Churchill über alles and the scourge of revisionism

Nicholson Baker reveals his naked bias: scraps of data are presented in such a way as to defend those who opposed the war, and denounce those who waged it. As an example, he mentions a 1940 Gestapo plan (approved of by Himmler) to create a “super ghetto” on the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar, to which 4 million European Jews would be taken. The implication is, of course, that the Nazis would have “resettled” rather than gassed those Jews, if only Winston had not declared war and cornered Adolf Hitler. Leaving Hitler (naturally) with no option but Zyklon-B.

In other parts of his book, Baker immortalises pacifists and humanises Nazis.

Pat Buchanan, props up a good part of his argument on the erroneous condemnation of Britain’s guarantee to Poland (of March 1939), which in turn, Buchanan laments, saw Britain declare war six months later. He considers the guarantee to be undiluted stupidity. Deceitfully, Buchanan ignores that Britain declared war because for years Hitler had violated all of Germany’s WWI agreements and had castrated Czechoslovakia.

Buchanan often repeats his assertion that the mass murder of Jews resulted from Hitler being trapped by the Allies, and echoes (as do many other pseudo historians) that extermination was not planned by the Nazis but was more of an ad hoc response to the circumstances in which the Third Reich found itself. Buchanan once again shows that he is masterful in not allowing his critics to say he misrepresents the facts. In most cases he doesn’t. He merely ignores them. There is compelling evidence, ignored by Buchanan, that from as early as 1920 (some say 1919) Herr Hitler was committed to liquidating Europe’s Jews.

That Buchanan’s sympathies rest with the Reich are clear. In the chapter “Fatal Blunder”, Buchanan uses the title to paint Britain’s political leadership - responsible for launching WWII - as overseeing the “greatest empire since Rome” shrivel into a pitiful island sucking at the American teat for subsistence.

Among other “blunders” is an event that began at 01:00 on November 10, 1938. An event best known as Kristallnacht.

That’s right. The organised state-sanctioned anti Jewish riots that razed 267 synagogues and either vandalised or looted more than 7,500 Jewish businesses, while butchering least 91 Jewish people and rounding up 25,000, is to Buchanan, a “blunder”. The Chosen People should be grateful for such generosity. After all, Buchanan’s “blunder” captures 91 deaths, whereas the pseudo historian and certified crackpot, David Irving, dismissed the gigantic human abattoirs of Auschwitz, Belsen, Sobibor, Treblinka and others, as “mere details”.

Ignoring rather than misrepresenting the facts is what condemns Buchanan and Baker. But such slyness is not limited to the two authors. The reviewer, Roy Williams exposes his bias or ignorance. Perhaps both.

Williams parrots Buchanan: “Hitler did not fight World War II to bring about the Holocaust. The Holocaust was a direct and foreseen consequence of Germany being simultaneously at war with Britain, the US and Stalin’s Russia.” Clearly both Buchanan and Williams are at best unaware, or at worst excuse, the one million Jews slaughtered in the name of racial purity before the plans of the Endlösung der Judenfrage (Final Solution to the Jewish Question) were fully implemented in 1942.

Williams further shows his hand when, at the end of his review, he crows “in July 1945, soon after the war ended in Europe, Britain held a general election … (where) Clement Attlee’s Labor Party won in a landslide. The beleaguered British people ... had seen through (Churchill)”.

Not a peep from Williams reminding readers that Churchill regained the Prime Ministership in 1951.

If Buchanan and Baker want to ignore facts, pen distortions and revise history, then so be it. But let’s demand that reviewers don’t give them a free pass.

Of course that presupposes that reviewers, unlike Buchanan and Baker, didn’t skip history classes at school. A tall order I suspect.