He would probably be surprised by the central role he and his fellow Nazis play in contemporary American public dialog: as a cultural touchstone in the health care debate, as a point of comparison for CIA interrogation techniques, and now as reluctant warriors:
Because Hitler wanted to end the war in 1940, almost two years before the trains began to roll to the camps.
Hitler had never wanted war with Poland, but an alliance with Poland such as he had with Francisco Franco’s Spain, Mussolini’s Italy, Miklos Horthy’s Hungary and Father Jozef Tiso’s Slovakia.
Indeed, why would he want war when, by 1939, he was surrounded by allied, friendly or neutral neighbors, save France. And he had written off Alsace, because reconquering Alsace meant war with France, and that meant war with Britain, whose empire he admired and whom he had always sought as an ally.
I’m no expert on Hitler Studies, but I do find it interesting that, in today’s free-wheeling marketplace of ideas, Hitler apologism won’t get you kicked off MSBNC, but criticizing coverage of the Iraq war will.
Ethan Porter, Matt Yglesias, and Steve Benen have more on this delightful topic.
Sometimes I think we should just be grateful there’s no Luke, Jenna, and Cokie Buchanans running around the set of the “Today” show. Though his sister is bad enough.
beltane
This country is getting a “Last Days of Pompeii” feel to it. When will the volcano erupt?
chopper
oh, now i’m humming that song.
DougJ
When will the volcano erupt?
I don’t know, no one’s monitoring it.
kipkrao
This guy has never heard of Hitler’s “Lebensraum”.
Makewi
Buchanan, in case you were not aware, has this idea that fighting WW2 was not necessary. Wrote a whole book about it. This argument seems to be his way of helping himself support that idea. Not unlike the argument that Saddam was no danger to anyone, except perhaps 27% loonier.
The Moar You Know
Pat Buchanan is a Hitler-loving, Jew-hating asshole.
Somebody had to say it, it might as well be me.
freelancer
Bucky better be careful, in 2027, the Nazis are coming back, and this time, they’re going after Jerks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fe9R7jcMPp4
John PM
Looks like Pat is trying to give Harry Turtledove a run for his money in the alternative history genre. Turtledove has a new book out with WWII starting in 1938 because Chamberlain did not “appease” Hitler. Saying that Hitler did not want war would be a new assumption in the genre.
Calouste
Buchanan conveniently ignores that Hitler has been going on about creating “Lebensraum” for Germany by expanding to the East since the mid-20s.
Buchanan is a Nazi-apologizing piece of shit.
MobiusKlein
Buchanan was in the 92 and 96 Republican primaries too.
Did well in NH, part of the trend that GBush was not conservative enough, splitting the R coalition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Buchanan#1992_presidential_primaries
Joshua
I read the original piece by Buchanan, and I honestly have no fucking clue what his point was. I was inclined to read it as some kind of satirical thing, until I saw @Makewi‘s comment. No, apparently the dude’s a straight-up Hitler apologist.
And, yeah, still on MSNBC. Is there any wingnut too nutty to be on the Sunday talk shows?
Donald G
Memo to Pajamanoids: Pat Buchanan is the definition of being “objectively pro-fascist”, not “any liberal who disagrees with Dick Cheney.” Thanx. :-)
shelley matheis
Ah, yes. Poor, sad, victimized Hitler. He was just trying to establish a ‘friendly’ dictatorship over Europe. And his massive war machine was threatened by both France and Poland. So the poor dear had to invade them, don’t you see?
The mind reels.
Sweet Jesus. What will it take to get this fascist off MSNBC?
MobiusKlein
And don’t forget his impact on the Florida ‘Butterfly’ ballot that ended up him getting a bunch of Jewish Grandmas to ‘vote’ for him, possibly providing the margin of GWB victory in 2000,
Donald G
@kipkrao:
“I don’t want war, I only want peace… peace… peace!
A little piece of Poland
A little piece of France
A little piece of Hungary
Or Austria perchance…”
freelancer
The wingnut gravitational tides are in a great deal of flux.
Obama is a totalitarian dictator who has us on the march to fascism, he’s doing things that remind us of Hitler! Though, I might add, Adolf wasn’t a bad leader, he could really capture a crowd, and had a lot of loyal followers. I mean, WWII only happened because Britain was a total concern troll.
You know what this means…9/12 project, and America: built by white folks, fuck yeah!
Brachiator
Oh, crap, I’m all confused now.
If Pat Buchanan starts comparing Obama to Hitler, will he mean that as a compliment?
Sloth
It’s The Producers in real life.
MBunge
Pat doesn’t ignore that the Nazis wanted to expand to the East. His whole point is that the West should have let them and if France and Britain hadn’t given security guarantees to Poland, there could have been a Nazi vs. Soviet death match instead of World War II.
It’s not that crazy an idea, except Pat convienently ignores the fact that whoever won would have had to have been dealt with eventually, and there’s no guarantee the West would have been any better prepared to do that in 1945 or whenever it happened.
Mike
SpotWeld
… okay, let’s all just agree to stop putting LSD in the right-wing drinking water supply. It’s stopped being funny.
gwangung
He’s part of the liberal media, you know…
YellowJournalism
@SpotWeld: No kidding.
SGEW
Again, nobody should be surprised by this.
Remember, this is the same guy who wrote an apologia for Chinese totalitarianism that argued by analogy that the U.S.A. has similar problems with the “ethnonationalism” of non-majority (read: not white christian) peoples. Key takeaway:
In order to avoid this terrible fate of a multiracial, multicultural society, he implies that we should take the same tactics as the Chinese use against Uighurs or Tibetans, or Turkey did with the Kurds, or Russia did in Chechnya. He is literally advocating white/christian supremacy by force. It reeks of outright genocide, both through rhetoric and historical example. Seriously. Read the whole thing.
Link. (Warning – links to WorldNetDaily)
So again: Yes, Pat Buchanan is literally a white christian supremacist/eliminationist. Say it again.
Donald G
Pattypatty Buckbuck will never compare Obama to Hitler…
He’ll compare him to Stalin, instead.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Is there a reason why crazy uncle Pat never talks about Imperial Japan? Last time I checked, we decided to call it World War II for a reason. I wonder what these folks would have to say about Pat’s bizarre notion that we should have just kept clear of the whole thing.
Victory
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4lJ9vsZjMU
SGEW
By the way, I take less issue with Pat’s most recent apologia for totalitarian states than I do with the one I quoted from, above. The Hitler piece is more contrarian historical revisionism from a suspicious (and conspicuous) motivation, while the China piece is straight up eliminationist material.
Also (from commenter Damiani on Yglesias’ thread): “. . . does it count as a Godwin when he’s actually, literally apologizing for the Nazis?”
Comrade Kevin
@gwangung:
Just another example of Liberal Fascism!
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@SGEW:
What, you mean like accuse them of being terrorists and throwing them in a brutal prison on the basis of no evidence whatsoever? And then cover that up by constructing a Kafka-esque system of un-justice that blocks any possibility of legal redress while pretending to give lip service to the idea? That would be horrible.
Jennifer
But the Today show does have a Jenna.
Jenna Bush.
Because they just couldn’t find anyone more qualified to serve as their “education correspondent”.
GambitRF
Does that explain why he’s still on MSNBC? Like the audience in The Producers, the powers that be at MSNBC mistake his complete seriousness for satire? Because otherwise I’m pretty much at a loss for what he’s still doing on TV.
Calouste
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Because the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor and started the War. Pat doesn’t think “gooks” could do that to the white man, could they?
Midnight Marauder
@MBunge:
Actually, I don’t think that was his point at all, and yes, it is a pretty crazy fucking idea.
arguingwithsignposts
Hah, from the comments on Matt Yglesias blog:
gocart mozart
To follow up on SGEW’s point, Pat is strongly anti-Hispanic immigration, both legal and otherwise. Hispanics are the most Catholic of all Americans. If he wanted America to be more Christian he would be encouraging more Hispanic immigration. Clearly he cares more about the “white” part than the Christian part of his America.
Midnight Marauder
And I’m really curious at this point what it’s going to take for MSNBC to remove this idiotic, worthless excuse of a human being from its payroll. I mean, when you’re revising history to be a Hitler apologist and that still won’t get you fired, what in the fuck does it take to get the boot? Does he have to commit infanticide on live television and devour a baby? Is that what it takes to get fired from MSNBC?
Karen
Buchanan has always been sore that the “wrong” side won WWII. Apparently, his whole family rooted for the Axis. The funny thing is that if he tried to sing his love song for Hitler in Germany now, he’d get arrested pronto.
SGEW
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: An excellent point, of course.
However, note that the Uighur “terrorists” are only Buchanan’s starting point, before moving on to his genocidal (or at least segregationist/eliminationist) discussion. I would argue that there’s a categorical difference between disappearing individuals (even many individuals) and advocating for the systematic suppression of an entire peoples. Both are crimes against humanity, but there’s a real question of magnitude, no?
ihop
it’s as if the roasted corpse of goebbels vomited out that screed on its very own.
and then got paid for it.
oh well, at least this crap puts the end to jonah goldberg’s bizarre idea about who would be the inheritors of the nazis.
arguingwithsignposts
I swear I can’t tell anymore who is the craziest wingnut: Malkin, Bachmann, Buchanan, Beck … the list goes on. It’s like they’re in a race or something to see who can say the stupidest, most insane thing.
This must be some kind of government stimulus plan for Sadly, No!
Makewi
I don’t see any folks on the right lining up in agreement with Pat over this line of reasoning. It’s insane, but it’s Pat’s own insanity.
Jay B.
Not unlike the argument that Saddam was no danger to anyone, except perhaps 27% loonier.
Which is 1000% more stupid than believing that he posed no threat to the United States.
DougJ
It’s insane, but it’s Pat’s own insanity.
I agree.
Cat Lady
Have these supposedly American right wing assholes seen the movies I saw growing up and actually rooted for the bad guys? Could they have seen Saving Private Ryan, Bridge on the River Kwai, Guns of Navaronne, Dirty Dozen, Where Eagles Dare, Schindler’s List and so on and so forth, and rooted for the poor misunderstood valiant-and-steadfast-to-the-end Nazis? The Deerhunter must give the torture apologists a sad too, since the torturers are supposed to be bad. All this time I thought the fucktards hated Hollywood because of teh gay and teh sex.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
The Reader’s Digest condensed version of Pat’s book that is up on the web has enough fallacies and lies about WW2 that you could go on forever ripping holes in it, but I particularly liked the part where he chalks up the entire casualty total for the war (approx 55 million dead, IIRC) to the conflict in Europe, implying that if only the western democracies had been more flexible in dealing with Germany then the loss of life might have been much less.
I guess Pat is so ignorant of WW2 history that he doesn’t even know that approximately 20 million out of that total of 55 million deaths were in Asia, not Europe. And that in Asia the war started in 1937 (or 1931 if you want to count the earlier Japanese conquests in Manchuria). Nice research there, Pat.
Demo Woman
What are the odds that if Pat is let go, he is picked up by FoxTV. It seems fitting that since Pat likes to talk about white supremacy and Hitler, that he be allowed to do so in a country where they don’t appreciate that type of free speech.
We could buy him airline tickets to Germany and allow him to preach in the square there.
David Hunt
@Brachiator:
I knew someone would beat me to the punch. Buchanan has just taken the Big (Godwin) Gun out of his list of available slanders for Obama and turned it back at his own head. I take this as a sign that the Right is moving on from Hitler comparisons and is soon going to start openly declaring the Obama is the Anti-Christ.
El Cid
Strangely enough, a lot of people today remember Hitler for what he and his Nazi movement did, and are less concerned about what he might have wanted if things had gone more his way.
Calouste
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Well, they’re Asian dead, aren’t they? Of course they don’t count in Pat’s eyes.
El Cid
@Jay B.: Saddam Hussein posed some threat to the United States, just not any type or form in which an invasion and occupation was even in the neighborhood of a sane response.
Demo Woman
@Midnight Marauder: O’Reilly is still on TV preaching about Bill Clinton’s lies even though Murdoch paid to have his sexual harassment suit disappear. For those who haven’t read the police report on smoking gun, it had to do with beans, loofahs and telephone sex.
It’s a shame that there does not appear to be a line in sand on what you can say. There is no decency anymore and it sickens me.
Leelee for Obama
I return us all once again to Miss Molly Ivins. The day after Buchanan won the NH Primary in ’92, she wrote a column saying his speech was quite something, but she was sure it sounded better in the original German.
I miss her every day.
Mayken
@El Cid: Yeah, including the Germans. Maybe especially the Germans. I was rightfully chided by one of my former German co-workers for poo-pooing the idea that a German national might be a danger to the US. He told me never to forget that much of the German population was either cheering Hitler or actively supporting his conquest. Those that didn’t agree were either silent or dead.
Demo Woman
@Demo Woman: There is something that ‘might’ get you fired and that’s the word fuck.
Maus
“Hitler apologism won’t get you kicked off MSBNC”
MSNBC and CNN aren’t liberal, only when viewed next to Fox.
tripletee
@Midnight Marauder:
It depends. If he was advocating for health care reform at the same time, then possibly. On the other hand, the baby might have vital intelligence that could help stop a terrorist attack. Isn’t stopping another 9/11 more important than whether or not Pat Buchanan eats an infant (after extracting vital intelligence from it, of course) on national television?
Anyway, I’m sure it’s the Democrats’ fault for not being bi-partisan enough. Reposted from an earlier thread, minus the strike-through inducing hyphens:
Perhaps emboldened by the indefensible kinds of rhetoric that emanated from some on the Left during the Bush years, Pat Buchanan has arguably stepped over the line by advancing an impassioned, and strangely compelling, defense of Hitler. This line of argument, while perhaps chilling to some, is not surprising in such a politically-charged atmosphere, where the minority Republican Party struggles to make its voice heard over the din of partisan warfare sparked by the Democratic victory last November.
[/Broder]
Face it, our national media is composed almost entirely of shameless hacks and/or moral midgets. They won’t even raise an eyebrow at a little Hitler apologia.
anonevent
@David Hunt: Ummm, they already do that.
Zifnab
So, for the record we’ve got:
“Hitler wasn’t so bad”
“Torture isn’t so bad”
“Iraq/Afghanistan wasn’t so bad when Bush was President”
“Giving billionaires more money is the only way to save the economy”
And we’ve got:
“Health care will kill you”
“Investigating the CIA is treason”
“We’ve lost in Afghanistan since Obama became President”
“Cash for Clunkers has failed miserably and Obama has destroyed the economy”
Is it opposite day again?
JK
The litmus test for Buchanan for judging a person is whether or not they are anti-communist. Hitler was fervently anti-communist, so he’s ok in Buchanan’s book. I guess Buchanan is willing to let Hitler slide for the non-agression pact with Stalin, because he was a reliable anti-semite.
azlib
As a student of WW II, I find Pat’s thesis to be ridiculous. Hitler always wanted to enlarge Germany to the east. He miscalculated with Poland only in the sense he did not think Britain or France would follow through on their treaty obligations. Hitler was a gambler and he thought the Poland could be taken without starting a world war. He lost that bet much to the sorrow of the tens of millions that eventually died in the conflict.
It can be argued that the war in the West was a sideshow compared to the war in the East against the Soviet Union. Again Hitler showed his true colors. There was no economic or geopolitical reason for him to attack the Soviet Union. They were supplying him with needed raw materials up to the opening day of Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941. Up to that point in time, he was the master of Europe, but his obsession with “living space” to the east made him start a war he realistically could not win against the Soviet Union.
Pat is also wrong that the killing of the Jews did not start until 1942. Jews were killed in Poland soon after the invasion in 1939. The extermination of Jews in the Soviet Union followed right behind Germany army. The Final Solution agreed to at the Wannsee Conference in 1942 was simply how to carry out the deportation and extermination of the Jews on an industrial scale never seen before in human history.
Midnight Marauder
@Demo Woman:
True, but you would think that upping the ante from “sexual hypocrite” to “revisionist/apologist for one of history’s biggest assholes” would be enough to make someone react in some kind of way.
But then your problem would probably be thinking in the first place.
Zifnab
@Maus: What the hell is liberal anymore? Liberalism is dead. The Democrats smothered it to death in the nineties, and the Republicans have been kicking the corpse since the turn of the century.
HyperIon
@Joshua: I read the original piece by Buchanan
In the original German? I miss Molly Ivins!
Reason has a good article on this (*gasp*).
devopsych
Pat and Bay grew up hearing this stuff around their Chevy Chase dinner table in the 50’s and 60’s. Pat is a graduate of Gonzaga High School and a member of The Sons of Confederacy. I know their type too well. I’m sure “Dad” was convinced Roooosevelt was a commie and Dwight was a little pink. They’re eternally racist, anti-Semite adolescents.
DB
That’s because he never had kids with his wife of over 30 years. Hasn’t stopped him from saying this, though:
Zero f’ing kids.
Midnight Marauder
@azlib:
Pat is also wrong that the killing of the Jews did not start until 1942.
He’s wrong big time on that one. I watched an incredibly chilling documentary on NatGeo a few weeks ago called “Hitler’s Hidden Holocaust” that documented the pre-death camp atrocities of the Einsatzgruppen, which many argue (pretty persuasively) actually brought about the need for the death camps. Long story short: the death camps were a result of Himmler seeing the incredibly messy results of the Einsatzgruppen standard practice of wiping out entire towns of Jews in public sight. They had to find a way to get rid of them in a far less public fashion.
I can’t think of another documentary I’ve seen in a long time that left me feeling as empty and emotionally affected as that one. I couldn’t sleep that entire night. Truly horrifying.
HyperIon
@Leelee for Obama: oops you got there before me. that’s what happens when ya don’t read ALL the comments.
Stefan
Still, I mean, say what you like about the tenets of Pat Buchanan, dude, at least it’s an ethos……
HyperIon
@devopsych: I’m sure “Dad” was convinced Roooosevelt was a commie
and a Jew.
That was a popular meme among the FDR haters in the 30s.
IOW they were as crazy then as the wingnuts are now.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
I’m sure the Madagascar Plan was just a bit of harmless fun
/Pat Buchanan
JK
“Pat Buchanan: Sotomayor? Racist. Hitler? Misunderstood.”
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=09&year=2009&base_name=pat_buchanan_and_the_benefit_o#116495
Wile E. Quixote
I wonder if Pat would like a copy of my book where I prove that the British Empire was the best thing to ever happen to Ireland and that all of the bad things that people say about Oliver Cromwell, the Irish potato famine and the supposed depredations of the black and tans was just a myth cooked up by the ungrateful Irish liberals.
Leelee for Obama
@HyperIon: It’s OK, hyperion. On Roosevelt being a Jew, there was a little poem they ahd back then about Franklin and Eleanor
You kiss the N_______
And I’ll kiss the Jews
And we’ll stay in the WH
As long as we choose.
plus ca change, plus ca meme chose
chopper
@azlib:
indeed. the final solution was a reformulation of an already existing process – the third reich had been committing genocide since they first set foot in poland. the camps were merely a faster, more efficient and cleaner method for mass murder.
Leelee for Obama
@Wile E. Quixote: Not only would he buy it, he’d let you know it was only the shanty Irish, not the Aristocrats (like his people), thank you very much.
Xenos
Back in 1806 the now-liberal town of Northampton hanged two Irish laborers for murder, based on the accusation of a yankee who was himself, rather obviously, the guilty party. A sizable crowd showed up to celebrate what was, effectively, the lynching of the innocent men. Twenty years later a deathbed confession by a witness to the murder established that Dominic Daley and James Halligan were innocent.
I am sure that Pat would love the book I am writing about how that mob really did not mean anything bad, just wanted to ensure their community was safe, and never held any hatred of the Irish… that would have been illogical of them, so that must not have been the case! Besides, this was not really innocent life, as these men had been born in a state of sin, and had not received a legitimate Protestant baptism, so no biggie there in any case. If the two layabouts had just worked to rise above poverty, this never would have happened to them anyway.
Leelee for Obama
@Xenos: And then you could do a book about Sacco and Vanzetti, and then one about Frank in Pa. If only those people had been smart enough and industrious enough not to be Jewish or Italian or Catholic or whatever their “real” sin was, since none of them were guilty of what they were accused of.
I think I’m gonna cry now.
Minionero
They’d send a limousine anyway?
Shawn in ShowMe
Nah, it just got driven underground. Liberalism is now the indy rock of politics.
jomo
If Hitler is misunderstood, but Obama has us on the march to Fascism, then that would make Obama is “Worse than Hitler”.
Mike in NC
Shorter Pat Pukecannon: Yesterday was the 70th anniversary of Polish agression against Germany…
Fax Paladin
Related to the Molly Ivins line: I vividly remember a Mark Russell PBS special from a couple of decades back in which he described Buchanan’s philosophy as “let Hitler be Hitler”…
Lettuce
Midnight to six, man
For the first time from Jamaica
Dillenger and Leroy Smart
There’s many black ears here to listen…
…
If Adolf Hitler flew in today
They’d send a limousine anyway…
Man, I love that song. I used it as my entry and exit music on a Milwaukee radio station for two years.
You might want to spell check that name…
TuiMel
So often I think to myself, “Well surely ol’ Pat has jumped the shark with this one.” So often – always – I am dead wrong. But, then, the continued employment of MSNBC’s entire pundit line up from Joe Scarborough and his TV wife, Mika, to “Why Aren’t YOU on Medicare” Bartiromo, to Chris “I get a thrill up (or is it down) my leg” Matthews never ceases to mystify me. They are low on smarts and even lower on scruples. So, why should it surprise me that they bring Pat Buchanon and his shocking, racist, hateful beliefs into any and all political discussions early and often (and treat him with such that cloying “Uncle Pat” affection)? This has to be a particularly easy choice given how effective Pat is at shouting down anyone with whom he shares the split screen. He adds nothing of value or real substance, but he is WWF Extra Fine Quality on the “generates controversy” scale.
Anne Laurie
@Wile E. Quixote:
Actually, Pat’s mother was German. Silly little man can’t stop bragging about that in his autobiography, because in his generation of Catholics that was considered “marrying up”.
Little Macayla's Friend
I’d never heard of Hitler’s ‘Zweites Buch’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zweites_Buch ) before, but I find it hard to believe Buchanan hasn’t (Requisite wiki link – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Buchanan#Books ) or that he thinks his critics haven’t. No interest here in reading his ‘apologia’ for the crimes of a madman, just that there appears to be one more shortcut to calling it what it is, without replays of European history, as at the yglesias link comment section, and I assume, B.’s 2008 book.
Ellid
I am so very tempted to register on Pat Buchanan’s site so I can quote large chunks of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich on that very situation. That man is an insult to every single victim of Hitler’s madness and every single man and woman who wore a uniform between 1939 and 1945. That includes three of my uncles and my father, all of whom would recoiled in disgust from the idea that Hitler was a peaceful man.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Fuck me pink. I’m no historian but that is some toxic bullshit there.
Gosh I don’t know Pat, maybe his attempt to conquer the fucking world? And what the hell is with this Freeze Frame history shit? Gee, at one point Hitler had killed 0 people, therefore any leader who has killed 1 person is MUCH WORSE.
In other news, James Von Brunn appeared in court for the first time today.
Delia
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
Well, golly, it’s not as if the Germans didn’t have their own A-Bomb project or anything. Werner Heisenberg, co-inventor of quantum mechanics, was the physicist on the project. They got off on a less productive line of research than the Anglo-American team; it was just really difficult to pull off a project of that magnitude with scarce resources once bombs started falling all around you. Plus, Hitler had a limited attention span and started pulling people off the project to work on the V-1 rocket so he bomb the hell out of London in the last year or so of the war. So it’s not like Hitler wasn’t trying. It’s just that conquering the world is a lot harder than it looks at first glance.
M. Bouffant
Is he saying that if the Limeys & Frogs had just let Mr. Hilter [sic] have Poland too, & maybe attack the Soviets, the Holocaust wouldn’t have happened? That the Holocaust was a necessary part of the war? (Well, if he just wanted a little “breathing room,” I guess it was. Never mind.)
Wile E. Quixote
So I wonder if Pat Buchanan refers to World War II as “The War of Allied Aggression”.
Brachiator
@Leelee for Obama:
And some of Sarah Palin’s “Real America” speeches are goosestpepping up that same trail.
And Ivins would have had soooo much fun with Palin. You betcha.
Mr Furious
@Midnight Marauder: Does he have to commit infanticide on live television and devour a baby? Is that what it takes to get fired from MSNBC?
I REALLY don’t remember Phil Donahue killing and eating a baby…
Porlock Junior
I fear that Delia, in stating the truth, has opened another can of worms. There is, you see, quite a body of opinion that Heisenberg deliberately sandbagged the German nuclear effort because he didn’t want to involve himself in anything so awful. The notable play “Copenhagen” is about this question, mostly. We can expect some comments on this, so I’ll start.
Heisenberg, not very surprisingly, contributed a good deal to this idea, starting soon after the war. But we now know exactly what Heisenberg and his associates said when they first got the news of Hiroshima. (We know because it was all recorded by the sneaky people who had them under detention at Farm Hall in England; of course, neither Heisenberg nor the many pundits knew this till many years later–those who lived that long.) The physicists did not express horror or shock or disbelief that the Allies would do something so nasty, but complete incredulity, at first, that they could. The Germans hadn’t managed to come close to making a bomb, so a bunch of foreigners?? Jeremy Bernstein’s book “Hitler’s Uranium Club” tells the story. You can see the “Hey, we didn’t do anything that nasty” mythology starting to take shape in the weeks after August 6-7 — but not till there had been time to think about it.
Brandon
I am surprised that no one has yet to make the connection with White Noise. Hitler Studies professor? Seems like a natural fit for these times.
Andy K
@Porlock Junior:
There’s also Nicholas Dawidoff’s biography of MLB-journeyman-catcher-turned-OSS-field-operative Moe Berg, The Catcher Was A Spy, which describes Berg traveling to Zurich in December of ’44 to attend a conference where Heisenberg was present. Berg was to ascertain the status of the German nuclear program and assassinate Heisenberg if the intelligence showed the Germans close to developing a weapon. Berg decided he didn’t need to pull the trigger.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Midnight Marauder:
The Nuremberg Laws were passed in 1935. They stripped German Jews of all citizenship rights, effectively making anything done to them legal under German law. That was also the same year that Hitler began mass-murdering the mentally retarded.
The Holocaust was an integral part of Hitler’s vision for a German Europe. It was going to happen wherever the Germans set foot, and their ultimate plan was to implement it throughout Europe. Reinhard Heydrich’s plans included mention of Jews in Ireland and other neutral countries. They talked about sweeping Europe “from north to south, then from east to west” of Jews. It’s very obvious that they intended to spread the program of murder throughout the continent.
Pat Buchanan’s obfuscating that because he probably supports the idea, the worthless bastard.
chopper
@Delia:
also, being against the ‘jewish science’ (einstein, von neumann, teller, born, bohr, pauli, most of the guys who got the physics off the ground were jewish) that made the whole physics workable did not help much either.
roseyv
I’m actually kind of grateful to Pat for having the guts to say this. Historically, I think Hitler has gotten kind of a bad rap, for the genocide and the concentration camps and stuff, but what gets lost in all that is that is that basically, he was just a decent guy trying to do the right thing for his country. He had to do the things he did. I mean, if Poland was going to be such a cock about handing over the Sudetenland, what he heck was he supposed to do? His hands were tied, when you think about it.
The problem is, history is defined by the winners, but remember, there’s always two sides to every story. It’s a brave man who steps up to remind us of that.
Thanks Pat Buchanan, for being that man.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@roseyv:
Yep. Unfortunately for Hitler, the history of World War II was written by the non-insane, non-genocidal. If he’d won the war, I’m sure all the Aryan kids sitting at desks in their schools built on the ashes of Moscow would get to hear all about the evils of Britain and France. Who knows? They might even be reading Buchanan’s book, assuming his German mother made him racially pure enough that his Celtic blood could be overlooked.