Christopher Hitchens - In defense of WWII [2008]

this program is brought to you by Stanford University please visit us at stanford.edu welcome to uncommon knowledge I'm Peter Robinson today revisionism those who would revise our understanding of world war 2 and those who would defend it Victor Davis Hanson military historian professor of classics a fellow at the Hoover Institution I quote you world war ii was worth it you intend to stand by that I think so you will Christopher Hitchens author and journalist quote is there any one shared principle or assumption on which our political consensus rests one would probably get the widest measure of agreement for the proposition that the second world war was a good war you'll stand by that well I said I would say that I it's my view as well as the consensus view all right world war two really good it gashes me somewhat put it like all right our first revisionist here today Pat Buchanan in his new book Churchill Hitler and the unnecessary war the background and then Buchanan central argument takes a moment to set up the background but bear with me here September 1938 British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain visits Munich to negotiate the agreement to the German annexation of the Sudetenland which is the border region of Czechoslovakia which is heavily populated by German speakers in return chamberlain believes he's gotten hitler to agree to give up any further territorial claims in europe in the following weeks hitler in eggs he not only in x's the Sudetenland but moves in and occupies prague then places poland under increasing pressure to give up Danzig a free city hived out of east prussia by the Treaty of Versailles but Poland is in control of Danzig is External Affairs Danzig has a German population of about 95 percent completely surrounded by polish territory March 31st 1939 Chamberlain reverses his policy of appeasement rising in the House of Commons to announce British support for Poland in the event of quote any action which clearly threatens Polish independence close quote August 24th were three three items from the end August 24th 1939 the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed the Molotov Ribbentrop pact they agree not to invade each other September 1st now 2:39 Hitler invades Poland and September 3rd 1939 Chamberlain announces that a state of war exists between Great Britain and Germany P cannon central argument quote what made a European war inevitable was not Hitler's occupation of Prague but Britain's guarantee to Poland had there been no war guarantee Poland might have done a deal over Danzig and been spared 6 million dead poles had there been no war guarantee there would have been no British declaration of war in September 3rd and there might have been no German invasion of France in May 1940 or ever there was nothing inevitable about Hitler's war in the West Victor well it's not an isolated act remember that what may change the invasion of Poland no what made Chamberlain come to his senses it was a long line had gone for me violations and mccannon makes the argument the Versailles Treaty this quotes this creepy Lady Astor that Hitler was born at Versailles but the point is lady astor is an american victory that's especially creepy we should as Americans point that out yes sir Hermann England was the social headquarters of the Munich set the appeasers yes Clevedon right but anyway it came after the violation of the demilitarized Rhineland the Anschluss the fragmentation of Czechoslovakia the murder of a forum the former German Chancellor the murder of the Austrian I mean this it already there were the crystal night Nick and knock with it Jews so all of this was sequential and serial and incremental and finally the allies especially England realized it was they had no choice it essentially they were bankrupt an ideology and courage I that unless they finally do the line it was unfortunate that they were not in a position to draw the line militarily at least Britain wasn't maybe France could have invaded on the West when they went into Poland but the point that you can and makes in the book is always out of context he says it hit Churchill considered this a disastrous move and he quotes liberal thinking people who thought it was a disaster not because they finally drew the line but because for five years they did not draw and then they had no choices when they were at the point of war Christopher when Chamberlain gives Poland award guarantee Britain has at its disposal 5 divisions the Germans have a hundred in the six months between the granting of the war guarantee and excuse me yes nearly six months between granting the war guarantee and Hitler's invasion of Poland Britain extends no credit to Poland it places no advisors on the ground it offers no concrete aid to Poland whatsoever they shouldn't have done it because it was a bluff and you ought not to make Bluffs when you're dealing with Adolf Hitler yeah there's not much to car with them it is a rather quixotic gesture but it's rendered quixotic by the fact that it's the it's the last stand you can make unless you're going to follow Buchanan's invitation to tautology which is to agree that there won't be a war as long as we give Hitler everything he wants all the time I mean to an extent that must be true but to the extent that Buchanan derives this from appeasable German grievances such as the Sudeten Deutsch right he for example he's I think consciously trying to deceive us the example I gave him my polemic against him in Newsweek was this in 1936 the Germany and Italy combined to invade Spain with some right-wing Spanish fascist mutineers to overthrow a democratically elected republican government Spain is not profiteer country from their side Spain doesn't know German papain doesn't have a german-speaking minority Spain can't encircle Germany it's on the other side of the Pyrenees it's a pure act of a calculated fascist imperialism and my strong suspicion is that Buchanan whose tradition is that of the Catholic fascist of me father Coughlin in the United States his well-known sympathy for General Franco encircle is concealing something from us that would be very unpleasant if further explored I want to return to the Polish war guarantee because Buchanan argues that absent that guarantee things might have been much better for everyone involved including the poles it seems to me that you you don't need to grant Pat Buchanan's entire ethic and view of the war to think that that may be that may actually be so that is to say if the Britain had not granted the Polish war guarantee kept mouths shut and rearmed as quickly as it could then 18 months later or two years later there may have been in a better position to face Hitler down no is there not only look there no even well really wants to play this speculation that right there is there is a terrible way of doing this that keeps one awake it comes from Sebastian happiness brilliant bugger fee of Hitler was something that Hitler's generals noticed when it was too late Hitler was was physically and mentally decomposing we know we know we know this now right they suddenly began to understand that the insane orders he was giving them restricted the war in saying the war in the east yeah because he knew he didn't have much time and he he had it either see Germany totally ruined which he wouldn't have minded or totally triumphant which is which is what he would like very soon very quickly once you realized that that some Germany was being run by a psychopath a concession by the way that Buchanan doesn't me he seems to regard Hitler was a very canny and brilliant statesman which I and I want to dispute with him but once you grant that he he's a decomposing probably syphilitic channels of play of course it'd be very intelligent just to wait it out right run out the clock on him as long as they deny him the chance to start a global war because under the cover of all he can also start the Holocaust if you really want to play this game you can but you can't play it as a sympathizer of Charles Lindbergh father cotton and General Franco and the the Sudeten don't okay but one point is that he he assumes that all of these - atrocities are unleashed only because of war and only because the British Box Hitler in and suddenly out of the head of Zeus comes the final solution as if all during the 30s whether it was the deportation of the mentally ill or racial exclusionary laws or the ostracism of Jews that you didn't have the nucleus of what was going to become whether he had a war or not it was only predicated on one variable German power since German had the Germany had the power then this awful vision was going to be realized war not well let me come to that the Holocaust next segment here Pat Buchanan quote for what happened to the Jews of Europe Hitler and his collaborator collaborators bear full moral responsibility but was the Holocaust inevitable close quote now I'm needless to say I'm bastardizing and art the argument is made at length here but very briefly Buchanan notes that the sponsee conference which works out the administrative details of the final solution doesn't take place until January 1942 that Hitler himself that any quote several times from the diaries of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels including February 1942 quote world jewelry will suffer a great catastrophe the Fuhrer realizes the full implications of the great opportunity offered by this war close quote from this chronology buchanan writes the destruction of the jews was not a cause of the war but an awful consequence of the war with no war in the West all the Jews of Norway Denmark Holland Belgium Luxembourg France Italy Yugoslavia and Greece might have survived as did the Jews of Spain Portugal Sweden and Switzerland close quote and where did all this idea come from I mean he's in a war and suddenly he finds he's in a war of an existential war and suddenly it comes to him that he has to start killing Jews or is he saying that it's he says he bears full responsibility and goes about throughout the book but and that but is well he wouldn't have really been able capable of it's like a heroin addict that really wouldn't take heroin unless somebody gave it to him is if they can't find a way to find it any other way I mean they were already there already mechanisms all during when they start killing people at Bali are they could start going in with special groups and the first day of the Russian invasion all of those things can't be organized contemplated and vision just because of a war scenario I mean all of these things and the character of ritual assassination systemic ethnic cleansing I mean what he had done was on a smaller but was absolutely consistent with a holocaust from so you don't believe that the ashes of war unhinges them from the last vestige of morality you don't buy that chali agree what we thought Victor says there would intensify it a bit by underlined it by saying there's a program for genocide laid out in a book called man camp that comes out in the 20s the entire electoral program of the National Socialist Party of Germany is to say that the the woes not just of their country but of the world are to be blamed on world Jewry their motive for invading the Soviet Union for breaking the hitlist on impact in the first place is to exterminate what they call Judea Bolshevism they think communism there are the great enemy is a Jewish and we so it's written into that the raison d'être Nazism is anti-semitism the organizing principle and isn't it the case I'm remembering that it makes it to something this opportunist and contingent it's a completely interim plan they were all going to be peacefully deported to where Madagascar and this was all going to be done under the auspices of a peaceful Germany well now Buchanan does make the argument that passage of the Nuremberg Laws which are discriminated harshly discriminated toward Jews that takes place in 1935 between that moment a crystal nacht is 1938 between the passage of the Nuremberg Laws and the crystal knocked violent of violence against the Jews perhaps half of German Jews have left and then after Kristallnacht and before the were the statistics indicate another half leave so something like and he makes the distinction that there's a difference between in effect driving Jews out of your country and pinning them up and sending them to the gas chambers that's it that's that that's a that's a critical decision right and we're did a lot of Jews go they went to places like Warsaw that was sent Oh a dance invade absolutely well those are the largest numbers went west not necessarily Kristallnacht was caused by the assassination of a German diplomat by a Jew who was denied access to Warsaw and was stateless and remember this is a guy who had to bathe seven times because he discovered his chief of staff at what marry a Jew and so I mean I didn't join the water and during the night and fog period the under the cover of which the Holocaust takes place very often they will they will use scarce resources like railway trains be important attachments and so to get on with killing Jews when when they these people needed at the front they were willing to jeopardize their war aims in order to finish with the Jewish people this is not something that comes as a spasm of anger this is a high priority the only slaughter I remember the ideology of the cannon argument had to accept certain things that Hitler is a monster and he's capable all these horrible things but if you and he wants to get out of his cage all of time but you one day were not a careful zoo keeper so you left the cage slightly open and he got out and therefore you're responsible for all crimes he committed as if it's you see it to say the hip it was a rational actor well that's that's that's exactly that I think is one one that's the historical calculation one has to make that if if they had not made that if the British had not made the guarantee to Poland one of the critical arguments is if the British had not offered the war guarantee to Poland would there have been a Molotov Ribbentrop pact and the notion there is no because this Munich that leads to the Hitler Stalin exciting as Trotsky points out at the time the only person you noticed he said now that mr. Chamberlain has done this and sold the Czechs to try and preserve the British Empire with Hitler the next thing that Hitler will do is make an agreement with Stalin but you see it's just as insane for the Germans knowing an extemporaneous just insane is just insane the Germans knowing that if they invade Poland to have a war with the British Empire it's just as irrational and quixotic of them to do that as it is for Chamberlain to say if you charge Poland we really will find you now Buchanan says aha Hitler was so upset with by Britain's failure to take his deal we have Europe you have the right that he raids Russia to impress them this is the action of an insane you remember what he said not when is it he already but well before 1941 he stated again and again to his generals maybe we can handle Britain and maybe we can handle Russia but we cannot handle the United States this is a country that put 250 thousand people every two months in World War one right and finally had up to three or three and a half million people by 1919 and the European Khan and Hitler had known that so he understood that eventually if he was going to go down that path it was inevitable that it wasn't just the British Britain was impotent when he went into Poland but it was a whole mechanism that going into Poland was the last straw for all liberal thinking people in democracies and so this idea that we search will and Roosevelt cooked up this war was crazy olá Buchanan Hitler in the Jews one last time you can and grab everything you said that still leaves the question was it correct for the Allies to push for unconditional surrender to the war aims go too far Buchanan quote at Casablanca 1943 Churchill and FDR declared their warring was quote unconditional surrender at Quebec in 1944 Churchill and FDR approved the morgenthau plan calling for the destruction of all German industry gurbles use the morgenthau plan to convince germans that surrender met no survival and here's the critical sentence annihilation of their hostages the jews was the price the nazis extracted for their own annihilation close quote give the germans terms earlier and you might have saved some large number of jews plausible madness it's the argument also that's made for hoping were working for the success of the stuff in the plan for the for the german general staff to take out hitler and negotiate a separate peace with the West some people say that would do even better to its do hope we do there is the Danish stuff and there is exists we just I guess we do all right but there's one but but I'd have to add the same cavil right right which is this which I get from a number of my German comrades in Austrian comrades they wanted to be sure that no serum was absolutely extirpated that there was no possibility there would be another doll Schloss theory that Germany had been stabbed in the back or betrayed from within and the Devonian should hang on so the Germans wouldn't be doing this kind of revisionism anymore that it would be an utter defeat something unarguable something finished germany i horrible all right Churchill next segment Churchill again a word of background with a war spreading in May 1940 political support for Chamberlain government the Chamberlain government collapses Churchill becomes Prime Minister in that month of May 1940 it's clear Germany is be making diplomatic overtures Halifax in the cabinet is probing Churchill over a critical period of several days will you accept a deal they let us keep the Empire we stay out of the general war there's now something there's some evidence in people's that Churchill seems to have considered it for about 48 hours there's no deep consideration but he doesn't rule it out immediately but the final decision is no he rejects the overtures and insists on going on pursuing the war prosecuting the war now here remember the mediator proposed was Mussolini he'd have had to is that what I shall commit just later Patrick O'Donnell they'd have had to accept a mediation all right quite a lot to be asked to swallow right right now I have to say when I'm with reading this strikes me as a reach but not implausible not altogether implausible Buchanan argues that Hitler is convinced Churchill wants to prosecute the war because Churchill has the lingering hope that he'll be able to turn the Soviet Union that Britain and Russia will be able to allow themselves and force Germany into a two-front war so Hitler decides things went pretty well in France France Falls in six weeks he decides on a lightning strike in Russia to knock Russia out but all the time he's doing it with an eye on Churchill and trying to impress Britain and there are quotations here he quotes again there are general generals writing in their Diaries that the main enemy is Britain we're moving into Russia because of Britain quoting Buchanan by his refusal even to consider a negotiated peace Churchill caused Hitler to commit his fatal blunder invading Russia this would bring the downfall of Hitler but add four more years to the war and bring death to tens of millions was it worth it Churchill should have settled no remember this is the same guy who same author who argues that had written just stayed out of things and had continued the policy of appeasement then Hitler and Stalin would have been never oblique clashed and they would have had this war the Nazis and the colonists and we would have in democracies would have sat out and watched these two atrocious systems wipe each other out and it would be probably a little bit better because he thinks Russia would have probably lost and European Christianity and the white race and all this would have won and then but and this is then the after that's the subtext of most of the book and then after saying that he says that Britain caused this war in the east eventually by giving this this guarantee to Poland and what keeps it completely out of the argument is of course why all this is going on there's unrestricted submarine warfare that is destroying American ships which he knows and he's getting this pressure from his naval commanders remember he declared war on the United States we didn't clear war on him right because he wanted to destroy written economically and the only way you could do that was to destroy the convoys from the United States so the idea that he wasn't doing things that were precipitous precipitous dangerous and wouldn't ever lead to war is crazy Churchill you by the way let the record show that you've been quite critical of the Churchill myth the Churchill legend I have and of the overuse to the point of diminishing returns of the Munich analogy for right right right exactly by the way I think this might be the point which to say that the other hidden agenda by Cohn has apartment to whitewash Catholic fascism in collusion with it is is to oppose the war in Iraq right actually we'll come to that but go ahead all right well just go to John that monitor in case you that's fair that's fair he's explicit about that he's explicit and that Churchill remember was happy very Pro Mussolini in the early days of photography ISM he had written in his book great contemporaries very flattering portrayal of Adolf Hitler saying he hoped that if Britain was ever to suffer similar extremity as Germany had that they would find a savior of the same time not a guy who was very hard to persuade when came to hardline anti-communist right-wing forces but for that reason very impressive when he suddenly realizes this is not that this isn't what I thought it was this is something pornographic and and insane and really menacing and there isn't any possibility of coexistence with it we can't he said we can't breathe the same air as these people they have to go he would have loved to manipulate a war between two Germany and Bolshevism I mean it would have been searched Orr's idea initially to invade the Soviet Union right all right exactly that's exactly 19 not just an idea it was carried into execution with the American forces as well as British one and his defense also we forget this well Buchanan is quite accurate and pointing out the paltry resources of Britain in September of 1939 what he doesn't realize is that Hitler it is true that Churchill is asking two things he wants to rearm and he wants to by 1939 stop the appeasement but after the fall of France when Churchill takes the reins of government he didn't have a lot of options this is a man who was making an argument finally and Christopher right about his sorted statements in the middle 30s but finally he was making a stand with very few resources he was making on a it speaks well of him that he was trying to rally the best in the British people to stop a nightmarish ideology of which he didn't have a lot of resources at his connect at his disposal grant everything you've said about a Churchill and the importance to all of world history of that moral insight did he prosecute the war wisely was he good on strategy and tactics I mean there are plenty of American military historians who would say we could have moved into Normandy a year earlier of Churchill hadn't insisted on that ridiculous approach from Italy that was Churchill he got all kinds of things wrong he got the moral insight right Michael has just written a very interesting critique of the Italian campaign for example every account you read of the Norwegian campaign he's absolutely calamitous where all the accounts are clamped as the campaign was coming yes yes right that's true it's just the term and and the the accusation made regularly by Goebbels or Nazi radio that Churchill enjoyed war and was and was after half drunk all the time literally drunk because he really loved doing it with a big glass of brandy and a cigar had a throw reddish for the business absolutely just the truth yes all true and just as well just as well there's no way I think most military historians would agree on this there's no way the United States was capable of invading Western Europe Normandy or where were share Berg where Normandy took place as soon as it could have done absolutely okay the Dieppe raid it showed that the United States was not in a position whether its landing craft or tactics and even after we forget 3,500 killed landing on normandy may have been an impressive achievement that the cost but then we lost 80,000 people in the next six weeks in the hedgerows it was not it it was a near run thing even in 1944 jr. Buchanan's second charge against Hitler excuse me against Churchill that he focused so monomaniacal E on Hitler that he underestimates or he loses sight of the threat from Stahl and I quote Buchanan the destruction of Germany to which Churchill had dedicated himself this is following on the point that Churchill refused to deal refused often in terms he presses for unconditional surrender the destruction of Germany to which Churchill had dedicated himself left a power vacuum that Stalin inevitably filled Britain fought Nazi tyranny only to pave the path pave the path to power for a greater tyranny close quote the first thing I've heard about Churchill would actually would the help of someone Victor doesn't like a measure if he Taylor the me years ago when that when those papers were opened in 1974 the premier de peces yeah the Churchill Churchill's premier papers as they're called the deal he made with Stalin in Moscow 1944 literally on the back of an envelope giving Stalin 90% of Poland Hungary Czechoslovakia Romania in exchange for Britain retaining the preowned an interest in Greece and Turkey and when you consider that it was Poland that Britain had gone to war for in the first place it's a it's a pretty sorted and shabby deal and there's I think they're arguing with that you can endure I think it's short term it's about this he says that Stalin and Stalinism communism was the greatest profit here of the Second World War that's only true for a couple of decades really I mean we can now see that the war that started really in 1914 that goes on the century various first truces on truces and so it doesn't really end till the Berlin Wall comes down in 1989 by that stage totalitarian ideology has not been defeated in modern society it's been discredited you thoroughly and without it without a thoroughgoing stand to root out Nazism in the first place I don't think that could have happened we depart from Pat Buchanan for a moment here Neil Ferguson has a book and a PBS television series of the same name the war of the world Ferguson stresses here's the list here American soldiers this is based on the first installment of the series American soldiers sometimes executed prisoners as surely as did the Germans and especially the Japanese the destruction by the Allies of Dresden Tokyo Hiroshima and Nagasaki resembles a lot the terror bombing that the Germans inflict on London and other cities Churchill and FDR Heil Josef Stalin is an irreplaceable ally Josef is of course a mass murder now listen to two quotations Neil Ferguson quote the Allies adopted the most brutal tactics of those they were fighting close quote rush limbaugh I direct this one to you particular cause differ quote now we've got this revisionist historian trying to say we're no better than the people we beat because we were using the same totalitarian tactics this is a latest example of the attempt to convince as many Americans as possible that the United States is no better than any of the worst despots and mass murders that have ever lived thank you PBS close quote so who are you with on that one Christopher Rush Limbaugh or Neil Ferguson mr. Limbaugh was very flattering but my good self in the New York Times now Sunday so I was actually this was I owe him one day actually he somehow I tries he may he could never find my g-spot I don't understand why people did my image I don't know oh I kind of drink just don't get it I don't but anyway if I haven't had the advantage of reading mr. fuzzums book I'm an admirer of his work in general um the difference I suppose would be this Germany and Japan in defeat were very expensively and carefully nourished back to life and health and democracy and prosperity um I do think that would have been the case for a German occupied Russia or German occupied United Kingdom and I think I rest my case on that distinction and and we know what happened and it is inside is like this tutorial yes right the difference is that in all war there's a process of brutality and it becomes worse and worse every party to war no matter whether a liberal democratic government or an autocracy will find themselves caught in that spiral but are did that descent into barbarity but the difference between the Allies and Germany and Japan was twofold number one if atrocity was incidental it was not essential to their war Mike making and in the sense that you didn't have special groups of British soldiers went out and found Jews and slaughtered them or you didn't have anything like The Rape of Nanking or you didn't have ten to fifteen thousand Asians per week being killed in the last year's of World War two by Americans and British in China and Korea Formosa that's one thing and the other is magnitude and no tip to make their own civilians commit mass suicide in the face of defeat and there's the wouldn't to be that what the other argument is more of a subtle one and it involves magnitude which I think Neil Ferguson didn't point out clear enough clearly enough excuse me and that is that while there was this difference in the way that first of all Hiroshima was and really in reaction to the savagery of the island-hopping campaign people remember after Okinawa was declared secure and they looked back and saw 50,000 casualties a popular American outcry at the end of the war just 90 days later was not we dropped the bomb but surely you must have if you exploded it in mid July you must have known it was there and you could have avoided Okinawa so the point that I'm making is its magnitude - the son of a man who was on a ship just off Okinawan watching kamikaze flights my grandfather that my namesake was killed there so the point that I'm making is that the fact that in retaliation to stop atrocity that the Allies engage in types of activities that kill a lot of people doesn't make it the moral equivalent of people who would have done far worse only they didn't have the access to the technology of the material resources there is some very unpleasant stuff that if you read the conversations of chow well and Lindemann and the advisors to church on area bombing they say we recommend that you bomb the working class areas of Hamburg because the houses are closer together the people are packed more tightly you'll get more jets per bomb and remember these are the cities are the areas of Germany they're never voted for Hitler Hitler I think I'm right in saying it barely even visited Hamburg when he was Chancellor as he knew he wasn't he was hated there's a socialist working class city it's horrible to think when we ask a rather smug question what happened to all the good Germans during the terrible period Nazism well a lot of them were being killed by the RAF Nagasaki by the way was the center of Catholicism in Japan yes took out the one with the one place where they're actually a large concentration of Christians in Japan however we are rat we have ratified this there is a fundamental moral distinction to be observed and to miss it is - that is to say all three of us agreed that mr. rush limbaugh is correct this time this time I'd have to say say mah it's rather not it it's phrased in a rather spirited way to people that you can count on employ ask yourself that the proof of the pudding is in the eating imagine a Japanese victory in a German victory in 1945 and ask what Europe and Asia would look like today visa vie what they do look like today and why is that wise er a probable difference let me take Neil Ferguson second point that Ferguson makes the principal beneficiary of the Second World War quote was Stalin's Soviet Union the wartime alliance with Stalin for all its inevitability and strategic rationality he grants that was nevertheless an authentically Faustian pact get ready for this sentence the victory of 1945 was a tainted victory if indeed it was a victory at all close quote what do you do that we've discussed that already that in the short term you can make the argument that in a geopolitical sense Russia was empowered in the long term you can see World War Two as part of an integral process that led to not only the destruction of Japanese militarism fascism Nazism but also the discrediting and Soviet Union and the world that we see today that's free of both communism and Nazism so I think I think that's an important to point out the victory is not tainted no it is a victory and it's not tainted but I don't understand I would just go disagree with it shouldn't necessarily but the argument that you can put against Buchanan or foes right is that there's always the option and it did exist was real of standing up to fascism a lot earlier than we did a lot of a lot of the catastrophic consequences are the result of postponing the resistance until 1940 instead of drawing a line with either with or without the League of Nations and appealing for American help in know later out 79036 in Spain or maybe better opposing them Italian genocide and aggression in what was then called Abyssinia Ethiopia all these chances are missed but but because the the beast what is the year was nice - is that moving speech to the League of Nations what year was that gosh I really ought to know it's nine thirty four thirty four so that's during the Spanish Civil War so it's the early 30s yes first half of this is your argument and because the the Beast is insatiable it doesn't recognize any of these things as concessions it just thinks of them as sighs a weakness to other things that it remembers I don't see quite the argument that Soviet Union comes off so well this is a country that lost 20 million dead in World War two and is very weakened severely and a lot of the problems it shows in the 50s and 60s and 70s and the Cold War was a direct result of the damage it was inflicted in World War two so it's not I know that was by Germany but nevertheless the idea that it just was Machiavelli and then figured out this war how to be on the right side and how to use the Allies and it comes out in 1945 when this wonderful they were you know millions of Russians who didn't believe in communist and there were good wonderful people that went out and fought the very mark and saved Mother Russia not the Soviet Union that's not what they were fighting for the second thing is this notion of post facto utopianism in which we sit here in the most wealthy affluent age of civilization and we go back to our ancestors who really in a direct lineal process gave us everything that we have and we say you know what they weren't perfect and therefore they weren't good peppy cannon his book the unnecessary war and the war in Iraq this is from Pat Buchanan's introduction in which he's discussing the reasons for writing the book quote there is there's a longest quotation but I'll just I'll put it on the table and let you have it there has arisen among America's elite a Churchill cult after 9/11 the Churchill called helped to persuade Anne untutored president that the liberation of Iraq from Saddam would be like the liberation of Europe from Hitler democracy would put down roots in the Middle East as it had in Europe after the fall of Hitler and George W Bush would enter history as the Churchill of his generation this Churchill cult gave us our present calamity if not exposed it will produce more Wars and more disasters close quote Christopher yeah we used to be a slogan in the 1930s Sloan at the left and the Popular Front at you said fascism means war and good slogan I think because it meant both the fascism intends war desires it but also it necessarily involves it it means that it is equivalent to it you can't have one without the other in other words you can't have peace with it I think the same can be said of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq which modeled itself partly on Stalin and partly on Hitler we have Baathist ideology helped itself to both of these and was ceaselessly engaged in aggression against its neighbors as well as genocide against its own inhabitants so there is there was no there was no compromise possible there was no containment all the all the horrors of this last war result again from having put off the confrontation with Saddam for far Iran allowed him to be in power to enough times to invade three neighbors and to a chattering neighbors rather and to him a staying power for best part of a quarter of a century I would add that that so much in quite a good analogy and we owe it should Buchanan lighting it the - reference or maybe the - catalyst the central moral insight is the same this is someone with whom we cannot abide Saddam Hussein and he'll all right when you read the end of Buchanan's book and you start to see that there's a contemporary catalyst encouragement for this type of revisionist thinking of world war two what made him write this book it seemed pretty apparent when you read it that it was the events post not just 2001 but say 1996 and all and because it prominently is the Serbian situation where we Buchanan's worldview went and bombed a Christian white nation in the heart of Europe for whom Muslims of porn apparently but when you look at his two examples of what we need what we did wrong and how we had to learn from World War two they're very shaky because were we know I mean Serbia being one absolutely we stopped his genocide in the middle of the Balkans that killed over 200,000 people or wounded them or exiled them and I'm a monster named melosa which is gone and there's the seeds at least of consensual governments in that area where there are nothing but really a rogue fascist communist whatever you want to call Milosevic click and then we had Saddam's yes it would be a good description and then we have Saddam Hussein and with just this week the Maliki government is discussing with us whether we should leave their country and we will so there's a constitutional government in the heart of the ancient Caliphate which was absolutely preposterous to even think that and then we're supposed to believe that that what we see today in Iraq with a Petraeus surge in the constitutional government what we see in the Balkans is complete folly because we didn't learn that we should let Hitler alone in World War two and the alternative of having Milosevic and Saddam Hussein would be much better for the world and for us it's preposterous we close out the program Claire loose used to say that history would give even the greatest men only a single sentence of pages Lincoln freed the slaves let me give you a couple of names and ask you for one sentence in return Christopher Adolf Hitler well um the greatest enemy of the German people Victor he's are all the worst nightmare within the human species Joseph Stalin firm but fair they're all getting just kidding I'm just telling the gravedigger of communism really yeah gravedigger promise Victor that's a separate show we'll have to set you down one more time the co greatest evil of the human experience and named Franklin Delano Roosevelt first toss temperament for all his weaknesses and human human pathologies which he displayed a numerous thing he was on score the right person at the right time in World War two in the Second World War and Winston Churchill um the lover of war and wine and brandy and of genial indem Gina and victory and unbowed in defeat Victor he usually did the good thing last after he thought and wrote and said all of the other bad things first he did the right thing last unlike that knows neither of you is going to come close very clever a victory because that's what Churchill says about the Americans they always do the right thing after they've tried everything else all right all right Victor Davis Hanson Christopher Hitchens thank you very much I'm Peter Robinson at the Hoover Institution for uncommon knowledge thanks for joining us you the preceding program is copyrighted by Stanford University please visit us at stanford.edu

Channel: CaNANDian

Views: 840,186

Rating: 4.7424893 out of 5

Keywords: Christopher, Hitchens, Victor, Davis, Hanson, World, War, II

Id: 6F13PqNlP7c

Length: 40min 25sec (2425 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 19 2012