–Former NYC Mayor Ed Koch
It’s no longer possible to disagree with Frank Perdue look-alike, Ed Koch. Pat Buchanan has left the reservation. As General Gorman said in Apocalypse Now, “he’s out there operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct.”
Buchanan’s most recent column makes some astonishing assertions. Among them, that World War Two was not worth fighting because:
The German people did not vote Hitler in. That’s a myth. He was appointed Chancellor. The most votes the Nazi’s ever got was 37%. But even if they had, so what? Did they vote to set up a police state? Did they vote to invade Poland? Did they vote to commit the worst genocide in European history?
Buchanan’s argument is that Communism, or Leninism, was a worse menace than National Socialism. As he sees it, the Western Powers failed to liberate Poland or Czechoslovakia, because they fell into Stalin’s grip. Therefore, the Allies did not accomplish anything by defeating Germany.
Not once in his entire essay, does Buchanan even mention the Jews. He might have argued that Stalin’s treatment of the Jews was only marginally better. That would have been a specious argument, but at least it would have acknowledged that the Holocaust occurred.
Buchanan has been accused of anti-Semitism in the past. It’s clear that he has a special loathing for communism, and especially its official atheism. It’s clear that he found communism more repugnant than National Socialism. There is an argument that can made in defense of that judgment.
But Buchanan goes much further than that. By implication, he is saying that the Allies should have allowed the total destruction of world Jewry in return for Germany keeping communism out of Eastern Europe. That is a trade he clearly would have made. And by making this argument, he has lost the right to sit down with any decent human being. MSNBC must fire Buchanan.
Geez, you make this whole National Socialism thing sound like they’re all Nazis or something. Oh wait…
Anyway, and I may be opening a can of worms here, isn’t Buchanan’s point on the German people somewhat correct, even if he got the method of Hitler’s empowerment wrong? So no, they didn’t actually “vote” to set up a police state, invade Pland or commit genocide, but a vast majority were cheering it on to varying degrees.
Daniel Goldhagen created a huge uproar a few years ago with his book, “Hitler’s Willing Executioners,” in which he argued the German people’s complicity in the Holocaust. Hitler didn’t create the violently anti-semitic, virulently nationalistic passion that engulfed the nation, he merely rode its wave. So really, I’m not in too much of a rush to defend the fifth column.
As for everything else Buchanan says, it’s as dependably crappy as ever.
Let’s be clear.
The Nazis never received more than 37% of the vote. In the 1933 election, they received 33%, IIRC.
Hitler did not run his campaign based on exterminating Jews, Gypsies, or anyone else. He didn’t run his campaign on a platform of conquering the world.
His views were available in Mein Kampf, but he didn’t run on Mein Kampf.
Once Hitler took power he had many diplomatic and military successes, the economy improved dramatically, and the German people began to place a lot of confidence in him.
And once the war started, particularly with the USSR, the alternative to victory was terrifying.
I’m not excusing ordinary Germans for supporting Hitler and his policies. But that support was largely earned after his appointment. It’s absurd to say that Germany voted for Hitler’s policies. And, insofar as they supported them after that fact, that was all the more reason to fight Germany.
point by point.
No, they received 44% of the vote; it was the year before that they received 33%. More importantly, the 44% was an enormous plurality in a state with at least 8 viable parties–the next closest party received a paltry 18%.
Of course, they never did receive more than that 44%. Why? Because Hitler abolished the party system shortly thereafter, so there WERE no more elections. But it would be ludicrous to think that a nation in the throes of a nationalist, militaristic frenzy in the years after wouldn’t have given the Nazis overwhelming numbers of votes.
Certainly…he merely ran it on the premise that Jews and other minorities were mongrel, evil creatures responsible for Germany’s fall in WWI and its depressed economy, and that the divine Aryans were a superior race whose greater destiny was reclaiming the Germanic lands. But sure, no one would ever have suspected this could be accomplished by killing those mongrel races and militarily re-taking those lands. No way.
There was no alternative to victory because victory was inevitable…they sliced through Europe like a hot knife through butter. There’s no way to imagine the Germans as a bunch of frightened, innocent patriots believing in Hitler only because they couldn’t bring themselves to imagine otherwise. Hell, they were ARYANS! They were unstoppable.
That’s a straw man…I never said they voted for his policies, I said they supported them. How Hitler came to power wasn’t Buchanan’s point, and I personally don’t even care. Once he was in power and running amok, they were with him every step of the way, and they sure as hell didn’t need or want to be liberated.
Like any successful demagogue, Hitler sold Germans a vision of what they wanted to be: strong, superior, entitled to great things. They went with him willingly and passionately.
As I said, Buchanan’s an ass, and he doesn’t even make that much sense. I agree merely with the specific point that most of the German people were worthless–not that taking down Germany wasn’t a critical goal.
surely you’ve heard about the night the great Walter Cronkite was discussing the role of ordinary Germans in the Holocaust. He stated that all Germans were basically Nazis, to which his shocked co-anchor responded, “They were Nazis, Walter?”
sorry, couldn’t resist.
In June 1932, Von Papen was appointed to be the new Chancellor. In the next six months, Papen tried to get a Reichstag majority for the government by holding two elections. The first took place in July. In that election, he failed to get any important support. Instead the votes for the Nazis more than doubled. The Nazis won 230 Reichstag seats and became the largest single party in the Reichstag. Papen was disappointed by the results of the election. In November, he held a new election. In this election, the Communists made tremendous gains and won 100 seats in the Reichstag. The Nazis also obtained 196 seats and 33% of the total number of votes. But in comparison with the results in the July election, the Nazis had lost about two million votes and 34 seats in the Reichstag, while the Communists had gained 11 seats. Many influential businessmen and landlords became alarmed at the spectre of a Bolshevik Revolution in Germany. The conservative Nationalists decided that their cause could be served by supporting Hitler.
Von Papen, who had just joined the Nationalist Party, wanted to utilize the strength of the Nazis to rid Germany of the Communist threat. He made a political bargain with Hitler. According to the bargain, Hitler would be made Chancellor and Von Papen be made Vice-Chancellor. Hindenburg, despite his contempt for Hitler, readily agreed to the bargain because the Nazis appeared to be the only well-supported right-wing party which could protect Germany from the onslaught of the Communist Revolution. On January 28, 1933, Hindenburg invited Hitler to be the Chancellor.
right…but in 1933, they had 44%. Just do a google search on “1933 German election results” or something similar. That was the last multiparty election.
And somewhere, little Joseph Ratzinger dreamed of being able to cast one of those votes someday.
Right. They got a whopping 44% after the Reichstag fire. After 9/11 Bush was at 90% popularity.
and I’m sure the Nazis would’ve been at 90% once WWII commenced. Still, that’s 90% for Bush as a person, not for the entire Republican Party; the Reichstag fire wasn’t as traumatic and galvanizing as 9/11; and at best, America only had three major parties at the time (counting the Greens, which is a stretch).
At this point, I’m afraid I may have to finally use my most indisputable, conclusive argument, one that will simply blow yours out of the water. I didn’t want to, but you’ve left me no choice, so here it is: your mama.
Pat the Fascist Buchanan has always been a closet nazi, he hatred for anything out of his distorted view has always been apparent. I agree that he is the epitome of evil and I can only hope that this menance to society is soon relieved of being able to spew forth his hate and bile on the nations airwaves without some balance.
Good catch, BooMan. I honestly… am at loss for words.
Besides the small matter of the 5-6 million murdered Jews and a comparable number of exterminated ‘others,’ there’s the insignificant little tidbit that Hitler’s master plan for Central and Eastern Europe exist in draft. And guess what: The term ‘Slavs’ was going to get an added ‘e.’
It is also known that his long-term goal was the conquest of western Eurasia, including Russia, and that he had his eyes fixed on the US. But he was hoping for several more years to prepare his war machine. When GB and France took him on, he was privately dismayed.
Really this is unbelievable. Anticipate the following spin from the neo-cons: “Pat also opposed the Iraq war. There you go, those war protesters really would have appeased the Nazis.”
His use of the latter term is especially ironic, since the real Quisling would have applauded his column.
…Mao, Ho Chi Minh, <s>Pol Pot</s> and Castro murdered their tens of millions.
In WWII Mao’s forces managed with pitchforks & farm implements to wreak more destruction on the Japanese than Chiang Kai Shek did with massive American aid. Tuchman’s Stillwell and the American Experience in China describes the general’s frustration dealing with a Nationalist movement more intent on protecting itself for the coming civil war than fighting the Japanese. At the end of the war, FDR sent them 500 million (that’s in Truman dollars) to fight the “evil” communists. Chiang got a small island, Mao got China.
Towards the end of the war the U.S. provided Ho Chi Minh’s troops with arms to fight the Japanese. The Vietnamese looked forward to becoming a free nation until the French demanded, and the U.S. agreed to return “French Indochina” to colonial rule. It was necessary for the British occupation force to re-arm the Japanese police to keep order. The French reinstituted colonial rule, and rest as we say is history. But kill “10s of millions”? To return their country to their own people?
I remember the headlines, and Steve Allen’s take on “Batista Fleas” in Cuba. Also the “prime directive” of the revolutionaries that a revolution cannot succeed without the support of the people. Americans were pissed because they couldn’t freely operate with a few well-placed bribes, but for some strange reason the people seemed not to miss them. If Castro had killed “10’s of millions” the island would be a ghost town.
[Just my take from memory. But this pisses me off. Revisionist by any other name.]
Buchannan shouldn’t be fired, he should be jailed. Maybe there’d be enough room in the cell for Coulter, O’Reilly, Kudlow, & Hannity. Talk about a cluster f*ck.
On reflection, I think old Buchanan may have a point.
By George Pagnanelli, 1999
The recent furor over Pat Buchanan and what he says about World War II is bringing about a widespread reassessment of the war, and also of one of the supposed villains of the conflict, Adolf Hitler. At first, people were generally condemnatory toward Mr. Buchanan, but since then, after cooler reflection he is getting a warmer reception for his ideas.
Of course, Mr. Hitler has several severe disadvantages going into all this: he has suffered the impact of over 50 years of bad press. Step back and think, if only four years of bad press did-in Dan Quayle, imagine what four or five decades would accomplish. Another of Mr. Hitler’s great disadvantages in getting a fair hearing is that age-old dictum: to the victors go the spoils, or to put it in a way more relevant to historical remembrance: it’s the winners who write the history. So, with these handicaps — Mr. Hitler at this point being uniquely-differently-challenged — Mr. Buchanan simply choosing to link himself in any way with Mr. Hitler was bound to raise people’s hackles. And it did!
We are suggesting that with a little more fairness, and with a deeper understanding of the nature of historiography, especially with supposed villains (Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Ventura), that we can come to appreciate not only these disadvantages but, indeed, as Mr. Buchanan has done, to turn it all around and find the good. It was a wise man who first said, “If you can’t say nothing good about someone don’t say nothing at all.” But how many historians have heeded that sage counsel, especially with someone like Mr. Hitler?
To their credit, in recent weeks and days they have started coming around. Pat Buchanan has raised our consciousness — all of us — at least a little bit. How did he do this, and what does it mean in terms of his ability to be our President?
Mr. Buchanan is aware that a people who forget their past are doomed to repeat it. He himself admits this fact in his own life. After losing in ’92 he promptly forgot it in ’93, then after ’96 he was oblivious again in ’97; now he’s running for President again, and projections are that 2001 will be an especially slow year for Pat, mentally-speaking. But with World War II, this fact is true for many of us; and if we weren’t even alive during the 1940s, it’s harder yet to recall. Those who were there for the most part are suffering Alzheimer’s or have lost their mental acuity by other personal failures. It’s no wonder, really, that people so softened in their minds have hardened their perceptions of the war into simple cliches like “good vs. evil” and “us vs. them.” The truth is, Mr. Hitler never meant any harm: “No harm, No foul” is the way it’s supposed to be.
It takes a heroic statesman, though, to clue us all in, and to shake up our memories, that we might not be beclouded in these areas. And Mr. Buchanan is that statesman, that heroic voice crying out in the wilderness.
There are a few great misconceptions surrounding Mr. Hitler and the war effort that need to be dealt with, albeit there are of course so many misconceptions that we can only just scratch the surface.
One misconception we have already alluded to. Mr. Hitler never meant any harm to anyone. The ones in his path who were accidentally tortured, maimed, tortured, robbed, raped, killed, tortured, butchered, and flung into mass graves, were actually to have been the receipients of his benevolence, but circumstances beyond anyone’s control “just happened.” All of us know about the best-laid intentions. And the bombs that tormented Britain, for a particular example, were only the result of incompetent help: as planes flew in, the wrong buttons were pushed; and in the case of the rockets launched toward Britain, again, wrong buttons. The consoles have been examined extensively in post-war years and it’s been proven that these buttons were subject to jamming, one thing or another; you slam a door 40 yards away and one of them engages!
Another misconception is that Mr. Hitler intended to conquer the world. This ridiculous assertion has gained creedence mostly because at the time it seemed like he was headed in all directions. Toward the East, toward the West, etc. The truth of the matter is that he wanted people everywhere to be strong and self-reliant. There are two ways one can accomplish this goal: one, just by preaching strength and hoping for the best, usually a vain hope; or, two, by challenging people through a direct encounter to reach down and see what they have, that they might meet that challenge. It’s still true today that the oyster doesn’t produce a pearl without the sand irritating it! And it was true in World War II, that muscle untested becomes flab. In a way — not to minimize World War II too much — the whole war effort was basically an encounter group with a lot of very good role-playing.
And one other misconception that we’d like to deal with is this, that Mr. Hitler was “pure evil.” He has been called every name in the book: scumbag, worthless, nasty, ugly, nimrod, and bad. At one point, he was even considered to be the Antichrist! Any one of us might turn out to be a little bit “bad,” too, if we had all that coming our way. As we all know, an arsenal is more than sticks and stones, it’s also words, names, and unfeeling slams. You tell a child that he’s Satan, he’s the Devil, he’s Mephistopheles, he’s Old Scratch, he’s a “real HITLER” (there it is!) — and you say it often enough — next thing you know, you’ve got a self-fulfilling prophecy! And Mr. Hitler heard this: “Hitler! Hitler! Hitler!” Even his own people callously shouted it at him as he passed! “Hitler! Hitler! Hitler!” Mr. Hitler, however, was bigger than all that, to a point…but he too could be pushed. No one likes a schoolyard bully’s antics, and Mr. Hitler was no exception. He was an artist, remember, and he could have an artist’s temperament. They do not like to be bullied. When they are bullied they can lash out. So, if you want to blame anyone, look to the Poles, the French, the Russians, the English, the Americans, and go right down the list. If any one of these culprits would have stepped-back and said “Hey” … (deep breath) … “what the heck are we doing to this poor guy?….”, but it didn’t happen until Berlin was reduced to shambles, and Mr. Hitler was dead in his bunker. The poor man couldn’t even get a truce that he might enjoy his honeymoon with Eva. The World needs a zero-tolerance policy on this kind of bullying. Think of the world as your body. If your arm has an inflamation or gangrene, you don’t just lop it off; but with tender care and patience you nurse it back to full health!
Pat Buchanan has brought these and many other facts to our attention. And as President, with the bully pulpit at his disposal, who knows what else he might do for us? One thing we can say with certainty, that with Pat Buchanan as President we won’t be wasting our money with the Defense Department. Because Pat knows and has shown, there’s nothing we have that’s really worth fighting for. Mr. Hitler fought his hardest, but look at where it got him. We can safely pull back from the world and focus on our own life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. And it’s true, the Oceans in their vastness are an adequate enough defense against any one, be he friend or foe. Let’s change our foes into our friends, and then we’ll have everything … but foes!
Mr. Buchanan is doing this — yes, more or less in a symbolic way, as Mr. Hitler is no longer with us and cannot be literally redeemed at this point; the world has to suffer its shame. And we hope Mr. Buchanan will continue to do this, as candidate and as President, that the world might find a way to live with itself in peace. And that we might come to see it as true, that there is plenty of Lebensraum — living space — for all!
http://www.negativespin.com/buchanan.htm
I’m shocked. I didn’t know … I used to enjoy the show with Bill Press on MSNBC. I think in large part because they didn’t yell at each other, and joked sometimes. Oh dear.
Seriously, Susan? Am I missing your teasing or snark? You did not know how anti-semitic and somewhat approving of Hitler/disapproving of our intervention there has been? You’ve missed a lot thru the years with him. He can’t even contain these attitudes when he speaks about the war years.
He also was a full booster of the Swiftvets whenever he was the substitute host on Scarborough Country. Absolutely vicious in that setting.
As an aside, Pat is the one I suspect was Deep Throat in 1972. I have no inside knowledge, but I believe it.
No in fact, it turns out that George H.W. Bush was Deep Throat (no kidding!) I don’t recall where I read this, but the case seemed pretty compelling. He held a personal grudge toward Nixon, who’d bypassed him for appointments.
Hmmmmm.