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

What we have here is an anti-Bush book masquerading as an anti-Churchill book. Buchanan spends almost the entire book destroying Winston Churchill's reputation, yet concedes that he was a great war leader. He blames Churchill for losing the Empire, yet winning the war. But Neville Chamberlain lost the Empire because he was neither a war leader nor a statesmen of any value whatsoever.

What made Chamberlain so bad was his indecisiveness. First he tries to appease Hitler, then he reverses course and goes to war with him. This vacillation was fatal. Churchill was right about Munich. At that point, Hitler could be beaten. But Buchanan disputes this. Hitler's own generals would not have supported a three front war with the Czechs, French and British, and the Russians forming the three fronts. No way Hitler survives this. Chamberlain gave away the store in hopes of containing Hitler, but it fell apart. Humiliated, he tries to bluff Hitler and fails again. Chamberlain failed to stop Hitler and gives up on appeasement when that was all that was left to him. Total failure.

At least Churchill saved England itself. Without England, there could be no empire. Chamberlain failed on both accounts. Churchill rescues England, but by then it was too late to save the Empire.

What makes this book really bad is that Buchanan devotes the end of it to compare Bush with Churchill. Bush's steadfastness with Iraq becomes a liability, not an asset. Bush admires Churchill's steadfastness, and that is his great fault, according to Buchanan. Buchanan is just flat wrong on that one.

In this book Mr. Buchanan reviews the historical literature surrounding the origins of WWI and WWII. He catalogs the rise of Hitler and Churchill in their prospective countries. He proceeds to detail their interactions, with an emphasis on the unnecessary and impossible war guaranty that England gave Poland in 1939, which led to the German invasion of Poland, kicking off WWII. He then describes how this all caused the decline of the British Empire, the rise of the USSR in eastern Europe and how America is falling into the same trap in the 21st century. I have read the last 6 of his books and I feel it is his best yet. The narrative clear and cogent, with his assertions backed by numerous references. I highly recommend this book!

I've read more than a few of Pat Buchanan's books. Some are interesting, many are what I call "a pamphlet stretched out to hundreds of pages". This one is a compelling read.

This is probably one of the best books Mr. Buchanan has written. His extensive research backs up a conclusion that Great Britain, and the US, may have been better off not having gone to war with Germany twice. Poor alliances and promises sucked them into these conflicts, essentially bankrupting England.

Through the lens of history we can see that Germany didn't threaten any vital interest of either the British Empire or the United states. His research is pretty convincing that in both wars Germany had no desire, at least when they started, of tangling with England. Nor did they have the resources to threaten much of England's Empire. Maybe it would have been prudent to keep the powder dry, so to speak, and tool up the military in case war was necessary. Even the dullest student of history can conclude that both the US and England were ill prepared to go to war. Twice.

The book leaves you with some compelling questions. What would have happened between Stalin and Hitler had Britain and the US not declared war? In retrospect, ponder the decades of having to deal with the USSR.

He ties things up in the end, applying lessons from both great wars to todays time. How many times do we commit the military when no US interest is at stake. Was Kosovo worth it? how about Somalia? Do we commit the military to Georgia because ethic Russians want to be part of Russia? The parallels to Poland pre WW2 are interesting. Were those alliances with France and Poland worth the cost of the British Empire?

This book ranks up there with some of the best historical analysis I've read.

For all the World War Two history buffs who have ever pondered such questions as 'Why the British Army was not annihilated at Dunkirk' or 'Why the Germans never built much of a Navy'... here is a book that provides extremely plausible explanations for these puzzles. Pat Buchanan's writing is lively, clear and smooth-flowing. He works from the most certain facts about the outcome of World War Two: That Great Britain lost her empire and became a small, second-rate island nation; that millions of innocent people died in the maelstrom; and that the Communists came to rule Central and Eastern Europe in a brutal fashion that impoverished these unfortunate nations for decades. From these incontestable facts Pat Buchanan sifts history to see if it was all so necessary or unavoidable. His conclusion is that it was not unavoidable; and that the biggest blunderers were British leaders and most specifically Winston Churchill. Buchanan postulates that perhaps it would have been better to allow Hitler to continue expanding into eastern Europe (allowing Poland to fall) where it would have eventually been inevitable that a German-Russian regional war would have ensued - but not the massive War that instead engulfed the world. His exposition is that Communism would have been destroyed by this war and the Cold War averted. Buchanan also provides substantial evidence that these eastward movements represent Germany's true aim: To become the singular power of Eastern and Central Europe - and that world domination was not Hitler's true goal. This book's claims may be considered audacious and controversial by some, but the author has done his homework in backing them up. Pat Buchanan has provided an epochal book on the subject - this is a magnificent piece of work that will most likely generate study and debate for a long time.

Patrick Buchanan and I come from very different parts of the political spectrum. I was surprised to find his theories well thought out, well supported, and generally convincing.

My favorite quote from the book: ". . . [P]reventive war is 'like committing suicide out of fear of death.'"

Buchanan's main point is that although Britain was on the winning side in both WWI and WWII, these victories were Pyrrhic. Britain's empire and its dominant place in the world were destroyed. Britain could have avoided involvement in both these wars, and the world might well have turned out better. In both wars, Britain entangled itself in a conflict in which it had no direct interest. Particularly crucial was Britain's guarantee of the borders of Poland against Nazi aggression. This essentially turned over the decision of whether or not Britain should go to war to other nations, to Britain's ultimate detriment.

Buchanan does not spend a lot of time discussing the implications of all this. In my opinion, it is quite clear that the U.S. is in serious danger of going down a similar path of arrogance leading to ultimate destruction. We would be wise to seriously rethink our national policy of guaranteeing the borders of other countries. This is quite obvious in relation to the Vietnam war, but the U.S. is still making the same mistakes elsewhere. In the meantime, the United States itself is experiencing serious declines in its financial system and quality of life.

I would call Buchanan's "Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War" a don't-miss book.

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.

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.

Readers expecting bust-`em-in-the-chops Buchanan stuff will be surprised. Either way you view what the "chops" part implies, the author does not serve up what most people expected, considering his usual expressed views. The title should have been the giveaway that this book was going to be unusual. One "expects" Mr. Buchanan to take a dim view of President Franklin Roosevelt (he does), a critical view of Adolph Hitler (he does), but of Winston Churchill? Prime Minister put-up-yer-dukes Churchill? Scorn indeed is what serves up on the man, backed with an exhausting amount of historical logic. Gracious, how much more entertaining can a writer be! But wait - Mr. Buchanan also in the last parts of "Unnecessary War" talk about his dislike of the Iraq War, and even about our lack of national interest in places like (how lucky can your timing get!), Georgia and Poland.

If the word "isolationist" can still be used, clearly Patrick Buchanan qualifies as a medium-strength isolationist as written in "The Unnecessary War." Somewhere, about two-thirds through the book, Buchanan's main point shines through: the United States would have been far better off today NOT being lead into WWII by Winston Churchill. Rather we should have let the major totalitarian giants smash themselves into exhaustion and eventual destruction against each other. Though this point of view is not shared by many, the theme running through all this might be the unintended downstream consequences of our continual tendency to "help" everyone else in the world. Starting his story before WWI, the author spends much time building his case for the above conclusion.

The most notable weakness of "The Unnecessary War" has to be the confusing cause-and-effect reasoning Buchanan uses. Too often one reads about a particular person as being the fault of some bad event in history, only to find out that the event turned out to be benign or salutary. Same person, same event. The astute reader should be able to pick out this sort of thing as it comes along. The adventure of reading this contrarian-style history is worth picking up a copy, and takes about two weeks to go through. Don't believe all those reviewers who call "The Unnecessary War" boring!

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.

Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War by P.J.Buchanan.

Published by Crown Publishing, Hard cover 544 pages $29.95.

How to lose the largest empire the world has ever seen, in three decades.

I have the highest regard for Pat Buchanan. He is arguably the best president America never had. As a writer, he is a victim of modern technology. His prose in Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War, is closer to a blog than a literary work, and his dependence on Lexis-Nexis, is apparent on every page. That said, Buchanan is a journalist, and as a journalist he has written a short history of the world from 1914 to 1945.

If the thought of ploughing through a history book fills you with foreboding, let me assure you that Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War, is a page turner par excellence. In all the 544 pages, you will not find a wasted word or a superfluous phrase. But be warned: you must read the entire book. Buchanan is guilty of overstating his arguments for and against as the work progresses. Depending upon your particular sympathies, there are chapters that will cause you to defenestrate the book in a moment. But as you progress, your own particular point of view will be addressed.

Fundamentally, Buchanan postulates that America by design and Sir Winston Churchill as a consequence, destroyed the British Empire.

The planks of his platform are that Britain did not have to enter the war against Germany in 1914, but because they did, they escalated a German/French squabble into a world war. He essentially says the same thing about WWII.

His position is that as Kaiser Wilhelm was closely related to Queen Victoria, and wanted to be friends with Great Britain. He uses a similar argument with Fuhrer Hitler. Indeed there is a similar suggestion that Hitler respected Great Britain and went out of his way not to antagonize her.

This places Buchanan's total thesis on very thin ice. It fails to appreciate that Great Britain is an island, and as such is paranoid about hostile forces occupying the continental coast 21 miles away across the English Channel. Once a hostile power can compete with the Royal Navy, and blockade Great Britain, they are finished. Both the Kaiser and the Fuhrer were intimidated by Britain's maritime supremacy.
Of course Great Britain could have turned a blind eye to Prussian aggression, but it would have had to build up its defences and wait for a Teutonic Europe to crush arrogant little Britain. Surely it was smarter to fight them in Flanders in 1914 than the Wield of Kent in 1925?

Buchanan contends that dear old Adolf was misunderstood, and only wanted to regain the land taken from Germany at the Versailles Conference in 1919. Does Buchanan seriously believe that Britain (like America), should have stood by while Germany occupied (and destroyed), all of Europe, murdered all the Jews, and enslaved everyone east of Bratislava?

He further suggests that Great Britain's declaration of war against Germany was tantamount to suicide. And it was. Churchill knew that Great Britain could only fight for three years, and then she would be bankrupt. He also knew that someone had to have the guts to stand-up to the Nazi hordes. What he didn't expect, was that America would exploit the situation, and shake Great Britain down, and financially screw her into the ground. Roosevelt's plan was derailed when Hitler declared war on America. Had that not happened, America would have sat it out while Russia and Germany tore themselves to pieces on the Russian Steppes and our courageous Dough-Boys could have occupied what was left.

Buchanan seems to favour this Mafioso foreign policy. An analogy might be standing by as a hoodlum attacks and robs an old lady, and when they have run off, stealing her shoes.

There are occasions in life when the honorable thing to do, does not pass the Enron test of business efficiency.

It is suggested that the genesis of Britain's problems was giving up a treaty with Japan at America's insistence. Buchanan seems to think that an alliance with Britain had some kind of calming effect on the war-like tendencies of warrior nations. A Japan/Britain alliance would have gentled the Japanese condition to the extent that occupying Manchuria and China would no longer hold any attraction for them. A similar alliance with the nice old Kaiser, would have seen Germany writing loud music, and slapping their Lederhosen for the rest of the millennium.

Too much of Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War, relies on quotes from other writers to support a given thesis. These are opinions not source material. However, Buchanan comes into his own in the final chapter where the mirror of old Europe generally and Great Britain in particular is reflected on the United States of today.

Whether you are American or British, this book is tough to read - but you must read it. For, in the words of George Santayana:

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

End

Pat Buchanan's book was long due. As a historian I am aware that is almost impossible to be objective about the two world wars that caused so much sorrow and casualties in the US. The feelings associated with WWII were too painful for somebody to be objective and to acknowledge that both sides committed crimes against mankind. We had to wait for 60 years before people have the courage to tell the story of both wars as they were. We needed historians to look at the facts and conclude that the Allies particularly England were not the nice people that most war movies want us to believe they were. Buchanan's very entertaining description of Churchill and of England plotting to destroy Germany in WWI just because of their economic might is courageous and in line with what most historians believe now. An insightful research on the vengeful Versailles treaty clearly helps us to understand why Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933. The book also points out to the other side of the coin when it mentions the Allies war crimes the carpet bombing of German and Japanese cities, the ethnic cleansing of 13 million Germans and the killing in the process of 2-3 millions of people. The Yalta conference will go into history as a shameful chapter of US and British history because of the surrendering of Eastern Europe without their consent to a dictator and in consequence much worse than Munich 1938. This book is a must read for anybody who wants to find a new refreshing look at the history of the two world wars that devastated Europe and the world and eliminated for good the British and French empires. It adds an interesting twist what if WWI had not happened.

A new challenging and thoughtful review of 20th century history. All our old assumtions are questioned and lets face it that century was the worst in human history other than possibly the 14th when plague wiped out a third of the European population.

I think Mr. Buchanan might not have come to the conclusion that Churchill should have made peace with Hitler if he was aware of "Hitler's Second Book: The Unpublished Sequel to Mein Kampf" edited by Gerhard L. Weinberg and published in German in 1961, and in the United States in 2003.

Not to be confused with the Second Volume of "Mein Kampf" or the infamous forged "Hitler Diaries", "Hitler's Second Book" consists of the notes dictated by Hitler to his publisher Max Amann in June 1928 and kept in the safe of the Nazi publishing house until seized by the US Army in 1945.

Hitler had evidently put off publication after he realized that it gave away too much of his thinking, not only his low opinion of his political allies and intentions for the Jews, Slavs and Communists in the near future, but also the inevitability of war (allied with the British Empire) against Greater Germany's ultimate rival - the United States.

Editor Weinberg discovered the unedited manuscript in 1958 in a folder marked "Draft of Mein Kampf" while microfilming the US Army archives of confiscated Nazi files in Alexandria, Virginia prior to their repatriation. The US had transferred ownership to the Bavarian government and the Munich Institute for Contemporary History was eager to publish it, so Weinberg entered into an agreement for them to publish his annotated edition in 1961 with no one to make any profit from it.

Unfortunately in 1962 while arranging the publication of the American edition, he found a pirated edition with a bad translation of his German text was already in print, and he couldn't sue to stop them since he was not suffering any financial loss.

Buchanan does us all a service. He engages in measured speculation of what might have occurred if the world's leaders had made different decisions. He does not make the case that World War Two was of no interest to America. Rather, Pat argues that that war unfolded as a result of very poor decisions of the part of Europe's leaders. The scope and difficulty of the Second World War was compounded by further poor decisions. This is not to say that ole' Pat didn't want to fight this war because it would positively impact Jews. No, what he says is that it was the wrong time and style for a war that imperiled Western Civilization. So with that in mind, read it and enjoy. He also provides some very strong evidence that Churchill was the source of many poor decisions.

I just finished the book. It's a long read, perhaps too long, but it goes fairly quickly. The book is quite engrossing. It is, by far, the most thoroughly documented book I've ever seen. Buchanan painstakingly cites the world-shaping statesmen and diplomats of that era.

It is absolute paranoid nonsense to suggest that Buchanan treats Hitler as a rational, even sympathetic, character in this book. (Such an accusation is usually leveled by Jewish intellectuals, and quasi-intellectuals, who incessantly whine that Buchanan is anti-semitic.) Buchanan has been slandered enough by such people. Buchanan's thesis is, and always has been, that Hitler is the greatest force of evil in the 20th century. He does show Hitler as an opportunistic and prescient leader, however....and that's no crime because it's true.

You can reject this book's thesis. But you can't argue with the fact that Buchanan quotes, and quotes, and re-quotes, the most prominent leaders of the day to support his views. I don't know where Buchanan found the time to write this thing. It is so darned well-researched, it is utterly infallible.

If your are looking for someone to name Winston Churchill a great man, do not approach Patrick J Buchanan. In his heavily researched tome, Buchanan indicates that World War II was more the product of a warmongering Churchill and a naive Neville Chamberlain than anything coming out of Berlin. Maintaining that Hitler sought neither world domination nor war with Britain, Buchanan explains the steps that led Europe to encounter both. The final fruit of this, which he lays in the lap of Winston Churchill is a divided Europe under Communist oppression and the loss of the British Empire.

Buchanan, outside of the stereotype of the conservative, was never for the Iraq war. He contends that USA replaced the once great British Empire and is now walking down the same path.

Buchanan acts as Monday Morning quarterback to the events of the 20th Century which he calls one European civil war. The book is a fascinating read and leads one to question what might have been had what he calls the great blunder not happened.

This certainly is a great book to give a less western view of the Twentieth century and an alternative view to those whom many consider the hero of the Allied Forces--Winston Churchill.

But further, what many may easily forget, Buchanan, a veteran of the Nixon administration and a conservative was vehemently against the Iraq war that continues to rage. He also warns of the problems with fighting a war on two fronts as the US now does. He clearly holds "W" in the same light as he holds Churchill.


I am happy to have bought and read the book.

Buchanan draws a distinct line between history as a science and politicians manipulation of historical facts in order to serve their aims.

Was Britain's guarantee of Poland in 1939 heroically cynical or imperially suicidal? Why did the pacifist Chamberlain, who had no means of aiding Colonel Jozef Beck and Poland against the Germans, commit the UK to Poland's defense (encouraging Beck to spurn negotiation on Danzig)?

Did victory over Hitler (six years later) preserve the British empire or sacrifice it on an altar of vanity? Did the victorious UK, laden with debt and obligation to the US (which took full postwar advantage) fall irreparably to third world status? Did England (Churchill) amorally welcome an equally evil regime (Stalinism) into east Europe?

Such questions are pondered in this book. Was Churchill the mythic hero routinely disinterred and used by neocons to plan new wars, or was he a complex opportunist with a history of strategic blunders and (later) switching sides on same issues?

Though some may say this is artful advocacy, this work raises many valid issues and is well worth reading. Churchill was indeed as human as the rest of us, and dear old England made some fatal choices in the mid-20C. Those choices (ultimately) led to the sacrifice of a grand empire that benefited the few at the expense of the many (readers may want to read Ian Kershaw's `Making Friends with Hitler').

If there is a flaw in this book it's the author's allusion to the Britain's continental `balance of powers' policy and subsequent failure to examine this policy in detail (after all, Chamberlain merely followed two centuries of successful policy in picking continental underdogs to urge them to kill off each other).

It's surprising (and laudable) the author didn't cite Rudolf Hess's 10 May 1941 enigmatic mission to the Duke of Hamilton as proof of spurned peace. Or the attempts of Lord Londonderry (Churchill's cousin, a WWI veteran with an annual income of £100,000 and little connection to those that actually worked for him and maintained his income, who thought Hitler wonderful).

Perhaps most lamentable is the author's omission of the price France (as the underdog in British policy, immobilized by communists and apologists like Lord Londonderry) paid. France lost over 1.4 million men in WW1 (1914-18) - more men than the United States - a much larger nation - has lost in it's entire history (1607-2008).

Clemenceau uttered a gem when confronted 20 May 1919 ("Que voulez vous que je fasse entre deux hommes dont un se criot Napoléan et l'autre Jésus Crist?) "What do you expect when I'm between two men- one of whom (Lloyd George) thinks he is Napoleon and the other (Wilson) thinks he's Jesus Christ? Both (Lloyd George and Wodrow Wilson) had no personal stake in the war - they had the luxury of academic interpretation and philosophy (they got France, under the `balance of powers' policy to do the hard lifting).

Clemenceau's nightmare materialized within six weeks in 1940: France lost another 90,000 men and 200,000 wounded (the US, wisely, sent it's best wishes).

This book is well worth reading, but incomplete. The warning it sends on imperial mistakes is timely, and I take that to be the real message. Certainly the past few years routine disinterment of Churchill to aid foreign adventures advocated by a few `poly-sci' ideologues is warning enough.

This one is typical PB. Well researched and carefully thought out thesis. A little too dense for me, but the illumination of historical events alone is worth the price. I cannot accept Pat's conclusions, however and feel that, for the first time, he is dangerously off course with this one.

As interesting as any fiction you might read, except, it is history and you know what is going to happen, but you find yourself wanting to know what happens next!

Buchanan's work is not a Macro view of the war, it is an adventure into the microcosm of world leaders who determined the outset of WWII. He'll take you to the beginning, WWI, and lead you down the path into the how's and why's of WWII. But from a fresh perspective. From the perspective of world leaders, there quotes, there actions and there blunders that lead us to WWII.

It is not a yawn of a history book, it has the feeling of history with the excitement of fiction.

Cons:
No book is perfect and from time to time, Buchanan would reiterate topics repeatably or in long winded form.

I also think it would have been a plus to dedicate a small chapter on how Hitler started the war machine.

Overall I found Mr. Buchanan's effort well worth reading. However, there seemed to be far too much repetition in the text, almost as if a filler was needed to reach a specific chapter's word count.

As my bias, I would have preferred the scope of Mr. Buchanan's book to have included America. An expansion of America's purpose in having the British end the Anglo-Japanese Treaty, for example. And then the role that FDR and his administration played in the march to "The Unnecessary War." The tale of the SS St. Louis, the American "commitments" to the Poles, to the French, ..., etc., all would provide a broader context to our understanding and beliefs now these sixty-plus years on.

While the references an author has used can always be pointed to as their holding a bias, from strictly an American perspective, in addition to Bailey, Chamberlin, and Tansill, I would have also liked to see Sanborn's "Design for War: A Study of Secret Power Poltitics 1937-1941" and Beard's "American Foreign Policy in the Making 1932-1940" also referenced.

As to "What-ifs" - No Undeclared War in the Atlantic, No Lend-Lease, ... No commitment by America to the British and Dutch to fight for their colonies against the Japanese, ... Many, many "What-ifs."

But then, the American "Arsenal for Democracy" really was the jobs program that ended the American "Great Depression" and began a multi-generational debt obligation.

"Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War," demonstrates just how dangerous a good writer can be when he is in possession of bad ideas. Patrick Buchanan, the well-known television pundit and former Presidential candidate, is essentially exploiting the current discontent with the Iraq war to revive the isolationist arguments of the largely pro-German, anti-English "America First" movement of the 1930s and 1940s in a radical and misguided effort at historical revisionism, recasting World War II as somehow just as "unnecessary" as the current quagmire in the Middle East. All the usual suspects are here: the "perfidious Albion" obsession, which sees England's every move as an attempt to lure its allies into armed conflict, the supposedly needless decision of Britain and France to draw a line in the sand at Hitler's invasion of Poland, the imponderable and unlikely "what-if" thesis that Hitler would have turned his attention to defeating Soviet Russia had the western allies let him have his way, and on and on. In the hands of a more reasoned and less polemical writer - Nial Fergusson, in particular, from whom Buchanan borrows all too freely - these ideas would at least have sufficient historical context to make them worthy of reasoned consideration. But Buchanan is a debater by nature and profession, trained to stake out extreme positions, advocate them ceaselessly, and never cede an inch of ground to intelligent counter-arguments. Basically, any book that paints Winston Churchill as one of 20th-century history's greatest villains while casting Hitler merely as a potentially useful bulwark against Communism cannot be considered as anything more than an attempt to garner attention through provocation, albeit skillfully done by Buchanan, whose gift for words could really be put to better uses.

Pat Buchanan's masterwork: CHURCHILL, HITLER AND THE UNNECESSARY WAR is one of the two finest works I have ever read on the 1910-1945 pre-war and wartime period. I have read and studied this period and the related histories of the US, Britain, France, Italy, Germany and Austro-Hungary, and felt comfortable in what I "knew" even though I had suspicions of much else. Mr. Buchanan's magnificently researched and footnoted book not only confirmed much that I did know but also provided an abundance of new data and revelations that were both startling and saddening.

The book reads like a novel but is some of the most carefully crafted historical explanation I have ever read and should be required reading in the schools of the countries mentioned (though I'm sure they'd resist the exposure tooth and nail.) I look forward to re-reading this book in the near future and I have recommended it to numerous acquaintances. This is a "must read" book and one that will forever cause you to see the two world wars and their tragic aftermath in a new and, unfortunately, humbling light.

I never thought I would be writing a favorable review of a book by Pat Buchanan but, as that infamous Catholic theologian Martin Luther once said, "Heresy, so be it. It is still the truth."

Buchanan has written a masterpiece. Built on the foundation set down by the late great British historian, A.J.P. Taylor, Buchanan's book contains much that is new, is meticulously and exhaustively documented, and extremely well written. Whatever else he may or may not be, Buchanan has established himself as a scholar and a major historian of the twentieth century. He of course has also demonstrated great moral and intellectual courage.

Buchanan shows in detail that WW 11, far from being a "good" war, was, as his title says, a truly unnecessary war that resulted from an endless series of bad intelligence, bad policies, bad decisions, and bad moral behavior by the "best and brightest" i.e. the leaders, of all of the major powers over a period of 30 years, from 1914 to 1945. Never was the faith, trust, and fate of so many, so mismanaged by so few.

In 1914, the Kaiser may have briefly dreamed that Germany might become the dominate power in Europe. Hitler was even less ambitious. He dreamed that all Germans in central and Eastern Europe who wished to, would be reunited, and that Germany would dominate Eastern Europe. He probably intended eventually to invade Soviet Russia. We know Stalin certainly intended to eventually invade Eastern Europe and Germany.

Meanwhile the British, French and the Americans meanwhile drove their WW 1 allies, Japan, and Mussolini (who hated Hitler) to Hitler. The line in the sand which the British drew that actually triggered the war, and was prompted by Churchill, was a pledge to defend the corrupt, anti-semetic, military dictatorship of Poland's and it's refusal to even discuss it's two decade subjugation of more than two million ethnic Germans who wanted only to become again part of Germany. Instead Poland lost six and half million dead, and became subjugated to Soviet Russia for fifty years.

Actually the book gets better and better as it moves along and his concluding discussion of the causes, and the results of the war, is absolutely masterful, especially his frank discussion of the holocaust which some still believe was a cause OF WW 11 but which in fact actually caused BY the "good war."

The Unnecessary War will change forever the level of discussion about "The good war", and that is a welcome development and a great advance in the study of twentieth century history for which we can all be grateful to Mr. Buchanan.

I would also recommend Thomas Flemming's THE NEW DEALERS WAR, as a companion book. It deals specifically with FDRs responsibility for the "Good war."

I never thought I would be writing a favorable review of a book by Pat Buchanan but, as that infamous Catholic theologoan Martin Luther once said, "Heresy, so be it. It is still the truth."

Buchanan has written a masterpiece. Built on the foundation set down by the late great British historian, A.J.P. Taylor, Buchanan's book contains much that is new, is meticulously and exhaustively documented, and extremely well written. Whatever else he may or may not be, Buchanan has established himself as a scholar and a major historian of the twentieth century. He of course has also demonstrated great moral and intellectual courage.

Buchanan shows in detail that WW 11, far from being a "good" war, was, as his title says, a truly unnecessary war that resulted from an endless series of bad intelligence, bad policies, bad decisions, and bad moral behavior by the "best and brightest" i.e. the leaders, of all of the major powers over a period of 30 years, from 1914 to 1945. Never was the faith, trust, and fate of so many, so mismanaged by so few.

In 1914, the Kaiser may have briefly dreamed that Germany might become the dominate power in Europe. Hitler was even less ambitious. He dreamed that all Germans in central and Eastern Europe who wished to, would be reunited, and that Germany would dominate Eastern Europe. He probably intended eventually to invade Soviet Russia. We know Stalin certainly intended to eventually invade Eastern Europe and Germany.

Meanwhile the British, French and the Americans meanwhile drove their WW 1 allies, Japan, and Mussolini (who hated Hitler) to Hitler. The line in the sand which the British drew that actually triggered the war, and was prompted by Churchill, was a pledge to defend the corrupt, anti-semetic, military dictatorship of Poland's and it's refusal to even discuss it's two decade subjugation of more than two million ethnic Germans who wanted only to become again part of Germany. Instead Poland lost six and half million dead, and became subjugated to Soviet Russia for fifty years.

Actually the book gets better and better as it moves along and his concluding discussion of the causes and the results of the war, is absolutely masterful.

The Unnecessary War will change forever the level of discussion about "The good war", and that is a welcome development and a great advance in the study of twentieth century history for which we can all be grateful to Mr. Buchanan.

I never thought I would be writing a favorable review of a book by Pat Buchanan but, as that infamous Catholic theologoan Martin Luther once said, "Heresy, so be it. It is still the truth."

Buchanan has written a masterpiece. Built on the foundation set down by the late great British historian, A.J.P. Taylor, Buchanan's book contains much that is new, is meticulously and exhaustively documented, and extremely well written. Whatever else he may or may not be, Buchanan has established himself as a scholar and a major historian of the twentieth century. He of course has also demonstrated great moral and intellectual courage.

Buchanan shows in detail that WW 11, far from being a "good" war, was, as his title says, a truly unnecessary war that resulted from an endless series of bad intelligence, bad policies, bad decisions, and bad moral behavior by the "best and brightest" i.e. the leaders, of all of the major powers over a period of 30 years, from 1914 to 1945. Never was the faith, trust, and fate of so many, so mismanaged by so few.

In 1914, the Kaiser may have briefly dreamed that Germany might become the dominate power in Europe. Hitler was even less ambitious. He dreamed that all Germans in central and Eastern Europe who wished to, would be reunited, and that Germany would dominate Eastern Europe. He probably intended eventually to invade Soviet Russia. We know Stalin certainly intended to eventually invade Eastern Europe and Germany.

Meanwhile the British, French and the Americans meanwhile drove their WW 1 allies, Japan, and Mussolini (who hated Hitler) to Hitler. The line in the sand which the British drew that actually triggered the war, and was prompted by Churchill, was a pledge to defend the corrupt, anti-semetic, military dictatorship of Poland's and it's refusal to even discuss it's two decade subjugation of more than two million ethnic Germans who wanted only to become again part of Germany. Instead Poland lost six and half million dead, and became subjugated to Soviet Russia for fifty years.

I never thought I would be writing a favorable review of a book by Pat Buchanan but, as that infamous Catholic theologoan Martin Luther once said, "Heresy, so be it. It is still the truth."

Buchanan has written a masterpiece. Built on the foundation set down by the late great British historian, A.J.P. Taylor, Buchanan's book contains much that is new, is meticulously and exhaustively documented, and extremely well written. Whatever else he may or may not be, Buchanan has established himself as a scholar and a major historian of the twentieth century. He of course has also demonstrated great moral and intellectual courage.

Buchanan shows in detail that WW 11, far from being a "good" war, was, as his title says, a truly unnecessary war that resulted from an endless series of bad intelligence, bad policies, bad decisions, and bad moral behavior by the "best and brightest" i.e. the leaders, of all of the major powers over a period of 30 years, from 1914 to 1945. Never was the faith, trust, and fate of so many, so mismanaged by so few.

After reading this book, you'll probably realize that everything you ever knew about World War II was wrong. Controversial, to be sure, but it's well documented and presented in a credible and highly readable manner.

Highly recommended.

By Prof. Ivo Cyprian Pogonowski,

Buchanans false image of Hitler in to the "Unnecessary War"


Patrick Buchanan presents a false picture of Hitler's rationality and intentions in his book Hitler, Churchill and the Unnecessary War." There are few people that would question the opinion that Hitler was a disgrace for Germany, and brought calamity known as "Gotterdammerung," to German people, by his foolish notions of German superiority, and his lack of education and command experience. Buchanan seems to be unaware of Hitler's Parkinson's Disease, which was contracted after his gas-poisoning on the western front during WWI.

In a German military hospital, after difficult recovery and a bout of blindness, caused by the gas poisoning, Hitler contracted meningitis and suffered an other attack of blindness, and wound up with permanently trembling left hand, as well as, personality change, which made him more cunning than he was earlier. Hitler was from then on worried about his own longevity and during his political career he was a man in a hurry, which fact was well described by professor M. Kamil Dziewanowski in his book "War at Any Price."

Hitler thought that he was "Germany's man of destiny" and that only he could accomplish his conquest of "Lebensraum" for the next German millennium. In fact the essence of the policies of the Hitler's government, at all times, was the implementation of the doctrine of Lebensraum, or "German living space."

The aim of Hitler's government was to size the lands inhabited by others, who were to be enslaved or exterminated and replaced by "racial Germans." These aims were to be realized by a series of wars. Each time Germany was to launch a quick, victorious campaign against w weaker, unprepared, and isolated enemy, whose resources were to help prepare for the next war.

This sequence was to lead to the conquest of the great agricultural lands of the Slavic two-thirds of Europe, and eventually to Germany's hegemony over the entire world. These lands, located mainly in the Soviet Union and Poland, were to become German Lebensraum during Hitler's lifetime. Hitler did not want to hear such warnings as that the American steel making capacity was the largest in the world and that USA, located between two oceans, enjoyed a uniquely strong and advantageous strategic position.

Hitler hoped that the German "Aryan" population would double under his rule, thanks to earlier marriages and larger families, while Germans with hereditary defect were to be sterilized. In fact eventually, Hitler's government kidnapped some one-half million blond children from occupied Poland to be brought up in Germany as "racial Germans."

Hitler believed that the Jewish minority was the main enemy of internal German racial purity and an important focus for consolidation at home in preparation for expansion abroad. Hitler felt that the wars for German Lebensraum represented an inevitable life-and-death struggle between races for the "survival of the fittest." Hitler was willing to let Germany perish in his attempt to implement the doctrine of lebensraum, rather than turn back and be "disgraced forever."

The fact that Hitler lacked education and preparation for the task he set for Germany, under his rule, is evidenced during Hitler's writing in prison in Bavaria of his "Mein Kampf" program. There Hitler was visited and given eight lengthy lectures on by major general, professor of geopolitics, as well as editor of "Zeitschrift fuer Geopolitik," Karl Haushofer (1869-sicide in 1946). The cell mate of Hitler, Rudolf Hess, was a student of Haushofer and he arranged for his visits with Hitler in prison, in order to help Hitler formulate a strategy, for which task Hitler was not prepared either by schooling or experience.

Hauhoffer taught Hitler that the defeat of the Soviet Union was of fundamental importance and that the control of the Soviet and Arab oil would put Germany in position to gradually acquire British and French colonies by blackmail. without fighting a war. "Germanic Britain" was also to be junior partner of continental German-Nazi power. This notion caused Hitler to treat "gently" the British on the battlefield and during escape to England from France in 1940, in comparison to the atrocities ordered by Hitler in Poland beginning in 1939.

Hitler believed that his own intuition and eight lectures by Haushofer, qualified him to be the "Germany's commander in chief." Hitler learned from Haushofer that Germany lost WWI because of insufficient food and manpower and therefore should form a strategically and numerically superior anti-Soviet alliance of Germany, Japan, Poland and other countries in order to destroy the Soviet-Union in a simultaneous attacks from east and west, without having to fight on a western front. For this purpose Hitler formed the "Anti-Comintern Pact" which according to Buchanan, Poland should have joined and thereby "saved the world" from an "Unnecessary War."

Patrick Buchanan seams to be oblivious of all the facts mentioned above, and the real history of Hitler's efforts to persuade Poland to join the Anti-Comintern Pact, which were described among others in the book "Diplomat in Berlin, 1933-1939" by Józef Lipski, Polish Ambassador to Germany during Hitler's administration. Soviet fear of a two-front war, simultaneously against Germany and Japan, is well described by Pavel Sudoplatov, an NKVD general under Beria, in his book "Special Tasks." The attack on the Soviet Union from east and west was "Hitler's best case scenario" supported by the German military commanders.

Poland was in hopeless situation being located within Hitler's Lebensraum and considered a spoiler of grandiose Lenin's plans for "Communist World Revolution," because of the Polish spectacular victory over the Red Army, in the Polish-Soviet war of 1920. At that time the commander of the Red Army, Mikhail Tukhachevsky's order of July 4, 1920 was: "To the West, over the corpse of "White" Poland, on the road to the worldwide conflagration."

Hitler's fury against Poland was caused not only by Poland's refusal to join in the German-Japanese attack on the Soviet Union; but also by being an obstacle to German access to the Soviet territory. Poland's resolve to defend itself, actually derailed Hitler's strategy and drove him to betray his Japanese allies who were fighting the Siberian Soviet army since 1937.

Thus, the Japanese considered Hiller a traitor, never to be trusted again, but to be used in the coming Japanese-American war. Japan not only lodged a formal protest in Berlin against the "Ribbentrop - Molotov Pact," but also started cease-fire negotiations with the Soviets after extremely heavy losses in the battle on the Kalka River at Kalkhim-Gol. A Soviet-Japanese cease-fire was signed on September 15, 1939, it was put in force the next day, on Sept. 16th and on September 17th 1939, the Red Army, freed of the hostilities against Japan, joined the Germans in the invasion of Poland.

Note: Books by Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski
Jews in Poland - A Documentary History
Hippocrene Books, January 1998; 432 pages
ISBN: 0781806046
Poland - An Illustrated History
Hippocrene Books (2000 - First Printing; 2003 - Second Printing; 2008 - Third Printing);
282 pages
ISBN: 0-7818-0757-3
Poland - A Historical Atlas
Hippocrene Books, New York 1987 - First Printing; 1988 -Third Printing;
320 pages
ISBN: 0-87052-282-5

I once was so infuriated by the stupid things that Pat Buchanan had to say that just the sight of his name on the cover of a book would have made me turn apoplectic. But for some reason, as the year's have passed by, and I've watched him regularly on the McLaughlin Group and listened to what he has had to say, I've suddenly begun to find him less antagonistic and much more of a realist, almost to the left of center in some of his thinking... Notice I say "some", not all.

So when I saw this book with his name on it I flinched slightly, but then I saw what the title was and what the topic was and gave it a second look. I bought it, read it, and I've got to say, I was really impressed by his analysis of the events and the theory that he puts forth as to what it all meant.

Too often historical events written about in books are looked at in a vacuum... plucked from the ongoing stream of history like individual happenings, as though nothing that preceded the events had anything to do with them. Personally, I think that World War II tends to be looked at that way. I never was really aware of what the average German citizen endured after the travesty known as the Treaty of Versailles. The inflation, the Bolsheviks, the starvation, etc. In this book Buchanan takes the reader back, way back, to a time and a place before even World War I, and lays out a timeline of history that is not one you tend to find played as the accepted storyline of European history.

Through the use of ample, documented, secondary sources, Buchanan shows us Germany for what it was, a highly industrialized nation, with an economy that was about to make it the economic powerhouse of Europe, surrounded by petty, jealous, warmongering countries who couldn't stand the fact that Germany was doing so well. Chief among those countries was Great Britain, Master of the Seas, and head of a global empire on whom the sun never set. A country that was constantly positioning themselves to make sure that they always stayed on top, even if it meant signing treaties with centuries-long enemies over signing treaties with blood relatives.

From that point on, with war hawks like Churchill shaking their fists and sreaming for pre-emptive strikes to take out Germany before it could overpower them economically, the course was set that would ultimately lead Germany and the German people to Adolph Hitler and then to the Iron Curtain. The fact that Great Britain was just watching and waiting for an opportunity... any opportunity... to confront Germany, even if it meant "manufacturing" reasons as to why they were doing it (poor little Belgium), and then using Churchill's own words from an over 50-year period of time to back up his assertions, is what makes this book so unbelievable to someone really reading much of this information for the first time.

And please, do not mark me an apologist for Hitler or for the German people, however I defy anyone who reads this book seriously to ever quite be able to look at the entire sweep of European history from the time of Queen Victoria's death to the beginning of the Cold War the same ever again. The Nazi atrocities were terrible, but so were the things that led up to them and gave birth to the Nazi's. The British and the French, after reading this book, will never come across like innocent victims to you again.

And the most significant thing about this book, and the thing that Buchanan saves for the reader till the bitter end, is the fact that his long storyline of history basically serves as a preamble to reminding us of the old adage that history truly does repeat itself. All you need do is compare what you have just read in the book about Britain's fumbles and foolish mistakes, and their loss of empire and loss of control of the seas, and its near fiscal insolvency after the war, and compare it to what we've allowed the current administration to do to this country today, if you want to really understand where we will end up tomorrow. It's a sad, sad, cautionary tale, but unfortunately one we are already looking in the rearview mirror at. Brace yourselves because history really does repeat itself.

A brave and insightful manuscript. The realistic review of Churchill and the British tragic errors cost millions of lives for the egocentric gratification of one man. The US should relearn the lesson our first president (George Washington) taught us many years ago. This book should be required reading in all of our colleges and universities.

Mr. Buchanan doesn't surmise why Hitler chose to declare war on the United States. Did it give Hitler more legal rights and freedom to act?
Or was it only to honor his ally, Japan?

Some alarmists have dissed this book as excuse-making for Hitler, the holocaust, etc.

But the point of this book isn't really that earth- shattering, and doesn't tell us much we don't already know.

WWI was avoidable, and had WWI never happened, there would have been no Hitler an no Holocaust.

Yes, there are many details, but is that not the basic point of the book?

Is that not true, and has it ever been a secret?

As a twenty three year old university student educated through the brilliant and wonderful California school system, I looked at Buchanan's book at first as sacriledge to the cult of FDR and Churchill. Yet, as I delved deeper and deeper within the sources that Buchanan used, along with several readings of William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, I came to the bitter conclusion that not only are the arguments posed by Buchanan correct, but that indeed the praise that I had so long assigned to Churchill, was indeed unwarranted.

The Tragedies of WWI and WWII will be discussed endlessly until the extinction of man. One thing however, is clear from this book and history. The true winner of WWII was "Uncle" Joseph Stalin. Communism, that wretched ideology that has killed more people than any other religion or ideology, won WWII. Buchanan makes an excellent point that while Nazism was a violent and perveted ideology, it is not an ideology that is capable of sowing seeds across nations. Nazism was embodied within the figure of Adolf Hitler. When he died, Nazism died with him (at least true nazism and not the few fringe groups that claim to be Nazi). Communism on the other hand, was not embodied within Stalin but indeed spread like a plague across the globe. Indeed, while Hitler was responsible for millions of deaths, the untold numbers that perished under Mao and Stalin far outweigh the victims of Hitler (that is only two of the numerous communist dictators of the bloody 20th century).

Buchanan laments that the West, specifically the English Empire, made such a tragic decision in facing off against Nazism when indeed Hitler never intended, nor wanted, war with the West. Read Mein Kampf (if you can get through the ravings and rantings) and you see the obsession of Hitler's was Lebensraum or the land of the East. Well, ladies and gentlemen, the east of Hitler's dreams was the Soviet Union and a clash between the two dictatorships was inevitable. Sadly, instead of having these two dicatarships bleed against each other, the Soviet Union, supported by the capricious Churchill and foolishly idiotic Rooselvelt, helped assist "Uncle" Joe in dismantling and occupying the balkans, Eastern Europe, and part of Germany. Hence, the making of the Cold War and the subsequent tyranny which we played in making over half of Europe, was partly the responsibility of the democracies which hypocritically strove to protect, but betrayed behind the scenes.

In the end, no matter what is said about this book, many will not like it. I have seen at universities, among fellow students, among too many professors, a professed admiration of the Soviet Union and Communism in general. It pains me to see students wear shirts of Che Gueverra despite the fact that he was a mass murderer. It is pitiful and disgusting the brazen teaching of many professors who only focus upon the crimes of Nazism, and not the far more cruel and longer crimes of the communist dictators of the 20th century. Perhaps most distressing, is the fact, that while Nazism is long gone and dead (for the better), Communism, hiding behind the facade of democracy or light socialism, is popular, alive, and kicking. The wretched institutions that claim to be the lights of free speech and liberty, are indeed the beacons of suppression that they preach against. Buchanan is right in his book, and I for one, give him kudos for the eloquent arguements that he has made, along with thanks for this excellent reading material. Read this book for it will give you awareness of the deception that is being wrought upon the descendants of those who suffered under the tyrannies of those who oppressed.

Buchanan takes most of the good ideas from Niall Ferguson's "The Pity of War" -- you would be better off to read them in the orginal there rather than Buchanan's cribbing and twisted views. Also, Ferguson's views are highly controversial and shouldn't be taken as consensus views from historians. The entire book is based around the idea that both world wars were "unnecessary" -- in the sense that if they hadn't happened nothing terrible would have happened to the British Empire. Forgetting the fact that maybe it was a good thing for the British Empire to go away (Mr. Buchanan should ask his Irish ancestors just how good it was), all of these arguments assume that a German dominated Europe wouldn't have been a bad thing. This is a huge unknown. There is plenty in Germanies behavior in the West in 1914, Bethmann-Holland stated German war aimes, multiple violations of neutrality (Belgium, Luxemborg, Romania in the Great War and almost everyone in WWII), and the general German brutality in the WWII. Buchanan really needs to think more about what Germany did and consider some criticism from Ferguson's books.

To the victor belong the spoils of history. Buchanan poses some hard but vital questions about that received orthodoxy and he's shouted down as anti-Semitic. In the end he merely wants to know when is war necessary, what justifies the horrors of war, then and now, and at what cost individually and nationally. Why was war "necessary" to stop Hitler but "unnecessary" to stop Stalin? Of course Nazism had to be stopped. And "for their crimes, Hitler and his collaborators, today's metaphors for absolute evil, received the ruthless justice they deserved" (xxi). Communism had to be stopped too. And the Cold War was won at a fraction of the cost of the World Wars. Today Buchanan fears we have forgotten our history and are thus doomed to repeat it: why was war "necessary" to stop Saddam Hussein but "unnecessary" to stop Kim Jong-il? And what price might yet be paid? Surely these are necessary questions!

Most of the other positive reviews here regarding Mr. Buchanan's use of reputable secondary sources are accurate. This book doesn't claim to be a work of groundbreaking new research. It is a book that takes already published material and forms it into a controversial perspective. In short, it makes you think.

This book re-tells the story of the first half of the 20th century, albeit from a slightly different perspective than the norm. Mr. Buchanan's theme is that the Europeans committed suicide by engaging in two world wars and that these world wars were not inevitable. He puts most of the blame on Churchill for destroying Europe's power and status in the world. Churchill's jingoistic attitude during 1914 and his rabid hatred of Hitler in the 1930's helped propel Britain into war against Germany twice, even though Britain had no vital interests at stake. He also criticizes Churchill for giving Stalin all of Eastern Europe (much more land than Chamberlain ever gave up to Hitler).

In the past I have always thought of Churchill as the hero of 1940 (and to be honest, I still do). After reading this book though, Churchill is brought back to Earth and shown to be what we all are: human. Churchill made mistakes. Even though this book challenges the premise of Churchill's greatness, I still enjoyed it because it opened up my eyes to another perspective that I didn't see before and has thus given me a clearer picture of the period.

Overall I found it an interesting read and it held my attention throughout. The book gives a good run down of the period examined and the bibliography led me to other good books to read (such as a work on Versailles). I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in international politics during the early 20th century.

Patrick J. Buchanan is probably the most fearless author and commentator alive in America today. Who else, even if they believed the thesis of this remarkable book, would have the personal courage and intestinal fortitude to publish it...especially in their own real name? Fearful of crossing Bill and Hillary Clinton, columnist Joe Klein authored "Primary Colors," but published it anonymously. (His identity as the author was ultimately revealed).

Mr. Buchanan has waded into far more dangerous waters than those swirling around the former U.S. president and first lady. The overwhelming consensus of both professional historians and laypersons is that Winston Churchill was a brilliant and gifted individual who, with the aid of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, saved the world from certain destruction at the hand of Adolf Hitler and Third Reich Germany. There are so many shibboleths in that single sentence that it boggles the mind that anyone would deign to undo not simply one, but all of them.

But that Mr. Buchanan does, and does remarkably well. The book is written by a commentator, not a trained historian, and so it is somewhat dependent upon secondary source material. However, Mr. Buchanan makes a compelling case for his controversial thesis. He amasses great amounts of evidence and marshals it to prove an absolutely irrefutable case, point after point after point.

Many who do not like Mr. Buchanan question his interest in the Second World War, asserting that he is an apologist for Hitler and the National Socialists, or even that he is a closet anti-Semite and Holocaust denier. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is Mr. Buchanan's single-minded commitment to truth that causes him to write controversial books advancing unpopular theses.

"Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it," a sage once said. If Mr. Buchanan's book achieves the wide circulation it so richly deserves, perhaps increasing numbers of Americans will learn that the unintentional -- and unnecessary -- consequences of "the Good War" should be kept in mind when considering contemporary foreign policy and military decisions.

Read this cover to cover in two days: captivated by how easy it wa