Pat Buchanan:Hitler Wins and No Holocaust

"No war, no Holocaust."



Pity Patrick J. Buchanan: pessimism in his old age has left him a shadow of his former self.

Once a fiery, mainstream conservative speaker and writer, Buchanan has spent the last 15 years marginalizing himself among many of the same people who once cheered him.

His latest column "Was the Holocaust Inevitable?" published, both by Town Hall and WND, is indicative of where Buchanan is coming from these days. His history of World War II, Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World contains some usual views on that war.

Those who had applauded the old culture warrior of the 1970s and 80s, could only shake their heads. The head-shaking had begun in the 1990s when PJB had turned into a leading advocate of government control.

Government control? Pat Buchanan?

Sadly, yes. Buchanan became an outspoken economic nationalist during his first run for the presidency, insisting free trade was damaging the country. Buchanan had discovered something that liberals instinctively knew: that government intrusion is good--as long as it's intruding on behalf of his chosen cause.

Buchanan's equally-outspoken opposition to war in Iraq caused his magazine, The American Conservative, to lose at least one reader. His continued opposition to protecting any American interest no doubt lost him a few more.

In October 1999, Buchanan was on firmer ground when he attacked the Republican Party--as well as the Democrats--as a "beltway party". Many conservatives have echoed those thoughts, and in 2006, Republicans lost control of Congress after years of feeding heavily at the public earmark trough.

Buchanan started the 1990s out by simultaneous sallies against Israel and its American supporters.

* Buchanan referred to Capitol Hill as "Israeli-occupied territory."
(St. Louis Post Dispatch, 10/20/90)

* Buchanan issued, perhaps, his most famous quote on the subject during the First Gulf War: "There are only two groups that are beating the drums for war in the Middle East -- the Israeli defense ministry and its 'amen corner' in the United States." ("McLaughlin Group," 8/26/90)

* Writing of "group fantasies of martyrdom," Buchanan challenged the
historical record that thousands of Jews were gassed to death by diesel
exhaust at Treblinka: "Diesel engines do not emit enough carbon monoxide
to kill anybody." (New Republic, 10/22/90) Buchanan's columns have run in
the Liberty Lobby's Spotlight, the German-American National PAC newsletter
and other publications that claim Nazi death camps are a Zionist
concoction.

This led some to look back at Buchanan's role in the Ronald's Reagan's visit to Bitburg, Germany.

Buchanan supported President Reagan's plan to visit a German military cemetery at Bitburg in 1985, where among buried wermacht soldiers, were forty eight buried Waffen SS members. Over the vocal objections of Jewish groups, the trip went through. In an interview, author Elie Wiesel described attending a White House meeting of Jewish leaders about the trip,

"The only one really defending the trip," he said, "was Pat Buchanan, saying, 'We cannot give the perception of the president being subjected to Jewish pressure."

Buchanan said in response in an ABC interview in 1992,

"I didn't say it and Elie Wiesel wasn't even in the meeting. [...] that meeting was held three weeks before the Bitburg summit was held. If I had said that, it would have been out of there within hours and on the news."

Largely forgotten today is Buchanan's role as a senior adviser to presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan, and his stint as the original host on CNN's Crossfire.

Which brings us to PJB's latest column, taken from his latest book about World War II. Britain declined after the war, choosing to cut loose its many colonies over the never 20 years. Buchanan sees Britain's slide through the prism of his particular causes: free trade and Britain's participation in two World Wars.

No Brit can easily concede my central thesis: The Brits kicked away their empire. Through colossal blunders, Britain twice declared war on a Germany that had not attacked her and did not want war with her, fought for 10 bloody years and lost it all.

This is, of course, one man's reading of history.

Buchanan's most outrageous claim may have been this next one.

"If Hitler were out to conquer the world, why did he not build a great fleet?"

Germany's resources were not unlimited, and Hitler did secretly build up the German fleet throughout the 1930s, until it was probably the 3rd or 4th most-powerful in the world. In fact, Hitler kept the German shipyards busy around-the-clock right up to--and after the start--of WWII.

By the end of the First World War the German Navy was one of the largest in the world. However, under the terms of the Versailles Treaty in 1919, the German government was restricted to vessels under 10,000 tons, forbidden to own submarines and allowed only 1,500 officers.

When Adolf Hitler became Chancellor in 1933 he implemented Plan Z, a ten year programme to develop a fleet capable of challenging the Royal Navy. The main emphasis was placed on the building of submarines and fast surface squadrons in order to be able to control Britain's vital trade supply lines.

German shipyards had difficulty producing the ships ordered by Hitler and on the outbreak of the Second World War the German Navy only had two battleships, two battlecruisers, three armoured cruisers, three heavy cruisers, six light cruisers, 22 destroyers and 59 submarines. Soon afterwards the Bismarck was completed. At 41,700 tons, it was considered the most powerful warship in the world.

That view expanded into still-more controversial territory when Buchanan's views of Hitler and the Holocaust hit the newsstands. The latest Buchanan historical theory is that the Holocaust would never have happened if Hitler had won the war.

Not until midwinter 1942 was the Wannsee Conference held, where the Final Solution was on the table.

That conference was not convened until Hitler had been halted in Russia, was at war with America and sensed doom was inevitable. Then the trains began to roll.

Nonsense.

Apparently, Buchanan's now acquired the powers of a psychic: he knows that Hitler "sensed doom was inevitable" in 1942.

Buchanan would also have us believe that Hitler's life-long, maniacal animus toward the Jews began only when he felt the war was lost. He does not explain Hitler's insistence to the very end that Germany would win--and the unpleasant consequences for anyone in Hitler's circle who was unwise enough to express otherwise.

He also does not explain Hitler's dehumanization of Jews as "insects" and "animals". Pat would have us believe Hitler was only joking about Kristallnacht--which happened four years before Buchanan claims that Hitler got serious about erasing European Jewry at Wannsee.

There's more, but space is limited today. This is only the beginning of a sad task: the highlighting of Patrick J. Buchanan's long slide into irrelevancy among the very people who used to urge him on.

We never much had any use for the label "Far Right". Most often it was used by the Mainstream and Liberal media for any view which was contrary to their own. But, Buchanan may be the Jimmy Carter of the Far Right: trading in on prestige garnered earlier in his career; never missing a chance to attack US interests wherever they intersect with Israel.

Like we said, pity Patrick J. Buchanan: pessimism in his old age has left him a shrinking audience for his increasingly-eccentric views.

by Mondoreb
images:
* patrickjbuchanan
Sources:
* Pat Buchanan: Hitler Didn't Plan to Kill the Jews
* Was the Holocaust inevitable?
* Was the Holocaust Inevitable?
* Pat Buchanan
* Pat Buchanan, Antisemitism and the Holocaust
* German Navy 1939

Bush Questions FDR Decision Not to Bomb "Auschwitz"

President Bush, during a visit to Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, purportedly made statements that questioned the United States' decision to not bomb Auschwitz or the nearby "rail lines" which brought millions of Jews to their awaited fate, of torture, then extermination, during the latter part of WWII. Source - AP

Nazi Camps in Occupied Europe 1943-1944

Throughout German-occupied Europe, the Germans arrested those who resisted their domination and those they judged to be racially inferior or politically unacceptable. People arrested for resisting German rule were mostly sent to forced-labor or concentration camps. The Germans deported Jews from all over occupied Europe to extermination camps in Poland, where they were systematically killed, and also to concentration camps, where they were used for forced labor. Transit camps such as Westerbork, Gurs, Mechelen, and Drancy in western Europe and concentration camps like Bolzano and Fossoli di Carpi in Italy were used as collection centers for Jews, who were then deported by rail to the extermination camps. According to SS reports, there were more than 700,000 prisoners registered in the concentration camps in January 1945. Source - Jewish Virtual Library

Tom Segev, a leading Israeli Holocaust scholar, said the remarks by Bush appeared "spontaneous" and that this was "the first time a U. S. President had made this acknowledgment."

Bush twice had tears in his eyes during an hour-long tour of the museum, said Shalev, who guided Bush through the exhibits.

Upon viewing an aerial shot of Auschwitz, taken during the war by U.S. forces, he said Bush called the decision not to bomb it "complex." He then called over Rice to discuss President Franklin D. Roosevelt's decision, clearly pondering the options before rendering an opinion of his own, Shalev said.

Shalev quoted Bush as asking Rice, "Why didn't Roosevelt bomb it?" He said Rice and Bush discussed the matter further and then the president delivered his verdict.

"We should have bombed it," Shalev, speaking in Hebrew, quoted Bush as saying.

Source - Florida Center for Instructional Technology

Briefing reporters later on Air Force One, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Bush was referring to the rail lines and not the nearby Nazi-German death camp where an estimated 1.1 to 1.5 million men, women, and children perished.

"It is clear now that the U.S. knew a lot about it," Segev said. "It's possible that bombing at least the railway to the camps may have saved the lives of the Jews of Hungary. They were the very last ones who were sent to Auschwitz at a time when everybody knew what was going on."

At the dedication of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington in 1993, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel famously asked, "Why weren't the railways leading to Birkenau bombed by allied bombers? As long as I live I will not understand that."

The Chairman of the museum, Avner Shalev, remarked later that evening that Bush was "not specific about what the Allies should have bombed."

In 1944, Roosevelt's assistant secretary of war wrote about the United States' decision to not take any action during the latter part of WWII when the "evidence" of Nazi death camps was now "clear." And yet, the first Nazi concentration camp, Dachau, opened its gates in March of 1933.

"Such an operation could be executed only by the diversion of considerable air support essential to the success of our forces now engaged in decisive operations elsewhere and would in any case be of such doubtful efficacy that it would not be warrant use of our resources," he wrote in an Aug. 14, 1944, letter.

Reactions to Bush's statement varied:

A professor of Jewish Thought at Israel's Hebrew University, Eliezer Schweid, said the bombing was "irrelevant in retrospect".

The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies in Washington:

"The refusal to bomb Auschwitz was part of a broader policy by the Roosevelt administration to refrain from taking action to rescue or shelter Jewish refugees during the Holocaust. Tragically, the United States turned away from one of history's most compelling moral challenges," said Rafael Medoff, the institute's director.

Whether the Allies should have bombed Auschwitz has been a long standing controversy from WWII, according to Mitchell Bard of the Jewish Virtual Library.

David Wyman's The Abandonment Of The Jews argues that the failure of the Allies to take action against Auschwitz was "longstanding indifference to the fate of the Jews rather than the practicality impossibility of the operation."

Other arguments were that the Allies were unaware of the Nazis systematically "relocating" entire populations of Jews from newly occupied territories until late in the war.

One argument is that the Allies did not know about the Final Solution early enough to make plans to bomb the camps and they didn't have reliable intelligence about their location. In fact, the Allies began had information about the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews by 1942. As early as June 1944, the United States had detailed information about the layout of Auschwitz from Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wexler, who had escaped that April. In fact, he cites Richard Breitman, who concluded that prior to 1994 “there was enough generally accurate information about Auschwitz-Birkenau to preclude the argument that the Allies did not bomb the camp because they got the necessary information too late.” Source - Jewish Virtual Library

The Jews were not relocated to other cities, instead they were loaded on cattle cars, shipped to concentration camps located next to quaint little towns such as Dachau in Germany and Auschwitz in Poland.

Both the British Secretary of State for Air, Sir Archibald Sinclair, and the U.S. Assistant Secretary of War, John McCloy, concluded Auschwitz could not be bombed. Erdheim notes, however, that this determination was made without following normal procedures to make such a decision. “The 'could not' assessment, in short,” Erdheim says, “appeared the most expedient way to implement the already established policy of not using the military to aid 'refugees.'” Source - Jewish Virtual Library

The argument that bombing the train lines would have been impossible was countered by the view of former Senator George McGovern, the pilot of a B-24 mission in 1944 that bombed Nazi oil facilities a mere five miles from Auschwitz:

In 2005, he said “There is no question we should have attempted...to go after Auschwitz. There was a pretty good chance we could have blasted those rail lines off the face of the Earth, which would have interrupted the flow of people to thos death chambers, and we had a pretty good chance of knocking out those gas ovens." Source - Jewish Virtual Library

This was the second trip Bush has made to the memorial, the first time in 1998, while he was Governor of Texas. During this trip he spoke about the "horror" and "evil" of the Holocaust.

"I was most impressed that people in the face of horror and evil would not forsake their God. In the face of unspeakable crimes against humanity, brave souls — young and old — stood strong for what they believe," Bush said.

"I wish as many people as possible would come to this place. It is a sobering reminder that evil exists, and a call that when evil exists we must resist it," he said.

The debate over whether the Allies should have bombed Auschwitz or the rail lines that led to it will continue. But in the words of noted Roosevelt historian, Doris Kearns Goodwin, who believed bombing Auschwitz would have been worthwhile:

“If it had saved only one Jew. FDR somehow missed seeing how big an issue it was.” With the kind of political will and moral courage the Allies exhibited in other missions throughout the war, it is plain that the failure to bomb Birkenau, the site of mankind's greatest abomination, was a missed opportunity of monumental proportions.

By LBG
Image - Artfiles
Image - Auschwitz Railroad Lines
Source - AP - Bush indicates bombing at Auschwitz might have saved lives
Source - Jewish Virtual Library - Could The Allies Have
Bombed Auschwitz-Birkenau?




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Ahmadinejad & 9/11: Interview Confirms His PR Desires to Use Ground Zero As Propaganda

Compiled by Mondoreb

Sometimes, after reading, it's hard to boil it down any more than it has been. On the TV interview with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iranian president, one feels this way.
From Little Green Footballs:

Iranian thug-in-chief Mahmoud Ahmadinejad explains his reasons for wanting to visit Ground Zero, confirming (as if we needed confirmation) that it was the right decision not to allow this creature anywhere near the site.

The video and Memri TV transcript:

Interviewer: You were supposed to visit the site of the Twin Towers, but this aroused controversy and many objections in their media. What do you think about this?

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: As you know, by spreading lies and by portraying me... For example, they show my picture next to a picture of Bin Laden, or next to tanks and cannons firing and killing people. This is psychological warfare.

9/11 has led to many significant changes. It was used as a pretext to occupy Afghanistan and Iraq. It was the reason for the killing of hundreds of thousands of people. It is only natural for us to respond in an appropriate manner. I wanted to visit there last year, but there was no time for that. So I decided to visit there this year to pay my respect to the casualties and convey my sympathy to the families.

I also wanted to raise several questions and express my views. I wanted to say that in my opinion, this incident is the result of the mismanagement of the world, and the result of the inhuman management of the world. Why did such an incident take place? We need to get to the root causes. We don’t want them to turn this incident, in 20 years’ time, into another false idol like the Holocaust, which they would use as a pretext to kill peoples, and prevent anybody from opening this [Pandora’s] box and examining what really happened in this incident. They might turn 9/11 into something sacred, and whoever does not accept it would be considered an infidel, whereas whoever accepts it would have to accept all the ensuing crimes.

In any event, we must express our views. I believe that this way, we would have formed cordial relations with the American people, and could have opened this issue up for discussion. Well, this is exactly what they want to prevent.

Complete translated video interview at the aforementioned Memri TV.
Spree at Wake Up America next weighed in:

I guess all of our concerns about his using a trip to 9/11 for nothing more than propaganda has been proven beyond a doubt now.

Calling the Holocaust, for anyone that knows anything at all about the holocaust, a "false idol" shows the depth of the lunatic, Ahmadinejad's, denial and insanity.

See-Dubya at Michelle Malkin said:

Good lord. Our worst instincts about the political reasons behind Ahmedinejad’s trip to Ground Zero have just been confirmed, straight from the horse’s, er, mouth.

(viLGF):
And lastly back to LGF for a neat summation:

That last bit is the important part. He clearly wanted to appeal to the far left, and feed their sick self-loathing fantasies, injecting a little more moral equivalence poison into the American bloodstream. And sadly, he would have found no lack of willing listeners among the Troofers and the Daily Kos Nutroots.

On this subject, tt's hard to add much more to all that.

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