Other than that, all of his points are Kissingerian arguments from personality and real-politik -- Hitler thought this, wanted that, was willing to trade X, etc.
Paul Hehn's book, A Low Dishonest Decade, gives a much more useful picture of the economic entanglements and realities on both sides that made war inevitable.
BW
--- On Fri, 6/20/08, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
> Subject: [lbo-talk] Pat Buchanan: UK to blame for Holocaust
> To: "lbo-talk" <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
> Date: Friday, June 20, 2008, 12:15 PM
> <http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=27107>
>
> Was the Holocaust Inevitable?
> by Patrick J. Buchanan
> Posted: 06/20/2008
>
> That the Newsweek cover was sparked by my book
> "Churchill, Hitler and
> The Unnecessary War" seems apparent, as one of the
> three essays, by
> Christopher Hitchens, was a scathing review. Though in
> places
> complimentary, Hitchens charmingly concludes: This book
> "stinks."
>
> Understandable. No Brit can easily concede my central
> thesis: The
> Brits kicked away their empire. Through colossal blunders,
> Britain
> twice declared war on a Germany that had not attacked her
> and did not
> want war with her, fought for 10 bloody years and lost it
> all.
>
> Unable to face the truth, Hitchens seeks solace in old
> myths.
>
> We had to stop Prussian militarism in 1914, says Hitchens.
> "The
> Kaiser's policy shows that Germany was looking for a
> chance for war
> all over the globe."
>
> Nonsense. If the Kaiser were looking for a war he would
> have found
> it. But in 1914, he had been in power for 25 years, was
> deep into
> middle age but had never fought a war nor seen a battle.
>
> From Waterloo to World War I, Prussia fought three wars,
> all in one
> seven-year period, 1864 to 1871. Out of these wars, she
> acquired two
> duchies, Schleswig and Holstein, and two provinces, Alsace
> and
> Lorraine. By 1914, Germany had not fought a war in two
> generations.
>
> Does that sound like a nation out to conquer the world?
>
> As for the Kaiser's bellicose support for the Boers,
> his igniting the
> Agadir crisis in 1905, his building of a great fleet, his
> seeking of
> colonies in Africa, he was only aping the British, whose
> approbation
> and friendship he desperately sought all his life and was
> ever denied.
>
> In every crisis the Kaiser blundered into, including his
> foolish
> "blank cheque" to Austria after Serb assassins
> murdered the heir to
> the Austrian throne, the Kaiser backed down or was trying
> to back
> away when war erupted.
>
> Even Churchill, who before 1914 was charging the Kaiser
> with seeking
> "the dominion of the world," conceded,
> "History should ... acquit
> William II of having plotted and planned the World
> War."
>
> What of World War II? Surely, it was necessary to declare
> war to stop
> Adolf Hitler from conquering the world and conducting the
> Holocaust.
>
> Yet consider. Before Britain declared war on him, Hitler
> never
> demanded return of any lands lost at Versailles to the
> West. Northern
> Schleswig had gone to Denmark in 1919, Eupen and Malmedy
> had gone to
> Belgium, Alsace and Lorraine to France.
>
> Why did Hitler not demand these lands back? Because he
> sought an
> alliance, or at least friendship, with Great Britain and
> knew any
> move on France would mean war with Britain -- a war he
> never wanted.
>
> If Hitler were out to conquer the world, why did he not
> build a great
> fleet? Why did he not demand the French fleet when France
> surrendered? Germany had to give up its High Seas Fleet in
> 1918.
>
> Why did he build his own Maginot Line, the Western Wall, in
> the
> Rhineland, if he meant all along to invade France?
>
> If he wanted war with the West, why did he offer peace
> after Poland
> and offer to end the war, again, after Dunkirk?
>
> That Hitler was a rabid anti-Semite is undeniable.
> "Mein Kampf" is
> saturated in anti-Semitism. The Nuremberg Laws confirm it.
> But for
> the six years before Britain declared war, there was no
> Holocaust,
> and for two years after the war began, there was no
> Holocaust.
>
> Not until midwinter 1942 was the Wannsee Conference held,
> where the
> Final Solution was on the table.
>
> That conference was not convened until Hitler had been
> halted in
> Russia, was at war with America and sensed doom was
> inevitable. Then
> the trains began to roll.
>
> And why did Hitler invade Russia? This writer quotes Hitler
> 10 times
> as saying that only by knocking out Russia could he
> convince Britain
> it could not win and must end the war.
>
> Hitchens mocks this view, invoking the Hitler-madman
> theory.
>
> "Could we have a better definition of derangement and
> megalomania
> than the case of a dictator who overrules his own generals
> and
> invades Russia in wintertime ... ?"
>
> Christopher, Hitler invaded Russia on June 22.
>
> The Holocaust was not a cause of the war, but a consequence
> of the
> war. No war, no Holocaust.
>
> Britain went to war with Germany to save Poland. She did
> not save
> Poland. She did lose the empire. And Josef Stalin, whose
> victims
> outnumbered those of Hitler 1,000 to one as of September
> 1939, and
> who joined Hitler in the rape of Poland, wound up with all
> of Poland,
> and all the Christian nations from the Urals to the Elbe.
>
> The British Empire fought, bled and died, and made Eastern
> and
> Central Europe safe for Stalinism. No wonder Winston
> Churchill was so
> melancholy in old age. No wonder Christopher rails against
> the book.
> As T.S. Eliot observed, "Mankind cannot bear much
> reality."
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