Opinion & Commentary:

Rationalizing Hitler: Why Pat Buchanan is wrong

Lauren Matthew

July 4, 2008

It's spiritually crushing and a sad commentary on society when someone like Pat Buchanan says that the Holocaust was preventable -- had the British simply minded their own business.

Buchanan's June 20 Townhall.com column, titled "Was the Holocaust Inevetable?" is not only outrageously under-researched, but it's flat-out, 180-degrees wrong. In it, Buchanan writes that Germany was not a nation out to "conquer the world," and that Britain's involvement in WWII pushed Adolph Hitler to actions he would otherwise not have contemplated. England, he writes, drove Hitler and the Nazis to the systematic murder of more than six million people.

"[F]or the six years before Britain declared war, there was no Holocaust, and for two years after the war began, there was no Holocaust," he writes.

Opening a book on the Holocaust would have helped Buchanan in his research. (He should still open a book soon, because the survivors of this thing he claims could've been avoided aren't getting any younger.)

Here's a short and painful history lesson for anyone else out there that believes these atrocities could have been avoided. Hitler became chancellor of Germany on Jan. 30, 1933. He inherited a Germany that was still coping with reparations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. He inherited a country that, just like the United States, was economically depressed and angry. That country was ready to blow its top.

In Hitler's first hundred days in power, he took the following actions: large-scale arrest of trade unionists; suppression of free speech and political opposition; the opening of the first concentration camps; the complete overhaul of the judicial system that resulted in a court that answered only to Hitler; and the beginnings of a policy designed to persecute Jews.

If Buchanan wants to point out things that could've stopped the political and genocidal juggernaut that Hitler set into motion, maybe he should point the finger at Germany herself. Emergency provisions in the Weimar Constitution allowed, according to information provided by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the president to "usurp the powers of the state governments, suspend the constitutional guarantees of civil liberties, and dissolve the Reichstag."

Not only that, the Reichstag could give temporary power to the chancellor by a two-thirds majority vote. This is exactly what happened, too, following the Reichstag fire on Feb. 27. President Paul von Hindenberg handed over the proverbial keys to the kingdom. And he never got them back.

The Holocaust began in 1933, Mr. Buchanan. It began, in theory, the moment Hitler acquired all that power. And it began, in practice, with a Nazi-initiated boycott of Jewish businesses April 1. Stars of David were painted on shops. Nazis were stationed outside of them. Police were instructed not to interfere. Worse, they listened.

The Civil Service Law, which went into effect April 7, 1933, dismissed all "non-Aryans" from civil service, including teachers in state schools. Communists were dismissed four days later. There were more than 400 laws like this, enacted between 1933 and 1939, which separated the Aryans from the rest of Germany. Bonfires, May 10, incinerated books the Nazis declared "un-German" by the thousand. If this isn't the set-up to a horrific punchline, I don't know what is. And England didn't have a single thing to do with it.

Here are some other interesting tidbits:

On July 14, 1933, the Law for Prevention of Hereditary and Defective Offspring went into effect, allowing the surgical sterilization of the mentally retarded, the schizophrenic, alcoholics, and those with genetic diseases. Institutionalized genocide, in other words.

Jews were stripped of their German citizenship in 1935. On Sept. 15, the Nuremberg Laws went into effect. Citizenship was restricted to those of "German or kindred blood." Jews were forbidden to marry Germans. They were forbidden to fly the German flag. Anyone with even one Jewish grandparent was defined as a Jew and lost their rights as a German citizen. These laws were also used later against the gypsy population of Europe. By 1937, all Jewish property had to be "registered" with Germany. In 1938, Jews were no longer allowed to hold jobs. Physicians were forbidden to treat Jews in 1938.

And in 1936, at the Berlin Olympics, two American Jewish runners -- Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller -- were prevented from competing because no one in charge of the American team wanted to provoke Hitler, Goring, Goebbels, Streicher, and Himmler -- all of whom were visible in the stands that day. Jesse Owens ran instead.

I suppose Buchanan doesn't factor persecution into his narrow definition of what, exactly, the Holocaust was. I would think that even he would consider the Holocaust the period of time during WWII in which people were forced into concentration camps, though.

Dachau opened in 1933. Sachenhausen was set up in 1936. Buchenwald was set up in 1937. Mauthausen and Flossenburg were operational in 1938... I could keep going.

"The Holocaust was not a cause of the war, but a consequence of the war. No war, no Holocaust," Buchanan continues.

Wrong again.

While I, and countless people with more education than I have, could argue the cause of WWII for a century, one thing is clear: the Holocaust was already happening before war was declared. And if Hitler didn't want to take over the world, why would he start occupying Germany's neighboring countries so early on? Austria was occupied by 1938, which is, again, before the war began. Austria had voted for reunification with Germany, but that doesn't change that the expansion was already happening -- without a war. And where exclusion of Jews from everyday life had been relatively slow and methodical in Germany, it sped along in a year in Austria. By the time of the Anschluss (the takeover of Austria), Jews were attacked in the streets in Vienna.

In March of 1939, Germany took over Czechoslovakia. No guns went off, and no one protested. So maybe it wasn't war… yet. But again: if Hitler wasn't trying to take over, why bother?

I also have to wonder what Buchanan would think of the Munich Conference, held in September of 1938. There, English, French, and Italian leaders met with Hitler in Munich to "resolve the political status of the Sudeten Germans." Hitler had never made it a secret that he sought reunification with lands lost to France (the Alsace-Lorraine), Belgium (Eupen and Malmedy), and Denmark (Northern Schleswig) because of the Treaty of Versailles. That reunification also called for part of Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland, where an estimated three million "ethnic Germans" resided.

The French and British were obligated, by treaty, to support Czechoslovakia should she be attacked. They were afraid that Hitler's invasion would draw them into war and allowed him to annex the Sudentenland.

No Czechs were allowed to participate in the conference. Neville Chamberlain was the one at the table for England, leading to his infamous declaration of "peace for our time."

Ever heard the term "lebensraum," Mr. Buchanan? Living space, in German. Something Hitler always cited as a necessity for the expanding Reich. Hitler never "demanded" land because it was just handed over to him. No one ever made him demand it. Six months later when Hitler came back for the rest of Czechoslovakia. Then came war. Only then. And Chamberlain was replaced by Winston Churchill.

Let's back track one more step. In July of 1938, there was a chance to stop the Holocaust. No one took it.

World leaders, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt, met for the Evian Conference on Lake Geneva. Thirty-two countries were represented. The reason for the conference was simple: Roosevelt cooked it up in response to pressure from the U.S. about the "growing refugee problem." And where were all these refugees coming from? The Third Reich.

Between 1933 and 1941, forced emigration of Jews from German-controlled lands was in full swing. By 1938, according to the United States Holocaust Museum, one in four German Jews fled. But as time went on, no countries would open their doors to Jewish immigrants. The annexation of Austria just made things worse. At the time, American Jews were clamoring for increased quotas. Roosevelt was trying to balance that desire with the Depression. The conference ensured that no country present would take in more refugees than it could handle.

Two days after the announcement of the Evian conference, Hitler issued a statement: "I can only hope that the other world which has such sympathy for these criminals (Jews) will at least be generous enough to convert this sympathy into practical aid."

The conference lasted nine days. There were 21 Jewish delegates. But in the end, every country there said there was not enough room to accommodate the massive flux of immigrants that Hitler was ousting. Britain, who had control of Palestine, refused to open that land to the Jews.

"We don't have a racial problem," the Australian delegate said, "and we don't want to import one."

I don't know how Buchanan is looking at this, but a vote then and there to open the doors of these 32 countries even just a little more could have changed the course of history. And all of this was before war was formally declared.

In November of 1938, things only got worse. In a 48-hour span, more than 1,000 synagogues were burned within the Reich -- along with their Torah scrolls. Seven thousand Jewish businesses were looted, 96 Jews were killed, and Jewish cemeteries, hospitals and homes were destroyed. Thirty thousand Jews were arrested. To cope with that number, Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachenhausen were expanded. This was Kristallnacht -- the night of the broken glass -- and it was set in motion by the Nazis to eradicate the Jewish presence within the Reich.

A wave of Jewish suicides followed these two days.

When Germany invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939 (Britain, coincidentally, entered the war two days later), Hitler's motives had to do with both lebensraum and racial purity. War, he said, was life. It was "all things." And Hitler was cunning in how he turned the tables on the Jews. On Jan. 30, 1939, he'd issued a warning: "If international finance Jewry inside and outside Europe should succeed once more in plunging nations into another world war, the consequence will not be the Bolshevization of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe."

Hitler was blaming the Jews for the war he'd already set in motion and the Holocaust he'd already set into motion. I can see how Buchanan might read that and think "no war, no Holocaust." I can see it because I know Germany saw it that way, too. I know Austria saw it that way, and I know everyone who put Hitler in power saw it that way.

It's still wrong.

As early as 1919, well before he came to power, well before a race law went into effect, well before the Wansee Conference of 1942 where the term "Final Solution" was first used as a euphemism for genocide, Hitler wrote that the final objective of what he was working for was "the removal of the Jews altogether."

What does Buchanan think "removal" meant, here? He's got it backwards: no Holocaust, no war.