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When, if ever, is it appropriate to provide an apologetic defense of Nazi Germany?
Darryl Cooper, host of the widely acclaimed Martyr Made podcast, recently did a 2+ hour interview with Tucker Carlson. Darryl Cooper is known for two things. One: being meticulously empathetic with regards to the plight of the disaffected groups that are the subject of his 30-hour long history podcasts, bringing out the vivid details that form the background milieu for poorly-understood events like Jonestown. And two: his unhinged Twitter takes.
As one can imagine, jimmies were rustled. The most common line of attack was “Tucker Carlson platforms Nazi apologetics.” In a literal sense this is true. Cooper gives the German perspective on Winston Churchill. One might make the obvious point that Germany started the war by invading Poland, but the Soviet Union also invaded Poland. Yet the Western allies did not declare war on Stalin. This AskHistorians thread (no haven for Nazi apologetics!) is enlightening. What masqueraded as a mutual defense treaty was actually an anti-German treaty. Britain really was out to get them.
Once we dig deep enough, the real reason World War II started was to preserve Anglo hegemony over Europe, the exact same reason that Britain joined World War I. Post-hoc rationalizations are just that, post-hoc. It certainly isn’t irrelevant when studying World War II that the holocaust happened, but that isn’t part of the causal chain of events the way many seem to believe.
I want to emphasize that I personally like Anglo-American hegemony. Churchill’s aggressive stance towards Germany is good for me and for the vast majority of the people reading this, but in order to understand history (or current events for that matter) one has to understand the people who do not like Anglo-American hegemony. I do not know where on the doll Anglo imperialism touched him, but I do not believe that Darryl Cooper says the things that he does out of hate for his fellow man.
Sorry, but what Anglo hegemony existed in continental Europe before WW1? To my knowledge, there were few if any British or US troops stationed on the continent at that time. Neither the US nor the Brits were in a position to push France or Spain or Germany or Austria or Italy or Switzerland around by threat of overwhelming violence.
As any player of Paradox games like Crusader Kings or Europa Universalis knows, if you allow your regional rival to absorb smaller countries until they control a large empire, this will be very detrimental to your future security interests. The British generally have a strategic interest against an Europe which is militarily united from Lisbon to St. Petersburg (at least unless they are part of that military union).
The regional power most likely to achieve conquering huge parts of Europe was Germany. So it makes sense that they opposed anything which would see Germany getting stronger, such as allowing them to defeat France and extending their territory.
Especially in WW2, their security interests and international law happened to align, as Hitler was not uniting Europe by charming the Polish into voting for him, but by outright conquest and annexation.
By contrast, the USSR was a lesser threat to British security interests in 1939. Sure, if it conquered all of Europe to Calais, that would be a problem for them, but the USSR was not in a position to just steam roll over Germany, and the ideological differences between Stalin and Hitler (with the Nazis considering the Slavs Untermenschen, and the Soviets considering the Nazis evil capitalists) made a long term joint military effort unlikely.
Of course, once Germany was soundly defeated, the geostrategic landscape changed, and the two blocks emerged. This is the point where I would assert an Anglo hegemony over Western Europe.
It should also be noted that Germany was not especially threatened in 1939. Of the regional powers, neither the Brits nor the French nor the Polish had any plans to jointly attack Germany and annex parts of it -- they had gotten their territorial claims in 1918. The USSR was perhaps a different story. A risk-adverse German leader might have co-founded NATO in 1935 to secure their future security interests against potential USSR expansions.
But Hitler was not content with Germany not being the strongest player, so he opted to conquer Europe instead.
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