Buchanan Responds to Hitchens

Pat Buchanan has responded to Chirstopher Hitchens's criticism of his book on Winston Churchill's "unnecessary" war against Adolph Hitler. Buchanan's perception of World War II is one of ignorance. He seems to think that Hitler would have been appeased if he was allowed to take control of certain territories. This is, of course, nonsense and it lets Hitler off the hook for his insane actions. Buchanan is, as Hitchens said, and apologist for Hitler.

Here is what Buchanan wrote:

"Did Hitler's crimes justify the Allies' terror-bombing of Germany?"

"Indeed they did, answers Christopher Hitchens in his Newsweek response to my new book, Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War: "The stark evidence of the Final Solution has ever since been enough to dispel most doubts about, say, the wisdom or morality of carpet-bombing German cities."

"Atheist, Trotskyite and newborn neocon, Hitchens embraces the morality of lex talionis: an eye for an eye. If Germans murdered women and children, the British were morally justified in killing German women and children."

"According to British historians, however, Churchill ordered the initial bombing of German cities on his first day in office, the very first day of the Battle of France, on May 10, 1940."

At this point Buchanan went on to quote Paul Johnson, who is not an expert on World War II, and A.J.P. Taylor, whose work is from the 1960s and 1970s and was quite controversial and not generally accepted by other historians.

Buchanan continued:

"After the fall of France, Churchill wrote Lord Beaverbrook, minister of air production: "When I look round to see how we can win the war, I see that there is only one sure path ... an absolutely devastating, exterminating attack by very heavy bombers from this country upon the Nazi homeland.""

""Exterminating attack," said Churchill. By late 1940, writes historian Paul Johnson, "British bombers were being used on a great and increasing scale to kill and frighten the German civilian population in their homes.""

""The adoption of terror bombing was a measure of Britain's desperation," writes Johnson. "So far as air strategy was concerned," adds British historian A.J.P. Taylor, "the British outdid German frightfulness first in theory, later in practice, and a nation which claimed to be fighting for a moral cause gloried in the extent of its immoral acts.""

Full article.