Churchill, Hitler, and The Unnecessary War

by Patrick J. Buchanan

  6. Charles Callan Tansill, Back Door to War: The Roosevelt Foreign Policy 1933–41 (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1952), p. 509.

  7. A.J.P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War, Second Edition with a Preface for the American Reader and a New Introduction, “Second Thoughts” (New York: Atheneum, 1961), p. 195.

  8. Smith, p. 18.

  9. Andreas Hillgruber, Germany and the Two World Wars, Translated by William C. Kirby (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), pp. 58–59; Smith, p. 18.

  10. Norman Davies, God’s Playground: A History of Poland, Volume II: 1795 to the Present (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), pp. 420–21; William Henry Chamberlin, America’s Second Crusade (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1950), p. 44.

  11. Hillgruber, p. 59.

  12. Tansill, p. 510.

  13. William Manchester, The Last Lion, Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone, 1932–1940 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1988), p. 403.

  14. Taylor, Origins, p. 196.

  15. Ibid., p. 213.

  16. Maurice Cowling, The Impact of Hitler: British Politics and British Policy 1933–1940 (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 276.

  17. Tansill, p. 510.

  18. Donald Cameron Watt, How War Came: The Immediate Origins of the Second World War (New York: Pantheon, 1989), p. 143.

  19. B. H. Liddell Hart, History of the Second World War (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1970), p. 10.

  20. Cowling, p. 188.

  21. Simon Newman, March 1939: The British Guarantee to Poland (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), p. 89.

  22. Tansill, p. 453.

  23. Watt, p. 155.

  24. George Kennan, Memoirs: 1925–1950 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967), p. 96.

  25. John Lukacs, George Kennan: A Study of Character (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 43.

  26. Newman, p. 91.

  27. Ibid.; Watt, p. 154.

  28. Watt, p. 145.

  29. John Toland, Adolf Hitler (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976), p. 517.

  30. Ibid.

  31. Ibid.

  32. Ibid.; Richard Evans, The Third Reich in Power: 1933–1939 (New York: Penguin Press, 2005), p. 683.

  33. Sir Nevile Henderson, Failure of a Mission (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1940), p. 214; Smith, p. 131.

  34. Henderson, p. 219.

  35. Henry A. Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 316.

  36. Taylor, Origins, pp. 202–3.

  37. Michael Bloch, Ribbentrop, Foreword by Hugh Trevor-Roper (London: Abacus, 2003), p. 233.

  38. Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), p. 479.

  39. Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1936–1945: Nemesis (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), p. 84.

  40. Ibid., p. 92.

  41. Tansill, p. 454; William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1960), p. 451.

  42. Smith, p. 132.

  43. Newman, p. 103, Dutton, p. 58; Watt, p. 167.

  44. Manchester, p. 401.

  45. Ibid.

  46. Watt, p. 170.

  47. Ibid., p. 402.

  48. Stewart, p. 355; Smith, p. 133; Taylor, Origins, p. 205; Dutton, p. 58; Cowling, p. 295.

  49. Taylor, Origins, p. 207.

  50. Alexander De Conde, A History of American Foreign Policy (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1963), p. 576; Smith, p. 185.

  51. Smith, p. 164.

  52. Andrew Roberts, The Holy Fox: The Life of Lord Halifax (London: Orion, 1997), p. 147; Roy Denman, Missed Chances: Britain and Europe in the Twentieth Century (London: Indigo, 1997), pp. 120–21.

  53. Newman, p. 184.

  54. Bullock, p. 497; Taylor, Origins, p. 210; Newman, p. 162.

  55. Correlli Barnett, The Collapse of British Power (New York: William Morrow, 1972), p. 560; Denman, p. 121; Taylor, Origins, p. 211; Bullock, p. 498; Chamberlin, p. 58.

  56. Taylor, English History, p. 441.

  57. Ernest May, Strange Victory: Hitler’s Conquest of France (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000), p. 193.

  58. Manchester, p. 406.

  59. Ibid.

  60. Emrys Hughes, Winston Churchill: British Bulldog (New York: Exposition Press, 1955), p. 175.

  61. Denman, p. 122.

  62. Peter Rowland, David Lloyd George: A Biography (New York: Macmillan, 1975), p. 757.

  63. Hart, pp. 7, 11; Manchester, p. 406; Telford Taylor, Munich: The Price of Peace (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1979), p. 971.

  64. Hart, pp. 7, 11–12.

  65. Manchester, p. 406.

  66. Ibid., p. 407.

  67. Roberts, Holy Fox, p. 148.

  68. May, p. 193.

  69. Denman, p. 121.

  70. Henderson, p. 236.

  71. Johnson, p. 363.

  72. Ibid., p. 358.

  73. Francis Neilson, The Churchill Legend (Brooklyn, N.Y.: 29 Books, 2004), p. 328.

  74. Winston S. Churchill, Step by Step: 1936–1939 (London: Odhams Press, 1947), p. 344; Manchester, p. 407.

  75. Manchester, p. 407.

  76. Ibid.

  77. Ibid.

  78. Churchill, Step by Step, p. 343.

  79. Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948), p. 347.

  80. Ibid., p. 348.

  81. Hart, p. 704.

  82. Ibid., p. 15; Neilson, p. 318; Hughes, p. 177.

  83. Smith, p. 145.

  84. Niall Ferguson, The War of the World: Twentieth Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (New York: Penguin Press, 2006), p. 377.

  85. Luigi Villari, Italian Foreign Policy Under Mussolini (New York: Devin-Adair, 1956), p. 216.

  86. Ibid.

  87. Johnson, pp. 356–57.

  88. Watt, pp. 185–86.

  89. Stewart, pp. 356–57.

  90. Capt. Russell Grenfell, R.N., Unconditional Hatred: German War Guilt and the Future of Europe (New York: Devin-Adair, 1953), p. 22.

  91. Tansill, p. 513.

  92. Ibid.

  93. Kissinger, pp. 316–17.

  94. Peter Clarke, Hope and Glory: Britain 1900–1990 (London: Allen Lane, Penguin Press, 1996), p. 190.

  95. Henderson, pp. 225–26.

  96. Denman, p. 121.

  97. Shirer, Third Reich, p. 466.

  98. Taylor, Origins, p. 211.

  99. Barnett, p. 560.

  100. Ibid.

  101. Ibid., p. 562.

  102. Denman, p. 3.

  103. Hart, p. 11.

  104. Hughes, p. 175.

  105. Newman, p. 136.

  106. Richard M. Nixon, Six Crises (Garden City, N.: Doubleday, 1962), p. xv.

  107. Newman, pp. 218–19.

  108. Roberts, p. 144.

  109. Ibid.

  110. Ibid, p. 147.

  111. Graham Stewart, Burying Caesar: The Churchill-Chamberlain Rivalry (Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 2001), p. 358.

  112. Gilbert, p. 612; Manchester, p. 413; Stewart, p. 358.

  113. Gilbert, p. 612; Manchester, p. 412.

  114. Gilbert, p. 612; Manchester, pp. 412–13.

  115. Watt, p. 190.

  116. Chamberlin, p. 51.

  117. Neilson, p. 409; Patrick J. Buchanan, A Republic, Not an Empire (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 1999), p. 277; Hanson W. Baldwin, Great Mistakes of the War (New York: Harper, 1949), p. 10.

  118. Denman, p. 151.

  119. George Kennan letter to Pat Buchanan, November 5, 1999, PJB Files.

  120. Ibid.

  CHAPTER 10: APRIL FOOLS

  1. A.J.P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War, Second Edition with a Preface for the American Reader and a New Introduction, “Second Thoughts” (New York: Atheneum, 1961), p. 54; Correlli Barnett, The Collapse of British Power (New York: William Morrow, 1972), p. 331; Henry A. Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 273.

  2. F. H. Hinsley, Hitler’s Strategy (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Pre
ss, 1951), p. 16.

  3. William Henry Chamberlin, America’s Second Crusade (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1950), p. 61.

  4. Ibid., p. 45.

  5. Charles Callan Tansill, Back Door to War: The Roosevelt Foreign Policy 1933–41 (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1952), p. 510.

  6. Chamberlin, p. 61.

  7. Tansill, p. 514.

  8. Chamberlin, p. 52.

  9. Taylor, p. 203.

  10. Ernest May, Strange Victory: Hitler’s Conquest of France (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000), p. 193.

  11. Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Life (New York: Henry Holt, 1991), p. 612.

  12. May, pp. 193–94.

  13. Ibid., p. 194.

  14. William Manchester, The Last Lion, Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone, 1932–1940 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1988), p. 412.

  15. William Shirer, The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1969), pp. 422–23.

  16. Ibid.

  17. Peter Rowland, David Lloyd George: A Biography (New York: Macmillan, 1975), p. 757; Gene Smith, The Dark Summer: An Intimate History of the Events That Led to World War II (New York: Macmillan, 1987), p. 163.

  18. Andrew Roberts, The Holy Fox: A Life of Lord Halifax (London: Orion, 1997), p. 151.

  19. Simon Newman, March 1939: The British Guarantee to Poland (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), p. 221.

  20. Tansill, p. 519.

  21. Ibid.

  22. Manchester, pp. 407–8.

  23. Ibid., p. 408.

  24. Newman, p. 212.

  25. Taylor, p. xxvii.

  26. George Kennan, Memoirs: 1925–1950 (Boston, Little Brown, 1967), p. 88.

  27. Taylor, p. 185.

  28. Norman Davies, God’s Playground: A History of Poland in Two Volumes; vol. II: 1795 to the Present (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), p. 431.

  29. Newman, p. 213.

  30. Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, Completely Revised Edition (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), p. 501.

  31. Ibid.

  32. Ibid., pp. 504–5.

  33. Ibid., p. 505.

  34. Ibid.

  35. Newman, p. 214.

  CHAPTER 11: “AN UNNECESSARY WAR”

  1. Keith Feiling, The Life of Neville Chamberlain (London: Macmillan, 1946), p. 320; Correlli Barnett, The Collapse of British Power (New York: William Morrow, 1972), p. 458.

  2. Nicholas Bethell, The War Hitler Won: The Fall of Poland, September 1939 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973), pp. 97, 141.

  3. Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Life (New York: Henry Holt, 1991), p. 410; John Charmley, Churchill: The End of Glory (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1993), p. 152; Historical Papers: Documents from the British Archives, www.fco.gov.uk.

  4. Henry A. Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 252; Hajo Holborn, The Political Collapse of Europe (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969), p. 128.

  5. Francis Neilson, The Makers of War (Appleton, Wisc.: C. C. Nelson, 1950), p. 71; Emrys Hughes, Winston Churchill: British Bulldog (New York: Exposition Press, 1955), p. 169.

  6. Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948), p. 349; A.J.P. Taylor, English History 1914–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 446; Gene Smith, The Dark Summer: An Intimate History of the Events That Led to World War II (New York: Macmillan, 1987), p. 164; William Henry Chamberlin, America’s Second Crusade (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1950), p. 59.

  7. Smith, pp. 159–60.

  8. Chamberlin, p. 65.

  9. Winston S. Churchill, Step by Step: 1936–1939 (London: Odhams Press, 1947), p. 47.

  10. Ibid., p. 48.

  11. Ibid., pp. 60–61.

  12. Ibid., p. 330.

  13. Humphrey Carpenter, W. H. Auden: A Biography (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981), pp. 218–19.

  14. Smith, p. 197.

  15. Niall Ferguson, The War of the World: The Twentieth Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (New York: Penguin Press, 2006), p. 379.

  16. Bethell, p. 5.

  17. Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power 1933–1939 (New York: Penguin Press, 2005), p. 699.

  18. Charles Callan Tansill, Back Door to War: The Roosevelt Foreign Policy 1933–41 (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1952), p. 549.

  19. Barnett, p. 333.

  20. Kissinger, p. 317.

  21. Roy Denman, Missed Chances: Britain and Europe in the Twentieth Century (London: Indigo, 1997), p. 3.

  22. Barnett, pp. 572–73.

  23. Tansill, p. 550.

  24. Ibid., p. 553.

  25. Ibid.

  26. Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (New York: Macmillan, 1970), p. 165.

  27. F. H. Hinsley, Hitler’s Strategy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951), pp. 28–29.

  28. Andreas Hillgruber, Germany and the Two World Wars, Translated by William C. Kirby (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), p. 77.

  29. Bethell, p. 84.

  30. Ernest May, Strange Victory: Hitler’s Conquest of France (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000), p. 203.

  31. Ibid.; Chamberlin, p. 70; David Dutton, Neville Chamberlain (London: Arnold, 2001), p. 59; Smith, p. 277.

  32. Bethell, pp. 80–81.

  33. Chamberlin, p. 70.

  34. Dutton, p. 59.

  35. Bethell, p. 165.

  36. Ibid., p. 90.

  37. Niall Ferguson, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Power Order and the Lessons for Global Power (New York: Basic, 2003), p. 287.

  38. Norman Davies, God’s Playground: A History of Poland in Two Volumes; vol. II: 1795 to the Present (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), p. 432.

  39. Hillgruber, p. 72; Norman Davies, Europe: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 995; Davies, God’s Playground, p. 432; Bethell, p. 92.

  40. Hillgruber, p. 72.

  41. Taylor, History, p. 450; Lukacs, p. 55.

  42. John Lukacs, Five Days in London: May 1940 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999), p. 12.

  43. Taylor, Origins, p. xxvii.

  44. Taylor, History, p. 467.

  45. Davies, God’s Playground, p. 430.

  46. Davies, Europe, p. 993.

  47. Sir Nevile Henderson, Failure of a Mission (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1940), p. 251.

  48. Hillgruber, p. 74.

  CHAPTER 12: GRUESOME HARVEST

  1. Ralph Franklin Keeling, Gruesome Harvest (Chicago: Institute of American Economics, 1947), p. 130.

  2. Correlli Barnett, The Collapse of British Power (New York: William Morrow, 1972), p. 15.

  3. Alistair Horne, To Lose a Battle: France 1940 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1969), p. 559.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Emrys Hughes, Winston Churchill: British Bulldog (New York: Exposition Press, 1955), p. 196.

  7. John Charmley, Churchill: The End of Glory (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1993), p. 514.

  8. Luigi Villari, Italian Foreign Policy Under Mussolini (New York: Devin-Adair, 1956), p. 162.

  9. “The Madness of Myths,” The Economist, November 9, 2006, a review of Norman Davies, Europe at War 1939–1945: No Simple Victory. Economist.com

  10. Norman Davies, Rising ’44: The Battle for Warsaw (New York: Viking Penguin, 2004), p. 158.

  11. Ibid.

  12. B. H. Liddell Hart, History of the Second World War (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1970), p. 3.

  13. Ibid.

  14. Norman Davies, “How We Didn’t Win the War…But the Russians Did,” Sunday Times, November 5,

  2006. http://www.timesonline.co.uk.

  15. Villari, p. 96.

  16. John Toland, Adolf Hitler (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976), p. 511.

  17. Ibid.

  18. Ian Kershaw, Fateful Choices: The Decisions That Changed the World, 1940–1941 (New York: Penguin Press, 2007), p. xv. 19. The Goebbels Diaries: 1942–1943, Edited, Translated, and wi
th an Introduction by Louis P. Lochner (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1948), p. 86.

  20. Ibid., p. 115.

  21. Ibid., p. 148.

  22. Ibid.

  23. Niall Ferguson, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power (New York: Basic, 2003), p. 296.

  24. Ibid., p. 354.

  25. Davies, “How We Didn’t Win the War.

  26. Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948), pp. iv–v.

  27. Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Life (New York: Henry Holt, 1991), p. 646.

  28. Churchill, p. 223; William Manchester, The Last Lion, Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone, 1932–1940 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1988), p. 266.

  29. Alan Clark, “A Reputation Ripe for Revision,” London Times, January 2, 1993.

  30. Sir Nevile Henderson, Failure of a Mission (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1940), p. 240.

  CHAPTER 13: HITLER’S AMBITIONS

  1. B. H. Liddell Hart, History of the Second World War (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1970), p. 6.

  2. A.J.P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War, Second Edition with a Preface for the American Reader and a New Introduction, “Second Thoughts” (New York: Atheneum, 1961), p. xx.

  3. Correlli Barnett, The Collapse of British Power (New York: William Morrow, 1972), p. 386.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Andreas Hillgruber, Germany and the Two World Wars, Translated by William C. Kirby (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), p. 51.

  6. Ibid., pp. 51–52.

  7. Ibid., p. 53.

  8. Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1889–1936: Hubris (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), p. 249; William Henry Chamberlin, America’s Second Crusade (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1950), p. 49; Hillgruber, pp. 48, 50.

  9. Kershaw, p. 247.

  10. David Calleo, The German Problem Reconsidered: Germany and the World Order (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 103.

  11. A.J.P. Taylor, From Sarajevo to Potsdam (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967), p. 134.

  12. Kershaw, p. 247.

  13. Ibid.

  14. Ibid., p. 246.

  15. Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), p. 337.

  16. Ibid.

  17. Roy Denman, Missed Chances: Britain and Europe in the Twentieth Century (London: Indigo, 1997), p. 129.

  18. John Toland, Adolf Hitler (New York: Doubleday, 1976), p. 611.

  19. Ibid.

  20. Niall Ferguson, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Power Order and the Lessons for Global Power (New York: Basic, 2003), pp. 330–31.