[Kat]
I'm surprised we haven't linked this before, but I am finding the back and forth over Buchanan's book extremely interesting. It starts with a predictable book by Buchanan:
Churchill, Hitler and "The Unnecessary War’: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World
I haven't read the book, but I understand the premise is what is in the title. Pretty much, Buchanan insisting that decades of bad decision making by western nations, wars of aggression (by the west!), ending with a very tough Treaty of Versailles in 1918 is what leads to the rise of Hitler and World War II.
Which, if you insisted on viewing WWII as the culmination of totally rational, if occasionally, misguided or illogical, decisions of state, could be a simple and acceptable view of the war. Accept, of course, that throughout the periods that Buchanan samples, Germany is hardly an innocent player or simple victim of other imperial bullies. And, Hitler's Nazism wasn't exactly a flash of anti-semitic militarism straight out of the blue German skies without relationship to any other history.
[continued in flash traffic]
In fact, private, para-military forces were off shoots of "home troops" of the many principalities that made up Germany before and during Bismark's ascendance and the Kaiser's imperial expectations. They became even more powerful post WWI and the break up of the Weimar Republic, eventually leading to the installation of Hitler at the front of a para-military force.
Those are just little facts that Buchanan gives short shrift to in trying to shape history to his ideology. But, I'm an amateur in this ring, comparatively speaking, so I'll shove you over to Gateway Pundit, who has a great round up of the reply, counter and counter-counter reply between Hanson and Buchanan. Then Allahpundit jumps in with a link to Hitchen's take down.
The point that Hanson and Hitchens each conclude is very simple: Hitler was not and never was a rational actor at the helm of the Ship of State, regardless of whether someone can point to actions of Germany that seem the acts of a rational state.
These continuing attempts to reform Hitler into a rational actor are always egregious because they must rely on omitting everything Hitler did before 1939. Like opening concentration camps, killing untermenschen and writing a crazy book called "Mein Kampf", complete with all of his plans laid out and written almost a decade before he actually took power.
One of the worst arguments I've ever seen on the subject is that Hitler really hadn't killed that many people before the war started, so the war must be to blame for Hitler ramping up his murderous activities. That's pretty much where Buchanan comes down on the subject and that also ignores the truth that Hitler was actually trying to mass murder people well before the war began. He just hadn't settled on the most efficient, quiet manner. For all Hitler's railing against the capitalist industrialists raping the Fatherland in "Mein Kampf" (yes, I did read the book), he was extremely fond of the order and efficiency of factories. He wanted to put that to work for the state; in all things.
The only difference that the war made is that he no longer had to keep it somewhat "quiet" and out of sight; particularly, in "occupied" areas. A trench in the woods and machine guns to the back of the head were quick and sufficient. That was before he realized he couldn't totally stomp out all sense of humanity in his troops. Plus the time and money for ammunition and pausing to eradicate populations went against his industrial military timelines. That's when he expanded his industrial death camp machines to other areas like Poland.
In the end, it was not the lack of desire before the war that kept people from being mass murdered on an industrialized scale, it was the lack of appropriate means. At least, the means that Hitler felt fit in with his "New Reich" where the trains always ran on time.
Frankly, I agree with others that analyzing all the political moves up until the rise of Hitler is an interesting academic exercise, but attempting, in any way, to reform Hitler and make him a rational actor at the helm of a rational state is useless, offensive and corrosive. I can see no legitimate reason to do so and it flies in the face of reality. Usually, as is the case with Buchanan, it is an attempt to alleviate any sense of our responsibility towards Israel and make the death of entire populations acceptable as part of the norms or necessities of politics and war. He would like it to be more acceptable for the United States to compromise with Iran and leave Israel to the wolves, allowing the United States to be "America First".
As you might know, I reject that completely. It is one of the reasons that I have argued here very strongly against Iran and its moves to obtain nuclear weapons. Regardless of how rational a state's actions seems to be, or how we understand political machinations, when a national leader begins to speak about wiping a nation or people off the map, repeatedly, and then sets about ramping up development of the very weapon capable of doing it, I get very itchy.
Because, I remember, too, how many people thought Hitler was surely a rational man, only doing what was best for his nation and would, surely, not do anything so horrendous as he said in his speeches or book. It was all just talk to bolster the nation and bring it back from the brink of ruin.
Wasn't it?
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