Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the...

Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World | Patrick J. Buchanan | A masterpiece

books:

Churchill, Hitler,...

	Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World Patrick J. Buchanan Crown, 2008 - 544 pages average customer review:based on 115 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

Excellent Book

After reading this book, you'll probably realize that everything you ever knew about World War II was wrong. Controversial, to be sure, but it's well documented and presented in a credible and highly readable manner.

Highly recommended.

A masterpiece

I never thought I would be writing a favorable review of a book by Pat Buchanan but, as that infamous Catholic theologian Martin Luther once said, "Heresy, so be it. It is still the truth."

Buchanan has written a masterpiece. Built on the foundation set down by the late great British historian, A.J.P. Taylor, Buchanan's book contains much that is new, is meticulously and exhaustively documented, and extremely well written. Whatever else he may or may not be, Buchanan has established himself as a scholar and a major historian of the twentieth century. He of course has also demonstrated great moral and intellectual courage.

Buchanan shows in detail that WW 11, far from being a "good" war, was, as his title says, a truly unnecessary war that resulted from an endless series of bad intelligence, bad policies, bad decisions, and bad moral behavior by the "best and brightest" i.e. the leaders, of all of the major powers over a period of 30 years, from 1914 to 1945. Never was the faith, trust, and fate of so many, so mismanaged by so few.

In 1914, the Kaiser may have briefly dreamed that Germany might become the dominate power in Europe. Hitler was even less ambitious. He dreamed that all Germans in central and Eastern Europe who wished to be, would be reunited, and that Germany would dominate Eastern Europe. He may have intended eventually to invade Soviet Russia (we know Stalin certainly intended to eventually invade Eastern Europe and Germany), but did so only after being rebuffed by Churchill who was waiting patiently for FDR to come to his rescue. In return, Churchill, the great enemy of "appeasement" then declared Hitler's former ally, Stalin, a "democrat" and gave him half of Europe.

Meanwhile the British, French and the Americans meanwhile drove their First world war allies, Japan, and Mussolini (who hated Hitler) into an alliance with Hitler. The line in the sand which the British drew that actually triggered the war, and was prompted by Churchill, was a pledge to defend the corrupt, anti-semetic, military dictatorship of Poland's and it's refusal to even discuss it's two decade subjugation of more than two million ethnic Germans who wanted only to become again part of Germany. Instead Poland lost six and half million dead, and became subjugated to Soviet Russia for fifty years.

Actually the book gets better and better as it moves along and his concluding discussion of the causes, and the results of the war, is absolutely masterful, especially his frank discussion of the holocaust which was not a cause OF WW 11 but which was caused BY the "good war."

The Unnecessary War will change forever the level of discussion about "The good war", and that is a welcome development and a great advance in the study of twentieth century history for which we can all be grateful to Mr. Buchanan.

I would also recommend Thomas Flemming's THE NEW DEALERS WAR which deals specifically with FDRs responsibility for the "Good war", Nicholson Baker's HUMAN SMOKE, and Bill Kauffman's AIN'T MY COUNTRY which deals with the America First isolationist anti-war movement.

for more information click here

Brilliant Military/Political History

Pat Buchanan's masterwork: CHURCHILL, HITLER AND THE UNNECESSARY WAR is one of the two finest works I have ever read on the 1910-1945 pre-war and wartime period. I have read and studied this period and the related histories of the US, Britain, France, Italy, Germany and Austro-Hungary, and felt comfortable in what I "knew" even though I had suspicions of much else. Mr. Buchanan's magnificently researched and footnoted book not only confirmed much that I did know but also provided an abundance of new data and revelations that were both startling and saddening.

The book reads like a novel but is some of the most carefully crafted historical explanation I have ever read and should be required reading in the schools of the countries mentioned (though I'm sure they'd resist the exposure tooth and nail.) I look forward to re-reading this book in the near future and I have recommended it to numerous acquaintances. This is a "must read" book and one that will forever cause you to see the two world wars and their tragic aftermath in a new and, unfortunately, humbling light.

for more information click here

The America First Movement Redux

"Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War," demonstrates just how dangerous a good writer can be when he is in possession of bad ideas. Patrick Buchanan, the well-known television pundit and former Presidential candidate, is essentially exploiting the current discontent with the Iraq war to revive the isolationist arguments of the largely pro-German, anti-English "America First" movement of the 1930s and 1940s in a radical and misguided effort at historical revisionism, recasting World War II as somehow just as "unnecessary" as the current quagmire in the Middle East. All the usual suspects are here: the "perfidious Albion" obsession, which sees England's every move as an attempt to lure its allies into armed conflict, the supposedly needless decision of Britain and France to draw a line in the sand at Hitler's invasion of Poland, the imponderable and unlikely "what-if" thesis that Hitler would have turned his attention to defeating Soviet Russia had the western allies let him have his way, and on and on. In the hands of a more reasoned and less polemical writer - Nial Fergusson, in particular, from whom Buchanan borrows all too freely - these ideas would at least have sufficient historical context to make them worthy of reasoned consideration. But Buchanan is a debater by nature and profession, trained to stake out extreme positions, advocate them ceaselessly, and never cede an inch of ground to intelligent counter-arguments. Basically, any book that paints Winston Churchill as one of 20th-century history's greatest villains while casting Hitler merely as a potentially useful bulwark against Communism cannot be considered as anything more than an attempt to garner attention through provocation, albeit skillfully done by Buchanan, whose gift for words could really be put to better uses.

for more information click here