Pat Buchanan: Hitler didn’t want war
Posted By Daniel Tencer On September 2, 2009 @ 4:56 pm In
He even appears to have implied that the Holocaust wouldn’t have happened if the Allied powers hadn’t guaranteed Poland’s security.
In his [1] column published Monday by Creators Syndicate, Buchanan wrote:
The German-Polish war [sic] had come out of a quarrel over a town the size of Ocean City, Md., in summer. Danzig, 95 percent German, had been severed from Germany at Versailles in violation of Woodrow Wilson’s principle of self-determination. Even British leaders thought Danzig should be returned.
Why did Warsaw not negotiate with Berlin, which was hinting at an offer of compensatory territory in Slovakia? Because the Poles had a war guarantee from Britain that, should Germany attack, Britain and her empire would come to Poland’s rescue.
…
Was Danzig worth a war? Unlike the 7 million Hong Kongese whom the British surrendered to Beijing, who didn’t want to go, the Danzigers were clamoring to return to Germany.
(Note: The city of Danzig, now known as Gdansk, is not a “town the size of Ocean City, Md.” It is one of Poland’s largest cities, and has historically played a major role in trade on the Baltic and North seas.)
Buchanan followed his assertion that Poland could have prevented the war with an argument that Hitler was not interested in a broad war to conquer the world.
But if Hitler was out to conquer the world … why did he spend three years building that hugely expensive Siegfried Line to protect Germany from France? Why did he start the war with no surface fleet, no troop transports and only 29 oceangoing submarines? How do you conquer the world with a navy that can’t get out of the Baltic Sea? … Why did he offer the British peace, twice, after Poland fell, and again after France fell?
The answer, Buchanan argued, is that “Hitler wanted to end the war in 1940, almost two years before the trains began to roll to the camps.”
That implication — that the Holocaust would not have happened had the Allies not insisted on fighting a war over the invasion of Poland — may be the most controversial assertion in Buchanan’s article.
Not surprisingly, the blogosphere has erupted in condemnation of Buchanan’s article.
At his blog at the Guardian, Michael Tomasky [2] responds to Buchanan’s question why Hitler would have wanted war before his army was fully prepared:
Well, maybe it’s just that Hitler was clinically insane, addicted to drugs, a pretty lousy diplomat and an absolutely terrible military strategist, whose decisions (fight to the last man in Stalingrad, and for that matter pretty much everywhere) lost him his best general (Rommel) and sent hundreds of thousands more German soldiers to their deaths than was, as it were, necessary.
At the Jawa Report, blogger “Rusty” [3] quotes Hitler’s Mein Kampf to debunk Buchanan’s assertion that Hitler had no expansionist desires with respect to Poland:
We … turn our eyes towards the lands of the East. We finally put a stop to the colonial and trade policy of pre-War times and pass over to the territorial policy of the future…
The future goal of our foreign policy ought not to involve an orientation to the East or the West, but it ought to be an Eastern policy which will have in view the acquisition of such territory as is necessary for our German people.
[From Vol. 2, Ch. 14 of Mein Kampf]
The American Prospect’s Tapped blog [4] sums up Buchanan’s article thusly:
That whole invading Poland thing was clearly just a big misunderstanding. He didn’t want war, he just wanted to arbitrarily annex whatever part of Europe he felt like having — the response was clearly overblown, and maybe even a little rude.
The article appears to be a preview of Buchanan’s new book, Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War”: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, which is set for release on Thursday.
For his part, Tomasky laments what he sees as a trend towards history revisionism attempting to re-cast the collective memory of Adolf Hitler.
“Jonah Goldberg gave us Adolf Hitler: Man of the Left. Now we have Adolf Hitler: Man of Peace. I’d make a joke here about what’s next, but I really don’t think this can be parodied.”
URLs in this post:[1] column: http://news.yahoo.com/s/uc/20090901/cm_uc_crpbux/op_3311160
[2] responds: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2009/sep/02/pat-buchanan-hitler-danzig
[3] quotes: http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/198684.php
[4] sums up: http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=09&year=2009&base_name=pat_buchanan_
and_the_benefit_o
Red States Have the Largest Numbers of Uninsured. They're Also Opposed to Healthcare Reform. Why?
By Susie Madrak Wednesday Sep 02, 2009 5:00pmVia Katiebird, this not-so-surprising news.
Once again, we validate the "Iron Law of Birtherism":
Reporting from Washington - Wyoming, with an economy marked by farming, ranching and small businesses, has a disproportionate number of people without medical insurance. And by that measure and others, its people are among the likely winners if Congress approves a healthcare overhaul.
But if Republican Sen. Michael B. Enzi was expecting a pat on the back from his constituents for working with some of his fellow senators to seek bipartisan agreement on the issue, he was disappointed.
Last week, Enzi held a town hall meeting in his hometown of Gillette. And when he told the 500 people in the audience that he believed both sides could eventually strike a deal, it turned out that wasn't a popular thing to say.
A state legislator even stood up and demanded that Enzi pull out of the congressional talks altogether, and was widely applauded by the audience.
The scene in Gillette was replicated in towns across the U.S. last month, as screaming taxpayers filled TV screens with criticism of healthcare proposals. The clashes dramatized a conundrum faced by lawmakers such as Enzi who are seeking compromises.
Some of the most vociferous opposition to the proposals before the House and Senate comes from residents of rural states that could benefit most if the present system is revamped.
"The states that tend to be more conservative have a higher rate of people who are uninsured," said Ron Pollack, executive director of FamiliesUSA, which backs a healthcare overhaul. "As a result, healthcare reform is going to provide a disproportionate amount of resources to those states."
And of course, they're the people who have been regularly told that taking any help from the government is "socialism" - although Medicare does seem to have slipped in under the radar.
Disgusting: Teabaggers Shout Down Wheel Chair-Bound Woman At Town Hall Meeting
By Logan Murphy Thursday Sep 03, 2009 7:00am(h/t Huffington Post - original video from NJ.com)
There's a special place in hell for people like this:
Congressman Frank Pallone (D-NJ), the man who recently "let it be known" that he'd step in should Gov. Corzine drop out of the New Jersey gubernatorial race, had his hands full at a town hall meeting in Red Bank last week.
A new low for these meetings may have been set when the crowd shouted down a wheelchair-bound woman with "two incurable auto-immune diseases" who had the gall to ask a question. Read on...
WTF is wrong with these people? I struggle to understand how their minds must work. It has gotten to the point where I can barely stomach these videos, but we must continue to put them out there and expose the ugly truth about the Republican Party and the fringe crazies who are out there doing their bidding.
No comments:
Post a Comment