Posted on 02/06/2023 7:00:44 AM PST by DIRTYSECRET
> I agree with him on WWI, but not WWII. <
Yep. Buchanan was spot on in regards to WW I. But I found some of his views on WW II to be, shall we say, rather disturbing. In particular, he felt that Britain and France should just have let Hitler take Poland. It was no big deal that Nazi Germany invaded a sovereign country, and brutally subjugated it.
Buchanan thought that if left alone, Hitler would never turn west. And so it would just be Nazi Germany vs. the Soviet Union. Two monsters fighting, with poor Poland merely collateral damage.
I dunno. Hitler was much like Napoleon. Both wanted everything. So had Germany beaten the USSR, I can’t believe Hitler wouldn’t have turned west.
Well the flip side was that the Soviet Union had as a condition of allying with Britain and France, getting half of Poland. Now of course they phrased it as “allowing Soviet Troops to be stationed in Poland”, but we know what that really meant. Britain and France told Stalin, no, so, Stalin made the deal with Hitler.
I remember a profile article about Bill Buckley’s wife Pat mentioning her driving a Lincoln (?) with a Pat Buchanan for President bumper sticker. So, at least *some* in the NR orbit appreciated the man.
In any case, I’ll miss Buchanan’s column. The man was usually right. None of us are perfect, and no one will agree with 100% of what someone else writes or thinks over a 50+ year-long career. But, in my opinion, Pat Buchanan nailed the big issues, was an independent thinker not a party hack and definitely got a lot more right than wrong.
I think Hitler didn’t have designs on Britain, assuming at the very least Britain stayed neutral. He would have been ok with Britain and Germany being the two big dogs, if Britain would have allowed it.
But clearly over time, Germany would have eventually worked to thwart Britain once she won her colonies in the East.
“Death of the West” was a prescient work.
Like everyone, Pat was right on a lot of things, and wrong on others.
Yep ... although, if we had stayed out of World War One, I believe World War Two would not have happened. At least, not in Europe. We might still have had to fight Japan; that's a complicated different story.
That's my take. Sacrificing France and Belgium would have been worth avoiding Hitler and the Bolsheviks.
That was about the time I dropped my National Review subscription. As Bill Buckley and his influence on NR declined, it turned in directions I could not agree with.
I’m sure Mahmoud Abbas is available.
Long Before Donald Trump, Pat Buchanan was the loudest champion for building the border wall. His many prescient warnings just fell on deaf ears.
He is like the male version of the Greek prophetess, Cassandra…
Like Churchill in his wilderness years.
RE: pat buchanan is a moron
Can you elaborate your one liner please…
Pat’s “THE DEATH OF THE WEST” book is a classic.
PROPHETIC
In 1996, I ran as a Buchanan delegate in the Louisiana GOP primary. I was always very proud that I was able to have a part in that campaign.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Republican_Party_presidential_primaries#cite_ref-2
On February 6, Buchanan won the Louisiana caucus. Buchanan and Gramm had made several trips to the state to campaign. Gramm was expected to win, due to being from neighboring Texas and having the support of many of the Louisiana party regulars.[2]
His obsessions for World War 2 revisionism was, and is, pretty creepy. Why was it so important for him to defend John Demnjanjuk, or to endorse a claim that Eisenhower starved a million German POWs, or that Britain should have made peace with Hitler?
Buchanan has written that Crimea was always a part of Russia. That means we should stay out of it. Isn’t there something to be said for us supplying weapons to Ukraine? Deplete their weapons stockpile and make them bleed. Of course our money should be spent on the wall. Let Europe settle it . It won’t as 2 world wars will testify.
Any details?
For almost all of my nearly 73 years, I thought the US did the right thing unequivocally by getting involved in the European theater of WWII.
I’ve studied the battles, the strategies, the biographies of the generals and leaders. I’ve seen all the movies.
I’m not talking about Japan - we had no choice but to respond as they attacked us.
But Europe? Now that I’ve seen how they just never can get along with each other, ever, and after we’ve spent untold trillions of our tax dollars to defend them, and sacrificed uncounted lives of young men and women who didn’t have the chance to live, love, and raise a family...
Well, the past few years I have had the first inklings of doubt beginning to creep in...
The other thing is, France and Italy came very close to going full-blown Communist after the war.
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