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

by Patrick J. Buchanan

Soon after he ascended the throne, the Kaiser was mesmerized by an 1890 book by U.S. naval captain A. T. Mahan, “a tall beanpole of a man, with a great bald dome rising above calm hooded eyes.”40 Mahan was more scholar than sea dog. His thesis in The Influence of Sea Power Upon History was that it had been the Royal Navy, controlling the oceanic crossroads of the world, that had ensured the defeat of Napoleon and made Great Britain the world’s preeminent power. Navalists everywhere swore by Captain Mahan. It was at Mahan’s recommendation that Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt had put Admiral George Dewey in command of the Pacific Squadron of six battleships and three cruisers that steamed into Manila harbor in 1898 to sink the Spanish fleet before breakfast.