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 Rating:
Summary: historical content
Comment:
Buchanan draws a distinct line between history as a science and politicians manipulation of historical facts in order to serve their aims.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: In-Depth but Off Target
Comment: This one is typical PB. Well researched and carefully thought out thesis. A little too dense for me, but the illumination of historical events alone is worth the price. I cannot accept Pat's conclusions, however and feel that, for the first time, he is dangerously off course with this one.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: The `cult' of Churchill
Comment: Was Britain's guarantee of Poland in 1939 heroically cynical or imperially suicidal? Why did the pacifist Chamberlain, who had no means of aiding Colonel Jozef Beck and Poland against the Germans, commit the UK to Poland's defense (encouraging Beck to spurn negotiation on Danzig)?

Did victory over Hitler (six years later) preserve the British empire or sacrifice it on an altar of vanity? Did the victorious UK, laden with debt and obligation to the US (which took full postwar advantage) fall irreparably to third world status? Did England (Churchill) amorally welcome an equally evil regime (Stalinism) into east Europe?

Such questions are pondered in this book. Was Churchill the mythic hero routinely disinterred and used by neocons to plan new wars, or was he a complex opportunist with a history of strategic blunders and (later) switching sides on same issues?

Though some may say this is artful advocacy, this work raises many valid issues and is well worth reading. Churchill was indeed as human as the rest of us, and dear old England made some fatal choices in the mid-20C. Those choices (ultimately) led to the sacrifice of a grand empire that benefited the few at the expense of the many (readers may want to read Ian Kershaw's `Making Friends with Hitler').

If there is a flaw in this book it's the author's allusion to the Britain's continental `balance of powers' policy and subsequent failure to examine this policy in detail (after all, Chamberlain merely followed two centuries of successful policy in picking continental underdogs to urge them to kill off each other).

It's surprising (and laudable) the author didn't cite Rudolf Hess's 10 May 1941 enigmatic mission to the Duke of Hamilton as proof of spurned peace. Or the attempts of Lord Londonderry (Churchill's cousin, a WWI veteran with an annual income of £100,000 and little connection to those that actually worked for him and maintained his income, who thought Hitler wonderful).

Perhaps most lamentable is the author's omission of the price France (as the underdog in British policy, immobilized by communists and apologists like Lord Londonderry) paid. France lost over 1.4 million men in WW1 (1914-18) - more men than the United States - a much larger nation - has lost in it's entire history (1607-2008).

Clemenceau uttered a gem when confronted 20 May 1919 ("Que voulez vous que je fasse entre deux hommes dont un se criot Napoléan et l'autre Jésus Crist?) "What do you expect when I'm between two men- one of whom (Lloyd George) thinks he is Napoleon and the other (Wilson) thinks he's Jesus Christ? Both (Lloyd George and Wodrow Wilson) had no personal stake in the war - they had the luxury of academic interpretation and philosophy (they got France, under the `balance of powers' policy to do the hard lifting).

Clemenceau's nightmare materialized within six weeks in 1940: France lost another 90,000 men and 200,000 wounded (the US, wisely, sent it's best wishes).

This book is well worth reading, but incomplete. The warning it sends on imperial mistakes is timely, and I take that to be the real message. Certainly the past few years routine disinterment of Churchill to aid foreign adventures advocated by a few `poly-sci' ideologues is warning enough.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: As good as fiction book, but it's history and all too real.
Comment: As interesting as any fiction you might read, except, it is history and you know what is going to happen, but you find yourself wanting to know what happens next!

Buchanan's work is not a Macro view of the war, it is an adventure into the microcosm of world leaders who determined the outset of WWII. He'll take you to the beginning, WWI, and lead you down the path into the how's and why's of WWII. But from a fresh perspective. From the perspective of world leaders, there quotes, there actions and there blunders that lead us to WWII.

It is not a yawn of a history book, it has the feeling of history with the excitement of fiction.

Cons:
No book is perfect and from time to time, Buchanan would reiterate topics repeatably or in long winded form.

I also think it would have been a plus to dedicate a small chapter on how Hitler started the war machine.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: A Definite Keeper!
Comment: Overall I found Mr. Buchanan's effort well worth reading. However, there seemed to be far too much repetition in the text, almost as if a filler was needed to reach a specific chapter's word count.

As my bias, I would have preferred the scope of Mr. Buchanan's book to have included America. An expansion of America's purpose in having the British end the Anglo-Japanese Treaty, for example. And then the role that FDR and his administration played in the march to "The Unnecessary War." The tale of the SS St. Louis, the American "commitments" to the Poles, to the French, ..., etc., all would provide a broader context to our understanding and beliefs now these sixty-plus years on.

While the references an author has used can always be pointed to as their holding a bias, from strictly an American perspective, in addition to Bailey, Chamberlin, and Tansill, I would have also liked to see Sanborn's "Design for War: A Study of Secret Power Poltitics 1937-1941" and Beard's "American Foreign Policy in the Making 1932-1940" also referenced.

As to "What-ifs" - No Undeclared War in the Atlantic, No Lend-Lease, ... No commitment by America to the British and Dutch to fight for their colonies against the Japanese, ... Many, many "What-ifs."

But then, the American "Arsenal for Democracy" really was the jobs program that ended the American "Great Depression" and began a multi-generational debt obligation.

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