Revisionist History from Pat Buchanan, Again

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September 1st, 2009 marked an important anniversary for the world. It was the 70th anniversary of the day Germany invaded Poland, officially starting WWII. I know there are a few history buffs on SP, so I thought this would be of interest. Here is the crux of Pat's argument that Hitler "never really wanted war:"

There is a lot of stuff here. Buchanan has laid out a line of argument that ignores not only Hitler's own rhetoric in the lead up to the invasion, but the weight of evidence which clearly demonstrates Hilter's agression. It's not so much what Pat includes in his argument, but what he intentionally leaves out of it that makes this look like just another one of his rants about the evils of communism and his hatred of Stalin:

To be sure Stalin was as big a monster as Hitler, but no one is forcing anyone to choose between them. Really, Pat, it's OK to despise them both. There has been a lot of critics of Buhcanan for his revisionist "lessons" of history in the past, but this latest one really "takes the cake," at least for me.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsme...moting_buchanans_hitler-sympathizing_colu.php
http://mediamatters.org/blog/200909020026

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=33399

 

Well, I'd argue that Stalin was much worse than Hitler, though probably only because he went largely unchecked whereas Hitler only lasted a few years in power.

Other than that, yeah, Buchannan's an idiot. I wish the US had laws like Germany that made Holocaust denial a crime.

 

I have a hard time getting angry about this for one reason. It's Pat Buchannan. I wrote him off as an idiot, a lunatic, and a fascist nearly 20 years ago -- in middle school.

 

This might be news if I care at all what Pat Buchanan said.

 

The fact that some people do care about what old Pat has to say should scare most of us!

 

I don't think anyone does care, really. He's been saying stuff like this for as long as I can remember. If he were a conservative with any influence at all, he'd be a pundit on Fox News, not MSNBC.

 

Pat's article is gone from MSNBC, it seems:

http://jta.org/news/article/2009/09...-remove-pat-buchanans-column-defending-hitler

So much for "revisionist" history. I agree that Buchanan went "too far" on this one. Nevertheless, I'm sure there are some particular conservatives who would like to "remove" his negative views on the Second Iraq War as well:

http://www.amconmag.com/article/2003/mar/24/00007/

Anti-semitism, or a moment when an "un-influential" "idiot," that "no one cares about" has a moment of clarity? Nevertheless, there is an apparent strain of anti-semitism, even more so, of just downright racism, that runs through Buchanan's broader ideas on history, as well as some of his domestic policy suggestions. But Pat fends that off with the claim of "the race card," being played when an unpopular or uncomfortable idea is introduced into the dialogue. That is a clever ploy that has been known to work in some instances. Just for the record, I don't agree, at all, with Buchanan's take on Hitler, the Holocaust and the invasion of Poland.

 

People will believe what they want to believe I suppose. Hitler probably didn't set out to conquer 100% of the surface of planet earth but the conclusions being drawn from that are pretty weird.

Goodness, I'm just looking at the second case. Militant Islam = China? China! And Iraq? Iraq probably got on less well with militant Islam than the US did. I'll freely admit to supporting the Iraq war at the time (I assumed Bush had some kind of plan for what to do afterwards) but I don't see how anybody could describe combating militant Islam as a goal.

 

In some strange and twisted way I actually find it refreshing that a conservative mentiones Hitler in another context than an example of the failures of appeasement and diplomacy. Other than that old Pat's dead wrong on this one.

 

I think that Buchanan in a sense has a point. I'm unsure whether he's making it well. What if ... we'll never know.

I don't know whether it was wise of Buchanan to choose Hitler as the starting point for his argument and not Wilson. I think that Wilson's abandonment of his ten points and allowing the vindictive Versailles treaty to happen set a cause for many of the following evils. The victors smashed and dismembered Austro-Hungarian and the German empires with their widespread German populations, and put a great emphasis in taking away important coal and steel industries from Germany (Alsace, Silesia) and Austria (Czechoslovakia) and controlling the rest (occupation of the Ruhrgebiet - in American terms, think about a foreign power occupying the major heavy industrial centres of America and controlling them)*, and exact vindictive reparations to strategically weaken the remainder of both empires - according to the principle of 'divide and rule'.

After WW-I Austria wanted actually get into Germany. That was prevented by the victors. The Anschluß of Austria in that sense corrected a outside interference. Lower Silesia, which was 75% German in 1905 was after WW-I annexed by Poland anyway, despite the population voting for staying with Germany. The French were putting a great emphasis on that, and I see it as Wilson's greatest failure to have allowed for that to happen, and to have allowed to place the war guilt solely on Germany (never mind the Russians and Serbia). I see the territorial re-expansion of Germany after the 1920a in many ways as a 'quicksilver effect' to correct many of the inter war distortions and injustices. The point was eventually made moot by the great population displacements in the course and aftermath of WW-II.

Hitler always wanted at least a restoration of the status quo ante, that is the restoration of the borders of 1914. He made concessions to Italy by leaving Tirol to them. Considering that a high percentage of SS ranks were of Austrian origin I have always found the notion that Austria was the 'first victim of Nazism' preposterous. Hitler was thinking in terms of 'Lebensraum in the East'. In that sense he wasn't all that different from all the other colonialists of his time. He wanted Germany to have colonies, just not overseas, but in the East. That this idea only had limited appeal to the rest of Germany is one thing, that it drove Hitler is quite another. And then, of course, there is Hitlers odious ideology, and undeniable crimes the Nazis committed.

The point Buchanan is trying to make, over and over again, is one of non-intervention. I don't really think it was a good choice to make Hitler the model case, because he is in that not addressing the root cause but the symptoms of the illness. Then, he probably had to use Hitler as his model case. In a sense the argument he's assaulting is the ever-repeating neo-con theme 'It's 1939, and this is Munich!' and their glorification of Churchill.

* in a sense, that understanding of the importance on technologies important for war was what gave us the European treaties on coal and steel and nuclear materials, which laid the groundwork for the EU.

 

I think Pat is way off in this case. Hitler had ideological reasons (of his own, though they are ethnically based ideology) to expand, via military invasion, to the east.

Plus the righting of wrongs done by France post WWI was a big part of the platform his party grabbed onto in order to justify its rise to power inside Germany-that sets the stage for some sort of tension with France (even if it is resolved via diplomatic negotiations).

Hitler knew he was starting a 2 front war by attacking Poland, but he tried to get the UK to make peace with him after he defeated France. Also Vichy France was similar in many ways to a vassal state for Nazi Germany. Not all of the french military went to the allies after France fell, that part that went to Vichy hands was going into Nazi-friendly hands.