Revisionist History and an Unnecessary Book

During my last visit to Chapters I found an interesting book called Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World. The premise of the book is that Winston Churchill, who I will not dispute as a war monger (although I believe a necessary one), dragged the UK and the USA into the Second World War. The author argues that this act ultimately destroyed the balance of power, which favoured the west. I will look at several of his arguments and assert that anyone who has taken a grade 12 history class should be able to debunk them.

Mr Buchanan argues that had cabals in the British government in 1906 not decided to support France in the event of a German invasion that this could all have been avoided.

This is a rather broad and reductionist statement. 1906 was a very important year for other reasons too. Great Britain was about to totally destabilize their military dominance and start the first arms race with the launch of HMS Dreadnought. The Dreadnought was a precursor to the modern battleship and, like the launching of HMS Warrior before it, made most other warships (including those in the Royal Navy) obsolete. This gave a rising young power the chance to catch up and rival the British on “home turf” – the world’s oceans. German leaders, both political and military saw this as an excellent opportunity to compete with the great empire. Germany had for many years now been competing economically and colonially with Great Britain to establish its dominance on the world stage. In reality, Great Britain, France, and Germany had been sabre rattling for decades before the outbreak of WWI, each looking for a chance to undermine the other.

Any grade 10 history student should be able to tell you that the First World War was caused by a combination of “isms”: nationalism, militarism, and expansionism, crossed with a comedy of errors and miscalculations. Each of the major nations were either striving to create their own empire or prevent theirs from falling apart. It was only a matter of time before a conflict would break out. It seems simplistic to argue that it was the British that caused these events to take place. Furthermore, it was the German invasion of neutral Belgium that caused the British to declare war on Germany in 1914 – not the invasion of France.

Mr Buchanan cites the Treaty of Versailles in helping to lead to the events that became the Second World War. This is one of the historically accurate arguments in his book – true enough that several people at the time of its signing also felt that it would lead to another war. Unfortunately for Mr Buchanan’s arguments, it was not so much the British, but the French that insisted on the brutal measures taken in the Versailles treaty.

To blame Churchill for the Second World War is very odd. He was the politician in Great Britain that was warning of Nazi Germany, the build up of its forces, and the violations of the Versailles Treaty. If people headed his warnings and enforced the treaty the war, and the rise of Nazism may never have happened. As one will find though, no one wanted to hear the warnings, they were too afraid of another war. Out of this fear came the West’s policy of ignorance and appeasement toward Germany. In England, Churchill was shouted down and ostracized as a war monger for his views; though prophetic they seem to us now. The protection pact with Poland sealed that fate as it was obvious that Hitler needed to be stopped and that he was poised to invade Poland. To say that Britain should have sued for peace rather than fighting, alone for some time, an “unnecessary” war is a giant leap in a thought experiment. It seems easy for someone 60 years later and on the opposite side of the Atlantic to say these things. Had Great Britain, and later the United States, not intervened, the death sentence for tens of millions of Jews and Slavs would have been sealed. Hitler’s aim was to wipe out the Slavic populations of Eastern Europe as to make room for the more agrarian life style he envisioned for his perfect German society. Hitler makes these aims very clear. Furthermore, why would Hitler stop at the English Channel anyway? It was nothing for him to go back on treaties when they stood in the way of his dominance – look at the non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union.

I find it somewhat alarming that My Buchanan is willing to sacrifice half of Asia and all of Europe in his quest to find a better solution. In all fairness, he may not be aware of these facts, thus making it less alarming. This is why the study of history can be somewhat boring sometimes. We strive to take the facts and assemble a picture that we can then analyse and study. Just as in modern science when one fits facts to support outcomes rather than draw outcomes from facts the results are skewed and inaccurate.

It seems that Mr Buchanan should stick to what he’s good at - losing presidential elections.