Can anyone take Pat Buchanan seriously anymore? After he write this piece of garbage arguing that Hitler didn’t really want a war? Serwer, silbey and Moynihan take him apart.

I could be generous and say this is based on Buchanan’s anti-communism and his desire to portray Stalin as a villain. But that’s simplistic thinking. Both men were evil.

I won’t be generous. This is pure ignorance. Any reading of the record — as detailed exhaustively in Schirer’s towering Rise and Fall of the Third Reich — will destroy the notion that Hitler did not want war. He may not have wanted war with Britain — not right away, at least. But he absolutely had designes on conquering the entirety of Eastern Europe and putting the vast bulk of its “inferior” population to the sword.

Maybe, as Buchanan has suggested, we could have stayed out and let Russia and Germany fight it out between themselves. But there’s no question that Germany would have won and emerged stronger and ready to bring the rest of the world to heel.

Anyway, Buchanan is a bad joke. This is the sort of thing that should end someone’s career as a commentator.

Update: Orac destroys Buchanan. It’s beautiful and includes a Mel Brooks clip.