Was there any pushback to the Pat Buchanan book, Churchill, Hitler and the “Unnecessary War” (2009)? It questioned Churchill’s judgment over his whole life, but particularly his decision to fight on in 1940. I’m sure there has been, but could you give me a citation? —W.M.

A: Here’s one….

On publication of the book in 2009 I wrote an editorial, which I reprise below.

Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, by Patrick J. Buchanan. New York, Crown, 518 pp.

No animus toward the author: I have respect for Pat and even voted for him in a New Hampshire Primary. I helped him with a few items during his research (while lampooning his beliefs in friendly banter). “I like a man who grins when he fights,” as Churchill said.

But a problem with Pat Buchanan’s book is the rampant use of selective quotes. Partial quotations edited to distort reality, or to fit a predetermined conclusion, are out of bounds.

Lusting after Armageddon

To establish Churchill’s “lust” for the First World War, for example, Buchanan quotes him on 28 July 1914: “Everything tends towards catastrophe & collapse. I am interested, geared up and happy. Is it not horrible to be built like that?…” (28)

But he omits the rest of that passage: “…The preparations have a hideous fascination for me. I pray to God to forgive me for such fearful moods of levity. Yet I w[oul]d do my best for peace, and nothing w[oul]d induce me wrongfully to strike the blow.” (from Martin Gilbert, editor,  The Churchill Documents, vol. 3, 1989.

As the war continues on 10 January 1915, Buchanan has Churchill exclaiming: “My God! This, this is living History. Everything we are doing and saying is thrilling—it will be read by a thousand generations, think of that! Why I would not be out of this glorious delicious war for anything the world could give me (eyes glowing but with a slight anxiety lest the word ‘delicious’ should jar on me).” (66)

The latter is pure hearsay from the notoriously waspish Margot Asquith—but let’s assume he said it. To suit his thesis, Pat trims the rest of what Margot reported: “…I say, don’t repeat that I said the word ‘delicious’—you know what I mean…..” (The Churchill Documents, vol. 6, 400.

Possessed of the words Buchanan deleted, one might ask what Churchill meant by “you know what I mean”? Did he assume Margot knew he realized what barbarity war was—that he had been warning of the apocalyptic nature of a European war since 1903?

“Vile & wicked folly & barbarism”

I searched in vain among Pat’s collection of lusty war quotes for contrary expressions by Churchill—and there are many. Take his 1909 remark after watching German Army maneuvers: “Much as war attracts me & fascinates my mind with its tremendous situations—I feel more deeply every year—& can measure the feeling here in the midst of arms—what vile & wicked folly & barbarism it all is.” (The Churchill Documents, vol. 4, 912.)

Buchanan does include an early 1900s remark about the dangers of a European war, but only to imply that Churchill had changed his tune by 1914. Nowhere do we read exculpatory evidence. Nothing is here on Churchill’s 1911 proposal for an Anglo-German “naval holiday,” for example. Or his plea, at the eleventh hour, for a peace conference attended by all the Heads of State of Europe.

Hitler red herrings

Then there is Hitler, on whom Pat is industrious. Under Hitler’s photo we read: “‘If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations.’ —Churchill on Hitler, 1937.”

This sentence has often been culled out of context to be misunderstood by the foolish or the unwary. Here is the full passage (Churchill, Step by Step, 1947 edition, 158). Draw your own conclusions:

To feel deep concern about the armed power of Germany is in no way derogatory to Germany. On the contrary, it is a tribute to the wonderful and terrible strength which Germany exerted in the Great War, when almost single-handed she fought nearly all the world and nearly beat them. Naturally, when a people who have shown such magnificent military qualities are arming night and day, its neighbours, who bear the scars of previous conflicts, must be anxious and ought to be vigilant. One may dislike Hitler’s system and yet admire his patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations. I have on more than one occasion made my appeal in public that the Führer of Germany should now become the Hitler of peace.

A different light falls on Churchill’s attitude when that was first written (in 1935, as he footnotes in Great Contemporaries). There was still hope then, he thought. All of which shows yet again that you can use Churchill’s words, vacuumed like a gigantic Hoover and offered unabridged by the faithful Martin Gilbert, to prove anything. You only have to pre-select and edit the ones that make your point, however misinformed.

The question we are asked to consider is whether World War II was really a “good war.” War is hell, which is why western democracies like Britain and France spent six years trying to avoid it. Once it had begun, the (barely) surviving partner (Britain) had a choice between barbarians, one of whom hadn’t (yet) expanded beyond his borders. Easy choice—especially without the benefit of hindsight.

Kirsch quotes Norman Davies’ No Simple Victory (which mirrors Stanley Baldwin’s logic 75 years ago): “If one finds two gangsters fighting each other, it is no valid approach at all to round on one and to lay off the other.” Maybe—if one of the two isn’t trying to eradicate your country.

Mr. Kirsch is certainly thorough, industriously Hoovering every far-out Churchill critique, all of which he represents uncritically: Gordon Corrigan’s Blood, Sweat and Arrogance, Richard Toye’s Churchill’s Empire, Christopher Catherwood’s Churchill’s Folly, Nicholson Baker’s Human Smoke, and Pat Buchanan’s Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War. This must be the first time a New Republic editor has nodded respectfully toward Pat Buchanan.*

Just when I was thinking he had overlooked the most virulent myth of all, that Churchill somehow encouraged and abetted the 1943 Bengal Famine, in the book Churchill’s Secret War), Kirsch dredges it up on the third page of this lengthy treatise. Churchill, that sly old imperialist, “refused to divert resources from feeding Britain to feeding India.”

Leave aside that this isn’t true. Are we to conclude that it was better to starve one of the three major protagonists against Hitler than to starve India—whose 1943 famine was exacerbated by Japan, with the help of  corrupt local officials?

To say Churchill “was fighting to preserve imperialism as well as democracy” is a bad reading of history. India’s independence was on track by 1935, that of the Dominions was assured by the Statute of Westminster in 1931. Churchill was fighting to preserve institutions like The West, Inc., which allow people like Mr. Kirsch the freedom to wring their hands over the dreadful things we inflicted on Hitler’s Germans. That the bombing of Dresden was requested by the Soviets goes unremarked.

Finally, presumably in a gesture toward equal time, Mr. Kirsch considers Michael Burleigh’s Moral Combat:

Burleigh fulminates, “Wars are not conducted according to the desiccated deliberations of a philosophy seminar full of purse-lipped old maids.” This is crude and bad-tempered, but Burleigh’s defensive impulse is understandable.

I’m so pleased that Mr Kirsch finds Burleigh’s fulminations understandable that I will offer him another, my favorite on the whole subject, from Lady Soames: “My father would have done anything to win the war, and I daresay he had to do some pretty rough things. But they didn’t unman him.”

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* All these books received appropriate responses by qualified reviewers, to which I can direct any interested reader. I have not provided links to Amazon, because we read them for you, so you don’t have to.

LONDON, 3 SEPT 1999— It was avidly awaited but fell flat. Tabling a truly ridiculous motion, Intelligence Squared (“the only institution in town aside from Parliament to provide a forum for debate on the crucial issues of the day”) combined with C-Span to bring us this spectacle. It would have been more interesting to debate whether Hitler or Churchill was the better painter.

I will spare you wisecracks about Intelligence Squared. The debate was not a “crucial issue of the day,” and so organized as to obfuscate the argument by forcing panelists to respond to disparate questions hurled in succession from the audience. It started off interestingly, but soon tapered into a long palimpsest of clichés, accusations, denials and counter-charges.

The debaters

Arguing the affirmative, and by far the most lively and effective, was the engaging Patrick J. Buchanan (Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War. His team included Norman Stone (Billkent University, Turkey) and a supercilious Cambridge don named Nigel Knight, whose Churchill: The Greatest Briton Unmasked concludes that it was Hitler who made Churchill a historical figure. Pat Buchanan was the best they had going. A great debater, he knows how to liven things up. But he could have done better by enlisting Professor John Charmley, a witty and able critic, and, like himself, a gentleman.

Opposing the motion was a team led by Andrew Roberts (Masters and Commanders, and numerous other sound histories). Roberts is a razor sharp advocate, but the nature of the program prevented him from getting in all his best ripostes. In his prepared remarks he did get in some preemptive strikes at what he knew was coming. Finally in the Q&A, was he able to chop away at the forest of misinformation.

Also effective was Anthony Beevor (D-Day: The Battle for Normandy), supported by  Richard Overy (University of Exeter), who usually just repeated Mr. Roberts’ points while sniffing at Knight’s. Stone seemed to want to talk about growing up in postwar Britain, and what a bad picture of him appeared in the newspapers.

Obfuscation squared?

What it came down to was a powerful attack by Buchanan (“We have come not to praise Churchill but to bury him”), who rolled out all the shibboleths and out-of- context quotes from his book, from Churchill leading the war party in 1914 to bombing Dresden in 1945. Pat labeled the failed attempt to occupy Norway in 1940 the “worst British debacle,” but later fastened a similar title on the British guarantee to Poland in 1939, omitting that it was Neville Chamberlain who did that.

Roberts called him, but Buchanan replied that, well, Churchill was “urging Chamberlain on,” forgetting that the last person Chamberlain was listening to in March 1939 was Churchill. Norway as Debacle is somewhat outranked by Singapore, but not to worry, Knight trotted out Singapore later. He was right that Churchill guessed wrong on Singapore—but so did the entire British military establishment. (Unsaid by all present: as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the late 1920s, Churchill had questioned defending Singapore with guns and had suggested using aircraft.)

Poland, Poland…

Buchanan’s most original idea was that it wasn’t necessary to guarantee Poland (which couldn’t be guaranteed, after all). Britain and France merely had to “draw a line down the middle of Europe,” to the west of which they would throw all their armed might against any German aggression.

Say what? Debate where it should have been if you like—but Churchill’s whole purpose in life from 1933 onward was to get somebody, somewhere, to draw that line, and nobody ever did. I think the Rhineland is to the west of Pat’s line, and we all know how the French and Stanley Baldwin responded to Hitler over that piece of real estate.

Of the Polish guarantee, Churchill said basically what Pat Buchanan said: “Here was decision at last, taken at the worst possible moment and on the least satisfactory ground, which must surely lead to the slaughter of tens of millions of people.” (Alas one of the quotes Pat didn’t mention. Later Pat told me that Churchill only took that view in retrospect, in 1948. Not so. His contemporary letters said the same thing.)

Real facts, appalling travesties

Nigel Knight took the attack to the 1920s when, he said Churchill not only foisted the Gold Standard on Britain, impoverishing her for the war ahead, but disarmed in the face of Hitler—whom Knight (but nobody else) divines was a serious threat circa 1928, when the Nazis won 2.6% of the vote. It was of course the Bank of England that wanted the Gold Standard, and not without reason, though this is an argument far removed from the subject.

Knight landed one good punch by declaring—in support of invading France in 1943—that they used more landing craft in the invasion of Italy than in Normandy. If that’s true, it’s an interesting point, but in his zeal Knight forgets that in the final analysis, D-Day was postponed through a series of decisions by Roosevelt, Churchill and their military advisers—and it was the wisest of choices.

Anthony Beevor gamely replied, and the third batters on each team followed suit, but it soon developed into an exchange of “the real fact is that…” versus “that is an appalling travesty of the truth.” Halfway through, I wanted to pull the plug on my monitor.

Climax and fizzle

Moderator Joan Bakewell helped make the time drag by complaining about the sound and the light, and insisting on taking questions in bunches rather than one at a time. This naturally distracted the debaters and got into all sorts of muddles, dropped threads and mistaken recollections of the questions. The most interesting factor, Bakewell concluded, was the difference between the two audience votes, taken before and after the debate:

Vote taken………Before       After

For the Motion       118              181

Against                     1,167       1,194

Don’t know              422              34

Oho, Bakewell chortled: The pro-Churchill side added twenty-seven votes, but the anti-Churchill side added sixty-three! Her implication was that Buchanan and Co. had made serious inroads.

Not really. The startling change was in the totals. Add them up and you’ll find that 1707 people were there to vote before the debate, but only 1409 afterward. The rest apparently left early. Justifiably.