Patrick Buchanan and the Necessary Book
Neocons think in news cycles, the Vatican in centuries—and Patrick J. Buchanan? In the body of worthy, provocative books he has produced, his thought ranges over decades. Having nobly failed to affect American elections and nudge our policies closer to prudence, it’s clear that Buchanan has withdrawn from the dismal business of trying to sober up the Republican party—and decided instead to work at dismantling the historical myths and moral fetishes of the center-left publicists who now dominate the “conservative” movement. His books are clearly written and remarkably persuasive—which explains the hysteria they have occasioned. His genial public persona, the ease with which he can engage the likes of Stephen Colbert and Ali G (remember “I don’t think Saddam was a threat even if he had BLTs”), guarantee him a broad readership. Indeed, his works are bestsellers and hence impossible to dismiss. They make an impact, and threaten to shatter the groupthink so carefully cultivated over the course of the 1990s, when dissenting voices of the Right were systematically purged and persecuted. They are a species of samizdat.
Which is why the totalitarians among us want to silence him—not merely to beat back his arguments but to destroy him as a man, render him an un-person, whose very name evokes hysterical disgust ... or better yet, terror. For up-and-coming conservatives, there is no worse fate than to be viewed as just a little too far to the right. You can err to the left all you want—Christopher Hitchens still venerates Leon Trotsky, not that it stops “conservative” journalists from licking his Bolshie jackboots. There are no enemies on the left. But lean a little too far to the right end of the narrowly circumscribed spectrum so recently established—remember when John O’ Sullivan used to publish Peter Brimelow in National Review? It seems like centuries ago!—and you might as well be a confessed pedophile.
Now, I’m all for drawing bright lines distinguishing honest opinion and daring dissent from the moral squalor of racial hate—whether aimed at non-whites, or Jews, or other groups who sometimes frustrate conservatives. But precisely because of the grave evil entailed in contempt for other races, or hostility aimed at the cousins of Christ, we must weigh such charges seriously. They aren’t parking tickets. To adopt an ideology predicated on racial or religious hate rightly earns a thinker an intellectual death sentence. It should never be administered lightly.
It’s clear that in writing Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War, Buchanan was courting controversy—and not of the surface sort, like the meaningless chatter aimed by the likes of Limbaugh and Coulter at John McCain, over whom they will be fawning come November. No, Buchanan was striking deep, and his aim was mostly true. In critiquing the figure of Winston Churchill, he was acting like St. Boniface among the Teutonic pagans, when he stood before their sacred oak and hacked it down.
Like Buchanan, I see much to admire in Winston Churchill, although The Unnecessary War has added shadows to the portrait, revealing that statesman as a flawed and troubling figure, a broken record whose refrain—“Now is the time to stand firm against the Germans!”—finally came round to being right. It was indeed right to stand firm against the Germans in 1937, and again in 1940, when they were governed by a murderous sociopath. What Buchanan reveals is that Winston Churchill had been urging last stands against German “barbarism” since before World War I, when the relatively harmless Kaiser Wilhelm sought an English alliance. (England allied instead with the Tsar who permitted pogroms, and the Belgium which had butchered some 7 million helpless Africans in the Congo.) And again, Churchill urged ruthless firmness against the “Huns” in 1918, when they were ruled by hapless, well-meaning Social Democrats. Indeed, Churchill demanded the toughest line possible against the sane liberals and moderate nationalists of the Weimar Republic—undermining their attempt to revise an unjust Versailles Treaty, and unwittingly helping Hitler and his thugs to gain political power. From the extensive materials Buchanan carefully adduces, it seems clear that Churchill himself was a nationalist, and not of the moderate variety. He opposed Germany not for reasons of principle but of Realpolitik; as the growing Continental power, it threatened British dominance. Hence any successful regime in a united Germany must always and ever be England’s enemy. Cartago delenda est.
Only someone who has derived from the grisly crimes of the Nazis a retroactive hatred for every German of every century (as many of Buchanan’s critics seem to have done), someone who takes vindictive glee in the Thirty Years’ War, in the bombing of Dresden and the mass-rape of German women by Soviet soldiers, could endorse Churchill’s 20-year obsession with crippling every regime which might happen to govern that country. Only a bloodthirsty lover of war could approve the high spirits that Churchill expressed six murderous months into World War I: “I think a curse should rest upon me—because I am so happy. I know this war is smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment and yet—I cannot help it—I enjoy every second.”
Thus spoke the Man of the Century—as J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis slogged through filthy trenches and watched their closest friends butchered—in defense, essentially, of what? Of Serbian terrorism? Of genocidal Belgium? Of the bumbling, Jew-baiting Tsar Nicholas? Of the corrupt, anti-clerical Third Republic (which only ten years before had stolen every church in France and expelled all religious orders, which denied women the vote because they would vote in defense of the Church)? It scalds us to admit it, but the conflict from 1914-1918 was a snuff version of “Seinfeld”: A War About Nothing.
The peace, as every serious historian admits, was utterly botched. A mishmash of Wilsonian messianism and incompetent Machiavellianism, it wounded the German “monster” but did not kill it. Perhaps if Charles Maurras, that other fanatical nationalist and anti-German, had had his way and the country had been divided once again—with an independent Rhineland and Bavaria, united to Austria—the next war could have been avoided. Conversely, if the principles of “self-determination” had been applied, and millions of Germans had not been placed against their will under fragile governments of tiny countries of dubious legitimacy—and German democrats discredited by crippling reparations—there seems little prospect that degenerate cranks would have come to rule the nation of Beethoven, Schiller, and Bach.
All this helps explain the rise of Hitler—it does not justify it. Not in my mind or in Buchanan’s. It should be presumed—in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary—that historians who attempt to account for the rise of Nazi totalitarianism are no more making excuses for it than epidemiologists who account for outbreaks of cholera.
It is nevertheless the case that any German government worth its salt in the 1930s would have rejected reparations, demanded revisions of borders, and undertaken some degree of rearmament—if only to guard against Stalin’s Soviet Union (which was undertaking its own Holocaust in Ukraine throughout the 1930s). This fact beguiled the appeasers, who’d rightly been traumatized by the irresponsible rush to war that led to the Somme. Just as for neocons, it is always and everywhere October 1938, for the appeasers it was always August 1914. They were transfixed by the madness which had led three monarchies into destruction, and sought to meet demands which seemed reasonable—even though they were being tendered by a madmen. (Pope Pius XII privately assured visiting diplomats that Hitler was demonically possessed—as good an explanation as any I’ve heard.)
When the British drew the line against Hitler, Buchanan argues persuasively, it was at the wrong place and the wrong time.
Is this so shocking? Why should it surprise us that Neville Chamberlain, who mucked up so much else in dealing with the Nazis, would also make a hash of this? In guaranteeing Poland’s independence against Germany in 1939, and encouraging its (anti-Semitic, dictatorial) leaders to stand firm against the return of the Germans of Danzig to Germany, Neville Chamberlain was lying. He had no intention of fighting in Poland’s defense, and no forces with which to do it. He was bluffing with hand a full of deuces, and he knew it. So did Hitler. The only people on earth who seem to have been taken in by Chamberlain’s last minute gambit were the feckless leaders of poor Poland—sandwiched between two totalitarian regimes, with an old-fashioned army and indefensible borders. Had the Poles succumbed to German pressure and surrendered the lands he demanded—and as was likely, become a German satellite state like Hungary or Bulgaria—Hitler’s full force would have turned against the Soviet Union. One fourth of the entire population of Poland would not have been starved, bombed or shot—Hitler’s vindictive answer to their misplaced trust in Britain. Instead, Chamberlain delivered Stalin to Hitler as an ally, and allowed Germany to turn its full attention to overrunning most of Western Europe.
Now, counter-factual history is in some sense a fool’s pursuit. Still, I enjoy counter-factual novels, and avidly consume the works of Harry Turtledove, who writes the best of the genre. One thing you’ll notice in such novels is that they are uniformly reactionary; whatever tweaks the author makes in the course of events, they always seem to end up worse than what actually happened. (Assassinate Stalin, and someone worse comes to power, et cetera.) Indeed, I think the primary satisfaction most readers take in such books is the Panglossian assurance that we do, after all, live in the best of all possible worlds.
But is this really true?
Given that Britain and France had no intention of fighting for Poland, was it really right to lie the Poles into war? What did this accomplish in the war against Nazi evil, other than buy a few months (Sept. 1939 to May 1940) in which to rearm? The Allies would have had that time in any case, had they allowed Germany to march through a compliant Poland against the Soviets. In essence, I cannot help but conclude that the Allies sacrificed Poland to an unprecedented genocide in order to bolster morale, and to salve their leaders’ bad consciences over Munich. Little good it did them. The rearmament they managed between 1939 and spring 1940 was not sufficient to keep Hitler from conquering most of Continental Europe, and seriously menacing Britain. Those brave Poles died—like Tolkien’s comrades on the Somme—for nothing.
At this point, I must differ with Buchanan. I’m not at all sure that the Allies would have sufficiently rearmed against a Hitler bogged down fighting the Russians. Nor might they have done what was essential to preserve their independence—and invade Germany from the West before he defeated Stalin. Given the folly, cowardice and short-sightedness of the French Third Republic, and the fiscal weakness of the English, it’s quite possible the Allies might have rested on their laurels, congratulated themselves on the defeat of Bolshevism, and ended up surrendering to a triumphant Nazi Germany that reached from Utrecht to the Urals. A horrible prospect—arguably worse than what actually happened, the conquest of half of Europe by Josef Stalin. (But for American intervention, he would have swallowed our Mother Continent whole.)
Here again, I will dissent from a man I deeply admire. I think America owed it to Europe to intervene in World War II. As part of Christendom, which took our entire civilization from that continent, we could not rightly stand by and allow it to be engulfed entirely by either variety of ideological evil. Mere filial piety demanded we hold the barbarians back.
Here I will agree with someone I’ve criticized quite sharply on this site, historian John Lukacs, who has written that Nazism was fundamentally more dangerous to the West than Communism, if only because the latter was so obviously impossible and insane. The abolition of private property, national independence, organized religion and the state, and all the other delusions which Marx foisted on intellectuals around the world—none of these could long have stood the reality test. The gap between Communist promises and Soviet reality could only ever have widened over time, leaving a regime empty and discredited as Brezhnev’s sclerotic state.
The distopia promised by the Nazis, on the other hand, really was possible. A dominant race really could have enslaved and exploited weaker peoples on a vast scale, just as Hitler had promised. Whole nations could have been exterminated, as Europe’s Jews and the Roma nearly were. Entire peoples could have been consigned to slavery for centuries. The Mongols managed it. So have the Moslems. Hitler’s “promises” were well within the range of the possible, and his degraded ethics were all too well-suited to modern man. If you don’t believe me, think about this: How many retarded children have you seen on the street lately? They used to be rather common—before the free, Christian peoples of the West discovered amniocentesis. Which side really won World War II?
With that said, I can only welcome Buchanan’s contribution to the debate about the 20th century, and his useful corrections to the fantasy picture most of us carry around of Winston Churchill—derived, I think, from the wistful craving for a “good guy” with whom we can identify when reading history, a friendly face at Yalta. That’s a fundamental human need, and I don’t mean to mock it. When looking back, it’s extremely dispiriting to see entire decades without a leader of men one might admire. In despair, we turned to figures flawed and faulty, who happened (by chance) to be right at the right place and right time.
But I can offer a better. There was one man who clearly understood the civilizational stakes at hazard in the three-sided conflict among the Nazis, the Communists, and the wavering West—who acted decisively against the dictators, aided in the conspiracy to assassinate Adolph Hitler, fostered American intervention in the war, resisted both totalitarian tyrannies, sheltered some 800,000 Jews against genocide, and condemned both racial and class collectivism in stark and unstinting words that will ring for centuries. A leader without an army, he spent almost the whole of World War II in easy reach of a dictator who could have kidnapped and assassinated him. His only force was moral, his only power the pen. His army consisted of unarmed men in cassocks, cloistered nuns and prayerful peasants. The regime he governed survived the Nazi nightmare, and did more than any other to erase the stain of Stalin. Someday he will be rightly known as St. Pius XII.
John Zmirak is author, most recently, of the graphic novel The Grand Inquisitor.
Comments
“In essence, I cannot help but conclude that the Allies sacrificed Poland to an unprecedented genocide in order to bolster morale, and to salve their leaders’ bad consciences over Munich. Little good it did them. The rearmament they managed between 1939 and spring 1940 was not sufficient to keep Hitler from conquering most of Continental Europe, and seriously menacing Britain. Those brave Poles died—like Tolkien’s comrades on the Somme—for nothing. “
I think there’s an alternative to this explanation. If the Allies had not bought time
to boost morale, they might never have fought. Had they never fought, all of Poland
might have been annexed to Germany anyway and Poland destroyed. Because the Allies
fought, Poland fell to Stalin in the end. Stalin did not inflict upon Poland nearly
the level of destruction that Naziism would have. Why? Because Stalin did not want
to annex Poland to the USSR, or replace the Polish population with Russians, or kidnap
“Aryan” Polish children and raise them as part of another nation, or extinguish Polish
culture as such. Poland has risen from the ashes of Bolshevism; it may never have risen
from the ashes of Naziism. The French and British war promises did bring salvation
to Poland—in 1989. If they had not intervened in 1939, then fifty years later there
might not have been a Poland at all, just a stretch of fairly recently colonized
Eastern Germany with a rump population of Slavic “sub-human” wretches working as a slave
caste. That’s just one alternative account of what happened.
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While I might agree with your characterization of the evil of Hitler and the danger of
a Europe dominated by that ideology, you can’t really believe that FDR manipulated and
plotted to get the US into WWII to “fight fascism”?
FDR saw an opportunity to strategically enlarge US power and influence---yes pick up the
pieces of the shattered British Imperial empire for himself. His “New Deal” wasn’t working
and the US risked social revolution unless it could be distracted with a war.
Churchhill was a bloody imperialist, and he was motivated by one thing---to preserve
the British Empire, and keep the loot that Britian stole from Germany after the
travesty of Versailles. He manipulated events to cause a war of attrition with Germany,
with Soviet Russia suffering the most of the attrition. For this he entered into a
devil’s pact with Stalin, selling his soul to this butcher---all all of Eastern Europe
along with it.
Buchanan’s message is that the US--and the West---is making the same mistakes we made
in WWI, and will be creating a Middle East that will explode into something far worse
later in this century.
I’m sure on that we can all agree.
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Joe Populist is right. The whole purpose of Buchanan’s book is to show the danger of entangling alliances and how they often aren’t or can’t be kept. Nor can we stop every genocide either. The USA has many commitments with far flung countries all over the world. We can’t save Tibet, Chechnya, South Vietnam, Rhawanda, Darfur, Cambodia, Somalia,Taiwan South Korea, etc. Hitler’s policy until at least 1941 was to expell the Jews of his empire not genocidal. He is even a father of modern Israel. His agreement with the German Zionists forced at least 1 hundred thousand to go Palistine. The Transfer Agreement allowed Jews to take 1000 gold reichmarks to Palistine only. They also had a trade agreement. Pius the Twelth was the only clear thinker in this matter. Stalin and Hitler were both devils. Hitler offered the British a peace after the fall of France and offered to let all Jews leave, if they gave up their property. Churchill’s refusal to negotiate at this time doomed both the British empire and most of European Jewry.
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The focus on Germany as the cause of WW II is misdirected. It was the creation of the Soviet Union as a consequence of WW I that ensured WW II (regardless of who ruled Germany). The principal failure of the Allies with regard to Germany was the failure to work with the anti-Hitler forces in Germany (principally in the army) to undermine or overthrow his regime. The reason is simple: they were more anti-German than anti-Hitler and they turned WW II into a war to destroy Germany. After the war they recognized their folly (e.g., Churchill’s comment that “we have killed the wrong pig").
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Good article! But I can’t help feeling that the crux of
your argument amount to this: the Germans are intrinsically
evil. You throw this idea out the front door in the early
part of your article only to sneak it back in later,
cryptically comparing Germans to Mongols.
Nazism as an ideology was a product of what Dostoevsky called
the “Insulted and Injured”; a resentment shored up by the
occult and Darwinism. It would not have lasted beyond its
fanatics, which were few. To believe otherwise is to succumb
to Hollywood manicheanism. Communism was another kettle of fish....
I don’t recall Our Lady at Fatima warning about the evils emanating from
Germany.
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Joe Populist wrote:
Churchill was a bloody imperialist, and he was motivated by one thing---to preserve
the British Empire, and keep the loot that Britain stole from Germany after the travesty of Versailles. He manipulated events to cause a war of attrition with Germany, with Soviet Russia suffering the most of the attrition. For this he entered into a devil’s pact with Stalin, selling his soul to this butcher---all all of Eastern Europe along with it.
If imperialistic rule was at the forefront of Churchill’s concern he would have made a deal with Hitler, who wanted England to keep its empire. FDR had as his chief non-war aim the destruction of the British Empire, an act if stupidity that has infuriated such Britons as Enoch Powell and David Irving.
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Not to diminish the staggering destruction of World War II by making a comparison but, exactly when might we see someone publish “Bush, Saddam and the Unnecessary War”? Then again, to certain destabilizing and corrupt forces on all sides, this festering war is achieving things beyond their wildest dreams. Perhaps the book needed is “Bush, Saddam and the Illuminating War.”.
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Dr Zmirak wrote, “...bumbling, Jew-baiting Tsar Nicholas...”
Sounds a bit harsh and unwarranted, if you ask me.
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“....was it really right to lie the Poles into war? What did this accomplish in the war against Nazi evil, other than buy a few months (Sept. 1939 to May 1940) in which to rearm? The Allies would have had that time in any case, had they allowed Germany to march through a compliant Poland against the Soviets.”
False, false and false.
The terms of the British guarantee were that Britain would make war on Germany in support of Polish independence, nothing more, nothing less. To say they were lied to is over the top. The Brits didn’t lie; least not on that one. And the Poles weren’t morons. Or naive. They knew war with Germany would be brutal for them. They weren’t lied or mislead into war, and the British didn’t sucker them into it. They just decided they weren’t going to buckle under, and damn the consequences.
A few months to rearm isn’t nothing. Getting the backs of the British citizenship up isn’t nothing either.
“Had they allowed.” Time, perhaps. But on a war-footing no; they’re citizens would have yet slept.
“...the Allies sacrificed Poland to an unprecedented genocide in order to bolster morale...”
Again, morale ain’t nothing, and why make the Poles out to be patsies? Why not say something righteous and hopeful about them: that they were the first to take up arms against the Nazi’s; that they were the first to take up arms against the Soviets; that their defeat to both --at the same time!!! was glorious; that their persecution and suffering was not for nothing but should earn them the eternal thanks of the world?
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CC:
The Poles were told both by the British and the French that the Allies would commence offensive actions against Germany in the event of a German invasion of Poland. It never happened.
To my mind, the Poles were the most heroic nation in World War II, precisely because they resisted both Hitler and Stalin. But Polish heroism doesn’t absolve British perfidy, and perfidy is the right word to describe what happened in 1939, and then at Tehran, and then at Yalta.
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Dr. Zmirak,
You often make sound and effective arguments. I do not necessarily agree with your overall opinion here - I believe that Bolshevik Communism was a far greater threat than Germany in any of its incarantions. But I am particularly appalled by your writing:
“...in defense, essentially, of what? Of Serbian terrorism? Of genocidal Belgium? Of the bumbling, Jew-baiting Tsar Nicholas? Of the corrupt, anti-clerical Third Republic...”
Really? By what proof or established wisdom on any of those counts?
As a Serbian-American, I am admittedly touchy when it comes to the Serbian reference because it implies state-sanctioned terrorism or, worse, a national Serbian terroristic leaning (which is quite like the anti-Jewish slurs you rightly denounce). It is well-established historical fact that Princip and the cabal in Sarajevo were Yugoslavists and unconnected to government or throne in Belgrade. In fact, Serbia’s government moved swiftly to capture and punish co-conspirators in Serbia proper and forthrightly denounced the barbaric acts committed in Sarajevo (even if the Duke and his government acted foolishly in their pronouncements, actions, and timing).
Were the VMRO in Marseille acting on behalf of ‘Croatian terrosism’ some few years earlier? I’d say yes and no - but not clear when just labeled as such, huh?
My advice, for what little it is worth, is watch the careless labeling you otherwise scorn when applied to other groups and people.
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The VMRO reference should read some few years LATER. (The Macedonian terrorist group VMRO acting in a conspiracy with Croatian nationalist precursors to the Ustasha movement murdered the Serbian king in Marseille France in the 1930s.)
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Now that I am all riled up I am also wondering how Dr. Zmirak compares the historical personages of one martyred Russian czar, a man immensely cultivated and deeply imbued with the Christian faith with another “saint” that lies in state in the main cathedral in Zagreb? I really wonder how the Ustasha’s archbishop who is plainly seen in pictures “blessing” the work of Ante Pavelic and his henchmen is regarded.
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The assassins were Serbs, which is all Mr. Zmirak said. Blessed Stepinac was not Ustashe, and it is blasphemous and
slanderous to say so. Nicholas II’s death does not negate the errors of his policies.
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Dr. Zmirak wrote, “...Buchanan has withdrawn from the dismal business of trying to sober up the Republican party—and decided instead to work at dismantling the historical myths and moral fetishes of the center-left publicists who now dominate the “conservative” movement.”
So true. Pat enlightened me on the “nation of immigrants” and the “free trade” myths in his book State of Emergency. I can’t wait to read his latest work.
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Has there been any systematic analysis of Tsar Nicholas’s so-called errors (I am withholding judgment until I see evidence) in regard to pogroms ? Perhaps he—a deeply religious man who said of the Protocols, “One cannot accomplish a good end through dirty means,” and ordered that they be censored upon being told they were a forgery—had reasons and was not just some knee-jerk Jew-baiting bigot ? I mean, inasmuch as most of the leading Bolsheviks were Jews, perhaps it would have been just to be even more severe. And to protect his people from usury and apostasy from Christianity seems as good as reason as any to prosecute the offenders.
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Tobias,
I guess if you and Zmirak say so that makes it so.
I also suppose that the sitting president of Croatia is a fool for suggesting that the Catholic hierarchs in Zagreb had better come to Jasenovac one of these years and pray for the departed that so many of their predecessors help depart.
While I may agree that Pope Pius may have been a force for good, it does not absolve Stepinac from what he and many (though not all) of his priests did during WWII: sanction, bless, aid, and abet the murder of Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, and other ‘undesirables’. The evidence is staggering.
As for Sainted Tsar Nicholas II: “errors of policy” do not call for labeling a decent and Christian man a “jew baiter”. I may be ignorant, but I have seen nor read of no proof to that effect.
I am an Orthodox Christian who is very much in favor of Catholic-Orthodox reconciliation, and I very much like the work that Pope Benedict is engaged in to that end. And, as a Serb, I am proud of the role that the Serbian Orthodox Church has and continues to play to that end - particularly the conference hosted in Belgrade in 2006 that helped re-ignite stalled talks between the two halves of traditional Christianity. But truth telling is required as a prerequisite to any true reconciliation.
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Eagle:The lies that Tito spread about Cardinal Stepinic have been fully reputed except to Serbians such as your self. The Serbs had no responsibility for anything,did they, in the start off WW1 or in the destruction of their own country when the overthrew the royal govt in spring 1941. That govt.had made an accomidation with Hitler. This lead to the invasion which cost all Yugoslaves so much death and destruction. The Serbs have never been very prudent, at least lately.
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And truth-telling includes the fact that Cardinal Stepinac was not party to murders or
genocide. And when people who are Serbian turn to terrorism in the furtherance of what
they think will benefit Serbia, their terrorism may correctly be called Serbian. Just
as the Serb who assassinated Radic was a Serbian assassin, and the man who killed King
Michael was a Macedonian assassin, and Pavelic was a Croatian mass murderer and tyrant.
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Eagle: I do agree with you about Czar Nicholas the second. He was a good Christian but a very bad ruler and military leader. In regards to Russian antisemitism. The Jews of Russia produced some awful criminals. They were leaders of many revoulutionary groups and took part in two attempts at least on the Czar’s, one of which was succesful. Overseas Jews also led in harassment of Russian intrests. The worst pogram on czarist Russia killed 45 Jews. Race riots occured the USA killed as many. The Crimes of Jewish Bolshivicks against Christians were many many times greater. The Jews of Russia were second class citizens but were certainly treated better than the Palistinians today.
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According to the information given by Original Jack, it appears that Tsar Nicholas made a mistake in not being more severe in his policies towards threats to his ancestral lands.
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Charles,
Mr. Zmirak can defend the charge of Jew-baiting, I’ll defend the charge of bungling. Who
was right in WWI? The Allies or the Central Powers? Do you think that Russia should
have declared war? If not, then the Czar clearly bungled. If you think that Russia
was justified, then was Austria-Hungary fighting an unjust war? I know that you like
monarchies, but monarchies fought on both sides—France and the U.S. were the only
major republics involved in the war. If the Russians entered into the war unjustly,
then the Czar bungled it. Even if he was right in declaring war, his military was
still woefully unprepared. Then there’s a fellow named Rasputin. If Nicholas did everything
correctly, then the Austro-Hungarians were fighting an unjust war against him, which I imagine is a
proposition you wouldn’t endorse.
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“Here I will agree with someone I’ve criticized quite sharply on this site, historian John Lukacs, who has written that Nazism was fundamentally more dangerous to the West than Communism, if only because the latter was so obviously impossible and insane.”
Not sure about that. 60 million dead at the hands of the Soviet communists is a lot of people.
How many people call themselves Nazis today? How many people call themselves communists today? Is that impossible or insane?
There are still kindapped people in the hands of communist terrorists in Colombia, who in turn are still the cause of death and destruction- for the last 50+ years up to...today.
Nationalsocialism was unsustainable. Communism is doing just fine without Marx, Stalin, and Lenin.
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I wonder if the whole mess could have been avoided with one of those neat drones we’re having fun with in Iraq?
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Mr. Piatak,
So it’s not mistake but fraud then? Any definitive proof? The British ever admit to this or is the intent to be gleaned from circumstantial evidence or something else? Seems a harsh judgment. What of the change of government? Was there an honorable re-negotiation with later British & French governments?
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CC:
I have a post going up later tonight that gives some more detail on these issues.
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Cicero,
“No one need be an admirer of Adolf Hitler”? How could anyone not admire a man who provides their victims with swimming pools and brothels? Someone that humane NEEDS to be admired in my book, maybe worshiped--you’ve got that covered though, dont’cha
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cicero,
I’ll stipulate the first two paragraphs without conceding that the jews therefore deserve whatever they wound up getting, which I guess you think wasn’t much. Those laws that Irving wound up on the wrong end of may sound like the cudgel of a conspiracy to you but to me they pretty much seem like the logical conclusion of the militant efforts of the PC cult. I’d say more but I don’t want to get on your bad side because, well, you’re pretty creepy dude.
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That said, outside it’s sunny with a gentle breeze, and I’m looking forward to teeing it up this afternoon.
Posted by Scott McConnell on Jun 18, 2008.
---
It looks like McConnell hasn’t lost his sense of humor in all the contretemps. Good for him. Do I detect détente between Amcon and Takimag? Dust-ups keep life interesting, though, don’t they? And more importantly, keep the duelers intellectually honest.
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Original Jack,
I never once claimed that Serbia bore no resposnibility for the events that led to WWI. But in fact they played a small role compared to - yes - the ‘bungling’ by ALL the great powers, Russia included. Becuase Russia’s government (including the ministers who called many of the shots and the tsar) made poor choices is no reqason to declare the martyred Tsar Nicholas II a Jew-baitor or any such thing.
I will also remind you that Tito was a Croat. In fact I will also remind you that the claims of Serbian Communism are way overblown. The fact is that vast majority of Serbian elite were anti-Communist. Tito’s inner circle had NO Serbs - the two prominent ones were expelled by him for veering ‘off path’ (Rankovic, Djilas). His circle did, however, contain Croats, Slovenes, and a Jew. The Serbs are not innocent in the matter; they did allow much of the ordinary population to get duped and serve as a greater part of the armed forces. But again, the officer class was disproportinately non-Serbian in Communist Yugoslavia. If you want to talk about 1941, think about what I am saying here in terms of who ‘came out on top’ and connect some basic dots as to who ‘overthrew’ their king.
As to Stepinac, I am open to explanations of historical fact. Believe me, I would rather it be that he not collaborated with the Ustasha, but the facts simply point the other way. How does one even explain the pictures of him and bishops at Ustasha gatherngs in seeming good spirits and in no way presenting a hostile front t Pavelic. If Pius saved as many Jews as is reported - and I believe he did - what is known abot Stepinac and what he did for Jews and Serbs in Croatia at the time? It was widely know then and there that a huge terror campaign had been launched. And what about the forced conversions carried out by MANY priests, as corroborated by not only eye-witness testiomony, but signed documentation. Are all these mountains of pictures of repeated gatherings and mountains of paperwork all the work of forgery committed by the Communists?
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I knew a very charming lady from New York who owed her life to Cardinal Stepinac, who offered baptismal certificates to her family, whether they converted or not. When the grandfather decided they would be baptized, the Archbishop baptized him first, so that the granddaughter’s papers read “third generation Catholic,” which was enough for her to make her way to safety in England. She always considered herself a Jew, but was deeply pleased that the Catholic Church was honoring the memory of a great friend of her family, and, she believed, of the Jews.
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There’s nothing “dishonest” about keeping the truth from those with no right to it. Or were all those Poles who lied to the Nazis so they could harbor Jewish children violating one of the Commandments? What is more, if Stepinac WAS doing this, it was with papal permission--as Sr. Marchione documents in her biographies of Pius XII. Papal order transcends canon law, just as charity overrides justice. The Church bent over backwards, throughout most of Europe, to save people from Hitler’s murder machine. The story deserves to be more widely known.
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<< There’s nothing “dishonest” about keeping the truth from those with no right to it. >>
That is right, but you confuse two unrelated questions. This is a question of forging documents in order to deceive others. Nothing could justify this, according to traditional Catholic morality. Of course, according to another standard, it may be justified, but that’s irrelevant to my point.
<< Or were all those Poles who lied to the Nazis so they could harbor Jewish children violating one of the Commandments? >>
If they employed what is known as “mental reservation” for a proportionate reason, they did not lie and they did not therefore sin. But if one lies, even for a “good” cause, then that is sinful. I would have thought you’d know this.
<< What is more, if Stepinac WAS doing this, it was with papal permission--as Sr. Marchione documents in her biographies of Pius XII. >>
I don’t accept that this is factual.
<< Papal order transcends canon law, just as charity overrides justice. >>
Charity does not “over-ride” justice. Any “charity” which was not in accord with justice would not be charity.
Of course, one may _not demand_ justice, and in that sense charity may go beyond justice. But one may not comm it an injustice in favour of “charity.”
<< The Church bent over backwards, throughout most of Europe, to save people from Hitler’s murder machine. The story deserves to be more widely known. >>
Of course the Church “bent over backwards” as she also did in the Middle Ages to assist the Jews. Countless papal bulls exist which erect protections for the Jews. But what she did not do is to permit fraud, forgery, and dishonesty to assist the Jews. The allegation is a calumny.
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Mr. Zmirak: I admire your article tremendously, but I quibble with your total exoneration of Pius XII. He was NOT so pro-active as he needed to be in saving Jewish lives. Also, he owed SOMETHING to the moral authority of his Church, and should have taken a PUBLIC stand against Nazism, whether it cost him his life or not. Why else do the ecclesiastics of the Roman Church wear robes dyed in the liturgical colour of martyrdom? Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli FORGED baptismal certificates for Jews and is reported to have responded, when asked by one of his officials, what the Vatican could do, to counter the Deputy play, “What can one say against the truth?” The Catholic Church’s record in most of Europe outside of Germany is, indeed, very good, but Pius XII showed himself, in this instance, not to be possessed of “heroic sanctity.”
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Thank you, Digby. I don’t think for one moment that Pius XII was concerned about his own life. But he was worried about the lives of others--having seen that the public denunciation by the Dutch bishops of Nazi crimes led directly and immediately to the deportations of thousands more Jews (in this case baptized ones) to death camps, including St. Edith Stein. If you read Robert Rychlak’s “Righteous Gentiles,” you’ll see that Pius was urged by Polish Jewish leaders to TONE DOWN the tenor of his attacks on Hitler’s abuses, since they were making matters worse. I much prefer the quiet sanctity of Pius, who risked his good name for the sake of saving more lives, to the hysterical self-righteousness with which, I imagine, Paul VI would have openly denounced Hitler and courted martyrdom--not just for himself, but for hundreds of thousands of others who might otherwise have survived.
“Jack too"--when will some people grow cojones and post under their REAL FRIGGIN’ NAMES--fails entirely to assert that an injustice is being committed when a would-be murderer, who has no right to the information about someone’s religious heritage, is deprived of data that would permit him to select his victims. I know that St. Augustine adopted a rigorous view on this--saying that one was obliged never to lie, even to a murderer who sought out an innocent. This position was gradually set aside by the Church, just like his assertion that unbaptized infants must burn in Hell. Sorry to speak lightly of a Father of the Church, but by Augustine’s logic, if the SS were at your door seeking the Jews (or Gypsies, or priests) you had hidden inside, you would NOT have the right to mislead those murderers. However, since they were threatening violence, you WOULD have the right to kill them. If this doesn’t strike you as a logical problem, you don’t need education so much as medication. Try Paxil.
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Oops. I meant “-fails entirely to demonstrate”, not “-fails entirely to assert.” He certainly asserted it.
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After following the discussion about Pat’s book here and at other sites like Pajamas Media, I wish Pat had written his book about WW1 and its effects on the West. WW2 is just too emotional because any suggestion that we should have stayed out makes many think the holocaust was tolerable.
To quote William Lind, “In 1914, the West put a gun to its collective head and blew its brains out.”
WW1 is the wellspring of WW2, the Cold War and the current M-E crises. WW1 is the poster child for the danger of entangling alliances. It also is the blueprint for the current obsession of spreading democracy.
Pat would have been better served to write about this instead of WW2. It would still have provided an opportunity to educate Americans about the past and the parallels of 2008. Plus it would not have stoked the “anti-semitism” rants that are going to distract most people from even giving his book a fair shot.
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Dr. Zmirak, I won’t argue with some very valid and sane points you have made in the last couple of posts. But I will take issue with the following because it is aimed at me also:
“...when will some people grow cojones and post under their REAL FRIGGIN’ NAMES...”
Some of us do not have the luxury of using our real names. Our livelihoods - and thereby the livelihoods of our families - would be in peril if it were to become public that we frequent such sites or hold certain views. And - just like with your example of Pope Pius (who, as I’ve mentioned, I admire) - we choose not to make the lives of others miserable by taking a (too) public stand on certain issues. If this is a matter of cowardice for you, sir, then I believe you may also be disconnected from certain realities.
That you and others have found both the courage and wisdom with which to publicly take a stand and at the same time preserve a livelihood is commendable. And that many (perhaps you as well) have suffered in monetary terms and in terms of access to opportunities (I think of what was done to Sam Francis) in order to further messages that need airing is also commendable. But I believe it is uncharitable to the extreme for you to criticize the use of pseudonyms on sites like this.
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Everyone seems to forget the greatest leader from the WWII period. A true patriot. Charles de Gaulle.
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Legein,
Yes. Also, what about the often maligned Franco? Saved the Church and Spanish society from Communist barabarians.
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Three of my favorites DeGaulle, Franco and Adenauer.
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In John Lukacs’ unjustified criticism of Pat Buchanan in The American Conservative,
he also repeated the knee-jerk criticism popular with liberals against David Irving.
He asserted that Mr. Irving, an outstanding historian of World War II, uses false-
hoods when he writes his books. Since he has made the accusation, would Mr. Lukacs
puleeezze give us a examples of Irving’s falsehoods? Thanks so very much!!
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Yes, Franco did a lot of good as well. Although, contemporary Spain has done its best to destroy everything he tried to defend.
De Gaulle resurected France from complete defeat AND remained largely independent of the Americans and Soviets. Something the British did not achieve. Also, Franco kept right out of the fray and Spain remained independent. Those two and Archbishop Makarios were the greatest leaders the Western world has had until Putin. The rest were just lackeys for various powerful oligarchs.
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De Gaulle failed to restore legitimate government to France. Adenauer failed to restore legitimate government to Germany. Putin has failed to restore legitimate government to Russia and in fact indicated his opposition to it. They are no heroes of mine.
France should be ruled by the Bourbons. Germany should be ruled by the Hohenzollerns, Wittelsbachs, and all the other ancient German dynasties. Russia should be ruled by the Romanovs. Commoners have no business pretending to be heads of state of any of these countries. I am tired of these European politicians usurping roles that do not belong to them, whether they call themselves “liberals” or “conservatives.”
Republican “conservatism” has no place in Europe outside of Switzerland, Iceland, and maybe a few parts of Italy.
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Theodore, what is a legitimate government in your eyes? A slave to global financial institutions or perhaps a slave to cultural imperialism or perhaps a slave to global media interests or perhaps a slave to decadent royal houses? Republican government as enscapulated by Aristotle, Cicero, Machiavelli (Discourses) is the best form of government.
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“France should be ruled by the Bourbons. Germany should be ruled by the Hohenzollerns, Wittelsbachs, and all the other ancient German dynasties. Russia should be ruled by the Romanovs. Commoners have no business pretending to be heads of state of any of these countries. I am tired of these European politicians usurping roles that do not belong to them, whether they call themselves “liberals” or “conservatives.”
And since when are any of those ancient families any more legitimate than those who rule today? Monarchs are only monarchs because their ancestors were more skilled at murder and thievery than their competition.
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Jack too: “Gravely unlawful” eh? Against which law? If you mean Canon Law, the pope is NOT bound by Canon Law, but can suspend it or revoke it at any time. So if Pius XII gave permission to prepare such false documents-- as his PRIMARY OFFICIAL BIOGRAPHER testified in several books about him (look up Margarita Marchione, and buy one), most recently “ Crusade of Charity: Pius XII And Pows 1939-1945,” which I personally helped edit-- then he was within his rights.
If you mean divine law, and intend to assert that a piece of paper used for internal church book-keeping cannot be falsified to mislead murderers who have stolen the documents and intend to use them to massacre innocents--then you don’t even qualify as a Pharisee. More like a Sadducee.
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“Monarchs are only monarchs because their ancestors were more skilled at murder and thievery than their competition.”
While those were certainly necessary skills for successful monarchs to have, I don’t think it is any more true of them than in it is for a successful elite in a democracy or any other kind of political society. I’d say the monarchs were at least more likely to have a sense of honor and duty to the higher than is the managerial elite that has been in place since Burnham wrote about it. Still, the idea that the divine right of monarchs is a politically viable notion that can be ever restored as it was is absurd. I am a big fan of Joseph de Maistre, but not for his actual political prescriptions, rather for the philosophy he built around them. I agree instead with legein that Cicero and Machiavelli’s Discourses advocated the most ideal system of government, and the latter had good insights about the dangers such governments face and what, if anything, can be done to maintain them.
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“While those were certainly necessary skills for successful monarchs to have, I don’t think it is any more true of them than in it is for a successful elite in a democracy or any other kind of political society. I’d say the monarchs were at least more likely to have a sense of honor and duty to the higher than is the managerial elite that has been in place since Burnham wrote about it. Still, the idea that the divine right of monarchs is a politically viable notion that can be ever restored as it was is absurd. I am a big fan of Joseph de Maistre, but not for his actual political prescriptions, rather for the philosophy he built around them. I agree instead with legein that Cicero and Machiavelli’s Discourses advocated the most ideal system of government, and the latter had good insights about the dangers such governments face and what, if anything, can be done to maintain them.”
I will agree that a monarchy is no better or worse than any other system. Whatever political system one lives under, the most important aspect of that government is that is restrained and that there are limits on it’s rule and that the people are guaranteed their God given rights.
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“As contrary to the virtue of truthfulness lying is a venial sin, but it may become grievously sinful if contrary to other virtues, such as justice, religion, etc.”
Okay, so I’d be willing to commit a venial sin to save the life of a Serb, a Gypsy, a Jew, etc. So was the future John XXIII, with Pius XII’s permission. I’ll do the Purgatory, thank you very much, rather than have murdered innocents on my conscience.
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1.I cannot agree that Communism was less of a threat to the West than Nazism. Hindsight is of course 20-20, but, let’s ask the question: after WWII, who triumphed? Not America, not Europe, not Christendom. No, it was the Left that triumphed, with the Communist USSR becoming superpower, and Western institutions infiltrated by anti-European, anti-Christian, nation-hating internationalists. Because Hitler was defeated, the left uses that defeat, and the power that they gained as a result, against all healthy manifestations of the natural desire to preserve one’s own distinctive culture and traditions. The internationalist elites, composed of politicians, bureaucrats and heads of multinational corporations are all determined to destroy nations and traditional culture, and they smash anyone who resists them. Anyone who doesn’t want America to become Hispanicised, or Europe Islamicised is called a Nazi. I have to say, I can’t really imagine a worse scenario for our civilization than this slow suicide that we are powerless to stop.
2.Granted, Hitler was a madman and his master-race ideology was truly evil in ways that most dilettantes don’t understand. But, in spite of that, and in spite of my great sympathy for the Russian people, I nevertheless am beginning to think that it would have been better if we had let Hitler loose, or, rather, if we had contained him in the manner described by Buchanan. Yes, Hitler would have murdered millions-- but would he have killed more than the Communists? I doubt it. Much of Western Europe would have remained under his evil dominion for a long time, but at least the nation-hating internationalists and other assorted leftists would have been purged. And, in the end, I think the seemingly universal desire of peoples for self-determination would have ultimately triumphed against a Nazi prison of nations, just as it eventually triumphed against the Soviet prison of nations.
3.It is an interesting argument that Nazism was a greater threat to the West because it had more potential for long-term success than Communism. I, however, don’t find this convincing. It seems to me that Nazism, like its leftwing totalitarian cousin, would also, necessarily, have changed over time. In any event, Hitler was not immortal, and much of the movement’s power stemmed from his Caesar-like charisma. I think, inevitably, the ideological fervour would have faded, as is usually the case with religion surrogates. The lust for conflict and war would have been tempered by a growing desire for stability, as it was in the USSR. And in that case, the Nazis would have constituted a very different rival for us, perhaps to our benefit. Instead of the stupid conflict between shallow ideologies (Capitalism and Communism), it would have been Christendom, or the empire of liberty with prosperity vs Heathendom, or the empire of servitude with prosperity. Perhaps that would have encouraged the defenders of our own civilisation to emphasise freedom and religion, instead of the mind-numbing, body-atrophying consumerism that has, following its supposed triumph,left our civilisation sclerotic, mentally retarded, and unable to defend itself against its enemies, internal and external.
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@Zmirak
Your reference to “jew-baiting” would make much more sense if you don’t practice Serb-baiting in every other article.
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In the past year, I have made one negative reference to Serbs, correctly identifying the ethnicity of the murderers of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Get over yourself.
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@Zmirak
If I remember correctly, you also mentioned Srebrenica and the fact that you were contemplating joining Croatian army during the war with Serbs. Not that I keep the score, it’s just from top of my head.
Just curious, if there is an American Jew saying that he would join Israeli army in case of their need, would you skip the opportunity to question where their loyalties really are?
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I mentioned the Srebrenica incident in the context of an article DEFENDING Serbian claims to Kosovo, in which I deplored the U.S. attack on Serbia. And no, I wouldn’t condemn a Jewish American for joining the Israeli army. In fact, I wish that certain neocons would do just that, instead of trying to send Americans to fight another country’s battles--even if it’s a country, like Israel, which I hope prevails.
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@Zmirak
Since you felt the need to help your Croatian brethren, would it have been o.k. for the huge number of German Americans to come to the help og the Kaiser in 1914? Or does the American oath to foreswear loyalty to other nations not apply to Croats and Jews?
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@Zmirak
What you actually said is:
“The English and French let him get away with this because they were still living in August 1914--when diplomatic blunders converted a Serbian terrorist strike into a needless and meaningless bloodbath that destroyed a continent. For neoliberals, every year is 1994 in Rwanda, or 1995 in Srebrenica.” Hardly defending anything.
I won’t even bother and search the site for every instance where someone has put forward the notion that the government, neocons, neoliberals and so on are in Israeli lobby pocket or working ultimately to benefit Israel. Even in your reply above you claim just that. To recap, it seems that you find someone feeling strongly and being partial about Israel at odds with their position to loyally serve American interests. Yet, demonstrably, you are partial to you Croatian roots and Catholic teachings to the point of taking up arms. If you find the cause worth dying for you argumentably find it morally just. If the cause is morally just why would you object to someone “trying to send Americans to fight”?
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Churchill was a warrior not a warmonger.A great surgeon does not want anybody to be ill, but he lives most intensely when doing his professional work. One could make the same point about a fine homicide detective.Churchilsl started no wars.He tried to prevent WW2.He helped preventWW3
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I’m not going to wade into the rat’s nest of Balkan politics. I never said American troops should fight for Croatia, so there’s no legitimate parallel with a U.S. attack on (fill in the blank, any of the many nations which Norman Podhoretz--who is NOT representative of most American Jews) demanded we invade. I stand by what I wrote about Serbia, and won’t bother to comment further.
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@Zmirak
“I’m not going to wade into the rat’s nest of Balkan politics...I stand by what I wrote about Serbia, and won’t bother to comment further.”
Excuse my Internet, but LOL!
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It seems the comments in Pat’s column “Was the Holocaust Inevitable?” have all been removed. Did a bunch of holocaust denying trolls flood the place and the mod’s removed them?
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The victors write history, and pundits and writers
memorize the details. Even if they disagree (and to do so
by too much can and often does get them destroyed
of course always on ‘moral’ grounds), but the context
within which to disagree has already had its parameters
set. Churchill was as much or more of a monster in that
his reign of death and incompetency spanned a much longer
time than Hitler’s.
Culturally I would suggest that the English, the Japanese,
and the Jews are an island peoples. The first two actually and
the third mentioned group actually as well, except they are a
moving island a cultural group behaving as if an island but can
be found in any location to which the island has moved.
I have noticed that the group think and behavior in these groups
has led over time toward favoring what is known as the ‘putsch.’
It means to survive, endure, prevail you do not concern yourself
with what is the ‘cause’ or even if it is right or wrong so much
(depending on the sensitivity of such matters in the culture
determines the degree to which you are influenced i.e. christian/
shinto/judaic). But the given or what is beyond question is that
to prevail you just of course join together with the group, the
‘putsch’ in the direction that the group is pushing or going. And
with that as the given, you use all tools at one’s disposal to
support it, i.e. intellectual arguments, financial instruments,
weapons etc., etc. You do not question the putsch once it is on
rather you just of course join in it and go with it.
In other groups/nations (other than the ones mentioned above i.e.
English/Japanese/Jewish which I’ve indicated have that island
or separated all the time mentality as a part of their determining
culture) the putsch only occurs during actual wartime, because of
the exigency of war. But with the island mentality imbedded in the
culture, the putsch is on ALL THE TIME. In other words for them it’s
war all the time. Since they FEEL as a part of their cultural
heritage that this war all the time or putsch is necessary to their
survival; they also must disguise such aggression from others who do
not have their own putsch going on or going on to that Nth degree
all the time. So they are constantly disguising it and even planning
ahead all the time as to how to appear to be the victims, since in
their minds thanks to their cultural heritage, victims or not they
must always be the aggressors if they want to survive.
Even Churchill doesn’t see this clearly about himself it’s so close to
the bone thanks to his cultural heritage he laments he loves what he’s
done so much to encourage WW-I and he doesn’t ‘know’ why.
That he even laments it is only due to the sensitivity of his
additional christian heritage as it pertains to right & wrong. There
is no such lamentations among the Japanese since they have elevated
the putsch to the level of the sacred or the divine so as to make it
even more effective as have the jews in their own culture as well:
i.e. saul may have killed his thousands (non-jews) but david has
killed his tens of thousands (non-jews).
‘Normal’ countries for whom it does not FEEL like they need to be
doing the putsch all the time to survive, that they do not need to be
in war all the time mode, don’t have that written into their culture
and so their docility is juxtapositioned tragically with those who do
FEEL the need for the putsch all the time. Since that happens to be
their own cultural heritage and impulse close enough to the bone it
in most of such people eludes their own conscious awareness of it.
Thus the average person in one of these ‘putsch’ cultures always does
tend to think of themselves as being OF COURSE the ‘victim.’
In other words like with Iraq we’re the good guys whether right or
wrong. But this is new culturally for americans who formerly were not
a ‘putsch’ culture. They may still not be a ‘putsch’ culture and
that could explain somewhat why they just do not seem to want to think
on it. Of course should el’Presidente invade IRAN now too he’ll have to
institute a draft and at that time the chickens may again come home to
roost, in many people’s thinking to themselves why are we ‘putsching’
all the time? Why if we’re so dedicated to peace is it WAR ALL THE
TIME? Unless of course there’s another 9/11 of even greater import
(whether it’s a false flag attack or not) to ‘putsch’ or push the
nation as one into yet another WAR. For all of these reasons Pat’s
thoughtful book is very timely and probably the most important book
written this year to my knowledge. But how it FEELS to those of the
putsch culture variety is that Pat is a ‘threat’ for speaking honestly
and factually to their survival. Actually some say and it is my opinion
as well even though it may not ‘feel’ like it to those programmed via
their own putsch cultural heritage pat is contributing TO their
survival. As probably I may have done herein in elevating all of this
up to consciousness for you. Even if it’s disconcerting at first or a
tad bitter to the taste, often such things if good for you become
sweet in digestion.
_____________
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My source was not Roncalli--whom I forgot was engaged in the worthy activity of issuing documents that saved lives. No, I was relying on the recollections of Tibor Baransky, a board member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council and a Yad V’Shem honoree, who worked directly with Angelo Rotta, Papal Nuncio in Hungary. Rotta gave Baransky “blank documents, forged protective passes, and faked baptismal certificates to save as many Jewish lives as possible; when Nazis and their local sympathizers ignored these documents, Rotta sent Baranksy to retrieve them,” according Marchione’s book. Rotta told Baransky his worked on Pius’ explicit orders. So that makes TWO papal nuncios independently claiming that Pius XII gave them such orders. Either Pius appointed men who betrayed his wishes--men who like Roncalli, he went on to promote--or they were indeed following his instructions.
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Mr Buchanan forgets that Hitler wanted war. The only way to prevent this
war was to stop his regime in the early stages.
Unfortunatly people like Buchanan prevailed, instead of confronting him
they thought they could appease him.
There is no left or right in this. But it’s typical of the left
to ignore the fact that there is an other who may be a little bit
more then just a victim. Sometimes this other has their own agenda,
which they may act upon, regardless of what we do.
Sure, when you ignore Hitler, you could come to the conclusion
that somehow the war could have been prevented.
But why ignore Hitler?
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