'etat.

Re Don Williams

If the State of Israel had been founded in 1920 as per the Balfour Declaration, the Jews of Europe would have had some place to go. In fact, Hitler might well have been satisfied to expel European Jews to Israel as he was willing to consider Madagascar as a destination as late as 1935.

Posted by SLC | March 24, 2008 12:12 PM

Lemuel: you're point is fair enough and I agree that the fantasy of Buchanan types is that Anglo-American power would have been extended for a longer period. Still, the fundamental fact is that the imperialism could only work so long as "the natives" were politically disorganized and lacked fire-power. This was already starting to change in the 1930s. There is no way the people of India, China, Japan and other countries would have indefinately accepted the status quo. The whole history of the 20th century is about the decline of Europe's global hegemony. It's difficult to imagine a realistic counter-scenario where that didn't happen.

Posted by Jeet Heer | March 24, 2008 12:15 PM

I'm looking forward to this book because it seems Buchanan's opposition to the Iraq War has for the past few years largely obscured the fact that he is an apologist for fascism and a terrible person generally, and this will likely correct that misperception to some extent.

Posted by Sean T. Collins | March 24, 2008 12:29 PM

I find this idea less interesting than the idea that Abe Lincoln should have just let the South go.

Posted by Al | March 24, 2008 12:38 PM

Re Robert Levine

"It had been the policy of British governments for centuries to not allow any one power to dominate Europe. "

This is generally true. However, relative to the situation in 1914, I think that the German attempt to build a high seas fleet to challenge British naval superiority, which led to the great dreadnaught race between Germany and Great Britain, was more important in the leadup to WW 1.

Posted by SLC | March 24, 2008 12:40 PM

"The antiwar group America First started as a Yale student organization. Founding members included Gerald Ford, Potter Stewart, Kingman Brewster and Sargent Shriver (his future brother-in-law Jack Kennedy joined later)."

Gerald Ford didn't go to Yale.

Posted by freddiemac | March 24, 2008 12:55 PM

I've just finished reading Niall Fergeson's The War of the World: 20th century warfare and the descent of the west. Now Niall's a conservative but unlike Buchanan he tries to maintain higher standards of truth and evidence. The basic problem with the Buch's little quote up top is that in order for England and France to have successfully 'contained' Nazi Germany, they would have to have been allied to Soviet Russia in the 20s and 30s, and publically announced guarantees to all of the new middle European states that emerged from the first WW. The minute the West dropped Russia, the odds of containing Germany went down considerably. There was a bit of a vain hope the Italy would help, but it was a very vain hope. And especially after 1936, the western powers failed to reorient themselves diplomatically to bring Russia unto their diplomatic side.

As for the US the problem there is that they were off the chessboard, with the notable exception of the China crisis. We may moan about what the US has become, but it did end the splendid isolation of the happy ignorant.

Posted by Northern Observer | March 24, 2008 1:00 PM

Vanya,

I just read (one of?) the speech(s) in 1939. There may be some subtext I'm missing, but I saw this...

When statesmen in the West declare that this [war w/ Poland] affects their interests, I can only regret such a declaration. It cannot for a moment make me hesitate to fulfill my duty. What more is wanted? I have solemnly assured them, and I repeat it, that we ask nothing of those Western States and never will ask anything. I have declared that the frontier between France and Germany is a final one. I have repeatedly offered friendship and, if necessary, the closest co-operation to Britain, but this cannot be offered from one side only. It must find response on the other side. Germany has no interests in the West, and our western wall is for all time the frontier of the Reich on the west.

It sounds, at least officially, like Hitler is interested in hard borders on the west. Now, this may just be BS on Hitler's end, but I missed the part about having sights on the US. Can you point me to the right quote?

http://fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/resource/document/HITLER1.htm

Is that the wrong speech?

-Gus

Posted by Gus | March 24, 2008 1:23 PM

Even considering it an idyll is a bit of a stretch.

I agree; I was going for sarcasm and seem to have come up a bit short.

Posted by JB | March 24, 2008 1:26 PM

He wanted to exterminate the Russians and make Russia the "Wild West" -- lebenstraum. Also no Pole was to be educated above fourth grade level. They were to be German slaves. This is OK w/ Mr. Buchanan, apparently. According to Nazi theory Slavs and Celts were subhuman -- not to speak of Africans and Asians.

As for the German officers' coup. They were mainly concerned with which of them would inherit Hitler's mantle and carry out his plans, not with stopping them.

Posted by harold | March 24, 2008 1:36 PM

Gus,

Read Tooze. His thesis is basically that Nazi policy from the very beginning in the 1920s was motivated primarily by the fear of American domination of Europe and Germany.

I can't find the speech in question on line, but here is a quote from John Lukacs in the same vein:

"[Hitler] was aware of Roosevelt’s inclination to support someone like Winston Churchill. From 1939 to the end of the war, Hitler saw the situation of the Western powers thus: behind Churchill was Roosevelt; and behind Roosevelt, the Jews. Because of this, Hitler’s speech on January 30, 1939, is of considerable significance, although it was overlooked at the time by a world that had grown accustomed to his fanatical rhetoric. “If the international Jewish financiers inside and outside Europe should again succeed in plunging the nations into a world war, the result… will be the annihilation of the Jewish race throughout Europe.”

Even Hitler did not think the Soviet Union was run directly by international Jewish financiers (just infiltrated by them), it seems fairly clear he's talking about the West. To Hitler (and Buchanan) Wall Street was (is) the HQ of the international Jewish financiers.

Posted by vanya | March 24, 2008 1:39 PM

Re harold

"As for the German officers' coup. They were mainly concerned with which of them would inherit Hitler's mantle and carry out his plans, not with stopping them."

Which officers is Mr. harold talking about. Certainly not Frisch and Von Blomberg who were from the Prussian elite and were not members of the Nazi party.

Posted by SLC | March 24, 2008 1:44 PM

Re vanya's quote of Hitler, 1939: " “If the international Jewish financiers inside and outside Europe should again succeed in plunging the nations into a world war, the result… will be the annihilation of the Jewish race throughout Europe.”
------------
As I said above: Hostages.

Posted by Don Williams | March 24, 2008 1:55 PM

Gerald Ford didn't go to Yale.

Ford was at Yale through 35-40. First as an athletics coach, then as a law student.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | March 24, 2008 1:58 PM

"Gerald Ford didn't go to Yale."

Fact checking is your friend. He certainly did go to Yale--for law school--in the late '30s.

Posted by Marlowe | March 24, 2008 2:03 PM

Harold: "He wanted to exterminate the Russians and make Russia the "Wild West" -- lebenstraum. Also no Pole was to be educated above fourth grade level. They were to be German slaves. This is OK w/ Mr. Buchanan, apparently."

Sure, and american leftists had no problem with the kurds being gassed, which is obviously shown by their opposition to invading Iraq. That would be an obtuse thing to say, but not any more obtuse than what you are saying about Buchanan.

Posted by scottynx | March 24, 2008 2:06 PM

Re vanya's comment "Even Hitler did not think the Soviet Union was run directly by international Jewish financiers (just infiltrated by them), it seems fairly clear he's talking about the West. To Hitler (and Buchanan) Wall Street was (is) the HQ of the international Jewish financiers. "
-------------
Well, even paranoid Anti-Semites sometimes have real enemies.

The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia had succeeded because of heavy financial backing from superrich American Jews outraged by the Russian Tsars' pogroms against Russian Jews. Consider the actions of financier Jacob Schiff -- who was the inspiration for the Romanov's intelligence service writing the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion".

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_H._Schiff

Jacob Schiff seems to have actually favored Germany in WWI -- he, after all , was a German immigrant. Plus Germany had provided sanctuary to Jews fleeing Russian attacks.

But American is a melting pot. Even among the Jews influential in the Democratic Party, you had superrich , assimilated Jews like Bernard Baruch -- whose family had been in the American South for over a century and whose father had served on Robert E Lee's staff . In his biography, Bernard Baruch boasted of his father's Ku Klux Klan uniform.

Those assimilated Jews were more likely to be interested in the US national interest than in what happened to some foreigners in distant Poland.

An interesting question is whether Hitler understood these complexities -- or whether, in lying to the German people, Hitler ended up lying to himself.

Posted by Don Williams | March 24, 2008 2:15 PM

Don Williams,

You do realize that just as German nationalists claimed that Jews were the driving force behind Communism, Soviet propagandists claimed that Jews were the driving force behind western Capitalism. This is one reason why German Jews such as the Warburgs and Rathenau were (dangerously) dismissive of the proto-Nazi conspiracy theories about Jews like them being Communist sympathizers.

Posted by Steve D. | March 24, 2008 2:25 PM

Re SLC's comments,

Oddly enough, the tyrant of the DR, Rafael Trujillo, apparently asked Hitler to ship the Jews to Santo Domingo.....Trujillo was a racist (for all that he was mixed blood himself) and wanted to 'improve' the Dominican racial stock by an infusion of white (Jewish) blood. Apparently Hitler was never that interested. Trujillo took a cue from Hitler when he murdered 40,000 or so Haitians in a mid-1930s pogrom.

DAS,

I'm on the Left politically, and I'm certainly given, on occasion, to pining for a lost agrarian ideal, although it usually involved peasant cooperatives rather than feudalism. I certainly loathe capitalism much more than I loathe feudalism.

Posted by Hector | March 24, 2008 3:20 PM

The German officers were not about to give up Hitler's basic war aims. According to the exhibit at Museum of Terror in Berlin, they were much given to arguing over how to divide power among themselves after they had assassinated him. If they had not been, they might have done a better job of it. And, it was because they knew this, that the allies declined to negotiate with them.

Posted by harold | March 24, 2008 3:41 PM

I'm willing to hear out that kind of argument, but only from someone who has a visceral hatred of Nazism and Buchanan, well, let's just say he doesn't. So I'm left not entirely convinced of the good faith of his claims, though they are not ridiculous on their face.

Posted by Rich | March 24, 2008 3:50 PM

AJP Taylor is right that Hitler's ambitions were smaller than the actual results of WWII, which dragged the scope and casualties and nations involved far past what any of the parties WANTED or envisioned in 1938-39.

John has put out some very good posts on Taylor. I would encourage any interested in history to read one of the true Master historians of the 20th century. "The Origins of the Second World War" created such a flap because Taylor was so esteemed and because it marks a start away from the scholarship that said WWII was all the fault of an out-of-control madman who only wished to destroy Jews.
Taylor was enormously influential in other areas. He is the one credited with the sociopolitical analysis that showed Ruling Elites, rather than voters, set policy in most Western democracies. With the masses having an artificial delusion oif control - except when the Elites have to openly oppose them (Think contemporarily about the persistance of Open Borders, outsourcing American jobs, the destruction of the US dollar to lower the actual debt in real wealth institutions controlled by the Elites must pay back).

Taylor invented one of the most persistant terms in political analysis: The Establishment. From these writings, he helped to popularise the term "the Establishment" to describe Britain's elite. Some have credited him with coining the phrase in a 1953 book review..

AS for AJP Taylor's influence on Buchanan, it is clear. In 1939, Hitler appeared to have goals of restoration of Germanic peoples to dominance of Europe, wresting control of professions and banks from the Jews, and acting as the defender of Europe against the Jewish Bolsheviks. The poster Vanya is wrong in that the Nazis always saw the danger of Jewish communists spreading megadeaths, democide West from Russia, as they gave every sign of doing with the COMINTERN, the aborted slaughters of Bela Cohen, Rosa Luxemburg, the Stalinist goons in the Spanish Civil War, and actions by the Soviet Jews in Latvia, Lithuania, Poland.
That was the main threat as the Germans saw it. The control of Jews of Western institutions was a worry, the millions the Jewish Bolsheviks sought to kill in the West was the greater threat in 1938-39.

The German declarations of war against the US and the Soviet Union were pretty forthright. The declarations and the analysis of the validity of the declarations is on file at Yale's "Avalon Project". The Germans had the Russians cold for gross violations of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and the US for completely abandoning it's neutrality protection by the summer of 1941.

Buchanan's argument that WWII led to the loss of the West having global dominance is true, and his many decades of warning that the most prosperous, technically advanced nation of the world would be hollowed out as it tried to maintain Empire solely for the benefit of the very wealthy Elites of America appears to be coming true.

Buchanan has his quirks like oversympathy for Germany, but he is generally correct that the West is slowly collapsing. And the seeds of the Death of the West are in the Great Wars and if WWII had been strategically been rethought in it's earliest stages, it never would have gotten so large, and the West would have been far stronger and American citizens far better off today.

Posted by chris ford | March 24, 2008 5:42 PM

vanya -

Have you ever heard of Hitler's "Zweites Buch"? It's sort of a sequel to Mein Kampf but touched upon different subjects to a large degree. The most stunning parts concern Hitler's views on America. It basically confims that an attack upon America was going to happen no matter what. Hitler viewed the US as far too much of a threat. An nation full of Aryans due to selective immigration, with a powefull industrial base. Yet it was somehow ruled by crypto-Jews like FDR. It was too strong to cut a deal with but too dangerous to ignore.

He never allowed it's publishing; in the early years because he was told that it might hurt the sales of Mein Kampf and later on for obivious reasons. The closest he comes to saying this stuff in public was probaly his speech to the Reichstag in December of 1941.

How Buchanan gets away with never bringing this stuff up is beyond me. Hitler was just too bat-shit crazy. Stalin, without a massive nuclear advantage, never would have provoked the US into a full-scale war.

Posted by Raindog | March 24, 2008 6:45 PM

I am astonished that Mr Buchanan could contemplate with ease a history in which either Hitler's Germany or the Soviets (or both) ended up with nuclear weapons.
As for Buchanan's ethnicity, I somehow doubt his German ancestry had much to do with it: I am half German and I certainly don't hold such weird notions.

Posted by JonF | March 24, 2008 6:55 PM

JonF, not that I disagree with the broad strokes of your comment, but as I recall the Soviets did manage to whip up a nuke or two before it was all over . . .

Posted by southpaw | March 24, 2008 7:01 PM

Re harold

Excuse me, Mr. harold is apparently talking about the situation in 1944 and the officers who were implicated in the assassination plot against Hitler. I was talking about the situation in 1938 which was entirely different. The two top officers in the Great General Staff at that time, Von Blomberg and Frisch were not part of Hitlers entourage and certainly had no ambitions as to taking over the, at that time, nonexistent German empire. As a matter of fact, Frisch was later cashiered from the army and framed on a false charge of being implicated in homosexual activities. Hitlers' takeover of control of the German armed forces did not occur until he was able to get rid of Frisch and Von Blomberg.

All of this is well documented by Walter Goerlitz, "History of the German Staff."

Posted by SLC | March 24, 2008 9:09 PM

As I understand WWII, Hitler had every intention of seizing Russia and most of the "geopolitical heartland" that Haushofer believed in. So that war was going to happen no matter what.

Where Hitler screwed up in actually conducting the war was:

1) Not finishing off the British army at Dunkirk.

2) Not properly supporting Rommel in North Africa with tanks and logistics, which would have enabled Rommel to take North Africa, swing through Turkey into the Caucasus and seize the Caucasus oil fields. This would have provided fuel to maintain the German war machine - meaning Russia might have lost, the Battle of the Bulge would have been a German victory, and German jet fighters would have prolonged the war considerably.

3) And of course, prosecuting a two-front war in the first place.

But I sincerely doubt any concept that Hitler's Germany could have been "contained" by anybody. The dynamism of the National Socialism ideology would have prevented that.

Had Reinhard Heydrich had not been assassinated, it is likely that had Hitler been assassinated or died otherwise, he would have been the successor - and he was perhaps even more dangerous than Hitler. He was considered much smarter than any of Hitler's other cronies and at least as psychotic (he was known to shoot mirrors that reflected his image.)

OTOH, had Hitler been assassinated many years earlier during the rise to power of the National Socialists, it's not clear the movement would have achieved what it did or been able to take control of Germany and then start WWII. It's not clear who in the Party could have replaced Hitler as successfully.

If you're going to deal with counterfactuals, it's better to deal with those that have useful outcomes.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | March 24, 2008 11:35 PM

Chris Ford,

"The Germans had the Russians cold for gross violations of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact"

This sounds spurious. Antony Beevor had unprecedented access to German and Russian archives (including private letters, diaries, transcripts of prisoner interrogations, etc.) in writing his history Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, and his description of Ribbentrop reading Germany's de facto declaration of war to the Soviet ambassador Berezhkov ('the hangman of Baku') and his deputy Dekanozov is at odds your statement. All the comments in quotes below are taken from primary sources, they aren't Beevor's invention. From pp. 7-8 of the book:

Ribbentrop, while waiting for them [Berezhkov and Dekanozov] to arrive, paced up and down his room 'like a caged animal'. There was little sign of the 'statesmanlike expression which he reserved for great occasions'.

'The Fuhrer is absolutely right to attack Russia now,' he kept repeating as if trying to convince himself. 'The Russians would certainly themselves attack us, if we did not do so'.
[...]

The two Soviet representatives were shown into the Reichsminister's huge office... As they came close, Berezhkov was struck by Ribbentrop's appearance. 'His face was scarlet and bloated, his eyes were glassy and inflamed.' He wondered if he had been drinking.

Ribbentrop, after the most perfunctory of handshakes, led them to a table to one side where they sat down. Dekanozov started to read a statement requesting reassurances from the German government, but Ribbentrop broke in to say that they had been invited to attend a meeting for very different reasons. He stumbled through what amounted to a declaration of war, although the word was never mentioned: 'The Soviet Government's hostile attitude to Germany and the serious threat represented by Russian troop concentrations on Germany's eastern frontier have compelled the Reich to take military counter-measures.' Ribbentrop repeated himself in different ways, and accused the Soviet Union of various acts, including military violation of German territory. It suddenly became clear to Berezhkov that the Wehrmacht must have already started its invasion. The Reichsminister stood up abruptly. He handed over the full text of Hitler's memorandum to Stalin's ambassador, who was speechless. 'The Furher has charged me with informing you officially of these defensive measures.'

Dekanozov also rose to his feet. He barely reached to Ribbentrop's shoulder. The full significance sank in at last. 'You'll regret this insulting, provocative and thoroughly predatory attack on the Soviet Union. You'll pay dearly for it!' He turned away, followed by Berezhkov, and strode towards the door. Ribbentrop hurried after them. 'Tell them in Moscow', he whispered urgently, 'that I was against this attack'.

Posted by Fred | March 25, 2008 12:15 AM

Yes, I was thinking of 1944, though there were a series of plots beginning in the 1930s.

They had it all figured out --- and here's how they planned to divvy up the spoils:

The following were appointed these roles as of July 1944[8]:

* Generaloberst Ludwig Beck - Reich President
* Carl Goerdeler - Reich Chancellor
* Julius Leber - Minister of the Interior
* Paul Lobe - President of the Reichstag
* Wilhelm Leuschner - Vice-Chancellor
* Fritz-Dietlof Schulenberg - Foreign Minister or State Secretary
* Kurt Hassel - Foreign Minister or State Secretary
* Julius Leber - Minister of the Interior
* Ewald Loeser - Minister of Finance
* Friedrich Olbricht - Minister of War
* Hans Oster - President of Reich Court Martial
* Hans Koch - President of Reich Court
* Eugen Bolz - Culture Minister
* Bernhard Letterhaus - Reconstruction Minister (Minister without portfolio if not appointed)
* Paul LeJeune-Jung - Minister of Economics
* Andreas Hermes - Minister of Agriculture
* Josef Wirmer - Minister of Justice

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_20_Plot

I guess "western" civilization is now crumbling because we in the "west" were just too beastly to the Germs in 1914 and 39. (The Germs not being part of the 'West'?) On the other hand, some folks think Fascism is alive and well, and it's the same old same old.

Posted by harold | March 25, 2008 1:58 AM

Britain was outwitted by the Poles in 1939.
Polands strategy was: Poland stands, when Germany falls. They benefited thus best in 1918 with hardly any losses.
To get things did not get in Versailles they aimed at entangling Germany in a war which Germany couldnot win - the war with UK/US and thus making Germany fall. The British guarantees of 1939 were use by the Poles which were bent on war and expansion to provoke Germany, wheras Britain believed they are apt to deter Hitler and keeping peace.
When Germany fell in 1945 the Polish profit was huge and outnumbered the losses by far.
The Oder-Neisse-Border was a nice piece of cake. Britain fought for it without any return on investment.
The Polish strategy proved right.

Posted by de Voss | March 25, 2008 6:25 AM

Wow!!! Be careful Buchanan, those who think otherwise go straight to jail. In Europe of course

Posted by Pat Stetson | March 25, 2008 10:18 AM

Raindog,

Tooze gives Hitler's Zweites Buch a fair amount of attention. Maybe Chris Ford should read it too, then he'd realize how far off base his ideas about Germany in the 1930s really are.

It's also clear why the Germans attacked the USSR in 1941 - Hitler really had no choice at that point. Because of the British success in cutting Europe off from outside markets, Germany was becoming increasingly dependent on the USSR for oil, coal, metal and grain - and on trade terms that were favorable to the USSR. It was either attack immediately, or watch the Soviet Union continue to grow stronger while the German/occupied European economy continued to stagnate and the US/Great Britain continued to outpace Germany in arms production. Germany's strategic position in 1941 was getting weaker by the day, Hitler judged, and judged correctly if your goal was to create an independent German superpower, that he couldn't postpone the battle.

Hitler's chief aim may have been insane - that is, trying to turn Germany into a continental superpower able to go toe-to-toe with the USA - but if you accept that premise most of his decisions, through 1942 or so anyway, were fairly rational.

Posted by vanya | March 25, 2008 10:29 AM

"Suppose that Stalin had won. In such an event, there is every likelihood that the forces of the former Soviet Union would have ended up on the Rhine with a puppet government in Berlin and most of Germany under Soviet occupation."

And who says that Stalin would have stopped at the Rhine. Uncle Joe in all probability would have gone all the way to the Atlantic. In fact he mentioned as much to one of his top generals after the war. It was his intention to spread the communist gospel by warfare having realized after WWI that that would not be possible by peaceful means in the democracies.

In 1941 at the height of German power Hitler didn't even have enough landing craft to cross the English Channel let alone conquer the world as the Western court historians keep pointing out at every opportunity.

Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941 as a preemptive strike. The Russians were ready to roll into Europe (Ice Breaker by Suvorov). Stalin hesitated because of Rudolf Hess's flight to Scotland. He was unsure of how Britain would respond to Germany's peace offer.

Fortunately for the rest of Western Europe Uncle Adolf beat Uncle Joe to the punch who was poised for an offensive on Europe.

If England had been so concerned about Poland's independence how is it that she did not declare war on Russia when Stalin attacked Eastern Poland a short time after Hitler marched in from the West?

WWII could have been avoided if France, England Poland and the Czechs had cut Germany some slack instead of forcing her to sign the Versailles Diktat. In that case there would never have been a Hitler at the helm in Germany. The Weimar Reublic could possibly have survived. Unfortunately the Western Democracies had to reap what they had sown 20 years before at Versailles and St. Germanine.

Posted by Erich mannstein |