True, the review http://www.amconmag.com/2008/2008_06_02/article2.html (by the eminent traditionalist historian John Lukacs) does not address in detail the tactical and strategic questions faced by the Western Powers after 1936–and before. (John Zmirak’s overall account above is quite lucid.) What it does address is the central question raised by Buchanan’s book, which is whether Hitler posed a greater threat to Western Civilization than Stalin. This is a fairly difficult one: many of us have been living in the Arendtian universe which posits two equal, malevolent totalitarianisms, the first vanquished in 1945, the second in, when–1956?, 1989? But those with decisions to make in the 1930′s didn’t have luxury of equal condemnation. The question of whether Stalin was Hitler’s equal in malice is obviously difficult. The underlying premise of most of the America Firsters (the bedrock of Buchanan’s book) is that Communism was much worse– which tended to makes such people less
hostile towards Nazism than they should have been. Lukacs makes the case differently, that Nazism, more popular, and because linked to nationalism, more “natural” was the greater threat to decency. This is counter-intuitive to much of the Old Right, but I think it’s largely correct.