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Product Description: Were World Wars I and II—which can now be seen as a thirty-year paroxysm of slaughter and destruction—inevitable? Were they necessary wars? Were the bloodiest and most devastating conflicts ever suffered by mankind fated by forces beyond men’s control? Or were they products of calamitous failures of judgment? In this monumental and provocative history, Patrick Buchanan makes the case that, if not for the blunders of British statesmen—Winston Churchill first among them—the horrors of two world wars and the Holocaust might have been avoided and the British Empire might never have collapsed into ruins. Half a century of murderous oppression of scores of millions under the iron boot of Communist tyranny might never have happened, and Europe’s central role in world affairs might have been sustained for many generations.
Among the British and Churchillian blunders were:
• The secret decision of a tiny cabal in the inner Cabinet in 1906 to take Britain straight to war against Germany, should she invade France
• The vengeful Treaty of Versailles that muti- lated Germany, leaving her bitter, betrayed, and receptive to the appeal of Adolf Hitler
• Britain’s capitulation, at Churchill’s urging, to American pressure to sever the Anglo- Japanese alliance, insulting and isolating Japan, pushing her onto the path of militarism and conquest
• The 1935 sanctions that drove Italy straight into the Axis with Hitler
• The greatest blunder in British history: the unsolicited war guarantee to Poland of March 1939—that guaranteed the Second World War
• Churchill’s astonishing blindness to Stalin’s true ambitions.
Certain to create controversy and spirited argument, Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War” is a grand and bold insight into the historic failures of judgment that ended centuries of European rule and guaranteed a future no one who lived in that vanished world could ever have envisioned. Customer Reviews: Rating: 
Date: 2008-07-07
The Unnecessary Book
Patrick J. Buchanan has put together a book in which Winston Churchill is the bad guy and Hitler not the most evil man in history. After having read this book, I have to ask myself, why was it necessary to write it? Seemingly, Buchanan argues that the Holocaust was a result of Britain declaring war on Germany. He doesn't pay much attention to Mein Kamph and Crystal Night. If you read some of his responses to criticism of this book you'll see that he contradicts himself because in the book, he acknowledges that Hitler was out to get rid of both Jews and Bolsheviks but he doesn't clearly state whether it's just in Germany and Eastern Europe or the entire world. What's the difference anyway? That's nice Mr. Irish Catholic Guy with a reputation for being hard on Israel. So that's nice that you wished that history would have been different and that I, a Jew, would be dead. I hope you really get creamed on this one in the media and that Conservatives and Liberals alike shun you for this stinker of a book. Rating: 
Date: 2008-07-06
Great merge of history and politics
This book is very well done. The web of politics and history is developed to the last detail. I gave this book a 5-star rating. I started to give it a 4-star, but then realized that the weakness was my own Achilles heel in history. I think from my standpoint the only thing that would have made it better would be if there was a glossary of the "cast of characters" in the back. I kept trying to refresh myself with Who's Who. But again, I gave it 5-stars because that was probably my own fault Rating:
Date: 2008-07-05
History You Never Learned in High School
This book is an eye opening look at a subject most people think they know all there is to know about. While not excusing any of the monstrous evils of the Hitler regime, Patrick Buchanan demonstrates that Churchill and other British politicians were just as responsible, if not more so, as the German politicians for the outbreak of World Wars I and II and all of the attendant horrors. Buchanan also exposes the bloodthirty side of Winston Churchill. Churchill, for example, was the architect of the starvation blockade of Germany during World War I and advocated bombing civilian targets in Germany and the use of poison gas against Iraqi rebels during World War II. As for Hitler, Buchanan portrays Hitler not as a maniacal ideology-driven warmonger bent on world conquest but as an opportunistic nationalist politician who badly miscalculated and blundered into a war he very much wanted to avoid. Finally, Buchanan illustrates the tragic consequences of what many call "the good war." Buchanan notes that the war destroyed what was left of the British Empire, and left a brutal Soviet tyranny in control of virtually all of eastern and central Europe. The war also set in motion a series of events that would lead to communist tyranny and atrocity in China and other parts of Asia. Churchill, far from the farsighted statesman he is generally portrayed as, comes off in this book as a mendacious, ego-driven and erratic bumbler. As for World War II, rather than an inevitable and necessary war, Buchanan demonstrates how even as late as the fall of 1939 catastrophe could have been avoided. Commenting on the outbreak of World War I, Winston Churchill once said, "The terrible 'ifs' accumulate." Indeed. Rating:
Date: 2008-07-04
Britain's myopia
Once again Pat has gotten it right. To think that so many Americans were called upon to surrender their lives or years of their lives to help a Soviet regime achieve hegemony in Europe.
Britain was basically done after World War I. To suck so many other nations into a war that was inevitably a Germany - Russia conflict was the height of selfishness and immorality. Even if Hitler had defeated Stalin, how would the Germans been able to control such vast expanses of territory? Germany would have been exhausted and would have crumbled from within.
I think the height of British duplicity was the guarantee of Poland. As Pat points out it was sheer idiocy. But, if Britain was sincere, why did she declare war on Germany alone. Stalin also attacked Poland. Why didn't the Brits declare war on Russia? Or was the guarantee selective.
Britain and the forces within her government and those that had the power to influence her government were fixated on Hitler. That myopia caused several horrible tragedies--World War II, the enslavement of eastern Europe and most of Asia, the cold war, the decline of the West and the ubiquitous Nazi phantasmagoria that has debased our laws and culture. Rating:
Date: 2008-07-01
Conventional WWII Wisdom: Not So Wise After All?
Anyone who has read widely on the subject will be familiar with much of the historical material Buchanan uses.
Buchanan's contribution to how we view the tragic and fascinating history of this global cataclysm is his compilation of historical facts, lesser known to the wider public, in a way that prods us to reconsider engrained assumptions. The ghastly nature of Hitler's totalitarian regime is a given, so the book focuses on weighing the costs of the various lousy alternatives available to other powers, such as the UK and US, that were not directly in Hitler's line of march. In particular, Buchanan challenges the wisdom of Britain's 1939 war declaration. The justification of allied war methods, such as mass bombing of civilians, is scrutinized using the same standards for belligerents of both sides.
Most of the criticisms found in the reviews had been predictable. Buchanan anticipated and effectively addressed them point by point. They get repeated just the same, as if Buchanan never thought of them. Obviously he has touched a nerve.
My last relative who truly represented "the Greatest Generation" has passed away. I'm glad most vets of that war, justifiably proud, will be spared the necessary reassessment of the almost unchallenged "good war" mythology. I sympathize with those WWII veterans who view doubts about the war's necessity (from a US or British standpoint) as a challenge to their own noble sacrifice and ideals. That's certainly not what this book is all about.
As an infantry veteran of the Vietnam War, the cold shower of doubt about its political justification came after returning home in 1967. For many Vietnam vets, doubts came while they were there. For others who went later, the doubts were there before leaving home. Whatever, we have had plenty of time to get used to the idea that the war's potential benefit was not worth the cost in shattered lives and resources. The same may be true of many Iraq war veterans. To confront WWII vets at this late date to similar doubts about the necessity of their sacrifice might be cruel. But to everyone else, the thesis and array of events that Buchanan has assembled in this excellent historical review are necessary reminders of just how deceptive ostensibly clear moral choices can be when militarily intervening in far-away conflicts.
US intervention in WWII did not start on December 7, 1941; just as US intervention in the Middle East did not start on September 11, 2001. The chronology of escalating tit-for-tat violence is something we need to focus on a lot more than we have. Buchanan has done just that in this hard treatment of the comfortable black-white WWII legend.
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