Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #209429 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 544 pages

Synopsis
A leading conservative thinker presents a revisionist history of the twentieth century that argues that Churchill's actions propelled Britain into two World Wars, a situation that led to the collapse of the British empire and ended Europe's global dominance. 80,000 first printing.

Customer Reviews

Churchill, the adventurer, Hitler, the ideologist
In this remarkable book about the origins and consequences of the great wars of the 20th century, Buchanan shows how the British Empire exhausted itself in two politically unjustifiable conflicts with the German Reich until Europe lay in ruins, with its eastern half enslaved by the Soviets and its western half leased out to the Americans. He describes, primarily by means of quotations, the state of mind of the persons strutting the international stage during that tumultuous period, centering on what went on in Britain.

First and foremost among these actors, he concentrates on Winston Churchill, who, early into the frightening game, had declared: "A European war can only end in the ruin of the vanquished and in the scarcely less fatal commercial dislocation and exhaustion of the conquerors".

Why such a level-headed man, only a decade later, should go all out to bring about such a war and to maintain it for 30 years cannot be explained rationally and rather belongs to the domain of psychiatry - for the catholic scholar Buchanan it is perhaps a question of ethics as well.

In the eyes of Buchanan, Churchill was a man without moral restraints (as he was for many contemporaries), acting entirely on the spur of the moment who would have no qualms doing precisely that of which he accused his adversaries, a man like Shakespeare's Richard III who said: "Why, I can smile, and murder whiles I smile, deceive more slyly than Ulysses did, and, like a Simon, take another Troy". At the end of his political career, he had, indeed managed to take another Troy, but ruined the British Empire in doing so; his country was relegated into the backrow of international powers, right next to its former enemy.

As opposed to that, Buchanan holds the sins of the German side against England to be rather venial citing many direct sources, but also the comments of famous historians like Keegan, Taylor or Kennan to prove his point. He underscores that in both of the Great Wars the German side went out of its way to avoid conflict with Britain, only to be rejected again and again, because London was loath to let go of the doctrine of "divide and reign" even though, in an expanding world,it was no longer applicable.

In order to appreciate the inertia of such political ideas, we can get a clue from Robert Vansittart - whom Buchanan rather neglects - in 1939 permanent head of the British Foreign Office, later to become chief of the propaganda machine. On the first page of a collection of articles and speeches from WW2, "Bones of Contention", Vansittart declares that, for him, the problem of Germany was "the problem of preventing her from gaining again in peace the victory she could not gain at war", and further along in the book he traces the origins of this antagonistic attitude "not to Adolf, but to Friedrich and Wilhelm".

Thus, what made Germany "utterly inexcusable" for Vansittart was the mere fact that the country existed at all and this made her the legitimate target of Britain's European policy - Germany was damned if she went to war, and damned if she did not.

In connection with WW2, the British assessment of Hitler is obviously a key issue for Buchanan. He tells us that many members of the political establishment, in the 1920s and 1930s, came to realise the stupidity and injustice of the document signed at Versailles which had upset the balance of Europe, and worse; the outcome was a number of agreements with Hitler which clearly ran against the spirit and the letter of Versailles, not to mention later agreements, such as Stresa.

One of the decisive issues of this period is, obviously the fate of Czechoslovakia which became critical when Germany, in the autumn of 1938, regained those areas that were largely inhabited by Germans. Six months after Munich, the Germans occupied what was left of the country and made it a protectorate. Buchanan spends a great deal of time on the discussion of the events that caused this move. He shows how complicated the situation of the country had become once the ethnic Germans had gained their independence: now the other parts of this artificial construct claimed equal rights. The Slovaks wanted a state of their own (they got it 50 years later). West-Ruthenia - in case anybody still remembers where it lay, after 1945, it eventually ended up as part of the Soviet union - wanted and obtained union with Hungary. The authoritarian government in Warsaw claimed the Teschen industrial area. Seeing such a chaotic situation arise without much interference from Berlin, the Germans seized the opportunity and occupied the land, thus keeping it completely out of the turmoil of WW2, oppressed, yes, but an island of peace in a continent at war. The other neighbours grabbed the leftovers.

The consequences of these events are described in a chapter entitled "A fatal blunder". In line with other historians, Buchanan critcises the British decision to press a guarantee upon Warsaw to bolster that country's position in the ongoing negotiations with Germany about Danzig and the corridor. Such a guarantee had no real substance, because London could, in no way, protect Poland, but in doing so, Britain tied her hands and gave to the Poles the power to decide about peace or a new war in Europe. Poland promptly overplayed her hand

The further development of WW2 allows Buchanan to follow Churchill's incoherent actions, taking as an example the British Prime Minister's vacillating attitude towards Stalin and the Soviet Union; the reader is left with the choice between almost criminal opportunism and unbelievable political blindness. Churchill had carried out his aim to "set Europe on fire" in order to beat his adversary, he sat among the victors at Potsdam, but he had to acknowledge at Fulton, a year later, that there had been a minor slip-up, now that it was no longer an admiring German dictator who stood on the other side of the North Sea, but the unscrupulous leader of a world power which the western Allies had nurtured in order not to leave continental Europe under the influence of a single nation. A Pyrrhic victory if there ever was one.

The conservative thinker Buchanan, at the end of his book, sees the present United States in a position quite similar to Britain's 100 years earlier: over-extended in military and economic terms, with its limited means squandered all over the globe. The reader cannot help but feel that the fate of the US may be decided in Afghanistan - the third nation, after Britain and the Soviet Union, to be defeated in the land beyond the Khyber pass.

Interesting but not convincing
Buchanan's brief history of WWI is excellent and the reader cannot fail but cringe at the stupidity by the leaders of both sides (pre and post War). His analysis of WWII however is far weaker.
Delving into Hitler's "intentions" is impossible. Buchanan argues: Hitler had no intention of attacking England, therefore the English should have kept out. Many retort: "he would, if he could". Had he won the East and become master of continental Europe, how long before England became the next morsel for his ambitions? Could a gambler and supreme opportunist, such as Hitler, resist the temptation? Not a wise bet to make.
If England had stayed out and Germany won in the East, would Nazi rule over all of continental Europe been better than the actual outcome, Soviet rule in Easter Europe? Europe's key states (France, West Germany, England) remained free democracies. Enfeebled but free. As to the colonies (British and French) WWII was a major bonus: It ensured their liberation soon after.
Buchanan's view that Churchill was greatly over-rated and a war monger is more in tune with reality. Contemporary biographies (such as Alan Brooke's, Chief of the Imperial Staff) are equally dismissive of his judgement and abilities. Nonetheless, his rhetoric and will power kept the country together in the first, darkest hours and his appointments of commanders and people at the levers of power, were excellent. For that he deserves full credit.

A tough read for middle-aged Britons....but quite superb
Like the other reviewers here, I wanted to hate this book. I'm one of the many middle-aged Britons watching their country lose its identity and sink into third-rate obscurity, compensated largely by the notion that Churchill led us to greatness by making the world free. Buchanan does not disagree with this view at all - in fact, he points out what a great war leader Churchill was. But Buchanan's analysis of the consequences of the war are incontrovertible. It broke Britain financially, made America, and replaced a psychopathic dictatorship which enslaved and murdered throughout Europe with another that did just the same. Britain never lifted a finger to save the country - Poland - that she went to war for. Churchill was not a great statesman. He made very bad decisions about Russia and the US, which he admitted himself, and which severely disadvantaged Britain and made it a very costly victory.

Buchanan's argument is that unlike Truman, Kennedy and Reagan, who all recognised the reality of what they could and couldn't defend, Chamberlain's Britain issued guarantees that were worthless bluffs. Britain could never have hoped to save the Czech Republic or Poland. He ponders whether NATO is doing the same thing right now, and what will happen if Russia decides that it wants to re-incorporate one of its old Baltic 'provinces'. As I write this, and Russia is invading Georgia, until recently a NATO candidate, I wonder how many of us would be willing to enter World War 3 because of the foreign policy of Georgia, or Latvia.Truman did't take on Russia over the Berlin blockade, and Kennedy did a deal with Krushchev to avoid frying us all over Cuba.

Buchanan links together the whole of twentieth century very carefully, so the whole historical context becomes clear. The victors of WW1 had dismembered Germany, creating a crippled country with major populations living in hostile neighbouring countries. From Britain, with an almost football-team-supporters view of history, anything which challenges our poorly-informed and childishly simple view of the battle of good over evil is patently nonsense. But where my daughter lives today, in the Czech Sudetenland, things are not so cut and dried. There, a terrible price was paid in ethnic cleansing, only for that country, like all Hitler's targets, to be occupied for a further 50 years by an equally barbaric regime.

This is a thoughtful and wide-ranging book. Unlike most modern histories it is not narrative entertainment ("... meanwhile, in a cellar on the other side of the city,..."), but a well-researched, well-argued presentation that has policy implications today. If you're happy with simplicity, then go ahead and dislike it. But it's hard to fault the history...