Saturday 6 July 2024

'Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War' by Patrick Buchanan

Winston Churchill’s political career extended from 1900, when he entered politics at the age of 26, to 1955, when his second term as Prime Minister of Britain came to an end. 

Throughout these 55 years, he was deeply involved in wars, civil wars and coups. He had little interest in issues like economic growth, healthcare, education and social development. He saw peace as a sign of national weakness and was obsessed with waging wars. 

In his book, Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, Patrick J. Buchanan argues that Churchill was the biggest warmonger of the world in the first half of the 20th century. He holds that Churchill was as much to blame for the Second World War and the holocaust as Hitler and Mussolini. 

He also blames Churchill for the rise of Stalinist Soviet Union in the post Second World War period. Buchanan quotes historian A N Wilson: “The tragedy of the twentieth century is that in order to defeat Hitler, Churchill believed it was not merely necessary but desirable to ally himself to Stalin.”

At the height of the Second World War, Churchill said in his speech in the Commons: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat’." He was being truthful—because throughout his political career, from 1900 to 1955, he had nothing to offer except unending and fruitless wars. He loved to fight wars—he despised all initiatives for peace. 

There is not a single year in Churchill’s 55 year long political career when he was not directly involved in fighting wars or in plotting coups in some part of the world. 

In the book's final chapter, Buchanan draws a comparison between Churchill and George W. Bush. He argues that just as Churchill destroyed Britain by dragging his country into one war after the other, Bush has led the USA to ruin by following the Churchillian example of involving his country into unnecessary and fruitless wars. Buchanan notes that Bush’s neoconservative worldview was inspired by Churchill’s role as a Western warmonger.

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