The Avoidable War

Churchill and the Avoid­able War will cost you the price of a cup of cof­fee. You can read it in a cou­ple of nights.  You may then decide if Churchill was right that the Sec­ond World War could have been pre­vent­ed. Click here for your copy.

Churchill called it “The Unnec­es­sary War…. If the Allies had resist­ed Hitler strong­ly in his ear­ly stages…he would have been forced to recoil, and a chance would have been giv­en to the sane ele­ments in Ger­man life.”

The Sec­ond World War was the defin­ing event of our age—the cli­mac­tic clash between lib­er­ty and tyran­ny. It led to rev­o­lu­tions, the demise of empires, a pro­tract­ed Cold War, and reli­gious strife still not end­ed. Yet Churchill main­tained that it was all avoidable.

This book is avail­able as a Kin­dle Sin­gle or an illus­trat­ed paper­back via Ama­zon USA and Ama­zon UK. I would be most grate­ful any read­er posts  a short review on the Ama­zon pages. Just go to the Ama­zon page and scroll down to “read­er reviews.”

For book reviews by Man­fred Wei­d­horn, War­ren Kim­ball and Charles Crist, please click here.

The war problem as Churchill saw it

This book exam­ines Churchill’s argu­ment: his pre­scrip­tions to pre­vent war, not in ret­ro­spect but at the time. Here are his for­mu­las, his actions, the degree to which he pur­sued them. Churchill was both right and wrong. Hitler was stop­pable; yet even Churchill did not do all he could to stop him. The text cov­ers what real­ly happened—evidence that has been “hid­ing in pub­lic” for many years. It is thor­ough­ly ref­er­enced with over 200 foot­notes to Churchill’s words and those of his contemporaries.

We must bear in mind that for ten years before war began Churchill was out of office. He had no ple­nary author­i­ty. But he did have stature, and the chal­lenges were great. There was the rise of Hitler; the rearm­ing of Ger­many; vio­la­tions of the Ver­sailles Treaty. There was the push for Ger­man hege­mo­ny, the remil­i­ta­riza­tion of the Rhineland, the Anschluss with Aus­tria. Then came the Munich Agree­ment and the  seizure of Czecho­slo­va­kia. Along the way were many missed oppor­tu­ni­ties for use­ful rela­tion­ships with Rus­sia and Amer­i­ca. Of course the chal­lenges were Britain’s alone—particularly in the cas­es of the Rhineland and Czechoslovakia.

Churchill’s warning

It is prop­er to con­sid­er the lessons of the past as a guide to sim­i­lar chal­lenges now and in the future. But as Churchill wrote:

Let no one look down on those hon­ourable, well-mean­ing men whose actions are chron­i­cled in these pages, with­out search­ing his own heart, review­ing his own dis­charge of pub­lic duty, and apply­ing the lessons of the past to his future conduct.

We must avoid apply­ing the fatal deci­sions of the Avoid­able War to today’s prob­lems. Yet that is what we do. His words were applied from the 1948 Berlin block­ade through the Cold War. More recent­ly they were quot­ed over the Kore­an and Viet­nam wars, the Suez and Cuban crises. Even more recent­ly we heard and hear them about Pales­tine, North Korea, Iran, Rus­sia, China….

Contents 

Chap­ter 1. Ger­many Arm­ing: Encoun­ter­ing Hitler, 1930-34

Chap­ter 2. Ger­many Armed: “Hitler and His Choice,” 1935-36

Chap­ter 3. Churchill and the Rhineland: “They had only to act to win,” 1936

Chap­ter 4. Derelict State: The Aus­tri­an Anschluss, 1938

Chap­ter 5: Churchill and Munich: Lost Oppor­tu­ni­ties and Mor­tal Fol­lies, Octo­ber 1938

Chap­ter 6. “Favourable Ref­er­ence to the Dev­il”: The Russ­ian Enig­ma, 1938-39

Chap­ter 7. Lost Best Hope: The Amer­i­ca Fac­tor, 1918-41

Chap­ter 8. Was World War II Pre­ventable? “Embalm, cre­mate and bury—take no risks!”

Sum­ma­ry: What Churchill Teach­es Us Today

More articles on the Avoidable War

“Churchill’s Hitler Essays: He Knew the Führer from the Start,” 2024.

“Churchill’s War Mem­oirs: Sim­ply Great Read­ing,” 2023.

“Hitler’s Sput­ter­ing Aus­tri­an Anschluss,” 2020.

“Munich Reflec­tions: Peace for ‘A’ Time and the Case for Resis­tance,” 2020.

“The Indi­an Con­tri­bu­tion to the Sec­ond World War,” 2017