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

by Patrick J. Buchanan

“The forty-eight hours after the march into the Rhineland were the most nerve-racking in my life,” Hitler later said. “If the French had then marched into the Rhineland, we would have had to withdraw with our tails between our legs.”46 He need not have been alarmed, for Hitler was dealing with defeatist leaders of a morally defeated nation. At Nuremberg, General Jodl would testify, “Considering the situation we were in, the French covering army could have blown us to pieces.”47 Added Shirer, It could have—and had it, that almost certainly would have been the end of Hitler, after which history might have taken quite a different and brighter turn than it did, for the dictator could never have survived such a fiasco. Hitler himself admitted as much. “A retreat on our part,” he conceded later, “would have spelled collapse.”