From 1480 to 1940

278 wars involving European countries where fought.

Below is a breakdown (in %) of the European nations that were involved in these wars.

England: 28%
France: 26%
Spain: 23%
Russia: 22%
Austria: 19%
Turkey: 15%
Poland: 11%
Sweden: 9%
Holland 8%
Germany/Prussia: 8%
Denmark 7%

Professor Philip Quincy Wright is a very respected scientist who, in 1970, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Price. Read his Biography at: http://tripatlas.com/Quincy_Wright

Ernst Friedel

“In dealing with Mr. Buchanan, one must accept at the beginning two caveats. First, as is his style, he will always resort to ad hominem attacks in lieu of an argument. Thus note at the very beginning his sneering ‘court historian of the neoconservatives.’
Second, Buchanan unfortunately is neither a reliable journalist nor an historian, and thus simply cannot be trusted to report accurately what is written.”

The ad hominen fallacy wrap up in an allegation of some one else employing the ad hominen fallacy.

Wrong. The last chance to prevent the global conflagration came on September 3 when Britain declared war on Germany. Germany had not declared war on Britain, nor did it intend to. Germany’s interests were in Eastern Europe, recovering German lands amputated at the Peace of Paris (Danzig and the Polish Corridor), and eventually confronting the Soviet Union over the other weak states of the region who had since ancient times been ruled either by Romanovs, Hohenzoellerns, or Hapsburgs. By inserting Britain (and thus France and later the United States) into this battle between two ruthless dictators, Chamberlain, Halifax, and Churchill guaranteed the destruction of their empire as well as condemned many more millions unnecessarily to death.

Why not just leave Germany and Russia to fight it out, weakening each other and coming to some eventual stalemate? I know that would have outrightly condemned Eastern Europe to rule by dictatorship by one of these two men, but was the result of the war any better for these people who suffered under 50 years of rule by the “foul baboonery of Bolshevism”, in the words of Churchill in a more sane frame of mind.

Not excusing these murderers, I think Hanson’s idea of sending in 100 divisions,(where were these warriors when France was overrun in a matter of days in 1940?), is utterly ridiculous and shows a judgment perhaps clouded by the politics of western interventionism. It was this very intervention by the West, arrogantly assuming that we knew better and could structure the world according to our own ideals, that threw the gas on this regional struggle and exploded it into the global conflagration Hanson decries.

Just the same, he uses his so call “political authority” to justify his abilities as a historian. Quite frankly, I’d rather trust Alan Keyes to teach me how to build a nuclear submarine using objects found around the house.

The fact that any media has embraced such a public figure only speaks to the quality of the train wreck we are witnessing, not the quality of the train itself.

That may very well have been your claim, but I’ve met some of his team and your claim doesn’t match the historical evidence – including the declassified debriefings.

I suspect a crank in your vocabulary is anyone who deviates on this issue from the orthodoxy established during the passions and hatreds of WWII.

As I said, Meyer may possibly have been off by a few dozen on Kristallnacht, but the comparison was with the millions already murdered by the Bolsheviks and the tens of millions of war dead that followed. As Buchanan said, “Kristallnacht was a shameful crime and a historic blunder…shocking, revolting and stupid.” As you rightly said, (the number of dead from) “Kristallnacht alone doesn’t include the tens of thousands of Jews put into concentration camps in Germany.” But in your determination to show that nothing could have been worse, you omit the fact that most were released the following month with a warning to leave Germany. I don’t think Buchanan even referred to the subsequent release, but the history is well documented. As horrible as their treatment was, Britain’s intervention assured that things would get worse for them and others.

Given the track record of Hanson and other neo-cons in applying WWII’s appeasement “lessons” to contemporary geopolitics, such lessons need more careful scrutiny. Most scholars of the period recognize the insanity of Britain’s surrendering its war-making decision to a Polish military junta with its own agenda. Buchanan is measured in supporting their analysis. But his gifts as a brilliant polemist and pithy, lively writer attract a wider audience. That’s one reason, I suspect, for the hysterical reaction of those clinging to the old war propaganda influenced dogma.

By the way, in insisting that new circumstances are irrelevant to how one deals with a problem (e.g. those prior to and after WWII) you continue to miss the point.