His strategic judgments aside, Churchill was a repellant man with the moral outlook of a war criminal (something he most assuredly would have been charged with, had he had the misfortune to be on the losing side)> His instinct in war was to assault civilians with starvation, poison gas, germ warfare and fire bombs.

@ T. Van Oosbree, I don’t recall the Nazis being paragons of virtue.  And I thought the Blitz, V-1’s and the V-2’s came from the Wehrmacht, not the RAF.

Bomber Harris was gassing innocent Iraqis and murdering towns to the glee and recommendation of people like Churchill. It seems in history the bigger the pile of skulls you build the “greater” you become. The one exception that leaps to mind is Jesus of Nazareth who opposed the greatness of Rome and the mindset that force, murder, terror,, and body counts make any people or Emperor (commander-in-chief) great.

If people still believed in Christianity and the final judgment they would be justifiably afraid. I suppose that is a bonus of living in a post-Christian American world. Guilt free mass murder.

Pat Buchanan is pointing out the truth about Churchill and using many quotes from the era to back it up. He isn’t second guessing but pointing out, that many of Churchill’s contempoary critics were right. Here is a list of some of Churchill’s great acomplishments.
1]. Builder of the modern welfare state as a Liberal.
2]. Warmonger in chief, as First Lord of the Admiralty.
3]. Genius of Gallipoli
4]. Father of modern Israel and Iraq as postwar Colonial Secretary.
5]. Genius of The Treasury as Lord Chancellor.
6]. Vicous opponent of Ghandi and Indian independence.
7]. Backer of Edward the Eighth in his wacky marriage.
8]. Genius of Narvik in his return
as First Lord.
9]. His refusal to negotiate with Hitler in defiance of many in the cabinet, left millions of Jews to Hitlers mercy.
10]. Destroyer of the French fleet which was in no way a threat to Britain.
11]. The first to Bomb German cities to make sure Hitler gave up any idea of peace.
12]. Fierce anticommunist who gave Hitler’s partner Stalin a blank check and went out of his way to kiss his ass.
13. Ass kisser of Roosevelt who gave away the Empire’s last silver to keep on fighting and bankrupted the Empire.
14]. His refusal to help the German resistance and going along with the unconditional surrender order made sure that Stalin would get to central Europe.
15]. War Criminal in Iraq, Ireland, the terror bombing campaign, and the shipment of people back to Stalin, among others.
16]. Hero of Yalta; who gave 100 million including Poland and eastern Germany to a known monster.
17].Unelected war leader, who was thrown out in a landslide when the people finally had a chance to vote.
What is his legacy? Nothing he ever set out to do, seems to have turned out well. He was a brilliant, physically couragous, self absorbed, almost total failure.

Did Churchill hear about the negotiations offered by Admiral Canaris and others? And if so, what was his response?

The guarantee to protect Poland was a bluff indeed, but a necessary last-ditch attempt to deter a dishonest and militaristic regime from any further aggression.

Is it really a “bluff” if your opponent has already ascertained that you don’t have the capability to follow through with it? And if you know this as well?

Not having read PJB’s new book yet (according to Amazon it is on its way), I am hesitant to comment. However, re: Churchill, it has long been accepted that he was if not directly responsible, then at least complicit in the setting up of the German sinking of the Lusitania, the proximate cause for the war hysteria which Wilson leveraged to get us into WWI. Innocent lives lost as collateral damage in the interests of the “great good” of the British Empire. How? He pulled warship escort.

It shouldn’t surprise paleos that the “elite” and their hired managers do not believe in universal morality. Their concerns are limited to the associated indispensable few. The rest of us are pigeons. It has been such for much of history.

Mcbrown with all due respect: I believe all my facts are at least debatably correct. Chuchill was a failure in his main goal to save the British Empire. He also had many other failures and crimes. He was never loved in my family which is one reason I agree with Pat. Another reason is because I have read many of his books and many about him and come to the same conclusions. His contemporay critics were right, in most cases, and Churchill was wrong.

Rick Johnson is sadly wrong in claiming that Churchill was “at least complicit” in the torpedoing of RMS Lusitania in WWI.  A remarkably nasty journalist named Colin Simpson put out a work of treacherous pseudohistory titled “The Lusitania” in 1972, and his calculated Big Lie has resonated ever since.  An excellent riposte was published not long after, “The Lusitania Disaster” by Bailey and Ryan, which demolishes Simpson’s pack of lies and distortions.  If one believes that Churchill set up the Lucy, then one believes that FDR set up the Pacific Fleet, and that the WTC Towers were designed to look spectacular when they were destroyed by deliberate US Government action.

Finding Churchill all too human and fallible is very reasonable and fair.  But please let’s save the muck-flinging to those who aren’t capable of doing better.

There is no doubt that Churchill’s connivance in the betrayal of Poland to Stalin was worse than Chameberlain’s betrayal of the Czechs at Munich.  In 1938, Britain owed the Czechs nothing.  By 1945, tens of thousands of Poles had fought for the Allied cause steadfastly from 1939 on, playing an instrumental role in saving Britain during the Battle of Britain and sacrificing their capital in the heroic Warsaw Uprising. 

Britain owed the Poles a lot, which made their betrayal at Teheran and Yalta infinitely worse than Munich.

Mr Piatak:
Yalta is quite different from Munich, but for reasons distinct from the ones you cite.  The key distinction is over what could be accomplished by pressure.  Churchill criticized the Munich settlement in part because it was possible at that point to put pressure on Germany with the threat of war, since British armaments surpassed German weaponry.  But this fact was foolishly ignored by Chamberlain.  In 1945, an all-out war with the 6 million strong Red Army over Poland would have been ill-advised, and was rejected by most Allied leaders (except Gen Patton).  FDR’s refusal to have an occupying US army past 1947 in Europe abandoned the last bit of pressure which could’ve been exerted on Stalin at the time.  This reflected poorly on FDR, not Churchill.

All these smart people making huge errors across the last 100 years…

It sure makes me wonder about how intelligent we humans are.

To characterize our inability to attack and then roll back the Red Army beyond the eastern Polish border as “betrayal” by Churchill or to say it reflected poorly on FDR is ludicrous.  We had neither the men and material nor the will to do so.  There was absolutely ZERO support for such madness from the citizens of Britain and America for any such scheme.  Poland was lost to the West at the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk.

To nbf:

Yes, it is ludicrous to blame the Allies for not launching a war against the Red Army in 1945, I agree.  But Churchill was right to regard as ludicrous FDR’s refusal to leave any force in W. Europe as a deterrent against further aggression on Stalin’s part.

Reg Stocking,

Why am I “sadly” wrong instead of just being, well, wrong?

Churchill as head of the Admiralty pulled naval escort from the Lusitania once a distance from North America despite knowledge that newspapers had advertised its cargo as including arms for the British. The Germans had warned that it might be a target because it was engaging in transporting war material beside passengers, including several hundred Americans.
A back door way to get America into the war. An example for later stagecraft at Pearl Harbor?

When will an honest account of FDR’s role in WWII emerge?

Rick Johnson,

You are wrong, and it is very sad that you accept the conspiracy theory without doing the homework to learn how trustworthy it might be.  Some years ago I got interested enough about the Lucy tragedy and in what actually happened and didn’t happen regarding Pearl Harbor that getting an amusingly unremunerative MA in United States history was easier than it might have been.

As stated, the best book on the Luch is Thomas A. Bailey and Paul B. Ryan: THE LUSITANIA DISASTER, New York, Free Press, 1975.  It’s about 400 pages of elaborate detail and demolishes a number of myths, including the one that Forst Lord Churchill scratched an intended escort.  Cunard Commodore Turner chose to disregard Admiralty instructions on how to avoid U-boats and got his ship sunk out from under him.  The British government had the choice of trying him for 1,198 counts of manslaughter and having to reveal the Admiralty’s instructions in open court or of blaming the beastly Huns.  The blame should go to the British government and perhaps Cunard for playing stiff-upper-lip and pretending that there was no serious danger in running an understaffed passenger liner in a war zone as though it were serenely peaceful.  Since RMS Lusitania was built and operated under government subsidy and listed as a merchant auxiliary cruiser of the Royal Navy, perhaps Cunard had no choice.

As for Pearl Harbor, try John Costello’s DAYS OF INFAMY, New York, Pocket Books, 1994.  Admiral Layton died before his AND I WAS THERE was completed, and Costello helped finish the job.  Having become fascinated by the topic, he did further research and wrote his own little volume.  If you wish to look down upon FDR and Churchill for what happened in the Pacific, it helps to know just what blunders they really made.  Costello makes a very strong case for hubris and myopia, having accepted Layton’s firm opinion that nobody in Washington understood the Japanese mentality and position well enough to hatch a conspiracy.

In both cases, just as with 9/11, it is maddening to have to realize just how badly we misunderestimate all sorts of dangers which are bloody obvious in retrospect.  As Admiral Layton noted, military historians tend to be armchair admirals and generals blessed with 20/20 hindsight.

Dr. Havers with all due respect:  The time to be firm with Stalin was in the very beginning. Churchill flew to Moscow and promised him aid and friendsip, just after Hitler’s attack. The Russians needed help but had a very bad record. they should have been arms length allies. Firm rules should have been demanded from the beginning. The USSR needed us. They never could have beat the Germans without our aid and support. Hitler almost beat them fighting on four or five fronts. The Russians were devastated by the war. Stalin was the ultimate realist. If we had told him absolutly no border ajustments, he would have acepted it. Reagan proved that a resolute foreign policy, when you have the upper hand works. He did this with a lot stronger USSR then the devastaded one of Stalin. Roosevelt and Churchill making up to Stalin like he was a friend instead of someone who just had a common enemy was a great mistake.

The original jack is quite correct about the difference between a friend and an ally; the old Arabic proverb is that my enemy’s enemy is an ally (as opposed to being an actual friend) is very correct.  But please don’t blame Churchill for Roosevelt’s egocentric conviction that Uncle Joe could be jollied along enough to come off it and mellow out.  Churchill had Stalin’s number.  Roosevelt regarded Churchill as a reactionary imperialist and Stalin as maybe a harbinger of a better world.  This is probably Roosevelt’s greatest failing.

Thanks for the comments. I hope to write something about the Buchanan’s book. In terms of world politics, it’s Hitler and not Churchill that should be nominated for Man of the Century (you don’t have to be good guy to win that title). It’s Hitler that got Churchill back into power. In general, “what if?” excercises can be entertaining, but they are counter-factual. They didn’t happen and we cannot prove that they would have happened if X did this and Y didn’t do that.

All of the above comments are very interesting---the kind of discussion that only
one finds on Takimag.

I have just finished a review copy of PJB’s new study; it is impressive in every
way, and I believe he answers a number of the questions brought up in this discussion.
He may not convince everyone (certainly not the idolators of Sir Winston---although
PJB gives the great lion his due and lots of respect), but he does an excellent
job is giving context to a lot of misunderstood events.

One thing: in depth comparisons of Nazi Germany and Stalin’s USSR are, I think,
very important in analyzing the period. Hitler inherited, in many respects, the
old Wilhelmine bureaucratic state; his initial government, lest we forget, was a
coalition government, and the state apparatus remained a composite of all sorts of
individuals and groups, from diehard Nazis all the way to “conservative” bureaucrats
and old military types (who, in many cases, actually disdained Naziism). The Wehrmacht
remained in some respects, out of the reach of Hitler for much of the 1930s (with
some notable exceptions, e.g the Fritsch affair, Blomberg, etc.).  And “total war”
was declared only in 1944.

Of course, the Gestapo and informants abounded, and political (and racial) differences
and “deviancy” could result in concentration camps, although the worst persecutions
took place under the pressure of war. Still, a comparison with the all-pervasive
Soviet system, the relative position of the Soviet military (with the widespread
purges of the 1930s) and the practical control of almost every aspect of Russian life
by the Stalinist regime, certainly bears examination.

Hitler, more than once, lamented to Speer and others, that he lacked the real control
over his military (and over the Church, etc.) that Stalin had. Organized opposition
within the military (e.g. Halder, Beck, the Goerdeler group, Canaris, etc.) existed
in Germany; Stalin eliminated all opposition, both real and potential, in the USSR.

British and American intelligence knew of these fissures, certainly in the ranks of the
German military, but never really took advantage of them to any great degree. This is
certainly not “counter-factual” history, but, I think, missed opportunities writ large.
I do think it is demonstrable that Churchill’s myopic view of the Germans, plus FDR’s
feeling that he could “manipulate” Stalin, played a role in this. “Unconditional
surrender” in Europe was, in my opinion, a disaster, something that drastically weakened
the appeal of the internal opposition. Whereas in Japan “unconditional surrender” was
not really “unconditional,” as the preservation of the throne demonstrated, the options
for the German opposition were undercut by the Allies.

@mcbrown:

You write: (Churchill) had to get England on a war footing.  If not, he left Britain open to attack.  The very fact that Britain was building up its armarmants insured that Hitler would attack, sooner or later.

Poor Churchill!  He had to arm, or the Nazis would attack; the fact that he was arming caused the Nazis to attack.

You also mention that he was the Last Lion of Empire, yet it was the Second World War that, indisputably, put the death blow to the Empire.  Perhaps he came not to praise Caesar, but to bury him.

@Leon Hadar:

Sir, I have read your articles with enthusiasm and enjoyment for several years now.  Kudos!  However, I beg to differ on the Man of the Century.  In my opinion, that was good old Uncle Joe, Iossif Vissiaronovich Dzhugashvili himself.

Mao trumps him in pure numbers, but Josif Stalin gave us not only a transformed Russia (from bankrupt sprawling empire to, well, bankrupt sprawling empire with nuke-tipped ICBMs) but also more good quotes than Mao.

Admittedly, neither Reich made it to the thousand year mark, but the USSR “soldiered on” a good bit longer than the Third Reich.

A gifted polemicist, Churchill.  I’ve often wondered at the synchronicity between the emergence of individualized mass communication (radio) and orators like Hitler, Mussolini, Churchill, FDR and Huey Long.  (Stalin was no great orator, but if you kill enough people I guess it doesn’t matter.)

I agree with Dr. Cathy and Kilted, good job. The men who made the 20th century Wilson, Lenin,Stalin, Hitler, FDR, Churchill, and Mao were not very nice people.

One quibble with Jack:  Churchill was not the “builder of the modern welfare state.” That distinction more rightly goes to Bismarck.  He may have advanced it in his tiny sphere of the world, but that’s rather a different thing.

To pb:
It is not evident that Hitler treated the security guarantee to Poland as pure “bluff,” given his fear of a two-front war.  Together, Britain and France had much greater firepower than Germany; France alone had as many troops as Germany and far more tanks.  The fact that Hitler called the bluff does not mean that he slept soundly over his decision; indeed, he was extremely agitated around the time of his declaration of war against Poland.

To “Original Jack”:
Churchill and FDR had far less wiggle room than Reagan later enjoyed in facing down the USSR.  Reagan simply outspent the Soviets with a costly arms build-up; he never considered a “war of liberation” as the way to demolish the Soviet regime.  Yet a war of liberation was probably the only act that could have saved Poland in 1945, and the Allies were wise to shy away from this momentous step towards WW 3, which public opinion wouldn’t have supported anyway.  Perhaps the Allies could have cut off Lend-Lease assistance, but I doubt that this would have had much effect on the victorious Red Army which was already looting Eastern Europe in order to pay for the war.

To Kilted:

Re Hitler as Man of the Century. I was considering here the geo-political map. Clearly, the rise of the U.S. and the Soviet Union and the Cold War, de-colonization, etc. wouldn’t have happened without WWII and the collapse of Germany (and Britain).

The only way the West could have had more than a marginal impact on Stalin’s policy in the Eastern European states the Red Army occupied in 1945 would have been by playing the nuclear card, which Roosevelt had no assurance was real.  He could have awaited its development before giving as much as he did, so that he (by then, as it happens, his successor) could be more aggressive.  That would have meant making the threat of nuclear war aganist non-nuclear enemies a central tool of US policy.  That was probably morally conceivable in 1945.  It was morally inconceivable by the time I was born almost 20 years later (Gen. LeMay’s occassional Vietnamese ruminations notwithstanding), and remained that way, so far as I could see, until until the current administration.  It is now an acceptable bi-partisan option.

Neither FDR nor Churchill made any meaningful attempt to put pressure on the Soviets over Poland.  I do not defend Roosevelt over this, but since Britain went to war to maintain Poland’s independence, and accepted the aid of Polish servicemen throughout the war, including during the darkest days of the Battle of Britain, the moral failure of the British is especially accute.

I agree.  We could more easily justify “realism” as a ground for abandoning Poland to Stalin’s tender mercies, since we had not gone to war and squandered our economic health and world standing to defend her.  In mainstream histories, Britian’s inconsistency in this regard is too little noted.  My strong sympathies are with the Polish people.  Yet, I think we must say, in retrospect, that allowing them to live in the Soviet thrall for 2-3 generations, horrible though that doubtless was, was better than setting a precedent of US nuclear bullying.  At least, if we do not, in fact, continue the current trend toward making nuclear bullying our post-cold-war policy of ultimate resort.

It’s hard to know what “meaningful” pressure would have meant regarding the Soviet occupation of Poland, short of WW 3.  FDR and Churchill had zero wiggle room on Poland.  That said, FDR didn’t have to capitulate to Stalin on other matters; his fear of Anglo-French imperialism and his subsequent attempts to marginalize both Britain and France in a postwar world simply played into Stalin’s hands.  Churchill was a foreign policy genius compared to the criminal naivete which FDR showed towards Uncle Joe.

“Conspiracy Theory” is a buzz word substitute for “Conspiracy Evidence” created by Leviathan.

FDR’s “Day of Infamy” speech was written 2 weeks prior to the attack on Pearl.

The beauty of “Evidence” is that it continues to come in after History is written.

Our judicial system even builds cases based on “Circumstantial Evidence” in our courts, yet, political historians prefer that the victors concept of history trumps the defeated nations facts.

Buchanan’s book was most kind to both Churchill and FDR!.....They deserve worse!

I hink PJB has a point that it would have been better for England to sit out the war.  Their war effort bled the country dry, bankrupted it, and made no significant impact on the course of the war.  The Soviets were by far the strongest power of the war, and destroyed the Nazis almost single handedly.  By the time D-day occurred in 1944, the Nazis were broken.  Nazism would die, not through collapse, but through Soviet conquest as the Soviets had planned all along.  Barbarossa surely caught Stalin by surprise, how could Hitler be so foolish to attack the Soviet Union?  The Soviet Union had an overwhelming superiority in men and materiel.  By the numbers, Soviet victory was inevitable.

The Soviet Union was a basket case by 1945. It never could have won the war without western help. It had spent it’s all to get to Berlin. If firm ground rules would have been followed Stalin, the realist would have accepted. Paton was right. He could have kicked the Soviets out, without a lot of effort. The fantasy that Stalin was a democrat and we could give him tens of millions of people was insane. Letting Hitler win couldn’t have been as bad as the final results of this war. Stalin gets all the fruits of victory and we get a 50 year cold war.

Judging by the Soviet blitzkrieg through Manchuria, the idea that they were spent, weak, or easily cowed by Western threats in 1945 is laughable--a convenient myth formerly embraced by Western chauvinists.  The Soviets won the war, which was primarily in the East.  We simply kicked in the already rotten door.

Manchuria was a backwater by 1945, the war was lost. There was little resistence left, even if the mainland had been invaded. Germany could never have been defeated by the USSR alone. The Russians suffered huge human and physical loses. Germany had to fight a many fronted war. The Soviets were nothing but sausage for the meatgrinder. The fresh American forces could have kicked them back to kingdom come. That is not the question. Stalin was treated like a friend, when he was an enemy and Churchill knew it. Defeating Hitler wasn’t worth leting Stalin win the war. Chuchill bankrupted his country, to let a worse enemy win the war, take all the spoils, and lead to a fifty year cold war. Like Buchanan says the war was unnessary.

[Grant Havers: “It’s hard to know what “meaningful” pressure would
have meant regarding the Soviet occupation of Poland, short of WW 3. 
FDR and Churchill had zero wiggle room on Poland.  That said, FDR didn’t
have to capitulate to Stalin on other matters; his fear of Anglo-French
imperialism and his subsequent attempts to marginalize both Britain and
France in a postwar world simply played into Stalin’s hands.  Churchill
was a foreign policy genius compared to the criminal naivete which FDR
showed towards Uncle Joe.”

Mr. Havers, the same condition was true with Poland and Germany in September
of 1939, but much more so. The Soviets and Brits had been allies, and Brtain
had considerably more reservoirs of influence in 1945 with Stalin than with
Hitler in 1939. It was not a question of inability in 1945: the Brits and
Americans had many more arrows in their quiver, short of WW III.

I repeat: the British guarantee to Poland in 1939 was unenforceable, foolhardy,
and wrongheaded. It should never have been given. In that particular case---
Danzig and a corridor---German demands actually had some validity. Poland was
not the place or time where a stand should have been made.

Attention everyone! Lewrockwell.com is rerunning Ralph Raico’s marvelous study of the life of Churchill. It is by far the best short study, I have ever seen. Dr. Havers, Mr Roach and mcbrown would especially benefit from a careful reading.

I second the recommendation of Dr. Raico’s essay (which originally appeared in the volume
The Costs of War, I think.

Back to the comparison between the British guarantee to Poland in 1939, and the failure to
support them in 1945-46. Here is my essential problem: Britain was willing to make an unenforeceable,
unrealistic guarantee in the earlier year, one which they knew would most likely bring on general European
war, over a corridor to Danzig (German demands for which, irrespective of Hitler and irrespective of what he
MIGHT well have done later, were certainly arguably justifiable), while they were unwilling to stand up in 1945-1946 not only for Poland (the eastern part ceded to the USSR, confirming the agreement that the Soveiets had with Hitler! and the rest under Soviet occupation and virtual rule--cf. Ambassador Bliss’ account), but also unwilling to defend the three Baltic states, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Jugoslavia, and Albania---all in the name of “peace.” Remember the accounts of Sir Winston showing his map of “spheres of influence”?
to Stalin: “See, Uncle Joe, we get 30% in Bulgaria, and you get 70%; we get 20% in Hungary, and you get
80%...etc.” And this is the “great moral defender of the West” against dictatorship?

There is a misapplied symmetry here, and Sir Winston does not come off well at all.

Mr. Havers: I just re-read the following paragraph, which, I must say, is outrageous:

<<Churchill is also blamed for forcibly repatriating the Cossacks and Russian POWs to
Stalin, knowing full well what their fate would be.  Yet had Churchill failed to do so,
Stalin may have followed through on a subtle threat to retaliate by executing Allied
POWs who had fallen into Soviet hands.  In these cases, Stalin held all the cards.>>

So, because our “friend” Stalin implies that he might execute POWs under his authority, therefore,
we undertake one of the most inhuman and immoral episodes of the post-war, Operation Keelhaul,
which hundreds of thousands of not only Russian POWS, but thousands of Russian civilians
living in the West, including many who had been quietly living there since the Revolution,
were forcibly, with machine guns pointing at them, packed liked sardines into closed box-cars
and sent as a “peace” offering to Uncle Joe (and the Gulag and the executioner)? And you
justify this?

Have you not read Aldred de Zayas, Nicholas Tolstoy, not to mention the accounts
of Krasnov? Have you not read of who British soldiers machine-gunned women and children
being forcibly stuffed into those boxcars? All to placate Joe Stalin.... for “peace.”

No, no, I cannot accept what you say as reasonable, not to mention the questions of morality.

Note: please excuse the typos…

Dr. Cathey:
I don’t “justify” Yalta or Operation Keelhaul in any simple moral sense.  Neither decision was Britain’s finest hour, to say the least.  However, I can imagine what Anglo-US public opinion would’ve felt about Churchill had he condemned Allied POWs to the tender mercies of Stalin while saving the lives of Russian POWs and Cossacks.  Terrible choices, all round.

Jack - the myth that the USSR only supplied men and all its equipment came from the US is believed by alot of Americans - but it is just not true. The other myth that the US was the major fighting force in the European theater is also another cherished myth. I read somewhere the Red army had 250 divisions compared to America’s 100 and Britain’s 40.

Stalingrad ended in February 1943 BEFORE the US even made so much as a speck of difference in the war. An entire German army lost without any help from the US in any significant amount.

http://www.stalingrad-info.com/

The idea that the Soviets used all borrored equipment does not hold water when you look at small arms during the war. Ten years ago the US was being flooded with backup Moisin-Nagants and captured K-34 from Russian arsenals. There were NO American weapons repatriated. Nor is there a historical record of contracts of American weapons being built with Russia military cartridges as was done under the Tzars for Winchester lever action rifles in the Crimean war.

In addition, the Russian T-34 battle tank is considered by many as the best all-around tank of the war. It was a Russian tank but did borrow a US designed torsion suspension that made it more manueverable. Its combination of angled turret armor, adequate gun, diesel engine, and speed made it a formidable adversary for the German tanks. The Sherman (nicknamed the Ronson - lights first time, every time) was way behind it.

There is also no evidence of large scale use of western aircraft. The historical accounts all show homegrown Soviet planes. Their ground support aircraft were the best in the war.

Dear Mark in LA. I never denied much of what you said. I just said it would have been impossible for the Soviets to beat the Germans alone and without our massive help.
Huge numbers of machine tools and other war supplies were shipped to Stalin which were used to build the war industries you speak of. Hitler had to fight many countries and on many fronts the Soviets had a one front war.

Mr. Havers:
I do indeed understand what you are saying, and certainly it was a terrible choice, at least
as we consider it TODAY. But, I don’t think it was such a “terrifying” choice for the Brits
back THEN. The research I’ve seen does not demonstrate much genuine remorse for what was
a real “crime against humanity.”

What I “learned” way back in the first years four year college was that the Allies were so
much more “moral,” and that we didn’t do “nasty things.” Yet we now know that the Allied
treatment of Russian National Army POWs, and not just thousands of von Pannwitz Cossacks and Vlassovites, but thousands of Slovaks, Chetniks, Ukrainians, etc., not to mention the several million Germans, both military and civilians, who were brutalised, raped, and executed, or in the case of the East Prussians, Pomeranians, and Silesians, dispossessed in mid-winter and forcibly herded across the Oder-Neise line, with barely the clothes on their backs, that this treatment rivalled some of the worst treatment meted out by the Sonderkommando squads...all done with the feline agreement of Sir Winston and the Allies. Such treatment, had it been done by the Germans, would have (and did) gotten the authors a seat in the dock at Nuremburg. Yet, at that “trial” we have the spectre of Russian Communist judges adjudicating the guilt of Germans, when just as much blood was on their hands.

What happens then to our vaunted “moral superiority”?

Dr. Cathey:
These are valid points you make.  You are right to question easy claims of “moral superiority.” The fact that the Nuremberg trials included the Soviets as judges is truly a low point in the history of justice (and it probably wasn’t necessary to include them).  I believe, however, that we have to distinguish between tough choices and easy ones.  Operation Keelhaul was a tough one, to say the least, since the alternative was to encourage the Soviets to kill Allied POWs in their custody:  when the Cossacks were returned to Stalin in May 1945, there were 15,000 US and 8,000 British POWs still in Soviet hands. Also, the US wanted Soviet participation in the war against Japan and thus didn’t want to alienate Stalin; their involvement turned out to be of low value, but it was still a motive behind the appeasement of Stalin. Anyway, these decisions were based on calculation, not moral superiority.

As the Nuremberg trials and all subsequent attempts in that legal arena have shown, there is only one real warcrime, namely losing the war. So far I have not seen anybody convicted of a war crime unless he first loses the war. And since most war criminals believe that their crimes are necessary to win the war, the net effect of war crime prosecution is zero, as sad as that is.

Mr. Havers:
As you use the word “appease” (correctly) in relation to the post-war attempt to appease
Stalin, perhaps you will with greater sympathy understand the views of those for whom dealing
with Germany in 1938-1940 included making certain difficult calculations, as well. Again,
the symmetry is interesting. Why is it that it is “not good” to jaw-jaw with Hitler in 1939
over the Polish corridor, while it IS good to “appease” Stalin in 1945-46?  Obviously, today,
some 60 plus years later, with hindsight, we can make all sorts of pontifications about how
bad the Nazis were, and that the Soviets were our “Allies.” But in 1939, such clarity, if
we may call it that, was most definitely NOT present. One can make a very strong case, based
on what was known THEN and what was observed THEN, that avoiding a conflict with the Germans
made perfectly good sense and was reasonable. Indeed, as Ernst Nolte has pointed out in his
excellent volume, DIE EUROPAISCHE BURGERKRIEG (which I think can be translated as “The
European Civil War"), most conservative Europeans, of whatever country, saw Soviet Russia
as a much greater threat to them and their destinies, than Germany. In August 1939, Hitler
had not yet (technically) “invaded” another country (the Austrian case we can discuss). but
the Soviets--internationalists, more so than the “nationalists” of Germany--were on the
march around the world via the Commintern, etc. And while the Germans did not, or so it
seemed, threaten the existence of the middle classes and private enterprize, the Soviets
most certainly did.  Thus, it was easy for many Europeans to make an envidious---if wrong--
comparison.... Again, hindsight is always interesting, but not necessarily probative.

Dr Cathey:
On the question of Poland in 1939 vs. 1945:  in 1939, the Allies indeed were bluffing with an empty promise, which they thought would stop Hitler’s aggression with the threat of a two-front war; obviously it didn’t.  Thus, the declaration of war against the Nazis in 1939 was based on considerable uncertainty regarding Hitler’s fears or long-term success.
In 1945, the only bluff available to the Allies was another threat of all-out war.  Yet Britain’s exhausted state and the Red Army’s solid occupation of Poland made that unrealistic; US public opinion would’ve opposed this too.  As Nisbet pointed out, Stalin’s occupation of Poland made any Allied “permission” to hold the nation unnecessary.
Perhaps the Allies in 1945 had learned from 1939 that the game of bluffing with a totalitarian tyrant does not work unless one is prepared to wage war.

I should add that bluffing out Hitler in 1939 was rational in a sense, since the Allies knew that Hitler feared a two-front war.
But Stalin didn’t have to fear this threat.

Mr. Havers:
Again, I appreciate your points, but I don’t think it really gets at
the heart of what I’m suggesting. The agreement with Poland in 1939
was open-ended, with no real escape clause. In an earlier message or two
I raised the question of “stages” where a British “NO” to Hitler might
have been effective (e.g., the Rhineland re-militarization, the Anschluss,etc.),
but specifically suggested that Poland was, even among many specialists in
the Home Office, definitely not one of them. Buchanan suggests that those
advocating negotiations by the Beck government were correct, and I totally
agree with him. The Polish guarantee, even as a “bluff” as you term it,
was reckless, unenforceable, and useless, even from the viewpoint of those alive in
August/September 1939. The Brits had no real vital interest in whether Danzig
went back to Germany (it was totally German, ethnically, culturally, and
historically). Additionally, goodly portions of northwestern Poland were majority
German-speaking (not to mention a portion of Upper Silesia, where a
rigged plebiscite had been used post WW I); a corridor made sense to many
(irrespective of whether one agreed with Hitler or not). With the Brits
jacking up the Poles, promising them help that never came and would NEVER
come, either in 1939, or in the Warsaw Uprising, or after the War either,
the Brits invited war, war was thrust forward as the only real option. Sir
Winston seemed to realize this, and he relished the prospect of “taking Germany
down a notch,” the consequences be damned.

Now, to 1945: if we were prepared to fight a war against tyranny in 1939-1945, spend billions
of dollars, and lose hundreds of thousands of lives to win a “just peace,” but then cede
a goodly portion of the results of that war to a tyranny that was arguably worse and
greater, what then was achieved? We were unwilling to oppose an arguably even greater
tyranny: this, it appears to me, vitiates our case fatally.

We traded opposition to one tyrant for an even more monstrous tyranny, and incalculable results flowed from that so-called “peace”: for does not the “p.c.” culture that we now have flow at least partially from that
“settlement” in Europe? Conservatives and traditionalists since the end of WWII have conitually
been tarred and feathered as “nazis,” “racists,” “fascists,” any time they begin to advance,
and opposition to the dominant therapeutic and mangerial state, more so in Europe, but also
in the USA, has been largely neutered for fear of such appellations. We have, to put it
succinctly, been in headlong retreat, NOT because we were “fascists” but because we are
constantly fearful that we will be labelled as such.  Does not this paradigm, at least
partially, flow from the unwillingness to carry through with the stated reasons for opposing
tyranny (e.g. the Atlantic Charter, et al)?

No; I agree with Tom Piatak who correctly remarked on these pages that Churchill, for all
his eloguence and ability, is not or should not be a “hero” for traditionalists and those who
revere our Western Civilization. I have few heroes for the 20th century, but I would include
Pius XII, who indeed understood the crisis the West was in. But not Churchill.

Jack, sorry I forgot to state the main point and it got lost in the shuffle. I was mainly responding to your claim that Patton could have kicked the Soviets out of Eastern Europe.

They weren’t spent when they were willing to lose 100,000 men to take Berlin. They were still in a rage of hate over what was done to them. Imaging the rage after being betrayed by their allies. They were battle hardened and well equipt. Patton could believe anything he wanted but I don’t think anybody at the higher levels of command was willing to bet against the Red Army at that time.