Pat Buchanan: Hitler didn’t want war
Published: September 2, 2009
Updated 5 months ago
Political columnist Pat Buchanan is coming under fire for a column arguing that Adolf Hitler didn’t want to launch a European war, and that World War II could have been avoided if Poland had agreed to hand over the city of Gdansk to Germany.
He even appears to have implied that the Holocaust wouldn’t have happened if the Allied powers hadn’t guaranteed Poland’s security.
In his column published Monday by Creators Syndicate, Buchanan wrote:
The German-Polish war [sic] had come out of a quarrel over a town the size of Ocean City, Md., in summer. Danzig, 95 percent German, had been severed from Germany at Versailles in violation of Woodrow Wilson’s principle of self-determination. Even British leaders thought Danzig should be returned.
Why did Warsaw not negotiate with Berlin, which was hinting at an offer of compensatory territory in Slovakia? Because the Poles had a war guarantee from Britain that, should Germany attack, Britain and her empire would come to Poland’s rescue.
…
Was Danzig worth a war? Unlike the 7 million Hong Kongese whom the British surrendered to Beijing, who didn’t want to go, the Danzigers were clamoring to return to Germany.
(Note: The city of Danzig, now known as Gdansk, is not a “town the size of Ocean City, Md.” It is one of Poland’s largest cities, and has historically played a major role in trade on the Baltic and North seas.)
Buchanan followed his assertion that Poland could have prevented the war with an argument that Hitler was not interested in a broad war to conquer the world.
But if Hitler was out to conquer the world … why did he spend three years building that hugely expensive Siegfried Line to protect Germany from France? Why did he start the war with no surface fleet, no troop transports and only 29 oceangoing submarines? How do you conquer the world with a navy that can’t get out of the Baltic Sea? … Why did he offer the British peace, twice, after Poland fell, and again after France fell?
The answer, Buchanan argued, is that “Hitler wanted to end the war in 1940, almost two years before the trains began to roll to the camps.”
That implication — that the Holocaust would not have happened had the Allies not insisted on fighting a war over the invasion of Poland — may be the most controversial assertion in Buchanan’s article.
Not surprisingly, the blogosphere has erupted in condemnation of Buchanan’s article.
At his blog at the Guardian, Michael Tomasky responds to Buchanan’s question why Hitler would have wanted war before his army was fully prepared:
Well, maybe it’s just that Hitler was clinically insane, addicted to drugs, a pretty lousy diplomat and an absolutely terrible military strategist, whose decisions (fight to the last man in Stalingrad, and for that matter pretty much everywhere) lost him his best general (Rommel) and sent hundreds of thousands more German soldiers to their deaths than was, as it were, necessary.
At the Jawa Report, blogger “Rusty” quotes Hitler’s Mein Kampf to debunk Buchanan’s assertion that Hitler had no expansionist desires with respect to Poland:
We … turn our eyes towards the lands of the East. We finally put a stop to the colonial and trade policy of pre-War times and pass over to the territorial policy of the future…
The future goal of our foreign policy ought not to involve an orientation to the East or the West, but it ought to be an Eastern policy which will have in view the acquisition of such territory as is necessary for our German people.
[From Vol. 2, Ch. 14 of Mein Kampf]
The American Prospect’s Tapped blog sums up Buchanan’s article thusly:
That whole invading Poland thing was clearly just a big misunderstanding. He didn’t want war, he just wanted to arbitrarily annex whatever part of Europe he felt like having — the response was clearly overblown, and maybe even a little rude.
The article appears to be a preview of Buchanan’s new book, Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War”: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, which is set for release on Thursday.
For his part, Tomasky laments what he sees as a trend towards history revisionism attempting to re-cast the collective memory of Adolf Hitler.
“Jonah Goldberg gave us Adolf Hitler: Man of the Left. Now we have Adolf Hitler: Man of Peace. I’d make a joke here about what’s next, but I really don’t think this can be parodied.”
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Hitler was an insane maniac who had no limits to his delerium that he acted out on the world stage, sacrificing millions of human beings in his never-ending flight forward that could end only in death and destruction.
That Pat Buchanan can discuss Hitler’s so called diplomatic maneuvers as though they were those of a rational human being is more a shocking sign of his own loss of mental clarity than anything else.
Such a horrifing attempt to reinterprete concessions that “should “have been made to a madman is a floundering pathetic attempt to negate the idea of civilized society for which he obivously h
“How do you conquer the world with a navy that can’t get out of the Baltic Sea?”
1. luftwaffe
2. you comandeer the french fleet… which is why the british attacked and sunk the french fleet before he could do it.
“Why did he offer the British peace, twice, after Poland fell, and again after France fell?”
1. because he wanted to invade belorussia, belgium, holland, latvia, lithuania, estonia, sweden, denmark, norway, hungary, czechoslovakia, romania, malta, gibraltar, morocco, algeria, egypt, jordan, syria, turkey, cyprus, libya, tunisia, lebanon, greece, georgia, the ukraine, russia, and etc, without worrying about his western flank.
2. will mr buchanan next argue that he offered the soviet union peace, so he didnt really want a war with them either?
“why is pat buchanan, presidential aide, presidential candidate, supposed intellectual giant…. unable to perform basic high school analysis of history?”
1. now THAT is a true imponderable.
although i believe mr suskind may have found part of the answer. perhaps mr buchanan is simply not part of the ‘reality based community’, and does not feel a need to constrain himself to ‘old fashioned’ values like careful observation of reality, and dealing with all available evidence, not just the evidence that support your own viewpoint.
Good response…
Pat is a racist.
But why did MADMAN HItler go East and then go West?
Did Uncle Joe talk the MADMAN into a the non-aggression pact?
Long before the MADMAN enter rational debate, Churchill and his ilk was standing in the British Parliament demanding war with Germany as early as May 1930. Long before the MADMAN and his slapped together ruling class party fought an election to please the international investors that Germany wasn’t going to fall to Bolshevikism.
The real fear was, that in the midst of Depression, a LEGAL socialist government would takeover Germany (like what came close in 1920-21 and what the American occupiers like Pace feared, when they tore up the Morgenthau Plan and re-armed Germany after the war!) and rip up the largely illegal Versailles Treaty. (Wilson was right on that score!)
Imagine that…the tiny details of international law then and now are being questioned…
Only a few days ago I was reading a old newspaper article about FDR praising Il Duce for his conquest of Ethiopia. I mundanely read an entire book twenty years ago about the Ford loved fascist Spain and then worked the US Congress to criminalize manpower and donations to support the Republican cause.
If one invested heavily in the Saar coal fields, wouldn’t the obvious port be Danzig? Wouldn’t it be terrible as an investor if it was given back to Germany by international courts at the time?
Anyone with an education that read boring OLD books on the subject is probably a denier in the NWO.
Ya…911 was an inside job too
Pat is a racist
I disagree, he is a fascist with little-man syndrom with delusions of grandeur
You must remember that his dad with a big supporter of FRANCO
and he was taught from his dad’s knew that deep inside ever conservative is a Fascist screaming to get out.
Trying to remember the name but I do recall reading that Hitler had entrusted the supervision of building a massive Luftwaffe fleet to an aging WWI hero . Who supposedly was too afraid to tell the fuhrer that he was behind in production and reported false fighter production figures to the high command.
Hitler’s eastern front campaign was entirely planned with a massively erroneous calculation of their air support. Which is why they got bogged down in winter. So I’d reckon that the rest of his campaigns were also based on these same miscalculations.
As for Buchanan’s assertion that the ‘Final Solution’ was based on some vague notion of european interference… then he really doesn’t understand Hitler at all. Hitler’s quest for a third was meant in the classic sense of building an pan germanic empire… uniting (and in some cases, reuniting) what was the old Prussian empire. Nothing the rest of european would have said or done would have made any difference. His utter disregard for the treaty with british pm Neville Chamberlain should be adequate proof of that.
His hatred of jews was far too deep for secondary considerations like european politics to have made any difference. The Wannsee Conference where they discussed the minutiae carrying out the holocaust should be proof in itself their utter unwaivering premeditation in the act of murdering millions.
Sorry, false typing - nthe rest of the comment.
Such a horrifing attempt to reinterprete concessions that “should “have been made to a madman is a floundering pathetic attempt to negate the idea of civilized society for which he obivously has nothing but contempt.
I think, that as an avowed Nazi and a buddy of Adolph, Pat Buchanan, has the inside dope on this matter. As a matter of fact he may have been giving Hitler his marching orders.
I read the article yesterday at antiwar.com, I got about halfway though and skimmed the rest. It’s a very weird article. I kind of felt like I was watching an old man have a mental breakdown and had to look away. I’ve always known that Pat was a Hitler/WWII nerd, but Jesus Christ Pat.
He should know, he rented a room from him and helped him wallpaper Jewish houses.
Pat Buchanan shatters the “good war.” Good for him. And to all those who think the war was unpreventable, read; Human Smoke by Nicholson Baker or Pat’s recent book, Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War.
Pat worked closely with US Leaders who helped Hitler so it makes since he takes that view. Pat was mentored by President Nixon and was the person who suggested Nixon burn the tapes. Pat is a wanna be who might even be a closet hiding his true self. He is rooted in his heart with racism and evil and watching him drull over Sarah Palin is just sick. Pat never reached to a level of importance and will be remembered for the loser and evil person he truly is. Hitler will greet him in hell.
Plain and simple, no big words, no intelligence needed Pat Buchanan has had altimeters for the last few years. He is a has been, no he is a wanna be. All anyone has to do is do a little research on him and you will wonder why he is still paid and invited to make comments.
Pat Buchanan is one of the good examples of what is wrong with America.
Just my opinion. You do your research on him, and form your own openion.
“Political columnist Pat Buchanan is coming under fire for a column arguing that Adolf Hitler didn’t want to launch a European war, and that World War II could have been avoided if Poland had agreed to hand over the city of Gdansk to Germany.”
Errr… the reich-wing whackjobs in the US like to use the Nazi occupation of France as their main reason for hating France today. “France rolled over, let them in” is the argument. They point at the European diplomatic attempts by other leaders to deal with Hitler peacefully and use that as justification as to why Trifectaboy was right to invade Iraq.
So now reich-wing posterboy Buchanan is suggesting Poland should have ROLLED OVER, that they should have used DIPLOMACY?
Is Pat becoming senile, or is he hoping that the rest of US have forgotten the reich-wing whackjobbery?
sigh…
Senior advisor to Nixon, Ford and Reagan.
No wonder…
Perhaps, as he suggested that Todd Palin do to Levi, someone should hold his head underwater until the thrashing stops.
Not even worth arguing about. Manure.
Unlike most manure, Buchanan Manure is only good for mutating everything it touches into more Buchanan Manure.
He’s right…
You know I got to agree with pat on this, like all psychotic psychopaths hitler just wanted everyone to surrender, bow to his will and command. You know like pat, bush, cheney, rumsfeld, rice and ashcroft.
Buchanan is our version of chamberlin.
what part of “today Germany, tomorrow the world!” does pat not understand as a declaration of war against the world?
racist klan member Buchanan needs to vanish.
Actually Hitler was pissed at the Jews because they were primarily bankers working on a fractional reserve system… just like our Federal Reserve is.
It’s the bankers who promote war because too much money is never enough, they’re always greedy for more.
Actually Hitler was “pissed at the Jews” as you so quaintly phrase it
because he was a psychopath projecting his own self hatred onto the outside world. He took advantage of the social and economic situation in Germany to create a collective hysteria that led the German people on one of the most dreadful killing rampages in history and eventually to a suicidal collapse.
Recently there is the example of Pol Pot and his mountains of human skulls.
Madmen!
Where do you think Hitler got all the money for the building projects,
building up the military….?
Here’s an idea. Let’s offer the rat wingers in this country a compromise on health care. Single payer for the establishment of “Goose Step Day.” Our intellectually challenged rat wingers would fall over themselves to learn the goose step, so they can parade around in their pointy hats and military uniforms, goose stepping like crazy.
his book has been out for months, i’m in the UK and have had it on my shelf for at least 2 months, and for the people to be lumping Buchanan in with Bush is very silly since Buchanan castigates Bush in the opening few pages of his book for being part of the “churchill cult”, ww2 has laid the blue print for every war since, look at the language they used to get the Iraq war rolling “we’re fighting good against evil” - “we must not appease saddam hussain” .
Even churchill himself said the war was unnecessary, and most of the British thought Hitler had the right to reclaim danzig, which was the reason he invaded Poland, Danzig was the port city who’s population considered themselves German, they always had done prior to the treaty of Versailles which stripped danzig from Germany .
I have to say the boilerplate comments on this story are very predicable, But Buchanan’s book is very well footnoted and imo is a magnificent piece, i urge everyone to get a copy and read it with an open mind.
Nowhere in this book does pat argue that Hitler was some type of saint, but I’m sure his detractors will try and paint it that way, and he’s right about the holocaust, there’s no way it would have happened without the war, it was only after he knew he lost the war that they started sending jews to the camps .
Also are we to believe the west really gave a damn about Poland ? … not sure if you know this, but after the war we handed it over to the butcher stalin which ushered in 40 odd years of brutality .
listen to pats interview on antiwar radio
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=C657677554F01E13
You see, neither did G.W. Bush…Bush wanted only to build schools and McDonald’s and Burger Kings in Iraq but when he found out Sadam was
ready to attack the US without a Navy and without an airforce that could make the trip to NYC……he just had to invade. Bush could see mushroom
clouds over Chicago, NYC, and Oakland because God gave him this
special vision.
So Pat you go baby…and don’t forget to say a prayer for Fritz Kuhn
of the German-American Bund…he died after exposing FDR to be
a big spending Liberal.
Pat “I’m Not A Crook” Buchanan learned all he knows on Morning Joe, a tool of the military oil complex.
Well, I always say, if you’re a fucking filthy racist Nazi sympathizer, best you speak up and identify yourself so we know from whence your agenda cometh.
palmharbor: bump!
“….most of the British thought Hitler had the right to reclaim danzig, which was the reason he invaded Poland, Danzig was the port city who’s population considered themselves German, they always had done prior to the treaty of Versailles which stripped danzig from Germany …I have to say the boilerplate comments on this story are very predicable…”
For the love of Jesus, what in the fuck are you talking about? The UK had the living shit beat out of it with firebombs and rockets — their people had to live in the Underground because of Hitler — millions of Jews, gays, and other so-called undesirables tortured and slaughtered and buried in mass graves — and you are taking up with a Hitler apologist, thinking that if only he could have been appeased with one city he would have stopped his march across the entire planet?
How much would you sacrifice of others to save your own ass, and what should happen to you once you discover when it’s YOUR ass on the line that there’s no appeasing a madman? Should the US have appeased Hitler with London to stave off further conquest? Jesus Christ, man. You’re out of your fucking mind. Snap the fuck out of it.
You are at somewhat off a disadvantage, as we here see Pat Buchanan daily, and hear his consistent support for authoritarian, white-supremacist, misogynist bootheels. So I can forgive you for deluding yourself with his propaganda. Or, maye you’re into those bootheels yourself, if you get my drift.
But one thing’s for certain: appeasing the most peculiarly dangerous psychotic megalomaniac in our recent history is precisely the kind of talk that the typical interplanteary uber-right-wing hack would lose their fucking bowels over should a so-called “liberal” deign mention negotiating with those they identify as our enemy, like the all-powerful Cuba.
I might be a rube with a foul mouth to you, sir, but you are a full on hypocrite, and an asswipe of the highest order, bobbing to and fro in a sea of totalitarian-advocating right wing propaganda with the barest of intellect as a lifeboat.
Get over yourself: 75% of your DNA is shared by a banana.
I’m confused…. So… Does this mean Pat is Pro-Obama now?
History is not as simple as people make out. There are always underlying drives and goals which are not wholly apparent from looking at the official history. History IS written by the victors.
That said, I listened to this as an audiobook, not knowing who the author was. Within the first two minutes, I was on Google looking up the title in order to find out who the Nazi-loving Jew-hating uncritical revisionist moronic gasbag of the book was.
Imagine my surprise to find that it was the same “thank god for terrorists to bring this country together” right-wing neo-fascist gasbag who brings embarrassment to my country each time he opens his mouth.
The man is intellectually deficient, repetitive, infinitely credulous to any sort of apologist, and in denial about the basic facts of human nature.
I hate that he got my money for the audiobook purchase.
What most people are doing is pointing out the obvious, that Patty’s analysis is just plain wrong. What they are missing is that Patty himself is not and maybe never was, an intellectually functional individual. This analysis of Hitler’s intentions says nothing about Hitler, but it says worlds about Patty. The sooner he is ignored, the better.
The sooner he is “retired” the better. His “ilk” are nothing but a drain and bane upon civilized society.
Is it Springtime for Hitler….and Germany?
Pat Buchanan should report IMMEDIATELY for a cranial PET scan…
…that brain tumor might still be operable.
He is one of the “undead”. Meaning that even if we remove his brain, the mouth and the gasbag body lives on in an unholy matrimony with other psychotics that share his crazy thoughts.
Good, it’s finally coming out in the open. Time to wake up! The Fellowship Foundation (the Family), the Cstreet cult that has secretly taken over our government, the one who Buchannons father was an early member, the one who Pats father was an early and important member is ,in reality the American Nazi Party. They are putting the words and actions, and I deas in the teabaggers and Christians brains. Like Hitlers Nazis they have a hatred for social programs for “those not chosen by God” and are funded by the major corporations and churches. It happened in Germany in 1935 it is happening here now. Heil Coe…Heil Barton!
It’s really quite funny that Hitler supporters like Buchanan don’t know whether to shit or go blind. On the one hand they want to show their support for Hitler and Nazism. But on the other hand now they’re being told by the other right wing nuts cases that Hitler and Nazism are ‘liberal’. Too funny watching them deal with trying to figure it all out. they want to kill Obama as much as the fake ‘patriots’ but now don’t know if he’s the second coming of their hero or not. GOD! Only in America!
can anyone criticizing Buchanan point to any evidence that Hitler wanted world domination and, prior to the out break of war, wanted to invade and conquer either the US or UK ? … good luck trying because there is zero evidence of this, you see, people are still believing the old propaganda that “hitler is hell bent on world domination”, this was propaganda by the allies to get people behind the war effort, and it’s still working today.
All evidence suggests that Hitler, pre war, wanted to get germany back to something like it was prior to the unnecessary reparations at the treaty of Versailles, it was a result of those reparations Hitler’s coming to power in the first place, that was the first blunder of the western powers, it was under the conditions of that very harsh treaty that hitler was able to gain a foothold in the first place, he made speeches simply titled “the treaty of Versailles” , hitler was the blowback of the harsh sanctions which were put on the German people post ww1 .
I’ve read the book, and nowhere in it does Buchanan defend Hitler or his actions, he makes it very clear that Hitlers crimes were horrendous, the book is a cold hard look at hitlers foreign policy and how actions by other countries helped shaped it.
70 years later and people are still driven by emotions rather than facts.
That’s why he invaded Poland, knowing full well that Britain had a treaty with Poland and a line drawn in the sand, right Pat? Oh, maybe Hitler didn’t have access to that knowledge and mistakenly invaded Poland, is that it? Or maybe he was incredibly drunk and woke up the next day and asked, “I invaded who?”, is that it, Pat? God, sometimes you are unbelievably full of crap.
reggieperrin: How about Mein Kamph. While it is true that Hitler would have accepted an alliance with Brittian and the US, He like the Family consider the rest of the world to be people who were not chosen by Christ, therefore their lives are of no signifigance other than to be used as labor and disgarded after having taken their wealth for the advancement of Jesus’s Plan. Nazism whether Hitlers version or David Coes Christian version is simply and without room for doubt a plan for world domination. Just Take a look at Iraq.
why doesn’t msnbc fire this asshole
Greetings,
You would be hard pressed to find someone more anti-fascist than myself. I abhor the NAZI state and if there IS a hell then I hope Hitler is burning there right now this very moment.
That said, I have to agree with Buchanan. The fascist state was in no way prepared for a European war let alone a world war. German war production during WWII never matched the output achieved during WWI. Why? because the German nation did not stop or even slow down the production of consumer goods. Here in the United States, we had massive rationing and we converted almost all of our industries into war manufacturing. For example, I’ve held (and fired!) weapons made by Singer (as in the sewing machine) Rockola (as in the jukebox) and other manufacturers you would have never thought would be making guns. Furthermore, millions of our women went to work making weapons of war but the totalitarian fascist state never thought to draft women to work in their factories as they had in WWI. Again, they were not planning for a world war.
Hitler never approved the production of a 4 engine long range heavy bomber because he didn’t see where there would be a need for such a weapon. By the time he did, it was too late. Also, German arms manufacturers pretty much had to go behind his back to produce the assault rifles that were desperately needed for the Russian front.
Oh yeah, all you guys that argue that Germany had some super advanced mighty air force are just wrong. Even France had a larger air force than Germany. Also, we saw what happened when Hitler’s air force attempted to be used in a fashion other than infantry support when they fell from the sky by the hundreds during the Battle of Britain.
Finally, the war between Hitler and Stalin would have happened regardless because Stalin was planning to attack Germany in 1943. All Hitler did was attack first. The way I see it, two dictators fighting it out would not, necessarily, have produced a world war. The curse of entangling alliances (George Washington warned of of them) was what brought all the other players into the conflict.
We can argue all we want about whether Hitler was a sadist, an insane madman or whatever but the Economics of Nazi Germany clearly show that these guys stumbled into a war that they didn’t want and were in no way prepared for.