Patrick Buchanan makes the case that, if not for the blunders of British statesmen--Winston Churchill first among them--the horrors of two world wars and the Holocaust might have been avoided and the British Empire might never have collapsed into ruins. Half a century of murderous oppression of scores of millions under the iron boot of Communist tyranny might never have happened, and Europe's central role in world affairs might have been sustained...

A radically new view of the British policy of appeasement in the late 1930s, identifying the individuals responsible for a variety of miscalculations and moral surrender that made World War II inevitable. Appeasement failed in all its goals. The kindest thing that can be said of it is that postponed World War II by one year. Its real effect was to convince Hitler and Mussolini that Britain was weak and afraid of confrontation, encouraging them to...