Uncle Pat needs to be put out to pasture! -Kevo

Buchanan's creative argument deserves a look.

Probably not. He's clearly gone off the Deep End.

Like that old joke about a rancher who kept buying up land compulsively. Asked if he wanted to own the whole state, he assured his questioner that no, he only wanted his land and all the land bordering it.

Not only did Hitler describe in Mein Kamp the conquests he intended to achieve in his lifetime, the Hitlerite German economy could only sustain itself with the spoils of conquest.

Buchanan's father was a strident America Firster who was dead wrong about Nazi Germany's threat to the United States but Buchanan can't accept that Churchill (not a favorite among Irish Americans) and Roosevelt were right about Hitler and his father was wrong.

"[W]here is the evidence that Adolf Hitler... was out to conquer the world?

Um, how 'bout all those countries he invaded and conquered???

Wait, you guys have got it all wrong. Pat is just trying to defend Barack Obama! Now, when frothing knuckle-draggers compare Obama to Hitler, Pat will jump and say, "But Hitler was just a misunderstood mensch so leave Obama alone!"

Ok, that doesn't even make sense to *me* but really, Patty is trying to re-write the history of Nazi Germany now?!? How is this supposed to help or even apply to current political dialogue?

Or has every other word out of his mouth become so ignored that he has to reach into the past in an ever more desperate bid to regain a semblance of relevance?

The playbook is seventy-five years old.

Marler: He's clearly gone off the Deep End.

Yeah, you treasure your oft-repeated little idea that Buchanan only developed his outrageous assholery in the past few years. Doesn't matter how many times we refer you to racist memos he wrote in the Nixon White House or denials of the Holocaust he made in the 1980s. (Prediction: Marler now expresses stunned surprise and asks for links. Again. Which he'll "forget" to come back to this thread to read. Repeat process in two months.) Like Mike K, you have a remarkable ability to simply filter out facts that interfere with your mental masturbation.

Um, yeah, Pat. Hitler also didn't want to kill millions of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and political dissidents among others in concentration camps. He only merely wanted to teach them a lesson, George Bluth Style.

He also wanted to hug and kiss all Russians who were captured by his advancing armies and not send them to forced labor camps or simply kill/brutalize/rape/starve them.

I'm sure Adolph would have appreciated your efforts Pat.

Buchanan will remain a high-profile commentator. In fact, I lay odds that Rachel Maddow has him on tonight to 'defend' himself. Everyone loves a nutcase...they bring in the ratings. Just ask Mr. Beck.

Cue republican holocaust denial in x seconds

How strange.

This piece appeared in my NYT's on Monday and I had an odd thought while reading it: How long until a prominent republican denies the holocaust ever happened? After all the August crazy? Anyone want to hazard a prediction?

Here is the lede of the story:

A Hamas spiritual leader on Monday called teaching Palestinian children about the Nazi murder of 6 million Jews a ''war crime,'' rejecting a suggestion that the U.N. might include the Holocaust in Gaza's school curriculum.

Great, here I though Beck and his ilk were denigrating Obama by calling him a Nazi, don't I feel foolish.

"was surrounded by allied, friendly or neutral neighbors, save France,"

Save, France Pat ? I don't know much about the death totals, but I would think France is easily were most Americans died on the European front. Pat blows off France like it was the Falkland Islands, not the grave of tens of thousands of Americans. France was a big fucking deal, Pat.

What about Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, Greece, and that pesky continent, Africa. What an a-hole.

How odd. When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the Holocaust was a lie, Republicans went apoplectic. Now uncle Pat tells Republicans that Hitler was a real nice guy who was forced into a war he didn't want because of a war pact between Poland and Great Briton?

This all goes back to Buchanan's book from a few years ago (more than a few years now I guess). His premise was that we should have allied with Hitler and gone to war with the Soviet Union, but Britain and France screwed things up by declaring war in 1939.

Hitler actually got along pretty well with the Polish government for a while--they were given part of Czechoslovakia for example. If the geography or the circumstances were different they might have signed up for the Axis like Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.

Buchanan just denied the holocaust too.. That's the only possible way you could even come close to claiming that Hitler killed fewer people then Castro.

It's the same old Pat. He probably doesn't quite understand why this is a big deal-- Buchanan has been making these claims for a long time; he's written books about it. He's also never said any of these things on TV-- and for good reason.

Buchanan's mistake here is that he's misunderstood the way the web works-- writing an essay on a web site isn't like writing yet another book for the Barnes and Noble remainder pile. Whole 'nother thing.

No, the villagers think it makes Pat more excitingly exotic. But it should be a firing offense.

Why anyone listens to or for that matter pays attention to this man's opinion is beyond me.....and then there is his sister. They both need to go somewhere far away where the media is relatively non existent....how about a gig in Uzbekistan?

I'll go along with Buchanan on the point that Hitler never wanted war - at least as long as everyone would simply give him what he wanted. However, he seemed a tad prepared to fight for somebody who thought that might be likely.

You quote: Buchanan also argued that by 1939, Hitler "was surrounded by allied, friendly or neutral neighbors, save France," and had no interest in confronting Russia.

So why did he invade France (and a bunch of other countries)? Why did he invade Russia? Why did he declare war on the United States after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor?

You say, "It's so rare to see tacit defenses of Hitler's military strategies in modern American journalism." This is NOT a defense of Hitler's military strategies; it's an assertion of his innocence, his victimhood.

This is beyond unbelievable. Saw it yesterday and have been wondering when the reaction would start.

It's a bizarre thing to say. Why would anyone in the world think it a good idea to defend Adolf Hitler? Counterfactuals are cheap, unprovable, and, in the end, pointless. 50-70 million people died in WW2, a war initiated by Hitler. All that counts is what actually happened. Who cares what Hitler fancied or felt, hypothetically?

So, yeah, Buchanan has turned the crazy to 11, or, maybe he has actually figured out how to go to 12.

For some reason, I picture Pat behind the counter in Monty Python's famous Dead Parrot Sketch.

Pat Buchanan has to wear a bag of cloves around his neck to cover up the old man smell.

His (Buchanan's) premise was that we should have allied with Hitler and gone to war with the Soviet Union, but Britain and France screwed things up by declaring war in 1939. -- ArkPanda, @17:31

I guess a couple days here, a couple days there doesn't make much difference to cow-Pat... One of the reasons lots of people in UK think WWII started on Sept 3rd (or is it 5th?) is because that's when Britain declared war. But, by that time, Hitler had already bombed the hell out of large portions of Poland and, in cities with large German population (like Lodz, where my Mother grew up), "Jews not allowed" have sprung up, overnight, in shop windows.

The invasion started on Sept 1; we have never, *quite*, forgiven Britain for being so tardy in showing their support to us; we thought they were our allies.

How low have we sunk as a nation when a motherfucker can be a Hitler/Nazi apologist and not be fired from his job, kicked out of his apartment, and shunned by all flag waiving patriotic Americans. IOKIYAR indeed.

Buchanan isn't the first to adopt this point of view. The real truth we may not know for another fifty years. Was Churchill the real warmonger, drunk on too much brandy when he signed that idiotic pact with Poland? And not just that. What about those massive and totally unreasonable reparations that he, Woodrow Wilson and others laid on Germany after a war that was not even Germany's fault and that, in any case, we should have stayed out of.

The only good thing to come out of it was Gary Cooper playing Sergeant York. The war was a preemptive strike by Germany, which knew full well that Russia and France were preparing to take out the nation with a double-barreled attack.It had nothing to do with the shooting of an archduke down in Austria or wherever it was that they shot the old boy.

I haven't read Buchanan's book, and I have no desire to. My guess is that he had a quick look at a few contrarian accounts of the origins of World War II (perhaps A.J.P. Taylor's) and garbled what he saw.

One can argue that Hitler didn't want a war with Poland in 1939--if they would just give him Danzig; but when they refused, he was not at all reluctant to invade. And he was probably genuinely surprised when Great Britain and France declared war over Poland (given their craven behavior re Czechoslovakia). He seems to have hoped that the English and the French would refrain from war (so he's reported to have said at the "Hossbach" meeting in 1937, with regard to Czechoslovakia). As to a war of eastern expansion, he was probably thinking of waging that war between 1943 and 1945 (the "Hossbach" meeting again: it was his "unalterable determination to solve the German problem of space by 1943-5 at the latest.") So, if the Hossbach memorandum is accurate (and Taylor had doubts about it), Hitler did want war, a war for Lebensraum, but later ideally than the war he got--and not (he hoped) with England and France. How Buchanan adduces that, in any general sense, Hitler did NOT want war, is pretty mysterious.

Buchanan isn't the first to adopt this point of view. The real truth we may not know for another fifty years. Was Churchill the real warmonger, drunk on too much brandy when he signed that idiotic pact with Poland? And not just that. What about those massive and totally unreasonable reparations that he, Woodrow Wilson and others laid on Germany after a war that was not even Germany's fault and that, in any case, we should have stayed out of.

The only good thing to come out of it was Gary Cooper playing Sergeant York. The war was a preemptive strike by Germany, which knew full well that Russia and France were preparing to take out the nation with a double-barreled attack.It had nothing to do with the shooting of an archduke down in Austria or wherever it was that they shot the old boy.

Of course Hitler didn't want war. He wanted to have free reign to take what he wanted without war. After all, no one but the Poles objected when Russia, Prussia and Austria carved up Poland in three easy helpings. He just wanted the pre-WWI borders back. ... to start.

Buchanan and Bachmann are surprisingly easy to confuse when you don't look closely at the names.

Hunter James,

Yes WWI and its aftermath was the foundation of WWII and reparations were a major part of that. Still, WWI was caused by the Franco-Prussian War which was every bit as much of an embarrassment to France as the end of WWI was to Germany, including reparations. There's always something in the past that can be used as an excuse. Always.

Neville Chamberlain said this 71 years ago. Pat should stop plagiarizing other politicians.

This is a small point--the Buchanan position is loathesome--but if I remember my WW II history, jolly old peace loving Adolf (fond of dogs and children!) wasn't satisfied with the Sudetenland, to which according to B. and a surprising number of commenters at Yglesias' site he was entitled, which was ceded to him at Munich, but proceeded to grab the rest of the Czech Lands including Prague. Perhaps the Sudetenland wasn't ceded to him nicely enough. Of course he would have been satisfied with Danzig, and the responsibility for the invasions of Poland, Belgium, The Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Yugoslavia, Greece and the Soviet Union were Britain and France's fault, as was the extermination of the Jews and gypsies--after all Hitler was provoked!

Personally, I dunno anything about WWII, so have no idea if Hitler's actions after Poland were planned or contingent on counteractions.

But what if, when the US bombed and invaded Iraq in 1991 or in 2003, other assorted Arab and regional nations - Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Gulf States, Turkey - had mutual defense pacts and banded together and counterattacked the US? And the US subsequently plowed all through the Middle East.

Then, future historians and pro-US schmucks might speculate about the way things turned out, saying, "where was the evidence that the US wanted to lay waste to/gain control of the Arab/Middle East?" Then other people might say, "gee, I dunno, how about the overthrow of elected governments the US deemed uncooperative, or the support of autocratic and totalitarian countries in the region to keep the oil flowing/protect Israel, or the bombing of Iraq for 12 years, or the embargoes, etc., etc."

But what's Buchanan doing?:

(1) reminding the US to avoid entangling alliances? Agreed.
(2) reminding people that the default position for wars fought to *save* lives, sacrificing the real to prevent expected future deaths, should be *No*. Agreed. (Would need high level of certainty that deaths will occur without action, and high level of certainty that action can prevent enough of them).
(3) Sending creepy messages about not intervening in WWII to save Jews. Don't agree with that one.

"[Hitler] wasn't satisfied with the Sudetenland, to which according to B. and a surprising number of commenters at Yglesias' site he was entitled, which was ceded to him at Munich, but proceeded to grab the rest of the Czech Lands including Prague."

Yes, exactly. Hitler's gobbling up of the (non-German-speaking) remainder of Czechoslovakia was compelling evidence that he wasn't just interested in bringing as many Germans as possible into the Reich. Whatever you think about the justice of Sudeten German grievances (and it's well known that Nazi propaganda grossly exaggerated the grounds for complaint), it's obvious after the fate of Czechoslovakia that you're dealing with someone bent on foreign conquest.

I'm not one to defend Pat Buchanan, but it isn't ridiculous to say Hitler didn't want full scale European war to start in September 1939. It is however absolutely ridiculous to state that Hitler didn't desire a war of conquest for German domination of Europe as it was basically the major premise the Nazi movement was built around; Hitler just wanted that war to break out in 1943 when his industrial and military buildup would be completed (this is very well documented in his own words and letters). In 1939 he was just expecting Britain/France/etc to repeat their previous caving in and his prediction turned out to be false.

Just read the whole thing to see the historical premise, context and logic. Christ Jesus Buchannan is crazy. Bad history too, that tends to happen when a politician is trying to score points with an ideological base. Obviously happening here, like the opening paragraphs repetition of Christian victims, mention of 50 million Jews and Christians as WWII's death toll...which leaves out the well over 20-30+ million non-Christian/Jewish Chinese, Japanese and Soviets who died (and also implies those aforementioned 50 million deaths were exclusively practicing religious Jews and Christians...).

I started to write something here showing exactly how and why he's dead wrong and using a dishonest historical argument deliberately to score ideological points with a group who doesn't know better and doesn't care, but I realized I was writing way too much after I got through Danzig. Its easier to say just read HP Willmott's "The Great Crusade" or any of his books on WWII as he's generally got it right, but then again he's a professional military historian and not a far-right demagogue like Buchanan

Every couple years, like clockwork, or more like a compulsion, Buchanan writes or says something truly insane about Hitler. You can count on it.

Of course, in between he says lots of other crazy stuff, too. But still, I'd take him over half the nutjobs and sycophants at Fox News.

Hunter James, times two (@20:03 and 20:05),

If you don't know the difference between WWI and WWII ("an archduke down in Austria or wherever it was that they shot the old boy". Sarajevo, actually. A part of Austro-Hungarian Empire, but, roughly, in erst-while Yugoslavia. Specifically, in the Bosnia/Herzegovina area), please have the decency to keep your trap shut on the subject. Go hunt somewhere else. There *may be* something you are competent to pronounce on.

Sheesh.

-Because Hitler wanted to end the war in 1940, almost two years before the trains began to roll to the camps.-

But those mean British and Poles MADE me fight them, and then I just HAD to put millions of Jews in camps and enslave them and gas them. It was TERRIBLE! ...(face begins to quiver)... OK, so I had already built those camps, but they were going to be much nicer until they all started PICKING on me (getting all blubbery like Glenn Beck)..I didn't WANT to commit genocide! I didn't WANT to try an conquer and subjugate Europe! Why would I want to do THAT? You think I'm CRAZY? You think I'm STUPID?

Having just read his despicable (not to say ignorant) screed defending Hitler's intentions I have found myself simply unable to patronize MSNBC in any way unless and until this very sick individual is finally barred from soiling the theoretically respectable airwaves of this network. That will, unfortunately, include Countdown so I wish to apologize and let you know that this in no way reflects on my positive opinion of your show. You are, however, earning your considerable fame and income from a "news" organization that appears to have no problem giving credibility to a person I now consider to be an outright sociopath. I would suggest, sir, that you give careful review to your principles before continuing your employment under a management team that appears to be devoid of any journalistic or moral principle.

I have not included the link to this bastards mental excrement as I am quite certain that you are well aware of if and quite capable of finding it on your own should you still need to.

I'm done with MSNBC and if you, Ed Henry and Rachel Maddow had the courage of your convictions I suspect you would be as well.

I mean, what's next from this pathetic man and MSNBC ? A reasoned defense of Jim Crowe? Dred Scott? The Inquisition?

You may reply if you wish with your response or for clarification but I should say that, at this stage, action is what is called for.

Hunter James does not seem to be aware of the fact that Churchill was not even in the Chamberlain goverment when Britain committed itself to Poland's defense. When Britain entered the war, he was named to his old post as First Lord of the Admiralty. He did not become Prime Minister until after Norway fell in 1940.

There is no further need to take anything Hunter James posts seriously.

What's so bizarre about Buchanan is why would he pick a high profile argument over an event the causes of which were settled 70 years ago? He has nothing to stand on. He just looks like a nutty anti-Semite.

"Was Churchill the real warmonger, drunk on too much brandy when he signed that idiotic pact with Poland?"

Are you Pat Buchanon? LOL! That's classic stupidity! You might want to re-check those history books!

Churchill was completely out of power, and rather unpopular with the Conservative Party before the war. He was NOT a part of the government, let alone Prime Minister when CHAMBERLIN, not Churchill, signed the pact with Poland. He supported the pact, but had NOTHING to do with negotiating it.

After war was declared in September 1939 Churchill was brought into the Cabinet. . . as First Lord of the Admiralty. Once again, he was NOT in charge of foreign relations.

Churchill only became Prime Minister in June 1940 after the fiasco of the Norway campaign and imminent collapse of France forced Chamberlin to resign.

Rather like a Monty Python sketch in it's errors!

I'm confused.

Limbaugh and others say Obama and Democrats are like Hitler and Nazis. Buchanan sounds like he's defending Hitler. That means....

Wait a minute. There's a chance the Republicans could come back in 2012?

It’s all in “Mein Kampf”, the annexation of large parts of Poland and the Russia, the killing of the Jews, everything. At least in the German edition. The English edition was abridged so as to not set off too many alarm bells. By annexation Hitler meant either killing or enslaving the Poles and Russians and seizing their land and giving it to true Germans. “Mein Kampf” is a bad read, turgid and boring, but everything is all spelled out.

As to whether Hitler wanted war verses just getting the land, Ian Kershaw’s exhaustive biography suggests he did want war with Czechoslovakia and later Poland. He wasn’t the first or last leader who wanted to be a “war president”.

This way I see it is this:
MSNBC is the one openly liberal channel out there.
Buchanan comments on MSNBC.
Buchanan defended Hitler.

Therefore the right wing will have further ammunition in its argument that Hitler was a liberal.

If Buchanan is like the rest of the GOP he is probably trying to play the victimization card -- Hitler had to invade Poland or the Soviet Union/the West would have blah blah blahed Germany until more blah blahhhh . . .

Then the next thing Buchanan will say on MSNBC is that if it wasn't for Roosevelt the Holocaust would never have happened. The way things look half the GOP will follow him right along.

Back with an overnight reflection. After all the crazy that's been on parade, I'm beginning to think that, as with hate crimes, there are limits to what should be tolerated in public venues. I was raised on the homily that "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" but that applies to my individual response, not to public discourse. Words CAN hurt public discourse, by influencing what comes easily to mind, by arousing emotions (fear and greed), by being such a torrent of muddled thinking that people don't have time to clarify or correct or by setting social norms.

Americans have a constitutional right to Free Speech, and, of course, that's a good thing. Certainly, I wouldn't want to give up MY right to call conservatives torture-loving, rigid, sex-crazed, racist, lying war-mongering, vicious, selfish, greedy, obstructionist incompetent crazies who are imperiling America's future because they focus on the wrong things and have no perspective or empathy...or, for that matter, any of the various other expressions of my liberalism. I want to be able to ridicule Pat Buchanan. I want to be able to call George Bush the worst President ever. So I respect the right of conservatives to express their ignorance.

But strongly-held opinions like mine, nonsense such as a belief in creationism, conspiracy theories on the blogosphere, and dissent are one thing. But disprovable paranoid delusions are being repeated through the media as "truth"--death panels, birthers, Obama is Hitler, Obama is going to indoctrinate our kids with HIS socialist agenda, kill granny, and now, Hitler was misunderstood--and this is damaging. This is crazy stuff.

We--real Americans--have suffered twenty years of this kind of right wing nuttiness. It crept out out the darkness after the fall of the Communist Evil Empire and has clawed its way into mainstream discourse, from "Clinton's a murderer and sex maniac", to "John Kerry's not really a hero", to "Saddam has got weapons of mass destruction" and now, this "we've got to be armed and ready against Obama's secret Muslim socialist takeover" crap. It has an impact, these delusions, and that impact is not good.

When the norm gets set by Glen Beck, Pat Buchanan, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann, we lose something precious; Some people have no shame.

The crazies are already raving that the government is going to crack down on them (indoctrination camps, anyone?) because, somewhere, in the dim recesses of their feverish, topsy-turvy brains, they know they have gone too far. So let's give them something real to worry about. Is there any constitutional mechanism that would respect the civil rights of citizens to their crazy opinions (both conservative and left-wing crazies) while preserving civil, vibrant public discourse? Their crazy is poisoning the soul of America, and I'm sick of it.

So, one facist defends another? No story here...

Having sat on the sofa with my mother, both of us aghast, mouths agape, during his 1992 GOP Convention speech, this "argument" isn't in the least surprising to me.

MY is right about the intentions. The M-R Pact was a sham, and it quieted Stalin's mobilization to the Western border.

But hey, Communism and Fascism are the same thing nowadays, right? So naturally we just picked the wrong ally. Or something.

Oh yeah. The BRITISH made him do the Final Solution.

It is so OBVIOUS now that Uncle Pat has pointed it out. Why I didn't see it before, I do not know.

Just more proof that anything sensationalistic is fine with the broadcast media. Even (?!) MSNBC. Looks like they're still trying to lure Faux viewers over.

[...] www.washingtonmonthly.com is other nice source on this topic,[...]

RE: "The British made him do the Final Solution": worth noting here that at the refugee conference at Evian-Les-Bains in France in 1938 and through World War II, the British refused to accept any significant number of Jewish refugees from Germany, Rumania, or Poland, despite the fact that the British themselves were forcibly relocating non-Jewish orphans and pauper children to Australia in large numbers at the same time to protect Australia from "the Yellow Peril." (German Jews look pretty much like German Christians, were healthy and extremely intelligent and well educated, and could have fit in smoothly.)Another odd fact: the Japanese Empire rescued more Jewish refugees than any nation other than the United States. Like the gangsters they were, the Nazi thugs were happily selling Jewish refugees to anyone who would take them for money donated by Jewish charities. The entry of the United States ended this flow of refugees and the official policy of mass murder -- which is a fact, not a myth -- was not promulgated until January 20, 1942 at the Wannsee Conference. Thousands of Jews had been murdered by SS Einsatzgruppen during the invasion of the Soviet Union, but the destruction of victims already in custody was a direct consequence of U.S. entry into the war, which closed off the three nations willing to accept the refugees: the United States, the Japanese Empire, and the Dominican Republic. As late as 1944, when the Nazi SS attempted to sell a million Jews for trucks -- and all informed people knew about the Holocaust -- the British government turned them down: "A million Jews! What would we do with them? Where would we put them?" (For openers, save their lives....then worry about it.) As one Jewish relief worker observed: "The British don't seem to object to the Final Solution at all, as long as the Germans do the actual killing." Our other major ally, Stalin, killed about twice as many people as Hitler, including both religious and secular Jews along with Christians and dissident Communists. The Nazi death camps killed a million Jewish children. Stalin's forced famine of 1932 killed three million Ukrainian children. Hitler was evil, Stalin was also evil. Harry Truman once said: "Back whichever one is losing...(and let them wipe one another out) World War II killed 21 million Russians, 7 million Germans, 7 million Poles, 6 million Jews, 3 million Japanese. The Holocaust really happened, to say otherwise is junk history. But America's entry probably killed more Jews than it saved and the British couldn't have cared less. We should have saved the refugees and kept out of the war instead of bending over backwards to provoke Japan so FDR could have a go at Hitler and help out "Uncle Joe" Stalin -- and never mention the Holocaust or try to interfere.