The use of the phrase "hundred million Christians is questionable, especially when you consider the Muslim populations in what was then Yugoslavia and Albania. The total population of the newly conquered Soviet territories probably barely equaled that number (around 112 million if I've done the math correctly, using the Wikipedia article on war casualties), and that is including all of the nearly seven million people in Austria, which was split up into zones of control by the Allies, and using an estimate of ten million people for Soviet occupied Germany.
In rhetoric this constitutes an "argumentum ad populum, or playing to the audience, as does his use of Joseph Stalin as a bà te noire. Mao Zedong was every bit as bad, if not worse than Stalin (37 million in Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward, Wikipedia, "History of the People's Republic of China; versus 20 million, Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment). Hitler had only twelve years to indulge his madness, not the nearly thirty Stalin had. Do not get me wrong: Stalin was a monster. This is Buchanan's anti-Bolshevik bias showing: if it's Bolshevik, it's got to be the worst. Stalin being the "greatest terrorist of all is highly debatable.
"Was Danzig worth a war?
When it was Poland's primary deep water port, and "the Polish government believed "this was an obvious first step to make Poland a satellite of Germany in the same way it had Slovakia "as the Polish Foreign Minister pointed out in the Ministry's White Book (its day to day diary of diplomatic initiatives and maneuvers)--you bet. (See Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny; p.p. 493-4)
"But if Hitler was out to conquer the world" why did he spend three years building that hugely expensive Siegfried Line to protect Germany from France? Why did he start the war with no surface fleet, no troop transports and only 29 oceangoing submarines? How do you conquer the world with a navy that can't get out of the Baltic Sea?
Why build the Siegfried Line? How about to help defend his strategic rear in case of a war with Poland, the Soviet Union, or both. This is basic military planning 101. (Shirer, op cit.)
Why did Hitler start a war with almost no surface fleet or other naval assets? First of all, building up a fleet in peacetime has a huge lead time: 5-6 years for aircraft carriers and battleships, e.g., the Bismarck was started in 1935 and was not ready for combat until 1941; 3-4 years for cruisers; 2 years for destroyers and auxiliaries; including the training of crews. Submarines, or U-boats (my turn to use the "argumentum ad populum, by using the traditional term for German submarines) requires a year or less in the era before nuclear propulsion. Within a year of the war's start, U-boats had Britain reeling, averaging over 300,000 tons sunk every month (Samuel Eliot Morrison, Two Ocean War; Messenger, op. cit.).
Secondly, Hitler never understood naval warfare, as exhibited by his failure to have a plan ready for invading England, or his failure to take Malta and secure Rommel's supply line. As such he "in my opinion "preferred the bully's and coward's methods of attacking the weak (using raiders) or from ambush (using U-boats); tactics which (as a bully and coward) he could understand.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).