Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World

by Patrick J. Buchanan

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

• 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 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.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, World War II, War, Military Fiction, European History

544 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

One of America's best known paleoconservatives, Buchanan served as a senior advisor to Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan. He ran for president in 1992, 1996 and 2000. Buchanan is an isolationist on the subject of American foreign policy and believes in a restrictive immigration policy.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/patric...

Reviews

[Don Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

So while Adolph Hitler was gobbling up Europe, intent on world conquest, England thrust up its greatest son, Sir Winston Churchill, a statesman for the ages, to oppose the evil tyrant, crush him, and save the world.

It is a great story. Pathetic little Winnie grows up to become Man of the Century, the great guardian of civilization against the forces of darkness and depravity. It is the story as I learned it through numerous accounts, and that I accepted and even cherished. The story that gave rise, at least in part, to the notion of "The Good War".

More's the pity, therefore, that it turns out to be pure fable. Indeed, in Buchanan's telling each and every detail is false. Let me briefly identify some of his main points, tracking with the elements of the myth as presented above.

Hitler was not gobbling up Europe. He was instead reversing the judgment of Versailles, both a colossal blunder and a grievous injustice that embarrassed men of good will everywhere.

Hitler was not intent on world conquest. He was intent on reversing Versailles and crushing Bolshevism in Russia. He tried repeatedly to avoid war with England, and failing that, to make peace with her, because he felt that England should continue as a great world power, and that England and Germany were natural allies.

Churchill can't be considered England's greatest son. He was certainly a man of utterly singular gifts. Unfortunately, however, they were harnessed to singularly poor judgment. Churchill's heroic exertions yielded nothing but carnage and ruin.

If the goal of statesmanship is "peace that leaves the nation more secure," as Buchanan has it, and I think reasonably, then Churchill was anything but a great statesman. He was certainly a great war chief, but one who lead his nation away from peace and into war and disaster.

Churchill did not oppose the evil tyrant -- he opposed an evil tyrant. But there were two great tyrannies afoot, German Nazism and Russian Bolshevism, and they were irreconcilably natural enemies. Ethical dilemmas presented to nations and individuals alike sometimes compel us to choose the lesser of two evils. Churchill chose the greater evil. He nurtured Stalin with revolting solicitude, thereby ensuring that his incomparable terror would ultimately have a vastly greater scope. And in fact there was no need to choose at all. Had Churchill just stood aside, the world could have dealt with whichever mutilated beast survived their inevitable clash with much less difficulty.

As for crushing Hitler, Churchill was certainly instrumental to the cause. But he was equally instrumental in perpetrating some of the greatest war crimes of both World Wars, including the starvation blockade of Germany after the armistice of WWI, and the carpet bombing of her cities in WWII. Both had the conscious objective of annihilating non-combatants.

Churchill did not save the world. Instead huge chunks of it disappeared into slavery and death behind what he subsequently termed the iron curtain. And the casus belli which had been sufficient to drive England to war against Germany applied more to Stalin at the end of the war than it had to Hitler at the start. The deaths of millions had bought less than nothing.

Finally, England's share of responsibility for the catastrophe is not less than Germany's, and it may well be greater.

"Churchill, Hitler…" is a terrific read. The scholarship is deep, the material is exceptionally well organized, the writing is lively and clear, and the thesis is convincingly argued. This is the very best of contrarian history -- new (at least to me), shocking, and compelling. One hopes our leaders are thoroughly conversant with its thesis, that we may avoid other such "Good Wars" down the road.

[Kerry · Rating 1 out of 5]

For me, it didn't quite register until part way through reading this that it was Pat Buchanan, oh, that Pat Buchanan, that odious creature from CNN's Crossfire. It all makes a little more sense after getting that.

His basic premise is that Churchill was a warmongering fanatic (you can just feel Buchanan's hatred of Churchill in every word in this book) while everybody else was just trying to run their countries (and empires) in the best way they could and didn't want any trouble. If it hadn't been for Churchill, both WWI and WWII would have never happened and Europe would have been left in peace and the world would be completely different. Or perhaps the Kaiser would have just conquered France and left it at that and everything would have been fine. (Or, I'm not really sure, I only made it through a few chapters before abandoning this book.)

It does seem to fit Buchanan's sharp black and white view of the world, Churchill was the one who done it, while ignoring the actual complexity of the situation (the events leading into WWI), the conflicts of countries/empires, the networks of secret alliances, and any number of other flashpoints besides the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. The whole chain of events leading to the two wars, which Buchanan seem to be saying that changing one thing (Churchill's warmongering) would have prevented all the future events just seems too tidy and unrealistic. He probably goes on to say a lot more but I'll have to leave that to somebody who is willing to make it through the entire book.

[Stephanie · Rating 1 out of 5]

As Dan Carlin pointed out in one of his Hardcore History podcasts it's very easy to look back on history with the luxury of hindsight & point out what mistakes were made. Having said that if you want a revisionist history of the events leading up to WWI & continuing through WWII, then you've found your book. Buchanan makes it clear that he believes Churchill was solely responsible for both world wars & had Britain not interfered with Hitler then the Holocaust probably wouldn't have happened. I find this book to be an insult to every person who survived the Holocaust and even more egregious to the memories of those who didn't survive.

[Julio The Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I still continue to believe that had America stayed out of the European conflict of 1939-1945 both the United States and the rest of the world would have been better off".---Charles Lindbergh, WARTIME JOURNALS (1970).

This is probably the one time you are going to find Lindbergh, Noam Chomsky and Pat Buchanan agreeing on anything. There are certain topics that constitute the "third rail" of American history; touch them and you will die intellectually and be excommunicated from the mainstream media. The role of the United States in contributing to the outbreak of World War II, on both the Atlantic and Pacific fronts, is one such rail. Chomsky dealt with this topic in his essay "A.J. Muste and the Origins of the Pacific War" in his 1960s collection, AMERICAN POWER AND THE NEW MANDARINS. Since Chomsky has since moved on to other concerns, and Western liberals have no guts, it was only natural that Pat Buchanan, a paleo not a neo-conservative, should take the bull by the horns. The twentieth century in the Pacific began with the United States, Great Britain and Japan as allies after Nippon's triumph in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. (But not Germany, which saw in China a future ally.) So what happened? The British began to see peril in a strong Japan they wrongly believed coveted her Indian Ocean possessions, from Malaya to India. Japan's swift victories on mainland China and the South Pacific permitted perfidious Albion to persuade the United States to "contain' Japan, even at the cost of war, and every president from Harding to Franklin Roosevelt fell for it. Across the pond the United States, per Pat, was right to withdraw from European affairs post 1919 and wrong to intervene, after 1939, in what Stalin rightly called "an inter-imperialist war". Britain had a stake in preventing a German-dominated Europe after September 1, 1939 while the United States and the Soviet Union did not. This leads Pat to his most startling opinion: "After both sides launched mass bombings against civilian targets in large cities there was no longer any moral distinction between combatants"; a conclusion also reached by the novelist and pacifist Nicholas Baker in his book, HUMAN SMOKE: THE BEGINNING OF WORLD WAR II, THE END OF CIVILIZATION. This inflammatory polemic is bound to raise furious debate, hopefully on both the left and the right.

[Pawel_k · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author maybe knows history of Western Europe but know nothing about history of Central Europe.
'Also, Danzig was 95 percent German. Before Versailles, the town had never belonged to Poland.' - really? never? Are you joking or what? Find a map of Poland from the period before Partition and see where is Gdansk (Danzig) and see the corridor dividing Prussia from Eastern Prussia.
'At Brest-Litovsk in 1918, Germans and Russians had negotiated the terms.' - really? Germans negotiated with Russians? You must be kidding. If Germany negotiated with Russia then Allies also negotiated with Germans at Versailles.
'Eisenhower believed the demand for an unconditional surrender at Casablanca extended the war by years and cost countless lives.' - by years? Casablanca conference took place on January 1943, war ended on May 1945, that means two and a half year after the conference. So without demand for an unconditional surrender when could have it ended? On February 1943?

I can't recommend this book to anyone, but you can read this book if you are looking for justification of Hitler's ambitions and deeds.

[Dona's Books · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found CHURCHILL, HITLER, AND "THE UNNECESSARY WAR" by Patrick J. Buchanan on the Libby app. Check for your local library on the app and read great books for free!📚

I knew going into this book who the author was and that any material he presents might be done so in a biased way. Despite my agreement with one of his primary positions at the outset--that the Treaty of Versailles put Germany in an impossible position after WWI-- I read this book with great skepticism. I was right to, as the author wrote about Hitler and WWII for 400 pages without ever referencing the holocaust.

The subtitle of the book is "HOW BRITAIN LOST ITS EMPIRE AND THE WEST LOST THE WORLD." Indeed, Buchanon begins the book by extolling all the good Britian brought to the countries and territories it dominated. (Again, no mention of what might be considered a downside of being so dominated.) I don't share this rosy outlook on imperialism, and thus don't trace the events of the disastrous Treaty of Versailles and later US involvement in WWII with the same earnestness. It all simply means something different to me.

What I find most interesting about this book, and easiest to accept, given the extensive documentation Buchanon provides, is the rebranding of Churchill from a proper statesman to a jingoist whose fervor for battle led him to act in unreasonable, immoral, and cruel ways. I'm honestly astounded he was never brought up on war crimes.

Even if you don't like Pat Buchanan on Fox you'll probably still find this an interesting read if you like WWII history.

Rating:⭐️⭐️⭐️.5 / 5 stars
Recommend? Yes
Finished: April 6 2023
Read this if you like:
🖤 Nonfiction
🤍 History
🖤 WWII books
🤍 Winston Churchill
🖤 Military history

[Don · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well argued case that British actions between the two world wars resulted in their fall to a second rate power.

This is not a flattering portrail of Churchill. He is shown to have failed to see the perils of using the Soviet Union to defeat the Nazis.

Buchanan's view is that Britian should have never allied with Poland. By doing so Poland stood up to Hitler instead of accepting overtures of alliance. Buchanan shows that Hitler had no designs on the west was an admirer of England. If Poland would have negotiated with Germany, war with the west could have been avoided. There would likely still have been a war with Germany and the Soviet Union, but looking at what happened to Eastern Europe after WWII, Buchanan argues that having Germany defeat communism would have been a good thing - Nazism has not been exportable to other nations like communism and communists killed many more people that the Nazis did.

I recommend this to anyone that would like to see an argument for a isolationist policy.

[Ryan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Buchanan has a surprisingly good command of the secondary sources and the widely available primary sources. His overall reasoning, however, is terrible. This is a litany of abuse against the British Empire and Churchill, and, on the surface, a lot of the critique is deserved. The purpose of the polemic, however, is to suggest that a continental Europe dominated by the Third Reich would not have been so bad. A generous appraisal of one of the worst regimes in history. Buchanan suggests that the outbreak of war was primarily responsible for the Holocaust, which is accepted by many historians on one side of the "intentionalist vs. functionalist" debate. The problem is that he then tries to link this with his argument about the British guarantee of Poland, which, in his mind, was the main cause of the war. So, if there had been no guarantee, there would not have been a Holocaust. Yet Buchanan envisions a Hitler/Stalin conflict if the western allies had stayed out of Hitler's way and does not seem to understand that the majority of people murdered in the Holocaust were in eastern Europe and could only be targeted because the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union. So, in other words, if the west had stood aside and allowed Hitler to fight Stalin, the Holocaust would probably still have taken place.

The bigger problem is Buchanan's inability to discuss, at length, Hitler's insane decision to fight a World War over Danzig. Reading this book, you almost forget that Hitler had a clear choice in front of him and he made a decision that probably no other German leader after 1914 would have made in his shoes. Buchanan makes it seem like Polish and British intransigence were responsible for this situation, which is just flat out ridiculous. The way the Allies handled pre-war preparations and diplomacy can be justly criticized, but Buchanan does this in such a one-sided fashion that the result is simply asinine.

[David R. · Rating 2 out of 5]

This one can't help but be immensely controversial. What Buchanan is arguing is that Winston Churchill screwed up the world. The initial mistake was England's getting into WW1 -- which Buchanan asserts was the real unnecessary war. His conception is that Germany was only acting to secure the classical balance of power in Europe, that England would have stayed clear had Churchill not acted strenuously to beat down the Kaiser. This of course led to a humiliated Germany that found its redemption in Nazism. Which Buchanan thinks was unpleasant but permissible. For in his conception Germany would have only duked it out with isolated USSR had not Churchill goaded British politicians into a series of policy blunders, first with Italy, and then Japan, and then Poland. And now he asserts the British Empire was lost, that the West was lost to the communist bloc, and all due to Churchill. It's hard to swallow. I for one can't accept that Hitler's "Final Solution" was merely a spiteful response to military pressure on the western front. Nor can I accept a thesis that Churchill was consistently foolish and so powerful he singlehandedly botched two world wars. Generations of historians have reached different conclusions. This one must be taken as a curious and unfortunate outlier.

[Bethany · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book on a whim largely because I'd been criticizing it ever since I first heard about it and thought if I actually read it, I could rip it apart all the better. But then something shocking occurred. I actually agreed with the vast majority of it! I still look at the world and Britain / later America's role in it differently than Buchanan but his arguments are very convincing. Basically he says that WWI should never have happened; the settlement of WWI should've been a lot better (these points are not controversial), and then even if somehow the Nazis arose in Germany, Britain should not have gone to war on behalf of Poland in 1939. After reading the book, I concur... Buchanan comes across as crazy because he doesn't toe the standard line on these matters, but he definitely should be engaged.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book should be a real eye-opener for those who have accepted the conventional wisdom regarding WWII. It, like Human Smoke (Nicholas Baker) and a handful of other books, carefully demonstrates that WWII was not "The Good War" but instead an unnecessary blunder which led to 50 million dead and an Iron Curtain behind which Eastern Europe suffered for 50 years.

Buchanan delineates the series of diplomatic mistakes from Versailes to Danzig which led to the war. As in Human Smoke, Winston Churchill is shown to be the driving force behind the disaster, though Buchanan is easier on Roosevelt than Nicholas Baker is in his book. Buchanan convincingly refutes the various arguments which oppenents to this theory of "an unnecessary war" raise.
The book is clear and convincing. Human Smoke has the same theme, but presents more of a collage of historical vignettes. Reading the two concurrently would be a good idea.

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know a lot of people don't care for Pat Buchanan - but that should not be a factor when reviewing his book. Buchanan backed up his points with a lot of sources - and it's led to many great discussions between me and several friends - some liberal - some conservative. What if Britain didn't declare war on Germany in 1914? Answer: There wouldn't have been 700-800,000 Brits slaughtered. Germany may have defeated France (as they did in 1871) and gone on to defeat Russia. Lenin would have died in Switzerland as an exile. The formation of the Soviet Union would be doubtful. No Treaty of Versailles. No embittered German nation ripe for a politician like Hitler. No holocaust. The Jews would then have no stomach to fight a bloody conflict for an independent nation. No Second World War - which led to the deaths of 60-70 million. No Cold War or Iron Curtain. The Sino-Japanese War would have remained a regional war. With no European conflict - Japan would not have attacked France, Britain, Holland, and the United States. If anything - they would have attacked a weakened Russia for more territory. Mao and the Chinese communists would never have acquired the weaponry captured by the Soviets in Manchuria - and therefore would very likely have been defeated by the Nationalist forces. Korea would never have been partitioned - therefore, no war in Korea. With no Soviets or Mao-led China - it's highly doubtful Cuba or French Indochina would have fallen to communism. That's Buchanan's premise.

According to Buchanan and the people he cites - which is numerous - Winston Churchill was a warmonger who wanted to fight Germany in 1914 for economic and military reasons. He wanted to fight Germany in 1938. He refused Hitler's offer of peace in 1940 - after the fall of France and before the Battle of Britain - which prolonged the war in western Europe. He sided with an even greater tyrant - Josef Stalin - when Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Not until 1945 did Churchill realize the incredible mistake he made. Instead of a Nazi shadow hanging over Europe - there was a Soviet one. China fell to communist Mao. After Korea was partitioned, North Korea became a communist nation, and then invaded South Korea. Because the war weakened and bankrupted Britain, she could no longer support its vast empire. The sun finally set.

What if...

If any book could lead to some interesting and controversial debates - this would be the one. I very much enjoyed reading it. My only complaint is that Buchanan repeats himself quite a bit. But it's still worth reading because you will love the history of the diplomatic struggles between the major powers of Europe and Asia.

[Gary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good. Shows Churchill as he really was, rather than the savior of Britain

[Flob · Rating 2 out of 5]

So when was the necessary war? Well there were mistakes that is certain. And with hindsight things should have been done differently and the century ended up being pretty messed up. This book lays too much of the blame onto Britain and you must wonder at the author's prejudice. About half way through the book you start to feel sorry for poor old misunderstood Hitler. The author hates the thought but the Nazi's had to be stopped. Stalin could not have done this alone, almost certainly Russia would have fallen. (You can't help feeling that the author would have preferred a world with the nazis threatening rather than the soviets - and what technology could the nazis have developed, what rockets, what planes?) After the collapse of Russia Hitler would have neutralized Britain by force or threat. It was crazy, courageous and necessary that Britain stood alone and only Churchill made that possible. The USA waited and then came out of it as the victors. Britain was one of the many losers. That much is true.

The difficulty I had was to put aside my own beliefs here. I acknowledge many of the facts. But in the end the analysis is all badly wrong. So I'd advise those who were convinced by this to search the web and read some of the criticisms of this book.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Buchanan has challenged the traditional narrative of WWII, arguing that it was an unnecessary war, and led to much greater tyranny, more death than it averted. He takes all the arguments head on, demonstrating that it was ultimately Britain that led to WWI, which led to the disastrous Versailles, sowing the seeds for WWII.
But Buchanan argues the disastrous decision that led to WWII was Britain's war guarantee to Poland. To that point Hitler was reclaiming German land lost in Versailles, though he did conspire to gain Czechoslovakia. His aspirations were in the east, not the west as Britain feared. In fact he makes a strong case for Hitler's attempt at pacification of Britain even during the first years of the war. He wanted peace with Britain and knew a world war would ultimately prove his undoing.
Buchanan even demonstrates that the annihilation of the Jews didn't begin until midway through the war. Had the war not been going on, the final solution may have never occurred.

[Jack · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is very interesting to read. It is very convincing in explaining Churchill's responsibility for WWII, bringing a lot of facts.

What I find bizarre in this book is that Buchanan feels the need to virtue signal and insists in the conventional narrative that Hitler was "evil" and a "tyrant" - in spite of all of the historical facts reported in this book proving the exact opposite. For example the book talks about all of the German people outside of Germany who wanted to join Germany with Hitler in it. The people of the Saar democratically voted to join Germany with Hitler in it, Hitler is welcomed as a liberator when he comes to Austria, and the Germans of the Sudetenland wanted to join Germany with Hitler in it. So how exactly is Hitler a "tyrant" if the people he rules have consented to it?

Another big problem of the book is that Buchanan makes no serious attempt to understand Churchill's inexplicable decision to ally himself with the Soviet Union. The USSR had genocided its own population, with a bodybount in the region of 20 million people. Hitler on the other hand was responsible for the death of only a few hundreds Marxist revolutionaries. So tell me Buchanan, why is it that Britain entered into an alliance with Stalin, the greatest mass murderer in history? And the USSR had an ideology of world domination and the goal of destroying Western civilization, as Churchill himself warned. The book doesn't explain how Churchil went from being a bitter enemy of communism to allying himself with it.

It is disappointing thefore that the author cannot even bring himself to mention the German theory on this. Which is: the alliance between capitalism and communism was created and sustained by the Jews. As it's typical for the American "right wing", the Jews cannot be mentioned as a people with their own distinct political interests (not to mention the power and influence to pursue them) and we're treated to the fable that the Jews were only poor victims with absolutely no agency in everything that was happening around them.

Both of my criticism could however be motivated by the author's fear of his book being censored. So I will still rate it 5 stars because, in spite of the two problems above, it provides a lot of knowledge and it's a great summary of the events leading up to WWII.

[Glen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book to be extremely interesting, well-written, and full of anecdotes that brought the WW-2 era and its key historical figures to life for me. Buchanan is a fine nonfiction writer and enough of a contrarian to reject politically correct hagiography. I would love some of my friends and relatives of both liberal and conservative bent to read this book. I think they would come away with a lower opinion of Churchill and/or FDR, for one thing.

Buchanan's view of history focuses on power blocs and statesmen, warlords and peacemakers. It is a statist's review of the struggle, and Buchanan's characterization of the war as unnecessary doesn't reflect a libertarian, antiwar outlook on his part, as far as I can tell. He does, however, manage to pay homage to the common people and their suffering, mainly in recounting the tragedies of terror bombing, the Holocaust, and so on, and the utterly callous disregard for human misery evoked by the military and political leaders on both sides. Total war treats civilians of all ages as the enemy, and there is no such thing as a war crime. Churchill was almost a match for Stalin in this regard. For example, he enthusiastically supported the idea of dropping anthrax spores on German pastures, ensuring that cattle and sheep would ingest them and spread the disease to the human population. The good old USA had its share of demons in high places, of course, including FDR, Truman, and the execrable Curtis Lemay, who as an air commander bragged about how his squadrons of B-29's dropped thousands of incendiary bombs on Tokyo and fricasseed more Japs than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs combined. One shudders to think this man could have been "a heartbeat from the presidency" in 1964.

I recommend reading this book in tandem with "Human Smoke/The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization", by Nicholson Baker, which I'm currently reading. You will get a dissident's view of the war that could so easily have been prevented, but for the madness inherent in our human psyche.

[CJay Engel · Rating 5 out of 5]

It can be a challenge at times to keep up with all the names of people and cities and dates so you have to really pay attention. Especially as he starts with the unfamiliar territories and power of the WW1 world. But it's a five star book that will completely challenge your paradigm about the nature of WW2. You'll never look at Churchill, Hitler and the Second World War the same. I say read it.

[Ted · Rating 5 out of 5]

Her certainly tries to virtue signal in the last thirty pages, and generally avoids addressing which group helped usher communism into the West, but on balance this is an important book.

[Da1tonthegreat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pat Buchanan's revisionist history of the world wars is a critical pushback against the mainstream victors' narrative. Far from being "the good war," he argues that WWII was in fact "the unnecessary war." As noted in the title, these cataclysmic brother wars caused the end of western civilization's unrivaled supremacy over the world. Rather than the typical kneejerk "Hitler bad" treatment, Buchanan is somewhat objective in his analysis of Hitler, and acknowledges that Germany's grievances in the interwar period were completely legitimate. The conflicts with Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Poland were never about conquest, they were about reclaiming German lands inhabited by German people.

Most mainstream histories would have you believe Hitler invaded Poland because he wanted to slaughter their Jews or something. On that note, this work suffers because it does not mention the important role played by Zionists in these crucial events. From the Balfour Declaration to the international economic war on Germany to the creation of the state of Israel, this critical thread is missing from the tapestry of events.

Winston Churchill doesn't come out looking so good. He appears as a bloviating warmonger who sacrifices the British Empire in a pointless and avoidable conflict with Germany over various principles and causes abandoned and forgotten during the course of the most destructive war in history. The empire on which the sun never set died to make Eastern Europe safe for Stalinism and so the military-industrial complex of the United States could launch a globalist New World Order. Where was England when Churchill began his career, and what was the state of it when he left the world stage? In light of that, what can he be said to have actually accomplished? He cynically divided up the spoils of the destroyed Europe with the sociopathic monster Stalin, drawing down the "Iron Curtain" he would later bemoan. In his conduct of the war, he gleefully committed many of the same atrocities for which leading Nazis were executed at Nuremberg. And worst of all, the world wars caused by him and men like him sacrificed the flower of European manhood. We can never begin to imagine what we lost with those millions of war dead - our best and brightest, boldest and bravest. Had they been with us, would our civilization now be nearing its end? The world wars were the greatest tragedy of the twentieth century, perhaps of our entire history, and it was all avoidable.

[noblethumos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Patrick J. Buchanan’s The Unnecessary War: Why Britain Did It, Why the West Lost It (New York: Crown Publishing, 2008) offers a provocative reinterpretation of the origins and consequences of the Second World War. Written by a prominent American conservative commentator and former presidential candidate, the book situates itself within the long tradition of revisionist historiography that challenges the moral and strategic justifications for Britain’s entry into the war against Nazi Germany in 1939. Buchanan’s central claim—that World War II was not only avoidable but catastrophic for Western civilization—seeks to dismantle what he perceives as the dominant Churchillian narrative that sanctifies the war as a necessary struggle against tyranny.


Buchanan’s argument unfolds in two major parts. The first traces the diplomatic and political developments leading to the outbreak of war, focusing on British foreign policy from the Treaty of Versailles through the guarantee to Poland in 1939. The second examines the broader consequences of the conflict—most notably, the decline of the British Empire, the rise of the Soviet Union, and the eventual loss of Western global predominance. Buchanan maintains that Britain’s decision to go to war over Poland was strategically irrational, since it neither saved Poland from occupation nor preserved the balance of power in Europe. Instead, he contends, the war precipitated the dissolution of Britain’s imperial power and the spread of totalitarianism across half of Europe.


A significant feature of Buchanan’s narrative is his revisionist portrayal of Adolf Hitler’s intentions. While not absolving Hitler of moral responsibility for his crimes, Buchanan portrays the German dictator as a nationalist whose ambitions were largely continental and defensive rather than global and imperial. By this reading, the Western powers could have contained Germany through diplomacy and deterrence, avoiding the devastation that ensued. The author draws extensively from diplomatic correspondence, memoirs, and interwar agreements to argue that British and French policymakers, especially Neville Chamberlain, acted under misplaced moral fervor and strategic miscalculation when they abandoned appeasement and issued the ill-fated Polish guarantee.


In stylistic and rhetorical terms, Buchanan’s prose is forceful, polemical, and often infused with moral urgency. He writes less as a detached historian than as an advocate seeking to overturn what he calls the “Churchillian myth.” The book’s interpretive frame owes much to earlier revisionist historians such as A.J.P. Taylor, Charles Beard, and Harry Elmer Barnes, who similarly questioned the necessity and moral legitimacy of Allied policies in both world wars. However, Buchanan’s treatment is more ideological than scholarly: it serves as both a historical reinterpretation and a political warning against contemporary interventionism, implicitly linking the “unnecessary war” of 1939 to modern American entanglements abroad.


Critics have rightly noted the book’s methodological and ethical shortcomings. Buchanan’s selective use of sources often downplays Hitler’s expansionist rhetoric and the ideological nature of National Socialism, presenting German aggression in overly rational geopolitical terms. His counterfactual reasoning—imagining a peaceful coexistence between Hitler’s Germany and the Western democracies—rests on speculative assumptions about Nazi intentions and the feasibility of appeasement. Moreover, Buchanan’s moral relativism regarding the choices faced by Britain and France risks trivializing the genocidal and totalitarian dimensions of the Nazi regime.


Nevertheless, The Unnecessary War performs a valuable intellectual function by reopening debate on the complex interplay between moral principle and strategic prudence in international politics. Buchanan’s critique of “wars of choice” resonates with a long conservative tradition skeptical of liberal internationalism and moral crusades abroad. His insistence that well-intentioned intervention can yield disastrous unintended consequences invites reflection on the limits of power and the tragic nature of statecraft.


While The Unnecessary War lacks the methodological rigor and balance of academic historiography, it remains a compelling example of populist historical revisionism. Its sweeping narrative, moral fervor, and political analogies ensure that it continues to provoke discussion among historians, policymakers, and readers interested in the enduring lessons of twentieth-century diplomacy. Buchanan’s work ultimately illustrates how historical memory can serve as a battleground for contemporary ideological and geopolitical debates.

GPT

[Cill · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book and learned a lot from it, not the least of which is how little we really know about events that may affect our lives greatly. I would highly recommend it as an alternate view of World War 2, which has come to be called "the good war" by many in our present day world. It is also a very unflattering view of Winston Churchill who not only led the English people in that war, but presided over the demise of the British Empire as well. The story of how that came about makes a very interesting and eye-opening read.

[Richard LaLonde · Rating 5 out of 5]

This much needed departure from the mainstream narrative delivers compelling arguments and facts, exposing people’s true colors. Buchanan does not present an alternate history but rather an accurate, sincere account of strategic mishaps, war mongering, and even the U.S.’s poor decision making through diverging radically from traditional policies, nor does He downplay the terror and calamity. So much death could’ve been avoided if peace offers were accepted. I appreciate this unbiased, fair perspective on the most devastating war the world has seen.

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you love history and politics,pick this book up.When you're done you'll probably say History does repeat itself

[Mark Stacy II · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential reading. The best book I've read on what led to both world wars and their consequences.

[Aditya आदित्य]

What we have here is an alternative explanation of the second world war, an overarching description of the events leading up to it and an exposition of the major actors in Europe, brought to life with their quotations. Those conventionally hailed as heroes of this era are held culpable for the war and arguments are presented - as the title suggests - to prove the war itself as "unnecessary".

It might seem that Buchanan has cut some slack to Hitler. After all the book does not dwell on his antisemitism, the idea of Lebensraum and the Holocaust. Of course all of it is mentioned but is Buchanan anti-Nazi "enough"? The issue at hand is that he is more anti-Communist than anti-Nazi and for good reason. That might rub a lot of people the wrong way.



Where I am from, Hitler is not as reviled as in Europe. Don't get me wrong: he is well known as a mass murdered and a raging racist. But he is surprisingly appreciated as a leader who united his people, uplifted his country from squalor and most importantly gave a bloody nose to them British. There are some quarters of society (guess who?) which, because of the Arab-Israeli conflict, admire him for his antisemitism as well.

Interestingly, my people have got no love for Churchill. He is detested as a thorough imperialist and a dedicated racialist. The book mentions this about him and much more. Churchill's grit and effulgence aside, some serious questions are raised on the political outcomes of the war he won at the cost of the British Empire.

Lastly this book is a lamentation, a requiem in advance if you may, for the eventual end of western supremacy. Buchanan sees the two great wars as family feuds within the western world which have led to its decay. I don't find the idea as dismal as it is to the author. Here in India, I sit back and enjoy the show. Is it in bad taste...? May be. But then... what are you gonna do about it?

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pat Buchanan takes everything you learned in school about WWII and turns it upside down. Buchchan raises some questions about early twentieth century Europe. I am glad he starts off the book with an overview of World War 1; he shows how if Great Britain had stayed out, it would have changed history. This part about WW1 isn't controversial; it is simply meant to give you a background of Europe, to set the stage so to speak for WWII.

Buchanan's dealing of Nazi Germany isn't the mainstream view but that doesn't mean it's not the correct view. He lays out Hitler's ambitions which according to Buchanan, were not worldwide domination but rather for Germany to regain land lost in the Treaty of Versailles as well as invasion of Russia (Hitler despised communists). Buchanan makes it clear that peace and honor could have been had if not for Britain's unqualified guarantees to fight for Poland in 1939.

In the past I have always thought of Churchill as the hero . After reading this book though, Churchill is brought back to Earth and shown to be what we all are: human. Churchill made mistakes. Even though this book challenges the premise of Churchill's greatness, I still enjoyed it because it opened up my eyes to another perspective that I didn't see before and has thus given me a clearer picture of the period.

The tone of the book is a clear warning to the current state of America; Our "Poland guarantee" can be compared to our involvement in former Soviet satellite states like Georgia. This book really opened my eyes to an alternative view of WWII and Europe in general. I learned more reading this book than I had ever learned in school. Quite simply, this is one of the best books I have ever read and highly recommend it.

[Arun Ellis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Had difficulty with this book when I first read it - not because it's hard to read or because I necessarily found the views hard to comprehend - simply because I'm a Churchill fan - having read it a second time I tend to agree that British politicians could've played their hand a bit better but I'm still of the opinion that when Hitler had finished digesting Russia he would surely have come west with all that entailed. I would also contend that the old Empires were always destined to fall in a modern world. That said Buchanan makes some very valid observations surrounding the events leading to both world wars - I would also mention that in his desire to condemn Churchill and Chamberlain he misses the opportunity to discuss how the war would have panned out had America and Russia joined in 1939 instead of waiting for Hitler to attack them first, surely it would've been over a lot quicker and a great many more people would've survived - that said definitely a five star read for those interested in history.

[Justice Ellison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brings an unconventional perspective on both world wars that was very eye opening. It makes more sense now when they say that the winners of history are the ones who write history.

[Macon · Rating 5 out of 5]

While I didn’t agree with everything, Buchanan is a good writer and makes a very persuasive case.