Patrick Buchanan's new book

[Paul Mackin]

Wanted to get this book review in this morning's Washington Post of Pat
Buchanan's "Not an Empire But a Republic" to you all before rj saw it
scored another p-list coup:


In Buchanan's considered view 
view, the West should have
let Hitler have his little
treats in Czechoslovakia and
Poland, and then left him
alone to take care of Stalin
for us. Buchanan blames the
war in which nearly a
half-million Americans died
not on Hitler and his mad
dream of dominion but on the
allies who finally rose to
stop Hitler by promising to
declare war on Germany if the
Nazis invaded Poland.

"The British-French
declarations of war impelled
Hitler to attack in the West
to secure his rear before
invading Russia," Buchanan
declares. "Had Britain and
France not given the
guarantee to Poland, Hitler
would almost surely have
delivered his first great
blow to Stalin's Russia. . .
. Even had Hitler conquered
the U.S.S.R. at enormous
cost, would he then have
launched a new war against a
Western Europe where his
ambitions never lay? Had
Britain and France not given
the war guarantees to Poland,
there might have been no
Dunkirk, no blitz, no Vichy,
no destruction of the Jewish
populations of Norway,
Denmark, Holland, Belgium,
Luxembourg, France, or even
Italy."

 Anyway, says Buchanan, the
 Nazis represented no threat
 to America, because "Hitler
 saw the world divided into
 four spheres: Great Britain
 holding its empire; Japan,
 dominant in East Asia;
 Germany, master of Europe;
 and America, mistress of the
 Western Hemisphere." Buchanan
 seems to have no real problem
 with the idea of the Third
 Reich as the "master of
 Europe."

 It turns out that Buchanan is
 not so much an America
 Firster as the ultimate Blame
 America Firster. It's all our
 fault. The world would have
 been a finer, happier place
 if we had just let the
 Germans take what they
 wanted. "In 1917 Wilson had
 gone to war to make the world
 safe for democracy, and had
 made the world safe for
 Lenin, Mussolini and Hitler,"
 writes Buchanan. "In 1941
 Roosevelt had gone to war to
 make Europe and Asia safe for
 democracy and had made Europe
 safe for Stalinism and Asia
 safe for Maoism." 


			Best,

				 P.