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

Pat Buchanan is a former presidential candidate and famed political pundit who has a penchant for writing well researched modern history books. "Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War" is a long sober look at how Great Britain lost its empire through diplomatic blunders.
Buchanan makes these observations:
1. Great Britain had no business going to war with Hitler in 1939 over Poland. Buchanan claims that if Poland had given Danzig back to the Reich the war could have been prevented. This is conjecture. However, Buchanan is completely on target when he notes that England had no business dealing in Central and Eastern European politics. Eastern nations came within militarily aggressive Nazi Germany's sphere of poltical rulership.
Buchanan helps the reader understand how dangerous are mutually supportive military policies such as the Triple Entete and Triple Alliance in World War I and the guarantee of help from Britain to Poland if the latter were attacked by Germany.
2, Great Britain was woefully unprepared to fight Germany in 1939. Time was needed to strengthen British arms. When war was declared the British were unable to aid the Poles and suffering a catastrophe at Dunkirk.
3. Buchanan feels that by staying out of war with Germany, the British and isolationistic inclined Americans would have left the major fighting to the Russians. The two evil dictators would have fought it out alone without the 400,000 deaths suffered by both the USA and Great Britain in World War II. Churchill and FDR were fooled by the monstrously cruel Josef Stalin who slaughtered millions of his own countrymen.
4. Buchanan believes with many historians that the cruelly harsh peace meted out to Germany at the Versailles Conference of 1919 led to the rise of German Nazis under the evil genius Adolf Hitler. The blockade of Germany led to millions of deaths including women and children. The Germans felt they had been stabbed in the back by the Western powers seeking revenge. World War I and II were really two acts of the same tragedy. Over 50 million people, most of whom were civilians, would die in World War II. The war was a European Civil War from which the world has yet to recover.
5. Weak British leaders such as Neville Chamberlain, Anthony Eden and even the great Churchill made disastrous mistakes in dealing with Hitler and Japan. Churchill ceded Eastern Europe to the cruel Stalin at Yalta believing the Georgian's promise to treat these lands with justice.
6. Churchill failed in his three main goals to: a.Keep the British Empire strong; 2. Oppose a socialistic Britain. 3. Defeat Communism. His dealmaking with Stalin led to the imposition of the Iron Curtain and the enslavement of Eastern European lands by Stalin from 1945 to 1989.
7. Churchill, says Buchanan, is also to be faulted for his hatred of India and non-whites, the use of chemical warfare in Iraq and his desire to adhere to the Morgenthau Plan to turn Germany into an impoverished rural nation. (This plan was not implemented by the US Government)
8. Buchanan says President Bush with his belief in making democracy the goal in all the nations on earth is following a failed policy of democratic fundamentalism which will led to the failure in Iraq and hatred of the US abroad in the world. Buchanan says Bush is an admirer of Churchill who also was a blunderer on the international front.
9. Buchanan is a pessimist on Western leadership and hegemony in our conflicted globe.
10. Hitler, says the author, did not want to fight Great Britain. Hitler wanted to rule the European continent while Great Britain ruled the waves and her colonies. Buchanan does not believe Hitler wanted to attack the United States but was content to reign as a European dictator. This is a debatable point.
This is a controversial book which looks with a fine toothed comb at the historical record. It is an eye opener for students of history. I believe the next American President should read this book and give one to every member of his new Cabinet.

This book makes an excellent case that one of the most destructive people of the 20th Century was Winston Churchill. At first I didn't quite know how to take the argument. However, Mr. Buchannan makes the case that it was Winston Churchill who did more than any one politician to set the United Kingdom against Germany.

Most American's can understand Europe of about 1900. It was a really nice place. Yes, it was not perfect and no place is perfect. However, what is to consider is nearly 40% all immigrants to America didn't make it. It was a hard life in America and Europe was actually an easier place to live than the USA.

Buchannan really does his homework. Condider this snippet. Churchill discounts the effects of submarine and aircraft on capital ship. However, most of the capital ships lost by the United Kingdom in WWII were lost to either aircraft or submarines. This writer knows fully the debacle of when the Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse were sunk by IJN aviation units in the South Eastern Pacific just after Pearl Harbor. Churchill discounted any action by both the "racially inferior" Japanese and aircraft. He was seriously wrong on both accounts.

The book is full of stories like this. Either the British or Churchill seriously estimate a threat or invent an incident.

Buchannan makes one of the most damning indictments against a single politician of the 20th Century. When Churchill takes the office of First Sea Lord on the eve of the Great War the British empire was at the height of her power. Germany was establishing herself as a strong government with motivated and well educated workers. Russia was on the verge of Democratic reforms. France was the pearl of the west. When Churchill dies in the early 1960s the British empire is gone. Germany is destroyed. Russia is controlled by an corrupt and evil government. The former colonies of France and Britain are involved in great civil wars.

Buchannan has finally broken from the ranks of historians who say Churchill and the British leadership did no wrong in both wars. Buchannan makes a convincing argument that Churchill is a mere agent of chaos and merely spreads destruction where ever he goes. Buchannan puts the argument forward that Britain has some sort of death wish and this has poisoned Western Civilization.

It takes 50 years for objective history to be written about any one subject. WWII added another 25 years to the fact. But now the serious historian can start to get a whole picture of the 30 years wars of the 20th Century and that was caused by Britain and Winston Churchill. Yes, I accept the argument by Buchannan. He does a great job of selling his case.

Five Stars.

Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World
This book should be a mandatory reading in shools. I lived through those years in Europe and this book is one of the books which describes things as they really happened.

The thesis that WWI and WWII were really 2 halves of the same war has long been accepted in many circles. Buchanan misses the point however demonizing Churchill.

The jingoism that sparked WWI was widespread all across Europe. Kaiser Wilhelm II was a capricious megalomaniac that nobody could control. He started his reign by dismissing Otto Von Bismarck. Also the Prussian Junkers grossly overestimated German military might. Germany regarded Britain as an economic rival and security threat. Germany was actively engaged in an arms race with Britain. Germany would likely have found a reason to declare war on Britain if Britain hadn't done it response to the invasion of Belgium by Germany. France wanted revenge for loosing Alsace-Lorrain to the Germans in 1870. Austria-Hungary and Imperial Russia were both destabilized with their own problems to the point of internal collapse.
If not the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo, then something else would have just as easily started WW I.
Ironically, in 1914 America and Russia were the only nations that did not want war. Britain, France and Germany were all under the delusion that any war would be short and that they could win decisively.

Buchanan inaccurately lays too much responsibility for what happened on Churchill.

Set aside 20/20 hindsight and fast forward to 2008. Buchanan has publicly posited (using the same logic behind his historical analysis) that in 1991 after the breakup of the USSR, NATO should have been dissolved. And the countries Europe cut loose to fend for themselves. Factoring in everything that has happened since 1991 - ask yourself if you agree - this is the real measure of how you view his book.

"All around us now we see that the west is passing away.." begins the book. Buchanan resoundingly shows that the future of disgrace and loss we now face was not foreordained, but instead caused by impetuous decisions made by British and American leadership that involved the West in an unnecessary fratricidal war. The obstruction of some legitimate territorial claims of the German peoples. The vindictive madness of Versailles. The folly of the war guarantee to Poland, the diversion of Hitler from his goal of annihilating Stalin, the loss of the captive nations behind the Iron curtain, even the roots of the Empire's entry into the Great War- all are convincingly, unanswerably laid out by Mr. Buchanan. In addition, he gives the lie to the cult of Churchill worship, which has left a costly legacy of political foolishness that persists to this day.