As Jonah Goldberg observed in his book, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, we conservatives are often subject to the epithets, “Nazi” or “fascist,” merely for expressing our political point of view. Rarely do the labels even come close to representing our ideology or opinions, indeed are usually at odds with our commitment to freedom and opposition to government programs, serving primarily as a mean for those who so label us to dismiss our ideas.
Well, earlier this week, I read a column by a man who calls himself a conservative, while the ideas he expresses there makes one wonder if Pat Buchanan is, as some have described him, a Nazi sympathizer. Buchanan has long since abandoned the principles which have defined American conservatism (if he ever supported them).
As I’ve noted before, he showed so little regard for the leader of American conservatism, Ronald Reagan, that he chose to speak for far longer than the time allotted him at the 1992 Republican National Convention, bumping the Gipper’s subsequent speech out of prime time.
No one who would show such disrespect for the Gipper should consider himself a conservative. And no paper which seeks to promote serious conservatism would print (or offer pixels to) his columns.
This ex-conservative now claims that President Bush “made a hash of history” when he referenced the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939 as an example of the danger of appeasement.
Actually, it’s Buchanan who’s making a hash of history, as he’s pretty much made a hash of every serious idea he’s tried to consider for the past sixteen years or so. He contends that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s September 1938 Munich “deal with Hitler averted a European war — at the expense of the Czech nation.” Well, at least he acknowledges the abandonment of the Czechs.
“German tanks,” Buchanan observes “did not roll into Poland until a year later, Sept. 1, 1939.” And why? Oh, not because they thought the West was weak, having offered up Czechoslovakia to the Nazis, but because Poland “refused to negotiate over Danzig,” then an ethnically German city under Polish sovereignty (but officially a “free city” administered by the League of Nations).
“Hitler,” Buchanan claims, “had not wanted war with Poland.” He did try to negotiate. But, the meanies in the Polish government forced his hand because they were intransigent. The Nazis, you see, just had to invade. They were forced into it because how else could the Nazis include this German-speaking territory in their pan-Germanic Reich?
Does he really believe that Hitler would not have sought to dominate Europe had Poland sat down to negotiate the status of Danzig?
Buchanan takes it as a given the the Nazi idea of uniting all German territories under one regime is a good thing. That he was only driven to evil because the West prevented him from achieving this goal.
Since the Poles wouldn’t play along with this home for a unified German Motherland, a terrible war followed:
The cost of the war that came of a refusal to negotiate Danzig was millions of Polish dead, the Katyn massacre, Treblinka, Sobibor, Auschwitz, the annihilation of the Home Army in the Warsaw uprising of 1944, and 50 years of Nazi and Stalinist occupation, barbarism and terror.
It all could have been avoided, Buchanan claims, if it weren’t for Polish intransigence. Does Polish intransigence explain why Hitler decided to murder European Jews, who after all, had been second-class citizens in pre-war Poland? If he really wanted to punish the Poles, why was he so obsessed with the minorities they persecuted?
Note how Buchanan leaves out the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis. The word “Jew” isn’t found once in his column despite Hitler’s personal obsession with Jews and the centrality of anti-Semitism to Nazi ideology.
Could we have negotiated with a man who began persecuting Jews and other “undesirables” almost from the moment he took power? Who had already built the first concentration camps and had begun murdering mentally-handicapped citizens while stripping Jews & Gypsies of their civil rights?
But, ringing up Hitler’s anti-Semitism might make us aware that Hitler was more than just a champion of German unity. Apparently, Pat Buchanan doesn’t want us to see the man’s darker side. In this ex-conservative’s view, Hitler didn’t want a war. He didn’t want to dominate Europe, clearing out whole regions where Slavs and Jews lived to make Lebensraum (room to live) for Germans. He was just a zealous advocate of the German people.
Amazing this hash of history Pat Buchanan has made. All the atrocities of World War II could have been avoided if European nations had just negotiated a little more with Hitler. Hitler wasn’t bad. It was the West who made him into the monster he became. The problem is that these atrocities began before Poland, as Buchanan claimed, refused to play footsie with Hitler.
And where have we heard such arguments recently? Certainly not on the political right. My advice to Human Events and TownHall.com is that they drop Pat Buchanan’s column. This man belongs in the company of such apologists for anti-Western tyranny as Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky.
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*Just over two hours after posting this, I thought a more appropriate and accurate title would be “Nazi Apologist.”
Just a couple of nights ago, I saw a wonderful movie called The Singing Revolution. Through interviews and narrated archival footage, it tells an inspiring story of how Estonia freed itself from the grip of the Soviet Union. See it, if you can!
Relevance: One thing the movie made clear, and that honest students of history will acknowledge, is the role played by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in kicking off the German *and Soviet* invasions of Poland and the Baltics. Basically, Hitler and Stalin signed a pact. The public clauses claimed it was a non-aggression pact. But in secret clauses, they divided Eastern Europe between them. Stalin was to sieze the Baltics and the eastern half of Poland. Hitler was to sieze the western half of Poland.
This pact directly triggered the German invasion of western Poland within a week of its approval, and, within 3 more weeks, the forgotten *Soviet* invasion of eastern Poland. Hitler had delayed invading Poland, after Munich, because he needed to reach an understanding with Stalin and that took until 1939; *NOT* because of Chamberlain’s wonderfulness (appeasement).
And why did the Germans want Poland? _Lebensraum_, of course, and extermination of the inferior Slavic races – as laid out in Hitler’s _Mein Kampf_. Not because the Poles didn’t take the right attitude about Danzig.
Buchanan seems to have forgotten all that. Buchanan has long been an authoritarian and a homophobe (the real kind) and now, we know, is a Hitler sympathizer. Disgusting.
I have to agree. Pat Buchanan has been more of a populist than a conservative. Anyone who now heads up the Reform Party instead of H. Ross Perot could not be considered otherwise.
Regards,
Peter H.
It is very clear that when one moves to the far extremes of either left or right – they tend to meet.
We have been hearing for 7 years now how it’s the fault of the west for not capitulating to Islam – that we now have suicide terrorists, and murdered Iraqis and American soldiers.
So now we know the true meaning of WWII. If only all Germans were united under the Reich, there would have been no war. I understand that Hitler felt this to be a noble goal. But did the Germans, who lived under Czech or Polish rule feel they’d be better off under Hitler?
Of course why ask the little people – of course the leaders know best.
Interesting post. I read Pat to learn from him, although have not reflected enough to try to “figure him out.”
He’s one of the smartest American political minds of the past generation – and should be read at length before being criticized. I’ve read The Death of the West, also his sister Pat’s The Extreme Makeover of Hillary (Rodham) Clinton.
Pat, I always thought (or the part about him I find most appealing), is about: God, borders, and procreating-heterosexual-married families. As long as he’s “what you see is what you get,” I’ll give him the time of day, put my money on the counter for his books. I find a number of his arguments relevant, salient, prophetic almost.
Even if the “true face” of Pat Buchanan is now showing, conservatives have a duty to make the case for him in ways that Blue Ghettoed liberals won’t – and can’t.
I’ve often wondered why Pat Buchanan’s views evolved to such extremism. He was much more mainstream when he worked for Dick Nixon, or was suppressing his real beliefs.
Not only did he bump President Reagan out of prime time at the 1992 convention, I always felt the tone of that long and almost-hateful tirade seriously damaged President Bush 41’s re-election bid. I was at that convention in Houston and remember how uncomfortable and embarrassed a lot of people were by the time Buchanan finished. I was sitting next to a distinguished Republican conservative in the U. S. Senator who said that after listening to Pat Buchanan he needed a shower.
A question for number 4: do you also think Adolph Hitler would have gone down in history as a great man if he just hadn’t had that thing for Jews?
#5, Of course not (in hindsight). In hindsight, we should also ask the editors of Time Magazine, who named him Man of the Year….
I’ve always thought that Pat Buchanen is an anti-semite, pure and simple. He has a great personality, and a good conservative history as Nixon’s aide, etc., but he was/is/and will always be anti-semitic.
Also, he is Irish American Catholic in the most traditional meaning of that world… and so he is (like his predecessor, Joe Kennedy Sr) anti British Empire. Thus, he is kinda sorta not on Britain’s side in the WWII thingy, and is kinda sort on Hitler’s side in that conflagration, which did, after all, destroy the British Empire.
Sounds arcane, this analysis, doesn’t it? But then, Buchanen is arcane.
Buchanan has some great observations ….Obama is pure “faculty lounge”….comes to mind-a statement he made on PMSNBC. But he is a bigot plain and simple. I guess the good thing is that he doesnt pretend to be otherwise.
GPW, funny… I also had the thought, after what I wrote what I wrote at #1, that “Hitler apologist” was the precise term I wanted for Buchanan, not “sympathizer”. Oh well. Hitler apologist, who distorts history to support a false point. Still disgusting.
To #6 — When Time Magazine editors select a “man of the year” or “person of the year” it doesn’t always mean they honor the selectee. The selection is sometimes based on which world personality most impacted the news that year or changed the course of history.
Indeed. Hitler was Time’s Man of the Year in 1938. But it was not an endorsement. It was not an honor. It was not apologetics for Hitler. Time said, “Hitler became in 1938 the greatest threatening force that the democratic, freedom – loving world faces.”
IOW: Hindsight, my ass. *Contemporary* observers in the 1920s and 1930s could and did recognize Hitler as evil. The ones at the time who didn’t, were fools – or worse.
I have to wonder if Pat would have a different spin if Mexico decided it wanted to reclaim outright the lands we took from them back in 1848 – all in the name of bringing their Hispanic brethren altogether in the same fold? His revisionist view of Hitler is pathetic and despicable.
…or at least “reasonable”. Similar to Ramsey, the left-liberal commentator who very recently apologized for Chamberlain’s and Hitler’s actions at Munich, and praised the Nazi conquest of Austria as “bloodless”.
But it’s bull. What cosmic law says that putting all speakers of a certain language, any language, under one nation is a good thing? Much less, under an evil, totalitarian and anti-Semitic dictator? If Buchanan truly believes the former: does he think the U.S. should invade and annex Canada?
The majority of Austrians never considered themselves Germans, and still don’t. Nor did they want to live under Nazi dictatorship. In reality, the “bloodless” Anschluss of 1938 involved massive street-level intimidation of the Austrian people by Nazi brown-shirts and was followed by repression, executions, the rounding up of Jews, etc. Evidently, stuff like that doesn’t bother Ramsey, or Buchanan.
#13, good point. The art of the op-ed piece is to condense supple argument into talking points and sound-bytes. Buchanan revealed a lack of such argument in his recent piece.
With any “movement” leader – of any movement, mind you (and in particular of movements that vie for influence rather than state power) – I am often curios as to how soundly they traffic between their stated core values, the mood of the masses, and dynamics of governmental (or bureaucratic) power. In this sense, Pat is an interesting study.
FWIW, a JMK post from earlier this year, calling attention to Pat Buchanan’s The Death of the West and James Burnham’s Suicide of the West.
Pat and many “paleocons” have absolute confidence that they are the spiritual heirs of men like Burnham. Some of them were mentored directly by him and others of his generation. This is the intellectual turf that has to be crossed in order to be claimed.
FWIW, Daniel Flynn posted recently on George Packer’s NYer article, “The Fall of Conservatism.” Note the busy comment thread.
Jeremayakovka: Thanks for the link there.. it was pretty interesting to read.
After reading it I made my own comment there, what do you think ?
Heartfelt, good-faith comments, for sure.
Worth repeating:
The reason there is so much incoherence about what war we’re in is because the President does nothing to define it.
It’s as if a few speeches in 2001 and 2003 were the last word and that everyone is going to remember those days.
Trying to defend half the things Bush has done on the war front requires a great deal of projection , role-playing, and mind-reading. And Bush’s triangulations of Democrat-associated things has torn asunder the Republican Party nationally just as Clinton’s triangulations of Republican things did to the Democrats.
I believe that you are taking Buchanan out of context. I watched an interview with him in which he explained that the Nazis attempting the “Lebensraum” expansion and cleansing was foolish (suicidal actually). As soon as they crossed the line full-on into Poland, which Russia considered to be in her sphere of influence, they were guaranteed to lose; Nazi Germany, ideology aside, made a serious blunder in engaging the Soviets, since the Soviets had more resources and less industry susceptible to bombing (big, wide Siberia was perfect for factories). So Pat basically admitted that Germany cooked its own goose once it challenged Stalin. If I can find a link to this interview I’ll put it up.
Honestly, the ad hominem attacks in this article seemed a little unnecessary, too. If you want to prove a point, attack his logic, not his character; its what conservatives have always been good at ;-).
Um, Klaus, where are the ad hominem attacks? Please identify.
As to your summary of his remarks, well, yeah, the Nazis did “cook their own goose” when attacking the Soviets, but only because the Americans got into the war. Had we not gotten into the war, he could have diverted troops to the eastern front.
You may think I was offering ad hominem attacks, but I was quoting his words. And he said that if Poland had given up Danzig, all would have been hunky-dory, but that ignores his own stated goals, expressed regularly in the 30s and even before.
You fault me for engaging in ad hominem attacks and not attacking his logic. I didn’t even need get to his logic as I was addressing his ignorance of Hitler and the suggestion he made in his article that we could have negotiated with such a man (as Mr. Obama believes we can negotiate with the Iranian president.
Did you see Patrick Buchanan’s rendition of world war 2?!?! AHAHAHAHAH. It very cute. Check it out if your intrested here –
Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War