Buchanan Portrays Churchill's Warnings as Political Dogma

In Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War", Patrick J. Buchanan uses part of a correspondence between Churchill and his cousin, Lord Londonderry, to give the impression that Churchill's efforts to confront Germany during the 1930's were nothing more than a 400 year old policy Great Britain had maintained in order to oppose those stronger than her.

Buchanan also gets the date of the correspondence wrong by 2 years.

Great Britain's "carcass of dead policies"
In the first chapter titled "The End of 'Splendid Isolation,'" Buchanan walks the reader through the arms race leading up to World War I. Buchanan portrays Germany as a country innocently trying to build up a navy for itself and Great Britain undermining Germany at every step in order to maintain her supremacy in the seas (A future article will cover the issues with this angle).

Buchanan portrays Great Britain's efforts to stay superior as nothing more than out-dated, political dogma. To drive home his point and to somehow tie Churchill to the situation, he gives a portion of a correspondence between Lord Londonderry and Churchill from 1936 (more than 3 decades later). While the correspondence does not directly address the arms race leading up to World War I, Buchanan offers it as an example of an Englishman blindly supporting what Buchanan sees as an out-dated policy.

It is important to note upfront that Buchanan says the correspondence took place in 1938, but it actually took place in 1936.



I would attribute the date issue as a mere mix-up on Buchanan's part. However, this does demonstrate that his book includes sloppiness as well as distortion of events. Yet, when you couple the date mix-up with the excerpt of Churchill's reply to Lord Londonderry, it gives the impression that Churchill's warnings over Hitler were nothing more than political dogma as late as 1938. The threat of Hitler in 1938 was more real to the public than in 1936.

Churchill's Warnings Were Not Based on Nationality
The truth is that the correspondence took place on May 4, 1936 (Gilbert, p. 555). Less than 2 months prior, Hitler had sent troops into the Rhineland breaking yet another clause of the Treaty of Versailles (Gilbert, p. 551). Churchill brought up the 400 year old policy to Lord Londonderry to explain that confronting bullies is nothing new for Great Britain, but then he followed up with a caution concerning Hitler in the same letter.



In 1936, this type of talk is what set Churchill apart from other politicians who believed a road of appeasement would prevent war. Churchill saw otherwise and was not silent about it. His point to Lord Londonderry was that Hitler was going to bring war to Europe and that Churchill would have the same concern regardless of Hitler's nationality.

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

Gilbert, Martin. Churchill: A Life. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1991.

Buchanan's mistake here is inexcusable.

Like many historians before him Buchanan has allowed his own interpretations cloud his judgement of the facts.

Bob

Fair enough. Buchanan has a typo. It's bound to happen when you write as much as he does. Part of me says, "So what!" The other part feels you should have you little victory of finding possibly the sole mistake in a big book that he obviously spent a lifetime compiling.

To the heart of your article!

With the added commentary in this letter from Churchill, I think it only strengthens Buchanan's point that Churchill was doing what had been done for four hundred years in Britain. He wasn't necessarily anti-Germany; he was just anti-anything-stronger-than-Britain.

Good article though. It is nice to see that people are willing to research on their own even if they end up proving points they were attempting to discredit.

It's not just a typo. That statement, being two years off on the date, puts the letter in an entirely different historical context than if it had been written in 1938. 1938 was the year of the Munich Agreement and the Anschluss. In 1936, all Hitler had done was reenter the Rhineland, as Scott point out.

Making that kind of statement in 1938 makes him sound like a prick. Saying it in 1936, when war was not the inevitability it had become by 1938, makes him sound like your stereotypical Englishman.

I don't see how this reinforces Buchanan's point.

Even Scott says in his article that he believes the date was a mix-up. Either way, it's clear. The date is wrong.

Now let's go back to Buchanan's original point concerning Great Britain's policy of confronting the "bully." According to this correspondence from Churchill, he is continuing this policy. Could it be that this was actually a dead carcass of a policy? Or are we too stuck on backing good vs evil in this time period that we can't think outside the box?

Doing what is in the best strategic national interests of your country is never the "dead carcass of a policy." Nothing had changed dramatically from World War I and the previous century regarding the threats facing Great Britain. If any single nation had consolidated control over the continent, it would have represented a threat to the UK. The fact that this was the primary concern of the British for 400 years doesn't mean it still wasn't valid. And given Hitler's intention to try and cross the Channel throughout 1940, it seems pretty clear to me that it was still a valid threat, and hence a valid concern.

This has nothing to do with good vs. evil - it has everything to do with protecting the vital national security interests of one's country. That's what Churchill was advocating.

Mix-up, typo, or intentional mistake, it is the kind of thing that he should have gotten right. It was easy to fact check. In the area of research that I have spent most of my time, we have been inundated with secondary sources that are based on mistakes and errors, and one error in an influential secondary source can become an ingrained error in all of the sources that come after. Those mistakes and errors make it difficult to trust any secondary sources, which is a shame.

If you're writing history, you've got an affirmative obligation to get your facts straight. If you don't do that, it reflects poorly on you and casts doubt on the validity of your conclusions.

Bert, thanks for reading and commenting. However, I do disagree with you. While Britain may have had this policy of confronting the strongest power in Europe, he saw more than just a strong power in Hitler. That's why the rest of the letter is so important when he says, "If I read the future aright Hitler's government will confront Europe with a series of outrageous events and ever-growing military might."

And with this statement Scott, you really nail the arguement. Churchill was out of step with the general views and policies of the time. Either people turned a blind eye to Hitler and the rise of Nazism or simply viewed the whole thing with scepticism. There were a lot of people who never took Hitler seriously.

To take it further, there were people in Britain who wanted stronger ties with Germany and saw Hitler as a saviour figure. This was also a mood in many countries of Europe as Facisism grew and spread.

Bob.

You see Turtle, Buchanan is crap.

It would appear that those on this forum are unable to view history outside of their preconceived ideas. There is a main character (Churchill), there is a villain (Hitler), and there is the anti-hero (Stalin). Hitler is mean and Churchill stands up to him. Struggling to fight Hitler, Churchill has to call on Stalin for help. Hitler is defeated. The end.

Since Hitler killed a bunch of Jews, we can now say every outrageous, false thing that comes to mind without there being any accountability.

At the same token, we can now say all the glorious, outrageous stuff about Churchill, while ignoring anything wrong with him, without there being any accountability.

The old saying is that history is written by the victors, but history has a funny way of working itself out in the end.

Churchill's concern over Hitler was merely over his growing military. Since Churchill was a military man, he wanted nothing more than for England to always have the largest. My dreadnaught is bigger than your dreadnaught. My air force is bigger than your air force.

I'm not a big Churchill fan. I think his role has always been overrated. I think the British role in the whole war is overrated.

At the same time, I don't think anyone can honestly defend Hitler or Stalin for the things they did during the war, either politically or morally. Hitler's Germany was a confused hodgepodge of bad science, willful ignorance and overblown nationalism. Stalin was a commie.

If you think that we're criticizing Buchanan's book because we like Churchill, you're wrong. I'm criticizing the book because everything I've read about it including Scott's interpretations lead me to believe it was a crappy throwaway analysis designed to cause controversy, sell books and give Buchanan an excuse to peddle his isolationist anti-Iraq stance through a different medium.

Ditto

I don't think this view of Churchill is that common. Certainly there is a great love and admiration of the man in England, but there has been enough written about Churchill to expose his flaws. He certainly was not perfect and made many errors of judgement.

His abandoning of Harris and Bomber Command to revisionist and unfair criticism immediately after the war is still a sticking point today. His planned abandonment of Australia to the Japanese certainly won him no friends here. Thankfully we had a leader in John Curtin who had the balls to stand up to him.

Actually Churchill's great concern over Hitler was his anti-semetic stance, a view Churchill first realized in 1931 while visiting Germany. However Churchill had a great fear of Germany as early as 1928, due to the weakness of Weimar Germany and the rise of extreme factions in German politics.

Bob.

I've seen more outrageous books and articles written about Churchill that prop up his legendary status than those that give criticism. Books like Buchanan's help to shed light on those traits and deeds of Churchill that we tend to ignore in order to perpetuate the myth.