Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
I read this op-ed by Pat Buchanan earlier in the week at the Worldnutdaily with my jaw agape. Even by crazy right wing standards, this is seriously loopy stuff. He actually tries to portray Adolf Hitler as a perfectly reasonable guy driven to war by his would-be victims. It's a staggeringly incoherent attempt at historical revisionism. And real historian David Silbey gives it all the attention it's due:
I can't even begin to parse the ridiculousness of Pat Buchanan's latest piece, which argues that Hitler had no interest in conquering the world but was forced into war in Poland and then prevented from making peace by the recalcitrance of the Allies. "Hitler wanted to end the war in 1940, almost two years before the trains began to roll to the camps," Buchanan intones, as if the Holocaust was also forced on the Germans by lack of cooperation.This is the kind of appalling historical piece that leaves me thinking that I've fallen through into a bizarro world, and wondering what on the earth Buchanan thought the point was? To rehabilitate Hitler? To excoriate those uncooperative Poles?
He's not even particularly good at it. To handwave his way past Hitler's true intentions, he has to define the world that the Nazi wanted to conquer carefully, as "Britain, Africa, the Middle East, the United States, Canada, South America, India, Asia, Australia." Any major countries missing? Anybody? Any massively large land power nearby Germany, full of (by Nazi lights) untermenschen that the Germans could conquer for some lebensraum?
He does deal with the Soviet Union, eventually, but can only manage the patently risible "As of March 1939, Hitler did not even have a border with Russia. How then could he invade Russia?" The mind boggles. How strange a coincidence for Buchanan that the country blocking Hitler from invading Russia was, in fact, Poland, and that by October 1, 1939, Germany and the USSR did share a border. It was over this border that around 3 million German troops would pour two years later.
Enough. This is the kind of horrendous drivel that would embarrass a crazy uncle spouting off at a family reunion as everyone stands by awkwardly and shuffles their feet. It is the historical equivalent of speaking in tongues: the syllables, accents, rhythms, and pauses of actual speech that, when actually heard, dissolve to gibberish. Buchanan strings together his events from the past in a coherent narrative; coherent but absolutely disconnected from reality. Somewhere in this world, a rabbit in a waistcoat is looking at his watch, muttering about lateness. Buchanan has no worries on that score; he is well down the hole already.
Well said.
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Comments
"Somewhere in this world, a rabbit in a waistcoat is looking at his watch, muttering about lateness. Buchanan has no worries on that score; he is well down the hole already."
Beautiful.
Posted by: peter | September 9, 2009 9:30 AM
Great articles about WW2 and the Holocaust in the Guardian. Pat Buchanan should read them.
Posted by: Christophe Thill | September 9, 2009 9:32 AM
Hitler was agitating badly for war in the Czechoslovakia crisis. He was annoyed that Chamberlain worked so hard to appease him - so much that he turned his attention to Poland immediately thereafter, and did not give Chamberlain time to start appeasement efforts. In fact, Chamberlain and the appeasers (who were, by the way, for the most part on the Right in the British establishment), were perfectly willing to give Hitler Danzig and the Polish corridor, provided that Hitler negotiate (with the British, not the Poles) for these rather than take them by force. They were also prepared to give Hitler colonies in Africa.
Hitler invaded anyway. He thought that he could quickly take much of the continent, drive the British out of Western Europe, and force them to surrender. It's true that Hitler wasn't interested, initially, in invading and conquering Britain - he wanted a quick land war to secure a power base and an insulted and weakened Britain that would pose less of a threat to his interests. But there is no doubt that the long term plan was to conquer Britain.
Hitler wanted a short war to bring Germany back to first power status, then a period of consolidation, then another war against the naval powers to obtain a global colonial empire. During the consolidation phase, Hitler would eliminate the Jews and transform the continent of Europe demographically.
We're fortunate he was so stupid, and that the British public finally stood up to its government which went out of its way to appease fascism and Nazism. Chamberlain's efforts were a race against public intolerance of fascism, which is why so many of his negotiations were conducted in secret.
Oh, and Pat Buchanan is a fucking idiot.
Posted by: Chuck | September 9, 2009 9:41 AM
Pat Buchanan should be asked to explain the Tarnow Railway bombing [link], as well as the Gleiwitz incident. In the latter, a day before the invasion, the Nazis faked a Polish raid on a German radio station. These are hardly the actions of a nation that doesn't want war. But then, Pat is one of the few people in the world dumb enough to take Adolf Hitler at his word. So I guess I shouldn't expect much from him, or his racist supporters.
To quote General McAuliffe, Pat Buchanan is "NUTS!"
Posted by: Imrryr | September 9, 2009 10:00 AM
Re Chuck
I would agree with Mr. Chuck that Buchanan is a putz. However, I would have to disagree as to his claim that Hitler wanted a war in 1938. Actually, the German armed forces were in no condition to fight a major war at the time of the Munich Conference as the Panzer divisions mostly existed on paper and the buildup of the Luftwaffe had barely begun. In fact, the German General Staff, knowing the condition of the German military at the time, were appalled at what they considered Hitlers' recklessness and were contemplating a coup against him. However, Chamberlain apparently beli8eved the propaganda coming out of Berlin and greatly overestimated German readiness. In fact, by selling out Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain shot himself in the foot because the Czech arms industry was the most modern in Europe at the time and the Czech armed forces were fully modern and well equipped, unlike the Polish armed forces that were still thinking in terms of cavalry charges by horsed cavalry. If Chamberlain had stood up to Hitler and the latter was not bluffing (I think he was), the German armed forces would have found Czechoslovakia a far harder nut to crack the Poland was the following year.
Posted by: SLC | September 9, 2009 10:00 AM
Buchanan does acknowledge that those trains to the concentration camps did roll, albeit not until 1942.
Now I wonder: how long before he denies that that happened?
Posted by: Rodney | September 9, 2009 10:20 AM
How then could the United States invade Afghanistan or Iraq?
As for the ever-more misunderstood Chamberlain, a few points need making:
* After the mindless carnage and armaments-industry scandals of World War I, the British public was still very anti-war, and Britain's only military strength was in its navy (not much use in defending a landlocked nation like Czechoslovakia). Chamberlain did, after Munich, begin re-armament, but he had an empty hand in negotiating with Hitler, and they both knew it.
* Italy was also unready (militarily & psychologically) for war, and Mussolini knew it. The talks over Czechoslovakia were at his initiative, even though he didn't participate. Hitler had wanted to go into Prague shooting, and finally dragged an unready Italy along with him when he got his war the next year.
* Hitler, for whom racialism was everything, considered the "Anglo-Saxons" as natural Aryan partners, and wanted them as (subordinate) allies in conquering the subhuman East. A sizable faction of the British elite agreed with him, but fortunately never gained power.
* A lot of Americans also favored alliance with the Nazis against the gawdless Communists: Buchanan's sick politics are not his original creation, but have deep roots.
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | September 9, 2009 10:25 AM
Buchanan has always been rather loopy, but seriously, WTF??? There is that damn reality again, with that evil liberal bias.
Posted by: dogmeatib | September 9, 2009 10:39 AM
@SLC - I agree with what you said about Czechoslovakia's military, it certainly meshes with everything I've read about the situation at the time. But, considering the disparity in arms and equipment, and the fact that the campaign was over in 36 days, I have to imagine that 16,343 killed, and 27,640 wounded German troops was probably substantially more losses than Hitler was expecting to receive from those outdated and out gunned Polish defenders (also, let's not forget that Poland had to fight against two invading armies at the time).
Just imagine how it would've looked if Poland or Czechoslovakia could have fought Hitler's forces off...
Posted by: Imrryr | September 9, 2009 10:47 AM
Hitler is always pretty reasonable in the one particular source that is easily accessible to modern scholars - Downfall parodies on youtube.
Do you think Pat got all his information there?
Posted by: Sigmund | September 9, 2009 10:48 AM
Well, Pat's correct about two things:
1. Hitler didn't want a war. He just wanted all of the countries he invaded to surrender unconditionally. It's perfect bank robber's logic: if people hadn't been so stupid as to fight back, and had just given him what he wanted, there wouldn't have been any trouble.
2. It was all the fault of the Poles, and if it hadn't been for them, the war could well have been all over in 1940. If it hadn't been for the squadrons of Polish airmen who fought with the RAF and helped prevent the Luftwaffe from gaining the air superiority Hitler needed to invade Britain, who knows what might have happened? The outcome was far from certain, and maybe those few additional pilots tipped the balance against Germany? So if it wasn't for the Poles, Europe could well have been at peace again* by the end of 1940.
* and occupied by Nazis, but, hey, details...
Posted by: Brain Hertz | September 9, 2009 10:57 AM
@Chuck, SLC:
For what it's worth, Churchill disagreed with Chuck's assessment of Chamberlain.
In September 1938, we had all of 3 squadrons of Hurricanes, and a partially-equipped squadron of Spitfires; Germany's fighter squadrons were equipped with the Bf 109 (583 of them at the time). If Hitler hadn't been bluffing, and war had started a year earlier, we'd probably have lost the Battle of Britain.
Posted by: Robin Levett | September 9, 2009 11:01 AM
The comments to the op-ed are frightening. "Thank you for being so brave as to tell the truth about World War II." "Thank you for opening my eyes to the truth." "I eagerly volunteered in World War II, now I feel like I was used."
Yeah, just who the fuck did those Poles think they were in trying to protect their territorial integrity after centuries of being variously divided between the Russians and the Germans? Hitler was just a good guy who only wanted peace for Germany--that's why he had to go to war. He didn't want war with France, and that's why he attacked them. He didn't want war with Russia, that's why he was the one who broke their non-aggression pact and attacked them first. It's all so fucking obvious, and those elitist liberal historians are just out to smear Hitler.
Ugh. Reading Ed's blog can be so damn depressing.
Posted by: James Hanley | September 9, 2009 11:08 AM
Chamberlain was not appeasing just for the sake of rolling over, his intention were the opposite. England was in the process of building it's military at the time. Chamberlain thought that England was not ready to face down Nazi Germany at the time. So he made concessions in order to buy time. It made not have been the best move but Chamberlain was hardly taking Hitler at his word, unlike a certain Washington based talking head.
Posted by: Janine | September 9, 2009 11:12 AM
MSNBC had that same article on its website, but it got so many protests that it finally pulled it a few days later. Some Jewish organizations were not especially pleased, shall we say.
Buchanan is a Hitler fanboi. He probably collects Nazi memorabilia and tries it on when no one's watching.
Shit, even Conservapedia says Hitler instigated the war.
Posted by: wheatdogg | September 9, 2009 11:17 AM
Can you US guys PLEASE notify me if Buchanan ever dares to come to Germany?
PLEASE?????
'Cause if he says stuff like that in Germany, I'll be there with a video camera, and then Mr. B. will see the inside of a German jail. I believe he is borderline to a three year sentence already, and I can wait to read his next revisionist drivel, which will surely be full of claims that are actionable in German courts, there days.
Posted by: Heinrich Mallison | September 9, 2009 11:24 AM
Heinrich,
Buchanan's behavior is disgusting and the fact that he hasn't been more widely condemned by the American right wing is appalling. However, you'll find that most readers of Ed's blog are pretty strong free speech advocates. Ed almost certainly doesn't want Buchanan to go to jail for his remarks (I don't either and I suspect neither do the vast majority of readers of this blog).
Posted by: Joshua Zelinsky | September 9, 2009 11:33 AM
The absence of a German surface navy is another irrelevance. Experience in WWI had shown the power of submarine warfare. In both wars, submarine attacks on merchant shipping came alarmingly close to cutting Britain off from vital supplies.
Posted by: SimonG | September 9, 2009 11:37 AM
According to Buchanan, "Winston Churchill was right when he called it “The Unnecessary War” — the war that may yet prove the mortal blow to our civilization."
I'm not sure in what form Pat sees the "mortal blow". One of the consequences of the war was the acceleration of the collapse of colonialism in the post-war world. Another was the rise of the Jewish state. Both, it seems, good things for civilization generally, if not so much for white/male/Euro-dominant 19th century thinkers. Does he think that those poor benighted savages would be better off under continued Europeann dominance?
Posted by: perplexo | September 9, 2009 11:39 AM
On second thought, please don't. I know I won't. I am absolutely appalled by and opposed to Germany's laws against Holocaust denial. I said so when David Irving (whom I detest) was thrown in jail, and I'll say so for Pat Buchanan, even though I detest him as much:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/09/pat_buchanan_hitler_apologist.php
Posted by: Orac | September 9, 2009 12:07 PM
@perplexo
Buchanan sees the war as "unnecessary" because he believes the U.S. and Britain should have joined up with Hitler to defeat Stalin.
Posted by: Orac | September 9, 2009 12:16 PM
Never mind the fact that absent Hitler's attacks on the USSR, it's not at all certain that the USSR would have become the military threat that they did.
Posted by: D. C. Sessions | September 9, 2009 12:26 PM
Hear, hear. Nazi-apologists are despicable, but the whole point of free speech is that it extends to everyone, even to people whose views we find repulsive. Censorship is a dangerous road; and Germany's laws against Holocaust denial are profoundly illiberal and immoral.
Not that my country, the UK, is really any better. Our authoritarian Labour government prevented both Fred Phelps and the Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders from visiting the UK, on the grounds that their views were "extremist". Sadly, in the UK we don't have a proper written constitution or Bill of Rights, so our courts don't have the same ability as their US counterparts to protect free speech and other individual liberties. I would go so far as to say that the First Amendment is the single most valuable part of the US Constitution, and it is something which I would like to see replicated in my country.
Posted by: Walton | September 9, 2009 12:28 PM
"He thought that he could quickly take much of the continent, drive the British out of Western Europe, and force them to surrender"
not really. He did not expect the French and British to go to war over Poland. period. He thought he could get away with a quick decision and force them to accept it as accomplished fact.
Original planning in the west was a re-hashed Schleiffen Plan. Only towards the end was Guderian's etal plan accepted and only them was there and expectation that a significant victory could be achieved.
also remember, the Petan govenment was in power for a long time before the Nazi's took over full control of France.
Posted by: Kevin (NYC) | September 9, 2009 12:35 PM
Pat has the nerve to rehabilitate Hitler after all those nice Jews voted for him in 2000 in Palm Beach county?
Posted by: t_p_hamilton | September 9, 2009 12:39 PM
I am astounded at the illogic on display here. The right wing has been gleefully calling Obama "Hitler" since even before the election. Yet Buchanan now comes along with a defense of Hitler. Based on the comments at the op-ed, there is a substantial portion of the right-wing based ready to absolve Hitler of wrongdoing in World War II.
So, Obama is Hitler, but Hitler was not Hitler.
(Also, I liked the commenter asking why Buchanan had a beef with Pinochet. Comments like that show just how anti-fascist the right wing truly is - i.e., not at all.)
Posted by: thinkoplex | September 9, 2009 12:45 PM
Indeed. Without the right to free speech, how are you supposed to complain when all of your other rights are denied?
Posted by: Gretchen | September 9, 2009 12:46 PM
I think I remember reading somewhere that, after the Munich agreement of 1938, Hitler was supposed to have said something like, "They have robbed me of my war."
Posted by: ZacharySmith | September 9, 2009 12:52 PM
Re Robin Levett
The problem with Mr. Levetts' comment is the implicit assumption that a war starting in 1938 would have led to the same result as occurred in 1940, namely that Czechoslovakia would have fallen like Poland did with France falling in 1939 like it did in 1940. Given the state of the German armed forces at the time of the Munich conference and the superior Czech armed forces as compared with Polands', I think that such an outcome was unlikely (not to mention in addition, the fact that the terrain in Czechoslovakia is mountainous and more defensible against an attacking army the the plains of Poland). In fact, given the plotting in the German General Staff against Hitler, it is quite possible that a stalemate in 1938 would have resulted in a coup removing him from power.
Re Pierce Butler
Mr. Butler forgets that Great Britain would not have been fighting Germany alone in 1938. In particular, in addition to France, she would have been allied with Czechoslovakia, as I have argued, a considerably more formidable foe then Poland turned out to be.
Re Simon G
Actually, IMHO, the biggest strategic error that Hitler made, prior to the start of WW 2, was the decision to build the super Dreadnaught battleships Bismarck and Tirpitz, not realizing that the battleship was an obsolete weapons system (Hitler was, apparently enamored with battleships; the German navy actually had plans to build a super super Dreadnaught of 120 thousand tons displacement which would have mounted 12 twenty inch guns as its main battery!). If, instead, he had used the materials, labor, and seaman that were wasted on these ships to build Uboats, instead have having a dozen of the latter available for sea duty in June, 1940, he could have had 50 or 60 available, which, given the state of British anti-submarine defenses at the time, would have been sufficient to starve Britain out of the war in 2 or 3 months.
Posted by: SLC | September 9, 2009 1:01 PM
Perplexo @ 19:
In my attempts to understand the conservative movement, I follow Buchanan closely given he's a prime example of a paleo-conservative; a movement which both still exists though its weak in its influence and predates WWII. Back then paleos were the mainstream of the conservative movement and staunch isolationists (and nearly all bigots) during this period. This post that Ed refers to is not unusual in the least, Buchanan frequently makes this argument and even wrote a book proclaiming this argument (which I did not read though I have read two of his books).
The 'mortal blow' that Buchanan refers to is the vast number of young European men lost in both WWI and WWII. He sees a correlation between Britain's loss of empire and the loss of its men in WWI and WWII. This loss of a demographic opened itself up to non-Europeans immigrating into Europe, which is diluting the influence on classical western thought. He views the ramifications as ongoing and only now coming into full fruition.
Just like Mr. Buchanan decries the invasion of brown skin hordes from south of the U.S., he decries the Muslim hordes invading Europe.
Posted by: Michael Heath | September 9, 2009 1:28 PM
I recall reading somewhere that in Buchanan in his autobiography mentions that his father spoke with approval of the Nazi movement. Can Mr. Heath or anyone please confirm validity. If true it’s easy to see where this comes from, having grown up in such an environment. I’m also interested to know the general mindset of old-school paleo-conservatives on this subject beyond isolationism. I imagine their intense anti-communism above all else would have made them sympathetic to the Hitler or fascism in general.
In any case, it would be interesting to ponder how this squares with Jonah Goldberg’s fantasies that fascism is really a variation of liberalism (or vice versa). It would be amusing to see these two on a panel together discussing this period in history.
Posted by: Eric J | September 9, 2009 1:41 PM
Eric J - the best place to find paleo- thought is the The American Conservative. Besides the magazine they have bloggers who do provide interesting perspectives.
While I despise conservatism in general, believing it's as much a failure as communism, monarchism, and dominionism in terms of its ability to govern (though not neccessarily in acting as a minority party if they remained loyal to the Burkean form). I do find paleo- to be tied for first as least repugnant (the other being conservative libertarians such as Ron Paul). And in spite of all his blustering, I do not perceive Andrew Sullivan as conservative, certainly not in the American sense, yes in the British sense, which is far removed from American conservatism.
Here's the Wikipedia for paleo's. I didn't verify its quality: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleo-conservative
Posted by: Michael Heath | September 9, 2009 1:53 PM
Gretchen @ 27 said:
Dear Gretchen, if the whole of The Webs & InnerTubes were mine to freely give, I should give them all to you and consider them well spent.
I will quote you, doncha' know? Thank you.
*now I've gotta go back to work*
Posted by: Crudely Wrott | September 9, 2009 2:03 PM
SLC @ # 29: Mr. Butler forgets that Great Britain would not have been fighting Germany alone in 1938.
If Britain had declared war in 1938, neither its own population (thoroughly and with good reason disgusted with war, and not seeing Czechoslovakia as vital to British interests), nor France (whose public felt the same, and whose still-weakened army was equipped (poorly) only for defensive operations) would have cooperated with energy or conviction. Seeing how Hitler's greed was not satisfied with bendng-over-backwards regarding Czechoslovakia was necessary to convince Britons that war for Poland was justified.
Armchair revisionists 70 years later can conjure all sorts of might-have-beens, but Chamberlain was quite realistic in rejecting the idea of fighting all the way across Germany to "rescue" Czechoslovakia. He seems to have been much less realistic in believing his own "peace in our time" rationalizations, but he's hardly the only politician to fall prey to that mistake.
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | September 9, 2009 2:22 PM
I'm Polish, and I read it, and was appalled, also on behalf of my Jewish pals. It's simply absolutely batshit crazy and disgusting that anybody would think it's OK to spew bullshit like that.
Also, um, I thought that USian conservatives were supposed to be pro-Israel? I mean, I do know that Buchanan is not exactly a prime example of sanity and what not, but, this Chick tract:
http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/1055/1055_01.asp
So, um, well.
Posted by: Sara | September 9, 2009 2:55 PM
Re Pierce Butler
If Britain had declared war in 1938, neither its own population (thoroughly and with good reason disgusted with war, and not seeing Czechoslovakia as vital to British interests), nor France (whose public felt the same, and whose still-weakened army was equipped (poorly) only for defensive operations) would have cooperated with energy or conviction.
Mr. Butler makes the same mistake that all Chamberlain apologists make, namely failure to look at the other side of the hill. The fact was that, at the time of Munich, Germany was in no better condition to conduct a war then were Britain and France. Furthermore, the notion that Czechoslovakia was not a vital interest to Britain and France neglects the modern Czech arms industry, in particular the Skoda works. By failing to support the Czechs, Chamberlain handed over that vital industry to Germany without Hitler having to fire a shot. The fact is that Czechoslovakia was, militarily, a far more formidable opponent then Poland. Chamberlain and Deladier were too busy counting divisions instead or evaluating the quality of those divisions.
In fairness, no one can say with total certainty what the result of counter-factual history would be. However, I would continue to argue that Britain, France, and Czechoslovakia had a better chance to stop Hitler in 1938 then Britain, France, and Poland had in 1939.
Posted by: SLC | September 9, 2009 3:17 PM
IIRC (and IANAH (Historian)), the root cause of the problem was not Hitler (per se), but the punitive retributions levied on Germany after the end of the first World War. If we'd done to Germany then what we did to (for) them after the second World War, the Nazi Party would have never found a receptive power base in the German middle class, who presumably would not have been out of work and bitter; which I think was the whole point behind the Marshal Plan. So, if you want to exonerate poor, maligned Hitler, WWII was actually the "fault" of the "winning" side in WWI.
But, not having read Pat's piece, I have no idea if he ever made that argument.
Posted by: Scott | September 9, 2009 3:45 PM
But I'd love to hear from those who know better if that hypothesis is a reasonable one. It seems that by the time of the late 1930s, the die was pretty much cast for another conflict of some kind, whether the one we saw, or some other variant. The fulcrum for effective action to avoid conflict was at least a decade earlier than that.
Posted by: Scott | September 9, 2009 3:52 PM
I'd vote for Buchanan in a heartbeat if he was running against Sarah Palin, I wouldn't merely stay home. Hell, I'd send the guy a check, probably start drinking heavily, buy options in the company that owns Comedy Central and another that builds big fences. But I'd be there for him at election day.
Posted by: Michael Heath | September 9, 2009 4:14 PM
That's a totally reasonable hypothesis. If Germany hadn't been totally demoralized after WWI the Nazis might never have gained the support they did. On the other hand, maybe they would have anyway due to the Great Depression which affected Europe as well.
However that wasn't the argument he made at all, but instead that we just should have given Hitler what he wanted. That somehow he would have stopped after Poland and wouldn't have implemented his Final Solution. That's ridiculous and wrong to the extreme.
Posted by: Noadi | September 9, 2009 4:20 PM
@SLC
I'm afraid I'll have to disagree with you. Hitler wanted a war in Czechoslovakia, and was in fact disappointed to have had to reach a settlement. (Source: Ian Kershaw's Hitler, v.2, pp.121-125) The general staff was right to disagree with him, and had a different assessment.
Aside from Kershaw's biography, another excellent resource about war readiness is Tooze's *Wages of Destruction*, which talks about the logistical parameters of all of the decisions made in the Third Reich.
Posted by: steppenwolf | September 9, 2009 5:35 PM
Thanks Michael. I have visited American Conservative a few times before. I know at least once they have published an article by left commentator Alexander Cockburn.
On Buchanan as repugnant as I find most of his views, at least he is honest and straightforward about them--with some semblance of (albeit warped) principle behind them--a relief in this bizarre right-wing political landscape of Limbaugh and Beck.
Posted by: Eric J | September 9, 2009 5:59 PM
Danzig was 95% German, huh?
I'll bet a cow that it was also 95% Polish; the thing about Poland at that time was that everybody was Polish and something else (Marie Curie for example was Polish and French), since Poland had only re-emerged from non-existence a couple decades earlier. Even today, all of Silesia is both Polish and German, and it's belonged to Poland for over half a century.
What an ass.
Posted by: Jadehawk | September 9, 2009 6:31 PM
Re steppenwolf
I'm afraid I'll have to disagree with you. Hitler wanted a war in Czechoslovakia, and was in fact disappointed to have had to reach a settlement. (Source: Ian Kershaw's Hitler, v.2, pp.121-125) The general staff was right to disagree with him, and had a different assessment.
German historian Walter Goerlitz claims in his book, "A History of the German General Staff," that the general staff was planning a coup against Hitler who they considered dangerously reckless. When Chamberlain caved in at Munich, the coup was stillborn; after all, one doesn't overthrow a winner.
I have also read, although I can't cite the reference as we sit here today, that Hitler told his naval high command that he did not expect a war against Great Britain until 1944. The German Navy had a most ambitious building program in the works, scheduled for completion by that year, which would have added several battleships to the Bismarck and Tirpitz and in addition, would have constructed several aircraft carriers, although the Germans, like their counterparts in Great Britain and the United States still considered the battleship the main command of the seas weapons system (only the Japanese departed from this shibboleth). They, of course, were rudely disabused of this notion at Taranto and Pearl Harbor. Of course, when Hitler was proved wrong, the building program was shit canned in favor of Uboats.
Posted by: SLC | September 9, 2009 6:57 PM
An interesting co-incidence: a radio play of "Fatherland" has been on BBC 7 this week. (For those who don't know, it's an alternative history with the Third Reich running Europe.)
Regarding Germany's military ambitions and capabilities, it was inevitable that they would invade the USSR. They needed the USSR's resources, especially oil. If Britain had kept out of things, leaving Europe to fall without war, Germany would have been able to take more time in preparing for the invasion of Russia and would have been able to undertake it without distractions.
However, I still think that the invasion would have failed eventually in much the same way as it did historically. One big difference, though, would have been that the Soviet push westward would have continued much further; possibly right to the Atlantic. During the later stages of the war there was considerable anxiety about the speed of the Russian advance, and Britain and the USA went to some efforts to move eastwards faster than they would have otherwise, to meet the Russians deep in Germany.
So leaving Hitler alone would have ended up with exactly what Bachanan seems to fear most: a Russian hegemony across Europe.
One possible alternative to that scenario would be if the Germans actually managed to develop an atomic bomb. But even then, I have my doubts. Even with V2s they wouldn't have been able to deliver a bomb deep into Russia, and the Russian leadership had already demonstrated that they were sufficientlly ruthless to let vast swathes of land and millions of people be destroyed if that's what it took. I believe they'd have suffered a few nukes - I doubt that the Germans would have been able to build more than a handful - then continued their military buildup and pushed west anyway.
Posted by: SimonG | September 9, 2009 7:18 PM
@ Jadehawk
Um, it's a bit more complicated that that :)
Marie Curie was actually Polish, but she was not allowed to study at a Polish university, because she was a woman, so she moved to France to learn physics, and later married a Frenchman.
And Danzig, or Gdańsk, as it's called since WWI, WAS actually overwhelmingly German. Before WWII, it had a robust NSDAP chapter, and stuff.
The Silesian minority is Silesian, not Polish or German. Many people have dual citizenship, but as far as identity is concerned, people feel that they are Silesian.
Posted by: Sara | September 9, 2009 8:20 PM
SLC @ # 36: ... at the time of Munich, Germany was in no better condition to conduct a war then were Britain and France.
Just by the facts of geography, Germany was in a much better place to invade Czechoslovakia than Britain and France were to defend it. Does pointing this out make one a "Chamberlain apologist"?
... the notion that Czechoslovakia was not a vital interest to Britain and France neglects the modern Czech arms industry...
Please note that I was describing the British public's perception of Czechoslovakia, not that of strategic planners. UK strategic planners were quite aware of Skoda, but they were also aware of Vickers, and of the Somme and the Marne, etc, etc, etc. Without public support, only a dictator in as strong a position as Hitler or Mussolini can get away with starting a war.
If you think poorly motivated troops aren't a bigger problem than weapons supply, please review the 20th-century history of the better-equipped armies in a place called Vietnam.
... I would continue to argue that Britain, France, and Czechoslovakia had a better chance to stop Hitler in 1938 then Britain, France, and Poland had in 1939.
Take it up with Harry Turtledove. In point of fact, Britain and France desperately needed both the US & the USSR to get the job done - not to mention Hitler's strategic & tactical screwups. A generals' coup in '42 would probably have left Germany owning everything from Brittany to the Urals, if not the Pacific.
As others have pointed out above, WWII was made inevitable by the Treaty of Versailles after WWI (and many of the Allied delegations knew it damn well at the time). A successful peace requires at least as much strategic planning as does war.
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | September 9, 2009 9:22 PM
I read and agreed with pat's book and have found that almost all of these discussions begin with a knee jerk sort of "Pat loves hitler" ad hominum and then soon devolve, or rather Evolve, into a decent discussion of world war two!
the fact is world war two was wrong, world war one was wrong, vietnam was wrong and iraq was wrong.
alot of people got killed in the 20th century for no good reason. People thought handing over their rights and paychecks to the federal government was the way of the future and it wasn't, it was the way back to the pyramids and the pagan societies based on fear and belief in fate and a great controlling power.
now we have to find our way back and it's not going to be easy or pretty.
Posted by: lester | September 9, 2009 9:34 PM
@lester
I am hoping that was a long winded poe because if it is not you need to actually read the post to this thread. It happens to be written by Mr Bucannan and clearly he is apeasing the Nazis and laying blame on the rest of the world for misunderstanding the Christian guy Hitler.
And look up what Paganizm is too. A belief system that puts more weight behind the importance and roll woman have in this life scares Christians how?
Posted by: theroachman | September 9, 2009 9:42 PM
Buchanan is probably as annoyed by the phony comparison as we are... just for a different reason.
Posted by: Nemo | September 9, 2009 9:47 PM
@lester. I'm afraid I don't understand. So Japan bombs Pearl Harbor, and we are basically forced to declare war on them... Then Nazi Germany declares war on us, and we were supposed to do what exactly, just let them sink all our shipping without fighting back?
Also, I'd still love to see Buchanan explain how false flag incidents like the one at Gleiwitz show that Hitler didn't want war with Poland. Here's the link again, if you're not familiar with the Gleiwitz incident [link].
Posted by: Imrryr | September 9, 2009 9:59 PM
45: "An interesting co-incidence: a radio play of "Fatherland" has been on BBC 7 this week"
That's no coincidence, I'm sure they timed it to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the invasion of Poland.
Posted by: Jon H | September 9, 2009 10:02 PM
@SLC #36:
Sir Winston included? While he opposed appeasement, he subsequently acknowledged that Chamberlain had little alternative - his tribute to him in the Commons on his death in 1940 foreshadowed that, when he said: "Whatever else history may or may not say about these terrible, tremendous years, we can be sure that Neville Chamberlain acted with perfect sincerity according to his lights and strove to the utmost of his capacity and authority, which were powerful, to save the world from the awful, devastating struggle in which we are now engaged."
More generally, you forget quite how potent air-power was thought to be in the 30s; and by 1938 the Germans had by far the most powerful air-force in Europe - far better equipped than the British or French, and with recent experience in Spain.
The Czechs might have had a modern army, but it was outnumbered 2 to 1 by the Germans and Hungarians - and in addition there would inevitably have been disruption by the German elements. While they had strong mountain formations, the Germans had no lack of such troops.
Oddly, the Czechoslovaks also were committed to static fortifications in the defence of Sudetenland; how effective they would have been against blitzkrieg is questionable, especially since, being in Sudetenland, the fortifications were effectively behind enemy lines.
They had no effective air-force to speak of; while I've seen it described as a "fine second-tier air force", its fighters were all biplanes. France and Britain had no aircraft to spare. Germany would have had absolute air superiority over Czechoslovakia, and Stukas would have made a mess of the Czechoslovaks' admittedly decent tanks. The fortifications would have been difficult to resupply across territory held by Sudeten Germans hostile to the government, and interdicted (and attacked) by air power.
I'm really not sure that Czechoslovakia would have been that much of an obstacle.
Posted by: Robin Levett | September 9, 2009 11:10 PM
Re Pierce Butler
In point of fact, Britain and France desperately needed both the US & the USSR to get the job done - not to mention Hitler's strategic & tactical screwups. A generals' coup in '42 would probably have left Germany owning everything from Brittany to the Urals, if not the Pacific.
Mr. Butler seems to be rather confused. If war had started in 1938 and the German Army became bogged down in Czechoslovakia, which I consider to be quite likely, the coup planned by the German General Staff would have occurred in late 1938 or early 1939, not 1942. By the time 1942 rolled around, the German General staff had been cleansed of any generals considered insufficiently loyal to Hitler and replaced by his toadies. The Germans in 1938 would have controlled only Austria.
By the way, the reason that the war in Europe ended up lasting until 1945 was because the United States was unable to apply all its military power against Germany, as most of the Navy and Marine Corps in addition to several Army divisions and much of the strategic Army Air Corps were occupied in the Pacific against Japan. Contrary to much of what was written about WW 2, Japan was, because of its robust naval capability, a much more dangerous opponent for the United States then Nazi Germany. Had the Battle of Midway gone the other way, which it very well could have, particularly if Yamamoto had committed all of Japans' aircraft carriers instead of only 4 of them, the Normandy invasion might never have taken place.
As for Mr. Turtledove, he's a novelist, not a serious historian like Walter Goerlitz.
Posted by: SLC | September 9, 2009 11:29 PM
SLC, may I quibble, without intending any criticism of your overall argument? (I've enjoyed this discussion, but as I know little more about WWII than that "my side" won, I'm not competent to criticize anyone.)
Do you mean this in purely military terms? Ability to defeat the other side?Because it has always seemed to me that the threat from Japanese control of the Pacific, strategically (1941 strategic, not 2009 strategic), politically, and economically, was much less dangerous to U.S. interests than was German control of Europe. Would losing Hawaii and the Philippines really have been a huge problem for us? (I'm assuming, of course, that Japan could/would never have staged a serious invasion of the U.S. west cost.)
Posted by: James Hanley | September 9, 2009 11:59 PM
My understanding of WWII is mostly tech stuff about planes and the basics such as Mr. Hanley nicley put it “my side won!” *
I love to have some recommendations for some good books on WWII as related to the discussion here. Have Goerlitz written down but I am going to have to get the socialist library system to buy one of his books for me. Turtledove sounds interesting but from the arguments presented today most likely something to read after a few other books first.
Others?
~~~~~~~~~~
*No offense intended I really did like that line. I think the majority of the world knows no more than that about any war. The deeper questions and bigger pictures left un-analyzed by the majority of our mainstream Newspapers and TV stations is our world society’s biggest problem today, especially here in the US. This is a direct result do to the prevalence of closed minded MTV styled RW media such as Fox News, The Financial Times and others.
Sound bites and hooters girls only please.
Posted by: theroachman | September 10, 2009 12:22 AM
I think the appeasement debate going up above, and in particular whether Britain and France should have declared war against Germany over the Sudetenland or over Poland, misses something. With perfect hindsight, surely the best time to have declared war would have been with the remilitarization of the Rhineland.
From my (admittedly layman) perspective, the reasons for the policy of appeasement were:
1. A desire to avoid another Great War etc
2. The Depression was ongoing, and a war was seen as bad for the country's finances
3. Not wanting to incur the wrath of the public for going to war and so be out of favour politically
4. A lacking in British and French military capabilities
5. German propaganda about it's own forces
6. A focus on anti-Communism/anti-Stalinism, with a strong Germany seen as a bulwark against the USSR
7. A feeling that Germany was treated too harshly by the Treaty of Versailles
(Have I missed any?)
Here's how I see those reasons:
1. I can't see anything wrong with this reason. It is as noble a reason as they come.
2. With hindsight, this is probably wrong. With the economic paradigm of the time however (Hicks and Keynes etc had only just started making big noises), there was no way for the politicians of the time to have known that Military Keynesianism may have been of benefit to the economy (whether they would have gone along with this if they had the benefit of hindsight is another matter entirely, if the current Tories are anything to go by, then no).
3. Well this one was a political reason, and I guess if there's one thing that's unfortunately understandable in politics, it's political calculation. A bolder leader may have been able to push an earlier war though at risk to himself, but I don't think that that boldness could have existed then without knowing what we know now. Let's also not forget the position of His Majesty's Official Opposition, as the Labour party seem remarkably pacifist then as to now. I think the Liberal party disagreed, but they were a much declining force at the time.
4/5. I don't know enough about these two to be able to say with confidence whether appeasement made sense. It seems like it could be a "could do better" one, but it could also have been a reasonable decision. Was the intelligence on Germany realistic from a British perspective? I don't know.
6. How much this played a part in the late 1930s I'm not sure, but this reason is to me illegitimate. The idea that Communism/Stalinism was more of a threat than Fascism/Nazism was an Establishment idea, and not a realistic one. Moreover, focusing on allowing Germany to be strong, but not making sure France and Eastern Europe were also reasonably strong, ran contrary to Britain's balance of power policy of hundreds of years towards the Continent (although you could say that was broken in 1919).
7. Germany was treated too harshly, and I can understand the urge to redress that, but I feel once you allow a country to lose territory, you can't just let it take it back. So for me, this reason doesn't do it for me, particularly over the Sudetenland.
Overall, I think Chamberlain (and Baldwin before him) made the right decisions over this, and has probably been unfairly castigated for appeasement. Assuming he did it for less selfish reasons (and I'll give him the benefit of the doubt), I find it hard to avoid the conclusion that appeasement was the right decision. Wasn't it right to worry about the affect of war on the economy, even if it was likely wrong in hindsight? Isn't it understandable to want to avoid war with memories of WW1 so close? How reasonable is it to expect Chamberlain to have overrode public opinion when such boldness didn't seem as called for as it does now looking back? As they say, hindsight is a wonderful thing, and with hindsight the Rhineland rather than Poland was probably the right time, but that is the benefit of hindsight.
I thought I'd also comment on two things by Walton above, if I may:
To my mind, of those two decisions, Wilders is the only controversial one. Wilders does seem to lean towards anti-Muslim rhetoric rather than just anti-Islam rhetoric , which does worry me, but I don't feel it's blatant enough in his film Fitna (which is what he was coming to the UK for) to warrant a ban.
With Phelps on the other hand, the decision (which, to expand on your "extremism" comment, was apparently he was "Considered to be engaging in unacceptable behaviour by fostering hatred which might lead to inter-community violence in the United Kingdom") was the right one. We know that he was coming to the UK to do one of his infamous homophobic pickets. IMO, preaching hatred against groups such as homosexuals is unacceptable.
But why on Earth they had to ban Michael Savage (as awful as he may be) though, is beyond me.
Normally if I read this I'd just ignore it, but since you're a law student, I expect more precision!
I take it by a "proper written constitution" you mean a "codified and entrenched" one, since although our constitution is popularly termed "unwritten", other then Parliamentary conventions, it is written down, just not in one document. Nor is this constitution entrenched as it can be changed by a simple majority in Parliament.
And as for us not having a Bill of Rights, it seems to me that we already have one, arguably two, Bill of Rights. The first being the Bill of Rights of 1689. And I think it would be hard to argue that the Human Rights Act is not acting as a Bill of Rights.
The American Bill of Rights is better than those in that it is made up of amendments to the US Constitution, and so the rights in it are entrenched. The UK does need an entrenched and codified Constitution, and as for a new Bill of Rights, only so far as it is entrenched in said Constitution and/or it goes above and beyond the HRA (although as a libertarian you will probably disagree with that part).
Interestingly, you may already know this, but it seems during the Lords case over the 2004 Hunting Act, the principle of entrenchment may actually be evolving in our constitution already, with respect to certain rights like the right to a fair trial:
How the fuck the judiciary would actually assert itself above Parliament in such a situation is beyond me though.
http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKHL/2005/56.html
Oh on a related note, as there are likely to be history buffs reading this, would I be right in saying that most codified and/or entrenched Constitutions through history have been adopted after experiencing a time of "crisis", and that adopting a new Constitution is unusual in times of "stability"?
Posted by: Alex Deam | September 10, 2009 1:54 AM
But politics usually stops with death out of respect - is it not possible he was just being polite?
Posted by: Alex Deam | September 10, 2009 2:08 AM
Ed almost certainly doesn't want Buchanan to go to jail for his remarks (I don't either and I suspect neither do the vast majority of readers of this blog).
I dunno...the thought of Buchanan as somebody's prison wife is so very satisfying.
Posted by: Shay | September 10, 2009 3:09 AM
I've been annoyed for years that John McLaughlin took Buchanan back after his failed attempt to get the Republican nomination. This tears it.
I'm emailing the McLaughlin Group/Oliver Productions to inform them that I will no longer be watching their program s long as Pat appears on it. If anyone else would like to do the same (and I encourage it strongly), here is their email address:
comments@mclaughlin.com
and their snail mail address:
The McLaughlin Group
1717 Rhode Island Ave, NW Suite 640
Washington DC 20036
Posted by: Jeff Eyges | September 10, 2009 6:32 AM
"Contrary to much of what was written about WW 2, Japan was, because of its robust naval capability, a much more dangerous opponent for the United States then Nazi Germany"
Then again, the fact that the US was able to drive the Japanese essentially back to their home islands while our main effort was against Nazi Germany would seem to dispute that point. For most of the Pacific war the US was fighting with one arm tied behind its back. The European theater was given priority. They called Guadalcanal campaign "Operation Shoestring" for a reason.
Posted by: Ericb | September 10, 2009 8:09 AM
@Shay #59:
This is Churchill we're talking about... He had had no problem with ripping into Chamberlain on the policy ("you were presented with the choice of dishonour or war, chose dishonour and got war" or thereabouts), but not on his sincerity. Remember that Churchill is pretty unique in British politics having crossed the floor twice (in opposite directions) - and at all relevant times until May 1940 Chamberlain was his party leader. Political advantage didn't moderate his actions. From May 1940 until shortly before his death Chamberlain served in Churchill's Government and was in his cabinet, which would have been unlikely if the disagreement went deeper than policy.
Posted by: Robin Levett | September 10, 2009 8:10 AM
Re Alex Dean
Here I would agree with Mr. Dean to the extent that the the German armed forces were certainly less formidable at the time of re-militarization of the Rhineland then they were at the time of Munich. However, Mr. Dean overstates the issue of going to war over the Sudetenland. Under the scenario I proposed, Britain and France would have declared war against Germany only if an invasion of Czechoslovakia actually occurred. Of course, if Hitler was bluffing, which I consider to be a fair assessment of the situation, no such invasion would have occurred.
Unfortunately, Prof. Goerlitzs' book is long out of print. Mr. Dean had best look for it on Amazon or in a used book store.
Re Robin Levett
1. The Luftwaffe at the time of Munich was far less formidable then it was in September, 1939.
2. I think that Mr. Levett overstates the importance of air power relative to a possible German invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938 and underestimates the difficulty of the terrain therein. I would refer Mr. Levett to the difficulties encountered by the US forces in Italy in 1943 and early 1944, despite overwhelming air superiority.
3. Another aspect which has not heretofore been considered is the attitude of the former Soviet Union. Many commentators have opined that one of the reasons that Stalin signed the non-aggression pact with Germany was his suspicion that the appeasement policy of Britain and France portended their support for an aggressive policy against the former Soviet Union by the western powers. Chamberlain standing up to Hitler in Munich might well have prevented the German-Soviet non-aggression pact which followed Munich.
Re James Hanley
Mr. Hanley is quite correct that I limited my assessment of the relative threats posed by Germany and Japan to the United States purely in military terms. Germany lacked a naval capability to threaten the US mainline, having only the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau available as capital ships in 1940 and no aircraft carriers. Even if the 1944 ship building proposal had been carried out, the German navy would still have been far inferior to the US navy which had an even more ambitious building plan (i.e. some 20 Essex class carriers were constructed by 1944). However, at the time of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese navy was considerably superior to the US naval forces deployed in the Pacific. In particular, Japan had a larger carrier force to deploy there and in addition had superior aircraft and most importantly, superior torpedoes. Had the battle of Midway gone the other way, Japan would have been in a position to invade and occupy the Hawaiian Islands which would have greatly prolonged the war in the Pacific and may have even been sufficient to force a negotiated settlement with Japan instead of unconditional surrender. The development of the nuclear bomb in 1945 would have been of little avail in such circumstances as any bases available to the US Army Air Force would have been out of range of Japan.
Posted by: SLC | September 10, 2009 8:11 AM
Michael Heath @32:
I do find paleo- to be tied for first as least repugnant (the other being conservative libertarians such as Ron Paul).
Same here.
There's some paleocon themes I do agree with: fiscal responsibility/avoiding deficit spending, not invading other countries at the drop of a hat (*cough* Iraq *cough*).
But I think Buchanan's views are extreme even among paleoconservatives.
Posted by: Adrienne | September 10, 2009 9:23 AM
@SLC #63:
It was battle-hardened (it was, after all, the Condor Legion) and had exclusively monoplane fighters, including nearly 600 Me 109s (albeit not the 109g). The RAF had 3 squadrons of Hurricanes, and less than one of Spitfires, around 40 modern fighters all told. The French had concluded only a few months before that in any air war the Luftwaffe would wipe out their own air-force, and had only just started rearming to avoid that. Relative to the opposition, the Luftwaffe in 1938 was therefore far more formidable, not less, than in 1939.
Italy (or that part fought over in 1943/44) is a peninsula composed entirely of steep-sided mountains; hundreds of miles of them. The Allies were fighting against the grain of the mountains through deep belts of fortifications; and for much of the time the population was not openly opposed to the Germans. Even then, the Allies made progress, and the Germans wouldn't have needed to fight more than a few tens of miles, through a crust of fortifications set in much more gentle terrain in linguistically German territory, to get to Prague.
Air power would have prevented troop movements and resupply.
There's also the small matter (not previously mentioned) that the fortifications faced Germany, not Austria...and once the German boot had gone in, the Hungarians and Poles would have had no compunction tearing off bits of the carcass themselves - they did so in, or in the aftermath of, Munich as it was.
I really can't see the Germans getting bogged down in Czechoslovakia.
Hmmm; putting it gently, that is unlikely.
Just a short comment on your reply to James Hanley; a Germany in control of Europe west of the Urals would have had no difficulty outproducing the USA in whatever category of armament you care to name.
Posted by: Robin Levett | September 10, 2009 9:30 AM
Posted by: James Hanley | September 10, 2009 9:48 AM
Oh wait, I get it! Wingnuts don't think that Hitler is so bad, so when they compare Obama to Hitler, it's actually meant as a compliment, right?
Posted by: catgirl | September 10, 2009 10:17 AM
Re Robin Levett
I am afraid that Mr. Levett and I are just going to have to agree to disagree, hopefully not disagreeably, on the difficulty the German forces would have faced in an invasion of Czechoslovakia and the attitude of Stalin in the event of a non-appeasement policy by the Western allies. Mr. Levett is also making the assumption that Germany would have successfully attacked the former Soviet Union under the counter-historical proposal of a war in 1938.
However, relative to Germany out-building the US Navy, they lacked the shipyard capacity and manpower to do any such thing. They would, in fact, been hard put to fulfill the 1944 building program which would have left them in a totally inferior position relative to the deployment of aircraft carriers, the only capital ship of consequence in WW 2. I see no way they could have come close to matching the 20+ Essex class carriers the US had deployed by 1944.
Posted by: SLC | September 10, 2009 11:03 AM
Hitler himself stated his aims perfectly and unambiguously , which was "to destroy the Polish state once and for all". And what does Buchanan have to do to get thrown off television? Maybe extending his arm and shouting, "seig heil"?!
Posted by: Raymond Minton | September 10, 2009 12:52 PM
Why is it that the US 'freedom of speech' radicals always forget what a very loosely defined freedom of speech law implies? and the fact that it was the US who pressured Germany to adopt such laws that forbid Holocaust denial and hate speech?
Posted by: Heinrich Mallison | September 10, 2009 1:07 PM
Oh on a related note, as there are likely to be history buffs reading this, would I be right in saying that most codified and/or entrenched Constitutions through history have been adopted after experiencing a time of "crisis", and that adopting a new Constitution is unusual in times of "stability"?
Does Canada in 1982 count? No great crisis that I recall (except all the argle-bargle over the wretched paper itself, and the usual grumbling from Quebec....)
Posted by: Eamon Knight | September 10, 2009 1:43 PM
SLC - Robin Levett has made my argument regarding (most of) the military situation, and better than I could have done.
As for my "confusion": I picked the date of 1942 in the context of what would have been the most efficacious time for the generals to have replaced Hitler, not the time when anti-Hitler plots were at their peak. Hitler's military successes came largely from surprise and audacity: he did quite poorly at anything but sudden offensive strikes.
If Der Fuhrer had been killed, jailed, or sent back to Berlin as a figurehead while the Red Army was still on the defensive in, say, spring of '42, and the German effort that was wasted on Stalingrad had been applied to Moscow & Leningrad, then - at a minimum - WWII would have lasted at least as long as Boy George's wars have, and probably with a better outcome for the aggressors.
But the game of might-have-been could go on forever. I think we've established that each of us knows more about WWII in context than the benighted Buchanan, who is as wrong historically as he is politically and morally.
theroachman - please be aware that Harry Turtledove's novels go beyond the "what if the South had won the Civil War?" genre and into "what if flying saucers had whacked both sides at Kursk?" territory. Regarding actual history, allow me to recommend anything by Ian Kershaw, and Richard Evans's Third Reich trilogy (in present context, particularly The Third Reich at War).
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | September 10, 2009 3:07 PM
Thank you Mr Butler
I will look those up. As for Turtledove, I understand he is wacky, but I get perverse pleasure and fun from books such as those. I like to find out why someone would come up with wierd divergances from the conventional. Sometimes it takes a crazy to find out the truth even if the crazy is wrong in the end and from the start.
Posted by: theroachman | September 10, 2009 3:19 PM
@ Eamon Knight
There is a hockey joke there... Islanders vs Oilers...
Posted by: theroachman | September 10, 2009 3:29 PM
Yes! That looks like a great example, thanks. Unfortunately the exception rather than the rule though.
To SLC:
A stronger stance from Chamberlain against Hitler might have seen Stalin not agree to non-aggression against Germany, I agree, but I do wonder how that would've played out with respect to the other part of the non-aggression pact - namely the decision to divide Poland up between them. With a less strong Germany, maybe Stalin would've swallowed up the whole of Poland, rather than just shift it hundreds of miles west in 1945.
Robin:
Actually, it was me, not Shay, who said that, but anyway I think you misunderstand me.
I'm not saying "the disagreement went deeper than policy", I'm saying that while Churchill may or may not have "subsequently acknowledged that Chamberlain had little alternative", citing his speech in Parliament after Chamberlain's death for this doesn't work for me, since Churchill had every reason to gloss over any policy differences with Chamberlain to respect his memory after his death. If Churchill did "subsequently acknowledge that Chamberlain had little alternative" then I agree with him, but I'd like to see an example of this acknowledgment which was less connected with Chamberlain's death at a more objective time.
Posted by: Alex Deam | September 10, 2009 4:11 PM
Posted by: James Hanley | September 10, 2009 4:12 PM
Re Pierce Butler
The problem with the 1942 scenario is that, by that time, all the independent generals in the German General Staff had been removed and replaced by Hitler toadies. In 1938, the German General Staff was still dominated by the independent generals. If the German army had invaded Czechoslovakia and the fighting had degenerated into a stalemate, which despite Mr. Lovetts' contrary opinions was very likely possibility, that would have been considered a serious setback by the General Staff and would have emboldened them to initiate a coup.
Counterfactual history is certainly a lot of fun as evidenced by the discussion on this thread. Let me suggest some other conterfactuals for consideration.
1. If Napoleon had sent in the Imperial Guard at 4 o'clock in the afternoon instead of 6 o'clock at the Battle of Waterloo, the British line on Mt. St Jean would almost certainly have collapsed and Wellingtons' forces would have been in a disorderly retreat instead of the French forces. With the anti-French coalitions' best general suffering a disastrous defeat, they would quite possibly been forced to negotiate a settlement with Napoleon, leaving him in charge of France.
2. If McClellan had, as Lincoln suggested after the Battle of Antietam, attacked Lees' line with the two corps which he was holding in reserve, the result would have been a disastrous defeat for the latter and possibly led to an early end to the Civil War.
3. If a more aggressive commander then Sir Ian Hamilton had been in command at the Gallipoli Peninsula, it is quite likely that the British offensive in Turkey would have succeeded in knocking that country out of the war and opened up the Dardanelles to the resupply of munitions to the Russian forces by Britain and France. Such a development would have meant that the Brusilov offensive of 1916 would not have collapsed due to the Russian armies running out of ammunition. Together with the Somme offensive by the British, Germany might have been defeated in 1916 and a considerable carnage that ensued in 1917 at Third Ypres would have been avoided. In addition, an end to the war in 1916 would have meant that the United States would have stayed out of the conflict and, as suggested by General Fuller, Wilson could have positioned himself as the honest broker for a negotiated peace settlement.
4. One can only wonder what the outcome would have been if George Patton had been in command of the forces at Anzio in the 2nd World War, instead of the incompetent John Lucas. As occurred in Korea after the Inchon landing, it is quite possible that the German defense in Italy would have collapsed if the forces landed at Anzio had moved promptly to march on Rome and cut off the German lines of communication.
Posted by: SLC | September 10, 2009 7:47 PM
SLC - you've definitely left me way behind on the specifics of your scenarios.
If you haven't already read 'em, I recommend you hunt up What If? and What If? 2, edited by Robert Cowley, two collections of counterfactual essays by major historians. The first in particular focuses on military history (contributors include McNeill, Lapham, McCullough, Keegan, Ambrose & many more). (Hmm - an Amazon search indicates Cowley’s made a cottage industry of this, or maybe each volume was released under more than one title..)
If you're really into prowling the stacks for out-of-print alternative histories, hunt for Keith Roberts's Pavane, an excellently written novel about England after the assassination of the newly crowned Elizabeth I (you might want to skip the epilogue, which I'm sure was demanded by an accommodationist publisher).
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | September 10, 2009 9:02 PM
If McClellan had, as Lincoln suggested after the Battle of Antietam, attacked Lees' line with the two corps which he was holding in reserve, the result would have been a disastrous defeat for the latter and possibly led to an early end to the Civil War.
Mmmmm...maybe, maybe not. Lee retreating frequently proved himself as dangerous as Lee attacking (citing the Wilderness as an example). A tactical victory and considerable damage to the Army of the Potomac was quite feasible, simply by moving into a strong defensive position (which was always Lee's strength anyway) and waiting for McLellan to run out of will.
End of thread hijack, sorry.
Posted by: Shay | September 10, 2009 9:23 PM
Re Pierce Butler
Actually, I have read both of the counter-factual books Mr. Butler cited, although it was some years ago. The only essay that sticks in my mind is the one about Joshua of Nazareth in which the writer opined as to what would have happened if Pontius Pilate had decided to spare him instead of Barabbas. As I recall, the writer had him dying in his bed from natural causes some 40 years later.
Re Shay
The Sharpsburg position is the strongest between the Antietam creek and the Potomac River and it's not all that formidable. As T. Harry Williams put it in his book, "Lincoln and His Generals," there is very little doubt that an attack by McClellan on the Sharpsburg position with the two corps held in reserve would most probably been successful; under such an attack, in coordination with the corps already committed, the position could not have been held with the forces that Lee had.
I think that Mr. Shay, like all too many historians, overrates Lees' generalship. Actually, in many respects, Robert E. Lee was one of the most incapable commanding generals in history (see "Lee and Grant, a Study in Generalship and Personality," by Major General J. F. C. Fuller).
Posted by: SLC | September 10, 2009 11:28 PM