Did Buchanan Plagiarize this Map of Germany After Versailles? You be the judge.

In Patrick J. Buchanan's Churchill, Hitler, and the "Unnecessary War", he uses a map (Buchanan, p. 82) to show how Germany was carved up after the Treaty of Versailles. There is another map (Gilbert, p. 144) in a book by Martin Gilbert that appears very similar.

Similarities

• Similar topic: "Germany After Versailles" and "Germany in Defeat" both showing how Germany was carved up after World War I.
• Same region focus
• Same key in the mid-left region to show "Principal German Losses". Wording and terminology is the same.
• Same key on the lower right-hand side. Buchanan even uses the same coloring method. Solid color for territory lost, stripes for territory retained, and territory retained with no fortifications
• The same cities and regions all have sub-text. In some cases, it's the exact same text.

Buchanan's map is first. Gilbert's map is second. Click the pictures for a larger size.




References
Buchanan, Patrick J. Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War". New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2008.

Gilbert, Martin. The Routledge Atlas of the First World War, 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Something that should be considered when looking at these two maps is the Introduction and Preface to Martin Gilbert's book.

The Introduction was written by Field-Marshal Montgomery back in 1970.


The Preface is written by Martin Gilbert in which he states the following.

I've gone back and forth between the maps several times. There is no question that the map was inspired/copied. When dealing with borders and region focus, it's tough to find a unique way to draw a map, but Buchanan uses virtually the same text and same colors. He should have cited his source for the map.

Scott, does Buchanan make any mention of Gilbert's atlas book? Do any of the Gilbert books referenced by Buchahan have similar maps?

This one's worse than the first. Even the bullets are the same for the most part. Horrible.

Again, this is just like the last one. Did he probably use it as a reference? lol most likely. But they are not identical, their are tons of differences in the 2 beyond the obvious total difference in quality. It's just not enough to win a case in court over plagiarism.

He obviously should have referenced the guy, but he didn't and no one can prove 100% that he copied him due to the large quantity of differences.

This isn't much different then 99% of "reports" written by college students. They all find other works and change things around enough so it isn't a copy.

Yes. He listed the First World War Atlas book by Gilbert and Churchill: A Life in the bibliography. Throughout the book, Buchanan cited Churchill: A life giving the page numbers to where he quoted text. The maps have no type of notation whatsoever of where the information came from.

I voted yes again. Lol maybe this guy Buchanan picked up a copy of Gilbert's book, thought to himself well shit I can probably put together a book of my own, I suck at map drawing so I'll just copy these and add a few different details and change a few font styles around and nobody will know. SCOTT MANNING KNOWS!

Maybe they are related.