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Buchanan has more than a passing acquaintance with Holocaust denial - he did compare condemned SS-guard Demjanjuk with Christ (yes, really) and while he's managed to never cross the line into flat-out denial, he's certainly downplayed it. The forums at his official website were quite the hang-out for out-and-out Holocaust deniers up until recently.
Looks to me like Buchanan is beginning to share the views of David Irving - that the Allies should have joined the Nazis to fight Communism. If you're going to espouse that, the fact that the Nazis were - well, evil genocidal a-holes - needs to be downplayed.
I agree. How can you write an article on Hitler and conveniently omit the fact that he was a genocidal maniac? Of course he wanted war; he was prepared for it and the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact allowed him to do so without fear of Soviet interference. How else do you think that German forces managed to invade Poland so clinically and so decisively? How could Hitler have possibly achieved what were his goals peacefully?
Plenty of evidence out there to suggest that Buchanan is indeed a holocaust denier. Here is one article I found:
The conquest of Russia's economic and agricultural assets would create a global superpower that could become the number one state in the world. This idea was not a fairy tale. Had Britain remained neutral (as Hitler hoped) a joint German and Japanese invasion of Russia would almost certainly have succeeded.
Japan would have had lots and lots of problems with invading Russia that make that a highly unlikely scenario, it wasn't as though they were sitting around not doing much in 1941. First off they did a test run of it with Khalkhin Gol in the Soviet client state of Mongolia and lost badly to the combined Soviet and Mongolian forces.
Secondly China was a big problem for them. The KMT had them bogged down in Hunan and the communists were causing problems for them in Shandong and Shanxi (basically after the Japanese victory in the battle of Nanchang the Chinese started inflicting some really bad defeats on the Japanese). Starting a war with Russia when their army was tied up fighting the Chinese would not have been a viable option since Japan just didn't have the resources to take them and the Chinese on at the same time.
Last edited by Randomstudent; 03-18-2012 at 08:02 PM..
LOL...you get that garbage from a "jewish defense" website. Of course its against Buchanan they are for destroying America as it is and he is for defending it.
Ah, so you are also a fan of the "Global Zionist Conspiracy" as well? Oh, the Jews are going to destroy America, they want to conquer the world, they control the media, yadda, yadda, yadda. Of course, any link that I post you are simply going to dismiss it as a tool of Jewish propaganda. Anyone who is interested just google, "Pat Buchanan Nazi sympathizer" and pick any of the articles from ABC, MSNBC, Current, Huffington Post, Gateway Pundit, Politico, etc. Buchanan isn't overt with it, but as he has gotten older it's leaked out more and more. This would be Buchanan's general thesis:
WW2 was a failure of the Christian west to put their petty squabbles aside and address the true threat to the world, the atheist Bolsheviks. He is a little unclear about his beliefs on the Holocaust, but ranges from "acceptable" in exchange for defeating communism to "apathy" in thinking it wasn't all that bad. Buchanan doesn't admire Hitler per se, he just thinks Hitler's "talents" could have been put to better use.
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Originally Posted by Angorlee
Your the one that is rife with errors and baseless claims. There are few modern historians that would claim Hitler wanted war. The ones that still make that claim are the older historians like Ambrose.
Did Hitler want war? Yes and no. Hitler did not want war with the west, Britain and France. He did see war in the east as an unavoidable thing and prepared for that conflict from the beginning. Hitler thought the west would acquiesce to his territorial demands and give him what he wanted. He knew that the Soviets would not just agree to turn over the Ukraine to him. Hitler wanted war in the east to destroy communism and take the land he wanted/needed. So, when you answer the question of whether Hitler wanted war, you cannot give a simple answer. Further, Hitler had long stated he was quite willing to wage war with the west if they would not give him what he wanted, before he would turn east for the real conflict.
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Originally Posted by Angorlee
Hitler didn't attack Russia because of his inability to win against Great Britain. He attacked Russia because the Soviets were going to attack Germany. Even Russian WW2 generals say that.
As was mentioned by others, you are quoting a theory floated in the 1980's by Viktor Suvorov in his book Icebreaker. During the actual war, Hitler himself put forward a thesis that the Russians had been preparing to strike west, hence why he had no choice but to strike east (despite the fact Hitler had planning a war in the east since he wrote Mein Kampf). After the war, a handful of Wehrmacht officers clung to the theory, notably Wilhelm Keitel. Suvorov is an expatriate GRU agent who defected to Britain during the Cold War and then took up writing. He was born in 1947 and has no direct knowledge of the events and does not possess anymore information than any other historian writing about the events. This was proven after he was forced to reveal his sources.
Suvorov's theory is intriguing and there are parts of it that most historians agree with and parts that most do not. No one disputes that the Soviets viewed a war with Nazi Germany as an invetability. No one disputes that the Red Army was being built up. No one disputes that Zhukov and other senior commanders were drawing up plans and contingencies for a war with Germany.
What they do dispute is the theory that the Soviets were going to attack in 1941 and the Germans simply acted pre-emptively. The disposition of Soviet troops, their equipment, etc. all serve to counter this theory. Most historians believe that the earlierst the Soviets could have attacked on their own was 1943. At the time of the German invasion, the Soviets were still reorganizing the structure of their entire force. They had just started to supply their forces with their next gen battle systems like the T34 and KV1 as well as more modern aircraft. The Soviets were gearing up, but not for an invasion in 1941.
There is one other interesting debunk to this theory. If the Soviets were gearing up for an invasion, why did Stalin so readily dismiss the intelligence he was receiving from his own agents in Japan as well as from Britain about a pending German invasion? If the Soviets were within a month of launching their own assault, one would think they would have taken that as a real threat, put their troops on alert and prepared to receive the German attack, or accelerate their own timetable. They did nothing, they ignored the report and weren't even remotely prepared for the German invasion.
There are many frontline well known historians who have debunked Suvorov's thesis including all three of the major modern Russian WW2 historians; Gareev, Bezymensky and Isayev. In the west, no less than David Glantz is an outspoken critic. Martin van Creveld, who is someone I have read extensively takes a more balanced approach and has not directly entered the debate. He basically says that they were planning to destroy each other. Eventually there was going to be a war, but the Soviets weren't looking to launch one in 1941.
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Did he want war with the UK and the US? Of course not. He'd have much preferred for the UK to surrender and the US to stay out.
Already addressed, he did not want war with the US and UK, or the west in general. He just wanted things that they weren't willing to give him, so he had no choice but to go to war.
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Buchanan is scum because he says and writes what he believes to be true? When you have to resort to name calling against someone who disagrees with you it only shows that you have the weaker argument.
Buchanan's issue is that he develops a thesis and then picks and chooses the evidence he wants to prove his thesis while ignoring mountains of evidence to the contrary. Buchanan's article really isn't history, it is a political/religious statement thinly veiled by some historical "facts" which don't stand up to any serious study. A casual reader would see that article and think he was making some good points, anyone with a passing understanding of the events leading up to the war would see it for the crock of crap it is.
The short answer is that nobody wants war, unless the war is so one-sided that you can kickass with minimal casualties, gloat over the pageantry, foster shrill patriotism, and reward your military industrial complex and other assorted cronies. In which case even the most benevolent of powers can be enchanted with its attractive benefits. In that respect, Hitler does not stand out among the company he keeps.
Very well put NJGOAT, as usual. You are very well read on the subject and your knowledge is truly impressive.
To add, the only reason Suvorov's theory (that the Soviet Union was about to attack Germany) gained traction is that at the time it offered a plausible explanation as to why the Red Army, seemingly so large and powerful, suffered so badly in 1941. Traditional explanations that existed in Russian history books were not convincing on the subject and lacked credibility. Over time, however, as former Soviet military archives were declassified, new evidence emerged and a new generation of historians like Isaev and Glantz began to seriously research this topic, Suvorov's theory was debunked.
Well, there's land and then there's land. Italy got themselves a whole lot of useless desert, mostly so they could present a good-looking map of their colossal holdings. (Then they invaded Greece, got themselves hopelessly mired and had to be bailed out by a very p.ssed-off German militray, but I digress.)
Hitler's staff, on the other hand, had designs on the oil fields in Caucasus, and that's some worthwhile real estate.
It's not about Italy, because Italy was not the kind of empire (in modern times) Hitler was looking up to, it was the US and British Empire that were his shining example.
This is an interesting read and although Haushofer's teachings about German geopolitics were not acknowledged as basis for Hitler's ideas, they are pretty much the same.
"While some of Haushofer's ideas stem from earlier American and British geostrategy, German geopolitik adopted an essentialist outlook toward the national interest, oversimplifying issues and representing itself as a panacea.[6] As a new and essentialist ideology, geopolitik found itself in a position to prey upon the post-WWI insecurity of the populace.[7] Haushofer's position in the University of Munich served as a platform for the spread of his geopolitical ideas, magazine articles, and books. In 1922 he founded the Institute of Geopolitics in Munich, from which he proceeded to publicize geopolitical ideas. By 1924, as the leader of the German geopolitik school of thought, Haushofer would establish the Zeitschrift für Geopolitik monthly devoted to geopolitik. His ideas would reach a wider audience with the publication of Volk ohne Raum by Hans Grimm in 1926, popularizing his concept of lebensraum.[8] Haushofer exercised influence both through his academic teachings, urging his students to think in terms of continents and emphasizing motion in international politics, and through his political activities.[9] While Hitler's speeches would attract the masses, Haushofer's works served to bring the remaining intellectuals into the fold.[10]"
Russia/Ukraine were part of Hitler's long term plan, certainly, but in 1940-41 the Germans were not exactly starving. The most immediate goal was to defeat or force some kind of settlement with Great Britain. Usually it doesn't make much sense to start a new war when you haven't yet finished your first war. However Hitler hoped that by defeating the Soviet Union - the last remaining potential ally of Great Britain, he would force the latter to come to terms.
Russia/Ukraine was really what Hitler needed for his plans; if he could have avoided war with Britain, he would have. It was not about Germany's "starvation" in 1941, it was about the constant supply of food and raw material for his future empire - the one he had vision for.
if Britain wouldn't have threatened his plans of expansion, there would have been no war with Britain; in fact this was the war he was trying to avoid.
Hitler never significantly altered the global geopolitical vision that he outlined in Mein Kampf. Throughout the 1930s, in fact, Hitler and his representatives attempted numerous diplomatic maneuvers, before resorting to war, that were intended to give Germany a free hand in Eastern Europe. These maneuvers included attempts to form an agreement between Great Britain and Germany, in an effort to keep Britain out of a future German-Soviet conflict. 1937 Ribbentrop-Churchill Meeting in London
In 1937, for example, Winston Churchill held an extended conversation with Joachim vom Ribbentrop, who was Germany's ambassador to Britain at the time. Ribbentrop was remarkably frank during the discussion, explaining to Churchill that
"Germany sought the friendship of England ... Germany would stand guard for the British Empire in all its greatness and extent ... What was required was that Britain give Germany a free hand in the East of Europe. She must have her Lebensraum, or living-space, for her increasing population. Therefore, Poland and the Danzig Corridor must be absorbed. White Russia and the Ukraine were indispensable to the future life of the German Reich of more than seventy million souls. Nothing less would suffice. All that he asked of the British Commonwealth and Empire was not to interfere. There was a large map on the wall, and the Ambassador several times led me to it to illustrate his projects."[SIZE=2][3][/SIZE]
Two years later, on the occasion of his birthday in April 1939, Hitler made similar comments at the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. According to one of his personal architects, Hermann Giesler, Hitler made the following comments:
"As always, everything comes down to [living] space' ... He (Hitler) did not want Germany's colonies any longer - at least not in the sense that one typically understands the idea: i.e., colonial possessions. ... [Hitler stated] 'Basically I am convinced that a people, as well as individuals, should not break the connection they have to the environment into which they were born. Foreigners, as well as some of our own alienated intelligentsia, mock the phrase 'blood and soil'. However, I find confirmation of this concept upon looking back into history, especially into ancient times. Only the connection of a people to its environment allows its living will to grow and the strength of its long-standing, multifaceted culture to become differentiated. (p.375) ... The German people belongs to continental Europe.'"
This attempt of Rudolf Hess to negotiate peace with Great Britain most likely proves the same point ( Apparently up to the last minute he ( or whoever was behind him) thought that British non-acceptance was a matter of misunderstanding that still could be negotiated.)
Rudolf Walter Richard Hess (26 April 1894 – 17 August 1987) was a prominent Nazi politician who was Adolf Hitler's deputy in the Nazi Party during the 1930s and early 1940s. On the eve of war with the Soviet Union, he flew solo to Scotland in an attempt to negotiate peace with the United Kingdom, but was arrested and became a prisoner of war.
Did Hitler want war? Yes and no. Hitler did not want war with the west, Britain and France. He did see war in the east as an unavoidable thing and prepared for that conflict from the beginning.
Thank you.
Therefore in this respect Buchannan is right; Hitler didn't really want the war with the West.
Thank you.
Therefore in this respect Buchannan is right; Hitler didn't really want the war with the West.
Again, that's like saying a mugger doesn't really want to use violence.
Without somehow pacifying France and Britain, the East Front would not have been possible. Hitler certainly did not expect Britain to carry on as tenaciously as they did - in 1940, it must have seemed all but inevitable that Britain would be on the sidelines for a long time to come.
Again, that's like saying a mugger doesn't really want to use violence.
Without somehow pacifying France and Britain, the East Front would not have been possible. Hitler certainly did not expect Britain to carry on as tenaciously as they did - in 1940, it must have seemed all but inevitable that Britain would be on the sidelines for a long time to come.
OK, what exactly was he trying to rob Britain off in your opinion?
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