WWII started today, Here is what ex Presidental candidate Buchanon writes about it.
 

Did Hitler Want War?
by Patrick J. Buchanan, September 01, 2009



On Sept. 1, 1939, 70 years ago, the German Army crossed the Polish frontier. On Sept. 3, Britain declared war.
Six years later, 50 million Christians and Jews had perished. Britain was broken and bankrupt, Germany a smoldering ruin. Europe had served as the site of the most murderous combat known to man, and civilians had suffered worse horrors than the soldiers.
By May 1945, Red Army hordes occupied all the great capitals of Central Europe: Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Berlin. A hundred million Christians were under the heel of the most barbarous tyranny in history: the Bolshevik regime of the greatest terrorist of them all, Joseph Stalin.
What cause could justify such sacrifices?
The German-Polish war had come out of a quarrel over a town the size of Ocean City, Md., in summer. Danzig, 95 percent German, had been severed from Germany at Versailles in violation of Woodrow Wilson’s principle of self-determination. Even British leaders thought Danzig should be returned.
Why did Warsaw not negotiate with Berlin, which was hinting at an offer of compensatory territory in Slovakia? Because the Poles had a war guarantee from Britain that, should Germany attack, Britain and her empire would come to Poland’s rescue.
But why would Britain hand an unsolicited war guarantee to a junta of Polish colonels, giving them the power to drag Britain into a second war with the most powerful nation in Europe?
Was Danzig worth a war? Unlike the 7 million Hong Kongese whom the British surrendered to Beijing, who didn’t want to go, the Danzigers were clamoring to return to Germany.
Comes the response: The war guarantee was not about Danzig, or even about Poland. It was about the moral and strategic imperative “to stop Hitler” after he showed, by tearing up the Munich pact and Czechoslovakia with it, that he was out to conquer the world. And this Nazi beast could not be allowed to do that.
If true, a fair point. Americans, after all, were prepared to use atom bombs to keep the Red Army from the Channel. But where is the evidence that Adolf Hitler, whose victims as of March 1939 were a fraction of Gen. Pinochet’s, or Fidel Castro’s, was out to conquer the world?
After Munich in 1938, Czechoslovakia did indeed crumble and come apart. Yet consider what became of its parts.
The Sudeten Germans were returned to German rule, as they wished. Poland had annexed the tiny disputed region of Teschen, where thousands of Poles lived. Hungary’s ancestral lands in the south of Slovakia had been returned to her. The Slovaks had their full independence guaranteed by Germany. As for the Czechs, they came to Berlin for the same deal as the Slovaks, but Hitler insisted they accept a protectorate.
Now one may despise what was done, but how did this partition of Czechoslovakia manifest a Hitlerian drive for world conquest?
Comes the reply: If Britain had not given the war guarantee and gone to war, after Czechoslovakia would have come Poland’s turn, then Russia’s, then France’s, then Britain’s, then the United States.
We would all be speaking German now.
But if Hitler was out to conquer the world – Britain, Africa, the Middle East, the United States, Canada, South America, India, Asia, Australia – why did he spend three years building that hugely expensive Siegfried Line to protect Germany from France? Why did he start the war with no surface fleet, no troop transports, and only 29 oceangoing submarines? How do you conquer the world with a navy that can’t get out of the Baltic Sea?
If Hitler wanted the world, why did he not build strategic bombers, instead of two-engine Dorniers and Heinkels that could not even reach Britain from Germany?
Why did he let the British army go at Dunkirk?
Why did he offer the British peace, twice, after Poland fell, and again after France fell?
Why, when Paris fell, did Hitler not demand the French fleet, as the Allies demanded and got the Kaiser’s fleet? Why did he not demand bases in French-controlled Syria to attack Suez? Why did he beg Benito Mussolini not to attack Greece?
Because Hitler wanted to end the war in 1940, almost two years before the trains began to roll to the camps.
Hitler had never wanted war with Poland, but an alliance with Poland such as he had with Francisco Franco’s Spain, Mussolini’s Italy, Miklos Horthy’s Hungary, and Father Jozef Tiso’s Slovakia.
Indeed, why would he want war when, by 1939, he was surrounded by allied, friendly, or neutral neighbors, save France? And he had written off Alsace, because reconquering Alsace meant war with France, and that meant war with Britain, whose empire he admired and whom he had always sought as an ally.
As of March 1939, Hitler did not even have a border with Russia. How then could he invade Russia?
Winston Churchill was right when he called it “The Unnecessary War” – the war that may yet prove the mortal blow to our civilization.

Well 'republicans' gotta stick together. :rotfl:

What has this to do with any kind party affiliation?

Both are right-wingers, Buchanan and Hitler. Birds of a feather flock together.

And that guy really wanted to become president. America was lucky this time.

As a Brit, I'm deeply offended by what this man has to say. Rather get into a long, protracted statement as to why this t**t of a man is completely wrong and why he's ignored history. All I'll say is this, we have ignorant fascists in this country too.

Once again people make fun of something simply because it goes against "established" or "accepted" wisdom. Just like the "discussion" of global warming, its not about the actual facts, its about running anyone who doesn't agree with a specific view into the ground as some nutcase. While I know its shocking to some, and beyond thought for others, the historical FACTS are accurate. Hitler did not want war- at the time.

What the reproduced post fails to mention is that Hitler EXPECTED Great Britain and France to back down, as they had done repeatedly in the past. He miscalculated, thinking they would continue to appease his demands. It is FACT that after the war started, he made repeated overtures for peace. Someone that WANTS war doesn't try to make the shooting stop.

The facts are that Germany was wholly unprepared to fight a long term war that involved sea power, as any war with GB would. If you know your history, you know Donitz was unpleasantly suprised by the outbreak of WW2.

The Z plan, as it was known, anticipated war with GB in 1945, and was designed to put German naval forces on a footing to win such a war within that time frame.

Now, its also fair to point out that the wording of the demand to Hitler to remove his forces from Poland gave him an option to back off and stop war. He simply thought it was more blustering, and he was wrong.

To say that Hitler did not want to conquer Europe is not true. He simply wanted to do it in a way that cost less to his regime. Wise leadership by Churchill led to putting a stop to that before Hitler was truly prepared.

Also, its important to note that the claim that "we would all be speaking German" if WW2 had not happened is ludicrous. Taking an island in the Pacific is different than invading a continent when your supply lines are stretched over an ocean.

Hitler wanted war - he after all planned on one, but not in 1939. Those are historical FACTS. Just because you have a beef with the person, doesn't give you license to ignore the reality of history.

Wow Buchanan has lost the plot even more than he already had.
Thats quite surprising as I didn't think he could get any crazier

It's funny how most history since WW2 takes Britain and France to task for backing down from Hitler at Munich and throwing Czechoslovakia to the wolves. Buchanan throws Britain and France to the wolves for interfering one country later. Couldn't they have waited until Herr Hitler had perfected all his 4 engined bombers and built his vast navy and armada of troop transports and taken over the world with a minimum of fuss? The world would be safe now for non-smoking vegetarian white guys in crisp brown uniforms now. He would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for those meddling kids....

Hitler offered Britain peace after the fall of France only to secure his flank for the attack on Russia and save resources. However, I doubt his ambitions or those of his successors would have ever been sated. In addition, the idea that a peace treaty with Britain in 1940 would have prevented the trains from rolling to the concentration camps is ludicrous.

Because he was nutz?

I thought maybe this was fake, but it's right there on the official website... man, Pat is losing it.

I think Pat lost it long ago. This is just the latest evidence of it.

You know, I have no idea who this guy actually is...just what he is. What's next from him, "Pearl Harbour: It really wasn't Japan's fault"?

I have a theory that Pat used to be a stage magican and he tried to pull an illusion of removing his brain, but tragicaly forgot the illusion part...
But for the most part, I agree with CaptainHaplo on this.

Gee Pat, peace treaties with Hitler sure worked out great for Russia, didn't they?

He was set to take it, until the Brits put it out of the picture at Mers-el-Kebir, you ignorant fool.

That's all I'm wasting my time on. This is trash.

Well it might not be ludicrous.
If perhaps the Nazis didn't already have programs of extermination for the preservation of racial purity of the master race already up and running for several years, or if perhaps a week before the invasion of Poland Hitler hadn't said that the merciless extermination of men women and children was neccesary for his plan for more space to be put into practice.

Pat Buchanan is just upset that the Nazis killed tens of thousands of homosexuals and communists before he got a chance to.

(Runs and hides.)

IIRC, Hitler really did not want war with Britain, if anything he respected the British Empire and did not want war with them, but of course, he wanted the Danzig corridor more :dead:

I've heard of Pat before, but never read anything by him until now, and alas, he's obviously still under the belief that the Polish attacked Gleiwitz...

Hitler did want the war to end in 1940, he wanted to secure his flanks now that he had his bridgehead to strike the Soviet Union, he wanted to make sure that Britain would leave him alone, and as Britain so the US. He viewed the Bolsheviks as uncultured barbarians and it was inevitable that some point down the line Stalin and Hitler would go to war.

He did his best to break Britain, but his real goal was Russia.

So, Pat is partially right but for all the wrong reasons, and it's a damn good thing that we didn't stop fighting in 1940, who knows how things would have turned out? A successful Barbarossa perhaps? Then of course, after Barbarossa would come a possible campaign against the United States and the UK from a strengthened German perspective.

Alternate history is interesting :yep:

Oberon, you bring up an interesting historical footnote. Hitler's initial political successes were funded by Jewish interests - as a counter to what was seen as the threat of the Bolsheviks. When Stalin took power instead of Trotsky, the Russians became a major concern for many. It is unlikely that Hitler cared enough to find out where the money was coming from, so its doubtful he knew.

Another irony of history that a group of people would quietly throw hefty support to a person, who once established, became their greatest terror.

Learn history, or be doomed to repeat it.

To say hitler did not want war with france and Britain when he invaded Poland, is a bit like saying Saddam did not want war when he invaded Kuwait.

hitler wanted Poland being destroyed, to add one half of it to the German Lebensraum, and later adding the Soviets prey from Poland to German territory, too. He also wanted to destroy Poland and Polish people as a cultural and national entity, to have the Polish-Slavic subhumans available as a pool of always available slave-wokers for the German industrial demand. It was no war of strategic conquest. It was a systematic effort of annihilating a country and a people. No shoot-to-defeat-and-win. It was shoot-to-kill, and then nothing.

Yesterday there was a 1 hour docu on TV by second German TV program, showing some of the latest findings of historic analysis. There has been orders of Hitler to the Wehrmacht where he explained to his generals that the attack on Poland was not about just conquering and occupying Poland, or to win back Danzig, but that it was about nothing else but to destroy and annihilate Poland as a functioning state and ethnic group once and for all. Poland should seized to exist, forever, and it seems Hitler left no doubt on that intention, which means the Wehrmacht leadership knew what they were expected to achieve - and what they were expected to assist in. This was the primary goal from the very beginning, and explains why the assassination of intellectuals, artists, doctors, people of higher education, was driven forward with so much systemtic effort. It was about to kill the social elites needed to leave Poles in the hope they could ever have an independant future again.

Hitler delayed the preplanned attack on Poland once when learning about the changed attittude of Britain towards Germany and the treaty, and thought twice, but came to the conclusion that neither Britain nor France would seriously act against Germany. Later, he very obviously accepted the chance that there would be war with both when he nevertheless gave order to blitz Poland. His calculation was correct, both Western nations who had promised assitance and military help to Poland in case of a German attack and promised to open a front in the West, did nothing substantial, only the Frnech took a small town in the Rheinland area, which had been forseen by the wehrmacht - and tbhus had been evacuated, giving the French a "victory" for which they did not fight. Nevertheless their declaration of war remained to stay in the air, and Hitler knew that when Poland was struck. That he attacked nevertheless only means that he was ready to accept war with both nations, and the German blitz against France can be taken as a hint that when the delayed attack on Poland finally nevertheless was ordered, the war against the Western powers already was willed and taken as granted - to eliminate the risk that the British and French war declaration nevertheless left in the air: to start a war at Germany indeed, but at the time of their choosing. Hitler did not plan to give them the time to prepare that they needed.

No matter how you see it, there can be little doubt that when the order to attack Poland was given, Hitler already had decided to strike France as well since both countries had a shared border on land, and France was in reach of the precious industrial centres of germany, and that he was willing to accept war with Britain as well. As long as there was France, the third Reich's industrial heart and core, the Ruhrgebiet, was vulnerable. So France had to go.

I am sure that all this was also planned and intended as only the introduction to the ultimate goal of Hitler's ambitions: Russia, which was both the promise of fat prey, and a threat to Hitler's ambitions to dominate.

Seen that way, Poland's and France's only faults were that they had the bad luck to simply be in the third Reich's way, Poland physically, and France strategically. Same is true for Holland and Belgium, of course. Not before the attack on Britain failed by loosing the air war, the strategic need emerged to arrange oneself with the changed strategic needs of an ongoing war in the West, which led to the growing German ambition to conquer the rest of Europe as well and by that having better (=controlled) supply lines and infrastructure, making Scandinavia unavailable for the Western allies as military basis for their navies and air forces, and to gain a stronger position for the to be expected forever defence against military action of Britain, and eventually America.

One can wonder what would have happened if Hitler would have defeated Britain. It would have shifted a lot of strategic, economic and logistic balances in favour of the third Reich. I always considered the air battle for Britain the key event in the history of the war in europe, despite the fact that it was taking place relatively early in the war. There were bigger battles in size, in russia, yes. But I think that Britain did not fall was the one single and deciding event in the war in Europe. What american action remained in the Atlantic (for what purpose different than defending the American coast?) the German U-boats probbaly would have taken care of in uch the same way the American boats strangeled Japan. The German submarines almost achieved to strangle all Britain even under much more negative conditions. With Britain taken out of the formula, I wonder if America would have even dared to declare war on Germany - "yes" is not a certain answer here. I am absolutely not sure that the industrial capacities of the US then would have been enough to influence the German domination of Europe. Lend-and-lease deliveries to Russia would have had much lower volumes. The Russians in the end probably would have broken, I think, since it was only the industrial assistance of Britain and America that kept them in the game. Their armies skills' simply were inferior to the strategy and mobility of the Germans. even their wins later in the war they bought with much higher losses in liofe and material, and the Wehrmacht was the best-led and best-commanded army in the whole war. The Russians compensated that with higher material investements. And these were only possible due to lend-and-lease - and it still was a close call before the industrial numbers finally turned against the germans. Last but not least balance changed also due to Hitler's sometimes insane demands.

Germany having beaten Britain: and it would be a very different world we live in today, I have no doubt.

And a much worse one.