Right Wing Reading Rainbow III: Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War
This is state policy by other means. Your life ends in terror, this is now decreed.
If you haven’t figured it out by now, the entire developed world revolves around WWII. Every political or philosophical debate, on a long enough timescale, become about the philosophers on either side arguing about which position will best prevent the resurgence of Hitler and his National Socialism. All political arguments which have ever occurred in the past 75 years have been about the Reich. It haunts the nightmares of the entire political class.
So, now we’re getting to the really good stuff.
The Book
Pat Buchanan’s Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War is the book that you as a serious person need to be reading about World War II. It compiles the work of a great many other previous works which were all revolutionary, if they weren’t foundational, including:
The Collapse of British Power by Corelli Barnett
America’s Second Crusade by William H. Chamberlin
Europe At War by Norman Davies
Germany and the Two World Wars by Andreas Hillgruber
History of the Second World War by B.H. Liddell Hart
Wilson’s War by Jim Powell
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer
Inside the Third Reich by Albert Speer
A History of the First World War by AJP Taylor
The Origins of the Second World War by AJP Taylor
I want to draw particular attention to AJP Taylor at the end there. You may have heard good things about Taylor. Those good things are correct. You may think that you should read his book on WWII. Murray Rothbard loved it after all. The reason you don’t need to read AJP Taylor’s book is not because it is bad, but because Murray Rothbard died in 1994, before Buchanan’s book came out in 2008. Buchanan’s work may not make Taylor’s book literally obsolete, but it absolutely supplants it as a first-time guide to the World Wars.
I should also note that the book is not about the wars as such. There will be no glory-stories about Gallipoli or the Somme or D-Day or Midway or the Battle of the Bulge here. This book is about the causes and the effects of what Pat Buchanan calls “The Great Civil War of the West.” He goes through the lapsing of the Reinsurance Treaty, the construction of the German High Seas Fleet, and the Morocco Incident before the First World War. Then he thoroughly explains Versailles, Trianon, the Anglo-Japanese Naval Treaty, the Washington Naval Conference, Rhineland, the Anschluss, Munich, Molotov-Ribbentrop, and of course, Danzig.
You really come out of it realizing that Neville Chamberlain was the real hero of the whole story.
If I thought anything was missing from this book, it would be in the very beginning. He discusses the publication of the book The Influence of Sea Power Upon History by Alfred Taylor Mahan in 1890, and how it influenced Wilhelm II to begin the construction of a German High Seas Fleet. The ensuing naval arms race proved an absolute disaster. One book which went unmentioned was the article The Geographical Pivot of History, by Halford John Mackinder.
Mackinder’s book advanced Heartland Theory: “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island commands the world.” The influence of the book goes a long way towards explaining how British elites, who controlled an Empire on which the sun never set, could seem to honestly and steadfastly believe that the Kaiser, and later Hitler, aimed to “take over the world” by dominating Poland. Carl Schmitt would later indirectly respond to these claims with his 1942 book Land and Sea: A World Historical Meditation.1
Follow Up Readings
Now, if you’re a fan of the era, I can throw in some other recommendations as well:
Stalin’s War, by Sean McMeekin. A more developed understanding of the Soviet perspective. A very long book, but well worth reading. McMeekin’s main thesis is that World War II was primarily willed and orchestrated by Stalin, whereas Hitler was only tricked into it. Some readers will notice that this is similar to Suvorov’s Icebreaker thesis. Well, it can’t be, because McMeekin only mentions Suvorov a single time to insult him, despite agreeing with practically all of his relevant conclusions. McMeekin also demonstrates the absurd degree to which the American and British governments were penetrated with Soviet sympathizers, if not outright agents.
Hitler’s Revolution, by Richard Tedor. A more developed understanding of the German perspective. Tedor has interesting elaborations on the NSDAP’s numerous bouts of self-reinvention. You may already know about how Hitler took the DAP from a socialist-separatist party to a revolutionary-right nationalist organization with an attached street fighting club. Then they rebranded as radical centrists after he finished writing about His Struggle and got out of jail. Tedor takes you through the logic of all of these adjustments, through to the end of the war. One example I found funny was how the swelling ranks of the Waffen-SS with, non-Germanic recruits (e.g. Belgians like Leon Degrelle) meant that the Reich’s anti-miscegenation laws had to be rewritten. Turns out that where women are concerned, Spaniards, Bosnians, and Ukrainians look just as dashing in those uniforms as any Aryan.
Bloodlands, by Timothy Snyder. A very thorough and unpleasant elaboration of what it means to be caught in between two powers hell-bent on the systematic destruction of the other’s way of life. Expounds on the “Double Genocide” thesis: The idea that the Reich and the USSR both originally intended to enslave and deport their enemies, without genocidal intent, but no plan survives contact with the enemy. For example: The Lemberg Massacre. After the initial partition of Poland, 3 full NKVD divisions occupied the city of Lemberg/Lwow/Lvov/Lviv2, intending to deport the city’s large ethnic German population to Siberia. Partway through this operation, Operation Barbarossa begins, so NKVD Commissar Lavrenti Beria orders the city’s political prisoners be shot on site. By the time the Reich takes the city, seven thousand have been killed in this way. The city then celebrates the arrival of the Germans with a pogrom killing five thousand local Jews. Or for another example, the Warsaw Uprising, where the Soviets encouraged the Polish resistance to launch a major operation against the occupying Germans, only to hang back and let the Wehrmacht destroy more than 80% of the city in retaliation.
And if you really want a glimpse into the European mind at the time:
In His Own Words: The Essential Speeches of Adolf Hitler. Exactly what it says it is.
An Outlaw’s Diary, by Cecile Tormay. A first-hand account of a brief takeover of Hungary by Soviet-backed Communists in the immediate aftermath of WWI. It’s hard to convey in a single blurb just how quickly things can go from bad to completely jacked when these people gain power. In part because these communist organizations liked to employ literal convicted criminals, and in part because they had been making their lists and checking them twice before they had even taken over. If nothing else, Béla Kun got His Eternal Reward.
Always With Honor, by Pyotr Wrangel. The Black Baron’s memoirs, focusing on the Russian Civil War and his service leading the White Army against the Bolsheviks. For me, the beginning was the most interesting part, describing the almost surreal unraveling of Russian society in the early days of the revolution when people almost seemed to have fun pretending that it wasn’t happening at all.
And Something Fun
The Domination, by S.M. Stirling. Almost the opposite of The Probability Broach from last week. A trilogy collection in a dystopian alternate timeline where South Africa becomes something of a “containment zone” for history’s Bad Guys. Starting with American Loyalists and Hessian Mercenaries, then French Monarchists, Confederate expatriates, and some others. They conquer Africa and a bunch of other places. During WWII, the Draka side with the Axis because they are fellow racists. After the Soviets are defeated, the Draka decide that there can only be one Master Race, so they launch a surprise attack on the Reich “from behind” by launching an invasion up from the Caucasus. That is, by Marching Through Georgia. Then things escalate even more from there.
This is the third in a series of eight articles on right-wing book recommendations.
The next article will look at The Woke Left and how they Went Too Far.
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Watch this video for more details. You would think that this sort of thought would play a major role in the doctrine of the USSR, but actually “Eurasianism” is more common among Russian ultranationalists like Solzhenitsyn and Dugin.
The birthplace of both Ludwig von Mises and Michael Malice.
Stirling is a lot of fun. Thank you for these recommendations - I’ll start with the Buchanan book.