Hitler did not want war in the same way that Buchanan and the modern GOP do not want bipartisan conflict. It is much preferable for your adversaries to give you everything you want without condition or hesitation. When your adversaries do not immediately surrender and become your mindless servants, they force you into the tragic choice of conflict. All blame for the conflict -- and for the shameful and immoral way in which you conduct yourself during that conflict -- is theirs, not yours.

Just like Republicans don't want to destroy the public option. They just don't want Government run health care. Take another look in the mirror Alice!

"Why d'you keep makin' me hit you sweetie? You know I don't wanna hit you but you keep makin' me!"

Hey, Molly Ivins said it long ago. "Balanced reporting" means that if you're going to have someone on your TV show who's going to say Hitler was bad, you also have to have someone on who says he was a prince, because we all know that the truth must lie somewhere between the two extremes.

Madoff didn't want all his investors to go broke either. He just took all their money and bought himself "stuff." Republicans don't want people to go without health care; all they have to do is get a job with a company that offers health care -- see? Simple! And Pat Buchanan doesn't want most men to sound like they don't have testicles like he does.

Sometimes you just have to call a spade a spade, Pat!

"I want peace! A piece of Poland, a piece of Austria, a piece of France..."

Thanks, Mel.

OK, so Bu cannon is a little hazy on WW2 history.

He is still being used by the networks for his opinions on anything and everything. Punditry is like the Supreme Court, you have the job until you quit or die.

PB- his esteemed expertise on climate change recently spoken on some crappy Sunday News show - PB - "We all won't die" .

Ok, I admit that I am not a history buff. Especially when it is regarding military issues. However, my understanding of WWII is that Hitler was doing eevrything he could to cause a war. He fooled Chamberlain into believing he wanted peace, when he didn't. As a realty, London was nearly blown away, and Europe practically done away with. Hitler wanted total domination. Pat and I must have been taught different eents for what happened with Hitler.

I wrote this on Pat's blog. Obviously they didn't print it. Maybe it'll show up later.

"Good grief, Pat. What the hell are you smoking? There are so many factual errors in this piece I don’t even know where to begin. So I’ll just take one or two points for sanity’s sake. Germany didn’t want to invade Russia and had no long range bombers? Then why were they developing the Dornier Do 19 long range bomber years before WW2, only to be cancelled in 1937 in favor of tactical aircraft. It was part of the “Ural Bombing” program. Along with the Junkers Ju 89, another long range bomber in the same program. Where are the Urals? Why they’re in Russia. What does a “Ural Bombing” program tell us? Why it tells us that the attack on Russia was planned two years before the start of WW2. As for Dunkirk? You assessment that the German’s let the British go is beyond insulting. At the time Churchill had been Prime Minister for 16 days. He gave Operation Dynamo the go ahead. Expecting to only rescue 45,000 instead of the third of a million. Civilian boats and military vessels alike spent ten days rescuing the trapped soldiers. And what were the Germans doing in all this time? If they were doing strafing runs down the beach, they fighting the rear guard line whose mission was to fight to the bitter end, until as many could be rescued as possible. The temporary halt of Hitler on May 24 was called for two reasons, to consolidate German gains, and because the Dunkirk terrain was not suitable for armor. So the Luftwaffe strafing runs began. The battle was renewed in full on May 26, by which time the evacuation was underway. There was no “letting the British go.” That’s just two point, from a mountain of nonsense that you’re written. Which leads me to conclude that you’re either willfully ignorant or a liar. Either one is dangerous.

Here’s a picture of one of the long range bombers you say never existed.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b4/Dornier_DO-19_Uralbomber.jpg

Here’s a picture of British soldiers at Dunkirk trying to fend off a strafing run, which you seem to think must have been code for “letting the British go.”

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/86/Dunkirksoldier1.JPG

Write about something you know, because it clearly isn’t this."

It is difficult to miss the pro-Hitler sympathies of Buchanan in this article. At the very least he is serving as an apologist for Hitler's expansionism in Europe and operates from the assumption that Hitler was not off his rocker---which is a pretty well established fact. I read just recently that as early as WWI, doctors had diagnosed Hitler as a psychopath with hysterical tendencies. I'd say that pretty well covers it. To opine. as Buchanan does, about the motives of a psychopath whose famous book describes quite clearly his intentions with respect to the Jewish people is grotesque.

I disagree with the implied suggestion that Buchanan should be banned. That would itelf give Hitler a posthumous victory by adopting the "book burning" tactic with which he began. Tolerance for hateful opinions is one of the characteristics which distinguishes a free society from an unfree one such as Hitler presided over.

I also distinguish Buchanan's argument that Hitler didn't want War with Britain and France -for which some case can be made-from Holocaust denial. Hitler's attack on the rights of the Jews was unmistakable at the time , and now. But a case can be made that although Hitler always intended to attack the Soviet Union his invasions of Poland was a blunder rather than an intentional provocation-that the appeasement policies of the French and British (and our America Firsters)caused him to draw the wrong conclusion.

It's unfashionable to say this now , but among the pre war Irish Catholic community there was barely hidden support for Hitler because he was seen as an enemy of both the equally hated Communists and British and anti-semitism made that community ready to be apologists for everything short of the Final Solution. The private conversations to which I listened as a child in the 30s reflected the positions of Father Coughlin's "Social Justice" which was for sale on the steps of our parish church.

Just another twit in the long line of douchebaggery ...

Buchanan's whole reason for being is to twist and spin every argument into some sort of "struggle" to divide people against each other. Oh and don't overlook, to sell his books. Buchanan unvaryingly speaks to the poor victimized and picked upon white underdog party (Read: White Men Built This Country in DiogenesJr's TPM reader blog) That kind of crap is what he uses to exploit the feelings of inadequacy found in those who follow his rants. There is something grievously wrong with those rabble rousing euphuists such as Buchanan who replicate through their words the most blasphemous structures of contemporary life. Shame on him and shame on those who lap up his form of divisive tracts. How many followers of Buchanan's writings and rants and hatchet men are content to sit around doing absolutely nothing to contribute to the world around them but hatred, vitriol and chaos? I'd hazard to guess that the number isn't too high. But even then, if it's but a few they can cause such tremendous misery among so many.

Buchanan exists in the realm with the ophidians . .

~OGD~

.

I think many underestimate how much Buchanan's isolationism resounds with all different kinds of people.

My own father, a life long Democrat with pretty liberal tendencies as to domestic issues, was drafted towards the end of WWII, hated it, resented it, and has always believed a similar argument to the one Buchanan is making about Hitler. No amount of argument will change his mind, he feels strongly that he was forced into fighting for bullshit reasons, building the military-industrial powerhouse for the rich or whatever. He's also been pretty strongly against every other war we've been involved in in his lifetime. (Not to mention having a vitriolic dislike of the military and "the rich," something Pat does not.) What Pat says is always of interest to him.

That Buchanan's full oeuvre has an anti-semitic and racist slant doesn't affect that, as the isolationist thing (as well as his experience in paleo conservative government,) is what makes him desirable to a larger audience than the conservative-journal-subscribing crowd where he shows the rest of his self, and is one of the main personas he pushes on TV, actually, it resounds across various party lines.

The anti-illegal-immigrant obsession, which Pat also pushes at times on the tube, resounds across various party lines in a similar fashion, hence Lou Dobbs' continuing audience.

Buchanan's the guy who loved S Africa under apartheid.

Why can't colored people see they are better off living in shacks and serving their white masters!

Sure, Hitler didn't want to start a war.

Hitler wanted to "restore" his own romantic version of the Holy Roman Empire (1st Reich). Problem is those darned Poles were in the way, and unlike Czechoslovakia, they had the resources to at least try to put up a fight. And if it hadn't been the Poles, eventually it would have been the Hungarians, the Serbs, the Ukranians, the Russians...

If they'd just given him all of the land he wanted, there wouldn't have been a war.

Hey, Pat. Sometimes you have to fight a bully, whether or not he "wants" a fight.

They say that der Fuehrer was a fantastic dancer! And that Churchill
couldn't dance a step!

By the way, my father died from the debilitating effects of a German
machine-gun, and had great respect for the common German infantryman.

Can we boycott Buchanan like Glenn Beck, and spread to the four winds the news of what a racist windbag that old fool is?

During his Presidential run, Pat had a rally on a really, really cold night. It was so cold, his supporters had to wear FLANNEL sheets.

I guess this Jew is going to be the only one to say it... I'm glad Buchanan is out there. He is a man of principle, of backbone. He articulates the sentiments that others believe but are too cowardly to say in the mainstream media. I can read him and understand the Hitler apologists of the last 70-odd years in a way I never could before. I can understand the roots of fascism--and why It Can Happen Here. The risk is: "Who knows? Maybe people will fall in line behind him and start a movement that will grow and grow..." OK, it's a big risk. But even then I can study his thinking and be ready.

Has anyone read MEIN KAMPF?? I think his plans for the future are all laid out pretty clearly.

Buchanan's argument is that if Britain and France had not given Poland a war guarantee in 1939 there either would have been no war, as Poland would have ceded Danzig to Germany or any war would have been limited to Germany and Poland. There would thus have been no Holocaust, since the German decision to murder the Jews under their control was made in the entirely different context of general European war in 1941. This is explained in the book Fateful Choices, 1939-1941,by the eminent English historian Ian Kershaw, which discusses the steps along the terrible path.
In 1939, Germany sought to promote the emigration of the Jews under its control, coupled of course with vicious persecution but usually not outright murder. Buchanan has undoubtedly veered close to Nazi apologetics on occasion but not really here.

Buchanan's critics here assume that world conquest was always Hitler's aim but the story is complicated. Certainly in 1939 Germany did not want war with either Britain or France until they declared war on Germany. As Buchanan rightly says, Germany made no territorial claims on France. Admittedly, the Germans may have made additional territorial claims if war had not been declared in 1939 but there is no way to know for sure.

The implicit assumption here is that the outcome of the Second World War was uniformly positive. Certainly the destruction of the Nazi regime was a very good thing, as was the defeat of Japan, but the cost, e.g. 60 million dead,including 90 percent of the prewar Jewish population of Europe, whom the allies did little to save, was hideous. One might also note the use of atomic weapons against Japan. In his History of Zionism, Walter Laqueur says that VE Day in Jewish Palestine was a day of mourning. The story is more complex than the Good War narrative permits. Buchanan may be a flawed messenger but this is not a closed question. I would also note that the attempt to get him off the air is redolent of hostility to freedom of expression.

For those who condemn Pat on a talk string but couldn't possibly out-debate him on TV, you might learn something from reading Schenck v. U.S. , 249 U.S. 47 (1919), the over-rated Oliver Wendell Holmes' attack on free speech, and then read the 2-page flyer titled, "Assert Your Rights", which Charles Schenck was sentenced to 10 years in prison for distributing. You can read it at http://johnwilkenson.com/files/Schenck%27s%20pamphlet.pdf. Poor old Schenck was opposed to WW1 as "bankers' war", just as Buchanan has made some interesting points. Inapposite wannabe-clever demonization of Pat by his intellectual lessers is simply unjustified. It is also b-o-r-i-n-g.

A second world war was insanity for any European nation with the exception of the Soviet Union. France, the keystone to any successful conventional war strategy, lacked the national will and economic infrastructure for a major protracted war. Great Britain was better off in the infrastructure department but her national will and social structure had not really recovered from strains of the first world war. Italy lacked the economic strength for war and Germany was economically and militarily far weaker in 1939, relative to her enemies, than she had been in 1914.

It should have been clear to most thinking men in the Western democracies that another major war would be a losing proposition for the traditional social and economic order. The masses, whose efforts were indispensable to a serious war effort at the front and at home would demand a drastic reordering of social and economic priorities in their own societies in return for becoming cannon fodder and workers in the war effort. So "victory" was not really possible for the West. Even if they won the war they would lose the peace to their own domestic Leftist enemies at home. There were highly organized Leftist forces within every Western nation ready and eager to seize on any sudden strain in the social and economic fabric of their host to bring about a "New Social Order".

The West's only rational strategy, short of avoiding war entirely, was the "short, sharp" war that some British military strategists had suggested would become the successor to the long suicidal slaughter of the first world war. Up until the summer of 1940 this prediction was still a reasonably foreseeable outcome to the struggle. Losses on all sides were still "reasonable" and the damage to and consumption of national economic and social infrastructures was mostly within recoverable limits.

Unfortunately, modern industrial societies, unless they can be quickly overrun, tend to be impossible to defeat on the battlefield in traditional land warfare. They will fight on until their economic infrastructure is exhausted or their populace revolts.

After social and economic revolution at home after the war was "won" the biggest danger to the West was that National Socialist Germany and Communist Socialist Russia would get themselves into a fight to the death and that Communist Russia would win. This would have brought the revolutionary scenario of the first case back to the forefront.

The real issue for the West was not "How do we stop Hitler?" but "How do we preserve our own traditional social and economic order at home?" Even Poland, the ostensible reason for the war, ceased to exist in it's pre-war state after the fighting had ended.

Communist Russia and of course the United States of America were the only real exceptions to the general European predicament. Stalin had invested massively in economic, military and social infrastructure. With its huge land mass, enormous human resources, giant industrial organizations and totalitarian political and social control Russia was the one (partly) European nation with the potential to win a "Total War".

America, of course was physically too far from Europe to ever become directly engaged, and besides had enormous human, industrial, natural and social resources available to wage a war that could never touch its own shores. America could actually profit from the war while paying so low an overall price that not too much social change would occur. As a result the U.S.A. could actually move in a slightly Rightward political direction after the war while Europe lurched to the Left.

Wars do not end by themselves any more than they start by themselves, except through military or economic collapse or popular revolt. Leaders must have a conscious and practical "exit strategy." The first duty of a Western leader must be to preserve the traditional Western, Christian, private property, personal responsibility based social, economic, political and religious system of the West. That may mean avoiding war, (Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968) usually the best alternative, or it may mean engaging in a sort, sharp conflict with a well thought out exit strategy (1991 Gulf War), or it may even mean forming unexpected alliances (Nixon to China).

It may be instructive to note that Czechoslovakia, which did not go to war, emerged from the conflict with its economic, social and industrial base largely intact, so much so that for decades after, when film makers sought a traditional looking European city to film in they often chose Prague, even when the story was set elsewhere, as nearly all of the other cities of similar size had been destroyed during the war and rebuilt afterward.