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The 'Good War' And The Terrible Peace

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By PATRICK J. BUCHANAN

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 18, 2008

In attacking my book "Churchill, Hitler and 'The Unnecessary War" How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World," Victor Davis Hanson, the court historian of the neoconservatives, charges me with "rewriting ... facts" and showing "ingratitude" to American and British soldiers who fought World Wars I and II.

Both charges are false, and transparently so.

The focus of "The Unnecessary War" is on the colossal blunders by British statesmen that reduced Britain from the greatest empire since Rome into an island dependency of the United States in three decades. It is a cautionary tale, written for America, which is treading the same path.

Hanson agrees the Versailles Treaty of 1919 was "flawed," but says Germany had it coming, for the harsh peace the Germans imposed on France in 1871 and Russia in 1918.

Certainly, the amputation of Alsace-Lorraine by Bismarck's Germany was a blunder that engendered French hatred and a passion for revenge. But does Teutonic stupidity in 1871 justify British stupidity in 1919?

In 1918, Germany accepted an armistice on Wilson's 14 Points, laid down her arms and surrendered her High Seas Fleet.

Yet, once disarmed, Germany was subjected to a starvation blockade, denied the right to fish in the Baltic Sea, and saw all her colonies and private property therein confiscated by British, French and Japanese imperialists, in naked violation of Wilson's 14 Points.

Germany was sliced in half, dismembered, disarmed, saddled with unpayable debt and forced, under threat of further starvation and invasion, to confess she alone was morally responsible for the war and all its devastation - which was a lie, and the Allies knew it.

Where was Hitler born?

"At Versailles," replied Lady Astor.

Two years after Brest-Litovsk, Churchill himself was urging Britain to revise Versailles, bring Germany into the Allied fold and intervene in Russia's civil war.

As for my thesis that the British war guarantee to Poland of March 31, 1939, was the "Fatal Blunder" that guaranteed World War II and brought down the British Empire, Hanson is mocking:

"Buchanan argues that, had the imperialist Winston Churchill not pushed poor Hitler into a corner, he would have never invaded Poland in 1939, which triggered an unnecessary Allied response."

Hanson should get his prime ministers straight. It was Neville Chamberlain who issued the war guarantee to Poland after the collapse of his Munich accord.

Hansen implies that I portray Hitler as a misunderstood victim. This is mendacious. Hitler's foul crimes are fully related.

And was it moral, for Britain to promise the Poles military aid they could not and did not deliver, thus steeling Polish resolve to resist Hitler and guaranteeing Poland's annihilation?

During trips to Moscow, Churchill bullied the Polish prime minister into ceding to Stalin that half of his country Stalin had gotten from his devil's pact with Hitler, and yielded to Stalin's demand for annexation of the Baltic republics and Bolshevik rule of a dozen nations of Eastern and Central Europe.

Was it worth 50 million dead, so Stalin, whose victims, as of Sept. 1, 1939, were 1,000 times Hitler's, could occupy not only Poland, for which Britain went to war, but all of Christian Europe to the Elbe?

Patrick Buchanan's column is distributed by Creators Syndicate Inc.

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