Bunkum as History: The Revisionist Quest for Lost Innocence

Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, by Patrick J. Buchanan, New York: Crown, 2008, 518 pp. Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization, by Nicholson Baker, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008, 567 pp. Reviewed by Joel Fishman The two titles above may be non-fiction, but they are not legitimate history-writing. Both are based on facts, but facts that each of the authors has carefully selected with an eye to conveying his own personal message: that the Second World War was an unnecessary, wasteful, senseless, and barbaric endeavor which did not save Western civilization but instead dealt it a major setback. This literature, ostensibly relating to events of the past, is closely linked to the mood of the present, particularly the larger debate in the U.S. about its place in the world. In its broadest context, the question is whether the U.S. should continue to assume its exceptional role as a super-power or conduct a foreign policy similar to that of Europe, or perhaps Canada, one based more on soft power - persuasion and international consensus. In the background, there seems to be a consensus of public opinion that the intervention in Iraq was mismanaged, even if this policy may have protected the country against terrorist attacks in the post- 9/ 11 era. During the recent election campaign, it was repeatedly asserted that America's intervention abroad and foreign aid program had misdirected its resources and attention. It would have been preferable, some asserted, for the U.S. to turn inward and cultivate its own garden. Each following his own distinct logic, Patrick Buchanan, an ultra-conservative (a genuine old-con) politician and author, and Nicholson Baker, a fashionable contemporary writer and pacifist, present arguments compatible with the sentiments described above. The main problem is that in order to prove their theses with regard to the Second World War the authors needed first to establish that Western civilization was not in danger, that Hitler's Germany did not represent a lethal threat, and that there would have been a realistic chance to make a deal with him. Such assertions belong to a not-so-honorable American historical tradition.1 They date back to the interwar era in the U.S., during which the Isolationists and Americans of pro-German sympathies unsuccessfully tried to block American intervention in the Second World Indeed, Nazi propaganda agents and their American collaborators actively propagated this message. The complete argument, which these authors state only in part, and which currently remains dormant, is the ugly accusation that the Second World War was a Jewish War. This is an old message, which was discredited long ago. That is not to say that some of the authors' views are totally lacking in originality. Rather, we are not dealing with something new, or an innocent and theoretical historical problem, but the type of issue which has the potential for great ugliness. It would not take much to wake this sleeping dog. One does not have to dig deep to find this continuity, at least in the case of Patrick Buchanan's book. In one reference, he describes the members of the America First movement as patriotic because they succeeded in preventing America from entering into the Second World War until six months after Hitler invaded Russia. Separately, he describes Winston Churchill's rough language with regard to blacks and other minorities and adds that this put him somehow in the same category as Father Charles Coughlin, except that Churchill could get away with it because he was a dedicated Zionist (402). For readers unfamiliar with him, Father Coughlin was a radio priest who spread hatred against the Jews on the airwaves and a bitter opponent of President Roosevelt. It was generally understood that Coughlin was silenced as part of Roosevelt's agreement to permit Secretary of State Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli 's tour of the U. …

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