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

The Revisionist History That Won't Go Away

Patrick Buchanan published this book in 2008, and it generated exactly the response he expected: fury from the mainstream, serious engagement from historians who disagreed, and a slow, steady readership among people willing to question the received narrative of the twentieth century.

What the Book Argues

Buchanan's thesis is that Britain's entry into World War I, and specifically its guarantee to Poland in 1939, were catastrophic strategic blunders that destroyed the British Empire and delivered Eastern Europe to Stalin. He argues that Churchill's insistence on unconditional surrender prolonged the war, ensured the destruction of Germany as a counterweight to the Soviet Union, and produced the Cold War division of Europe that lasted until 1989.

The book is not a defense of Hitler. Buchanan makes this explicit repeatedly. His argument is about British statecraft: that wiser diplomacy could have contained Germany without a second world war, and that the moral clarity of the anti-Hitler crusade has been used to retroactively justify decisions that were, at the time, reckless gambles with the fate of an empire. He draws on diplomatic correspondence, cabinet minutes, and the private writings of Churchill, Halifax, Chamberlain, and others.

Whether or not you accept the thesis, the research is genuine, the sources are cited, and the questions raised are the kind that serious historiography should not avoid simply because the answers are uncomfortable.

About This Edition

Author: Patrick J. Buchanan
Publisher: Crown / PRH Christian Publishing
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780307405166