Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World

by Patrick J. Buchanan

But because Britain issued the guarantee to Poland and declared war on Germany, by June 1941 Hitler held hostage most of the Jews of Western Europe and the Balkans. By 1942, after invading Ukraine, Byelorussia, the Baltic states, and Russia, he held hostage virtually the entire Jewish population of Europe. Yet neither the Allies nor the Soviets were focused on the potential fate of the hostages Hitler held. At Casablanca in 1943, Churchill and FDR declared their war aim was “unconditional surrender.” At Quebec in 1944, Churchill and FDR approved the Morgenthau Plan calling for the destruction of all German industry. Goebbels used the Morgenthau Plan to convince Germans that surrender meant no survival. Annihilation of their hostages was the price the Nazis exacted for their own annihilation.