Buchanan On World War II, The National Question And Hitler’s Posthumous Revenge

07/23/2008

Pat Buchanan’s last six books — The Great Betrayal, A Republic Not an Empire, Death of the West, Where the Right Went Wrong, State of Emergency, and Day of Reckoning — all dealt with policy and politics from a Big Picture perspective. Death of the West and State of Emergency looked specifically at the National Question. But even Buchanan’s books on trade and foreign policy went after many of the enemies of the nation, like universalism and economism.

Pat’s latest book Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War is quite different. It is a historical study of various events and decisions by Britain and Germany that led up to World War I and World War II. Pat argues that had Britain acted differently, above all in giving a guarantee to Poland in March of 1939, World War II could have been avoided.

The subtitle of the book, "How Britain Lost an Empire and the West Lost the World", suggests that Pat thinks that the outcome of World War II had a great deal to do with the National Question. In fact, the opening paragraphs of the book begin with the recitation of some gloomy facts about birthrates, immigration, and loss of national self confidence to demonstrate that the West is passing away.

Naturally, most of the attention given to this book — both positive and negative — has focused on Pat’s claim that World War II was unnecessary. But in this piece, I’d like to look at if and why it really caused "The West to Lose the World".

From the lead-up to World War I to the immediate aftermath of World War II, a great deal happened to the popular perception of what the role of the nation should be in world politics, and how much race and ethnicity should be factored into the nation. Most of this is accepted by most historians and is not challenged by Pat in this book.

World War I was sparked in large part by clashing nationalisms in Europe, particularly within the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Following World War, I the principle of "self-determination" for ethnic groups became a shibboleth, resulting in the redrawing of many of the borders of Europe and the Middle East.

At the same time, the first international institutions, such as the League of Nations, began.

During the interwar period Japan, Italy, and Germany experienced a form of hyper-nationalism — with the latter’s especially being intertwined with ideas of racial superiority.

After World War II, in response to the perceived failures of the League of Nations, much more powerful international institutions — most notably, the United Nations — were created. They have continued to gain more power ever since.

All these factors have led to a greater sense of international comity. But it does not seem as if "Open Borders" should be the inevitable result. What has been the most damaging reaction after World War II is the extreme reaction against nationalism and anything perceived as "racism", which is assumed — if left unchecked — to result in the next Hitler. This is why Peter Brimelow opened up Alien Nation by calling the mass immigration unleashed by the 1965 Immigration Act "Hitler’s posthumous revenge on America".

Is this reaction at all based on reality?

Most of Hitler’s expansion up until Munich was in some sense done under the guise of Grossdeutschland or "Greater Germany" — meaning that all ethnic Germans should be under the same state. Hitler’s expansion into the Rhineland, Austria, the Sudetenland, and Danzig could all fit under this category. In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote that "National Socialists must go further" and promoted the idea of lebensraum or "living space" — meaning that the German nation and people must expand:

"The right to possess soil can become a duty if without extension of its soil a great nation seems doomed to destruction. And most especially when not some little negro nation or other is involved, but the Germanic mother of life".

But while these plans were outlined in Mein Kampf, Pat argues that these were really not part of Hitler’s immediate war ambitions. He thinks that Hitler wanted a Grossdeutschland, and then protectorate states. Although when Operation Barbarossa, the German attack on the Soviet Union, was initiated, Hitler cited lebensraum as a justification, Pat suggests that Hitler’s true motivation was in response to British intervention. He quotes Hitler:

"Britain is sustained in the struggle by hopes placed in the U.S.A. and Russia…Britain’s aim for some time to come will be to set Russia’s strength in motion against us. If the U.S.A. and Russia should enter the war against Germany the situation would become very complicated. Hence any possibility for such a threat to develop must be eliminated at the very outset." [p. 365]

Regardless of what Hitler’s ambitions were, vanishingly few of today’s American nationalists — even the most "extreme" — have called for a white takeover the Third World. They just want the Third World out of the West. If anything, it is the Mexican elite, with its flagrant commitment to the "Mexodus", dumping its poor on its northern neighbor’s welfare system, which is using America as its lebensraum. In this sense, the U.S. has indeed become what Eugene McCarthy called "A Colony Of The World".

While Pat does not try to rehabilitate Hitler, he does scrutinize the character of Winston Churchill in some detail. He shows that, if opposition to egalitarianism and mass immigration makes one a Nazi, then Hitler’s greatest opponent would be a prime candidate for the SS.

As Pat notes, "Churchill was no egalitarian humanist". He was an avid supporter of eugenics, who warned that Britain’s population of 120,000 feeble minded "should, if possible, be segregated under proper conditions so that their curse died with them and was not transmitted to future generations".[Page 401]

Churchill had no problem with the idea of some races expanding their living space: "I do not admit…that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia...by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race…has come and taken their place." [p. 403]

And Pat notes that this attitude certainly affected Churchill’s views on non-white immigration to Britain. In 1955, Churchill told an interviewer that "[non-white immigration] is the most important subject facing this country, but I cannot get any of my ministers to take any notice." [p. 404]

Churchill had even suggested "Keep England White" for a slogan for immigration policy.

"The multiracial, multicultural nation of today", Pat writes, is "no longer Churchill’s nation". [p. 405]

One can agree or disagree with Pat on whether World War II was necessary. But after reading Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War, it is hard to say it was "good". The fifty million dead and the empowerment of Stalin was certainly a high price to pay for the defeat of Hitler.

And what is unquestionably unnecessary is the continued self-flagellation of the West for fear of creating another Hitler.

In Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War, Pat has, albeit implicitly, provided further proof that America’s post-1965 immigration disaster is nothing less than "Hitler’s posthumous revenge."

Marcus Epstein [send him mail] is the founder of the Robert A Taft Club and the executive director of the The American Cause and Team America PAC. A selection of his articles can be seen here. The views he expresses are his own.

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