Buchanan's Compelling Argument | Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire...

History You Never Learned in High School | Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World | Patrick J. Buchanan

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	• Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World Patrick J. Buchanan Crown, 2008 - 544 pages average customer review:based on 108 reviews view larger image
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Great merge of history and politics

This book is very well done. The web of politics and history is developed to the last detail. I gave this book a 5-star rating. I started to give it a 4-star, but then realized that the weakness was my own Achilles heel in history. I think from my standpoint the only thing that would have made it better would be if there was a glossary of the "cast of characters" in the back. I kept trying to refresh myself with Who's Who. But again, I gave it 5-stars because that was probably my own fault

Buchanan's Compelling Argument

"The Unnecessary War" makes a good case: namely, that Churchill's bad political decisions and character flaws were largely at fault for making the European war between Germany and her neighbors into a world war. Furthermore, disastrous political decisions both before and during World War II ensured that the post-war world would be dominated in large part by the Soviet Union. Although it is a very interesting and compelling read, Buchanan does occasionally lapse into repetitious arguments, reminiscent of journalistic style. His comparison with more recent U.S. policy is also worth considering, although he doesn't spend much time developing this argument (at least in the present book). Highly recommended for its stimulating presentation of certain oft-neglected facts of twentieth-century European history.

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History You Never Learned in High School

This book is an eye opening look at a subject most people think they know all there is to know about. While not excusing any of the monstrous evils of the Hitler regime, Patrick Buchanan demonstrates that Churchill and other British politicians were just as responsible, if not more so, as the German politicians for the outbreak of World Wars I and II and all of the attendant horrors. Buchanan also exposes the bloodthirty side of Winston Churchill. Churchill, for example, was the architect of the starvation blockade of Germany during World War I and advocated bombing civilian targets in Germany and the use of poison gas against Iraqi rebels during World War II. As for Hitler, Buchanan portrays Hitler not as a maniacal ideology-driven warmonger bent on world conquest but as an opportunistic nationalist politician who badly miscalculated and blundered into a war he very much wanted to avoid. Finally, Buchanan illustrates the tragic consequences of what many call "the good war." Buchanan notes that the war destroyed what was left of the British Empire, and left a brutal Soviet tyranny in control of virtually all of eastern and central Europe. The war also set in motion a series of events that would lead to communist tyranny and atrocity in China and other parts of Asia. Churchill, far from the farsighted statesman he is generally portrayed as, comes off in this book as a mendacious, ego-driven and erratic bumbler. As for World War II, rather than an inevitable and necessary war, Buchanan demonstrates how even as late as the fall of 1939 catastrophe could have been avoided. Commenting on the outbreak of World War I, Winston Churchill once said, "The terrible 'ifs' accumulate." Indeed.

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