Tucker recently had an alternative historian on his show (Darryl Cooper, who runs the Martyr Made podcast) to expound on his view of the genesis of WWII, namely that Winston Churchill was a villainous figure. His twitter thread made after the show does a decent job of summarizing that point.
Obviously any suggestion that Hitler was not 100% Satan incensed the boomer right, provoking febrile emotional reactions like this one from Billboard Chris. The likes of Seth Dillon are also making their favorite call for "moral clarity," which I just read as "die for Israel" these days.
At the same time, a couple people made some decent counterpoints, namely that Hitler invaded a lot of countries at the time he was supposedly suing for peace. This is the problem with calling Churchill "the chief villain," which Cooper walked back into "a chief villain" on X.
Overall, the controversy is a good thing for the right. Tucker is softening up the ironclad boomer mythology of WWII - when you delve deeper into the motivations of the belligerents, you eventually delve into the question of, "so where did the Nazis get all this animus against Jews?" and "why is the Holocaust the greatest tragedy when 14 million Asians were killed by Japan and 20 million Ukrainians were killed in the Holodomor?" Also, blue laser eyes/red tint profile pics are gay.
A number of tweets in his thread have context added, because he was misleading (or outright lying).
Hes taking a very specific point of view to make Hitler seem less bad. If he was being honest, I'd say he had more of a point.
Ultimately, I think ww2 was largely driven by the impacts of ww1 and driving Germany to hyper inflation, etc. If they'd have had a stable economy and not been overrun by communists, Hitler wouldn't have been in power.
I also don't think Churchill was a villain, because that sits on the aggressors (namely, Hitler et al). Was Churchill (or anyone else) perfect? No. But to claim he's a villain is hyperbole.
Also, to claim nobody but Churchill wanted war is hilarious. Hitler literally started it by invading other countries. That's an act of war, and he knew it. He just thought everyone else would back down.
Of course Churchill wanted war, he declared war on Germany to 'save' Poland. Although 'saving' Poland turned into handing it over to the Soviet invaders for the next 40 years.
Why save Poland?
Its NAZI Germany pillaging and raping Poland had anything to do with it. Stormfags are really grasping at straws here.
What's weird is if Germany hadn't started it, there wouldn't have been that need. Strange.
They didn't "start" anything. Wilson laid the groundwork for the next war, more than anyone else.
That's like blaming Germany for the 1920 invasion of Poland, or the Winter War.
Even if we accept the "groundwork" argument, the decision for Russia to invade Poland and Finland doesn't rest on the Germans.
Yeah, Germany invading people definitely wasn't starting anything. Riiiight.
b-b-b-b-b-but Danzig!
I'm not convinced Churchill was a villain, but Russia/Ukraine doesn't cleanly break down like that.
Why are you talking about Russia and Ukraine in a topic about ww2?
Because Russia is the aggressor, but they are not exactly the villain, or perhaps not the only villain.
The US by way of NATO is the aggressor, and have pulled a DARVO to try to blame Russia.
The US foreign policy towards Russia could be described as a child swinging its fists near someone's face and saying, "I'm not hitting you! I'm not hitting you!"
But that's not the point of this topic... If you want to talk about Russia and Ukraine, that's an entirely different conflict with different origins, and not relevant to the point I made about ww2.
They did have a stable economy and weren't over-run by communists in the last days of the SDP's rule. The problem is that the SDP were Socialists and intended to go right back to everything they had just done after having reversed course to save the economy.
The problem with Germany was that they were over-run by Socialists. And the Socialists wanted to find a way to make Socialism work, come hell or high water, because obviously if you try Socialism with the right people in the right way it totally works.
"The goal of Socialism is Communism" - Vladimir Lenin
Yes, but this was also a scathing rebuke of the Socialists for not going fast enough. He despised how many socialists were head-in-the-clouds style "thinkers" and "authors" rather than people who actually pushed for a revolution. His problem was that the socialists would debate forever on their committees agreeing to nothing and 'thinking' about everything, and accomplishing less. Germany had already rebuked Communists (him personally). Instead it was over-run by Socialists who were arguing about how Marxian prophecies could really be fulfilled, and what was real Socialism, while Lenin had already moved well beyond that (and died).