Right Wing History, Part 2

Guest post by hilzoy

This time it's Pat Buchanan:

"True, U.S. and British troops liberated France, Holland and Belgium from Nazi occupation. But before Britain declared war on Germany, France, Holland and Belgium did not need to be liberated. They were free. They were only invaded and occupied after Britain and France declared war on Germany – on behalf of Poland.

When one considers the losses suffered by Britain and France – hundreds of thousands dead, destitution, bankruptcy, the end of the empires – was World War II worth it, considering that Poland and all the other nations east of the Elbe were lost anyway?

If the objective of the West was the destruction of Nazi Germany, it was a "smashing" success. But why destroy Hitler? If to liberate Germans, it was not worth it. After all, the Germans voted Hitler in."

Nowhere in the entire article, whose title is "Was World War II Worth It?", does Buchanan mention, or even allude to, the Holocaust, which one might have thought would figure in any list of the pros and cons.

[Cross-posted at Obsidian Wings. Note: I usually don't write a lot about the peculiar views of conservatives, but they've been on a roll for the last 24 hours.]

Comments

[Flint]

Its hard to know what to make of Buchanan because he opposed the war in Iraq and wailed over the intelligence communities failures, as well as being an out spoken critic of the Neocons.

The next minute he's coming out with statements like this, devoid of any moral imperative and principle, in an almost unconscious fashion. He is not stupid nor shallow but does he know how bad it makes him sound???

Its too easy to just to do the name calling thing and its ill advised... better to understand what it is you're dealing with (if possible).

Any psychologist or psychiatrists in the audience care to take a swag at this one?

[Byron]

I don't normally bother mentioning this, since I doubt it will ever make a difference. But Germans did NOT "vote Hitler in". The Nazi party never had more than 50% of the vote before Hitler came to power--although it was in a ruling group with another party and the Nazis were the single largest vote getters (around 40%). Hilter, however, as head of the Nazi party had no direct position in government. The president and other government officals kept him out of power until the Nazis and Hitler staged a number of events that made it seem like Germany was under threat from the Communists.

It was almost in a state of panic that Hitler finally managed to convince the aged President von Hindenburg and a majority of the cabinet to name him Chancellor. Hitler partly "tricked" the President and some of the cabinet members into thinking that the military was about to stage a coup, and that only Hitler and the Nazi party had the strength to hold the national together. (It's also most likely that the vote of the cabinet that gave him the Chancellorship was illegal because a new cabinet member was improperly installed in order to get a majority).

It was then through the Chancellorship--which was given to Hitler by an unelected cabinet, although it also required the elected president--that Hitler became a dictator. Hitler took more and more of the president's emergency powers as his own (partly through the Enabling Act). So, it's a myth that Hitler was ever elected by the German people in any sort of non-misleading sense. (See Nazi Party at Wikipedia for more).

[Byron]

I also meant to add that in the two elections before Hitler became Chancellor the Nazi party's vote was declining: 37.3% in July of 1932 (their peak before Hitler began unifying the Nazi party and the German state) and down to 33.1% in November of 1932 (Hitler took power the end of January 1933).

[cheflovesbeer]

I seem to remeber that germany declared war on the good old U.S.of A. Were we supposed to not fight Germany and thier ally Japan that attacked us?

[vanmojo]

Buchanan in a garden variety ass-hat. Does *anyone* seriously listen to what this guy has to say anymore?

[Jeff]

Pat Buchanan is on the record as saying that his best piece of journalism is one where he provided "evidence" that the Nazi gas chambers were incapable of killing anyone, so it's not a huge surprise that he didn't mention the Holocaust.

[mudkitty]

Pretty soon this tripe will be in the history books.

[Njorl]

'Nowhere in the entire article, whose title is "Was World War II Worth It?", does Buchanan mention, or even allude to, the Holocaust, which one might have thought would figure in any list of the pros and cons.'

If you think the western nations would have intervened to stop the Holocaust, you are sadly mistaken.

Buchanan's wet dream fantasy (with blood providing the wetness) is that Germany and Russia would have fought each-other without any harm coming to the western nations. Without a western front, they would have been more evenly matched and wrought even more brutal destruction upon eachother.

[Thom]

Hey, Byron. Exactly right. Let's remember also how Hilter's boys--first the SA, then the SS--dealt with Hilter's political opponents.