Were World Wars I and II--which can now be seen as a thirty-year paroxysm of slaughter and destruction--inevitable? Were they necessary wars? Were the bloodiest and most devastating conflicts ever suffered by mankind fated by forces beyond men's control? Or were they products of calamitous failures of judgment? In this monumental and provocative history, Patrick Buchanan makes the case that, if not for the blunders of British statesmen--Winston Churchill first among them--the horrors of two world wars and the Holocaust might have been avoided and the British Empire might never have collapsed into ruins. Half a century of murderous oppression of scores of millions under the iron boot of Communist tyranny might never have happened, and Europe's central role in world affairs might have been sustained for many generations. Among the British and Churchillian blunders were: · The secret decision of a tiny cabal in the inner Cabinet in 1906 to take Britain straight to war against Germany, should she invade France · The vengeful Treaty of Versailles that muti- lated Germany, leaving her bitter, betrayed, and receptive to the appeal of Adolf Hitler · Britain's capitulation, at Churchill's urging, to American pressure to sever the Anglo- Japanese alliance, insulting and isolating Japan, pushing her onto the path of militarism and conquest · The 1935 sanctions that drove Italy straight into the Axis with Hitler · The greatest blunder in British history: the unsolicited war guarantee to Poland of March 1939--that guaranteed the Second World War · Churchill's astonishing blindness to Stalin's true ambitions. Certain to create controversy and spirited argument, Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War" is a grand and bold insight into the historic failures of judgment that ended centuries of European rule and guaranteed a future no one who lived in that vanished world could ever have envisioned.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 3.5 / 5.0
Pat Buchanan's Best Yet In this book Mr. Buchanan reviews the historical literature surrounding the origins of WWI and WWII. He catalogs the rise of Hitler and Churchill in their prospective countries. He proceeds to detail their interactions, with an emphasis on the unnecessary and impossible war guaranty that England gave Poland in 1939, which led to the German invasion of Poland, kicking off WWII. He then describes how this all caused the decline of the British Empire, the rise of the USSR in eastern Europe and how America is... more info
absolutely deplorable "Churchill, Hitler and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World (Kindle Edition)" What we have here is an anti-Bush book masquerading as an anti-Churchill book. Buchanan spends almost the entire book destroying Winston Churchill's reputation, yet concedes that he was a great war leader. He blames Churchill for losing the Empire, yet winning the war. But Neville Chamberlain lost the Empire because he was neither a war leader nor a statesmen of any value... more info
Magnificent, epochal work. For all the World War Two history buffs who have ever pondered such questions as 'Why the British Army was not annihilated at Dunkirk' or 'Why the Germans never built much of a Navy'... here is a book that provides extremely plausible explanations for these puzzles. Pat Buchanan's writing is lively, clear and smooth-flowing. He works from the most certain facts about the outcome of World War Two: That Great Britain lost her empire and became a small, second-rate island nation; that millions of innocent... more info
Compelling thesis I've read more than a few of Pat Buchanan's books. Some are interesting, many are what I call "a pamphlet stretched out to hundreds of pages". This one is a compelling read. This is probably one of the best books Mr. Buchanan has written. His extensive research backs up a conclusion that Great Britain, and the US, may have been better off not having gone to war with Germany twice. Poor alliances and promises sucked them into these conflicts, essentially bankrupting England. Through the lens of... more info
Related
Sections
