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

by Patrick J. Buchanan

U.S. warships now supported the blockade. “Once lead this people into war,” Wilson had said in 1917, “and they’ll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance.”30 America had forgotten. The blockade was responsible for the deaths of thousands of men, women, and children after the Germans laid down their weapons and surrendered their warships. Its architect and chief advocate had been the First Lord of the Admiralty. His aim, said Churchill, was to “starve the whole population—men, women, and children, old and young, wounded and sound—into submission.”31 On March 3, 1919, four months after Germany accepted an armistice and laid down her arms, Churchill rose exultant in the Commons to declare, “We are enforcing the blockade with rigour, and Germany is very near starvation.”