Tucker Carlson is anti-war, and because of this, he has also become highly critical of such important world leaders as Winston Churchill. Whether it’s Tucker Carlson denigrating Churchill for having ‘lost the west’ on Piers Morgan or interviewing a pseudo-historian named Darryl Cooper who claims that Churchill was the “chief villain” of WW2 while calling this pseudo-historian “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States,” Tucker Carlson is so far off base that I feel compelled to call him out.

And it’s not just Tucker Carlson. There is a growing anti-war element on the political right that carries many of the same views.

First, allow me to address the elephant in the room. War is never good, but we live in a world where we do not always have truly good options available to us. Had England listened to Winston Churchill, for example, France and England would have invaded Germany when Germany invaded Czechoslovakia in 1938. Germany did not have enough troops against France at that time to direct traffic, and Hitler would have been gone within two weeks. Instead, Neville Chamberlain appeased Hitler to create what he called ‘Peace for our Time’ (he even wrote a book by that title. The result wasn’t peace; instead, it led to a war that killed an estimated 74 million people.

There are historians who argue that though Germany had few troops against France when Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, Germany had already started building the Siegfried Line, and Germany had a larger, better equipped, and better-trained air force than France and England combined such that France and England could not have invaded. The truth, however, is that Germany allocated 1,000 aircraft to Czechoslovakia, and though Germany got Czechoslovakia essentially without a fight, had there been a war, those aircraft would have been used against the Czech air force and not against France and England. That would have left France and England with a numeric advantage in aircraft. Also, the Siegfried Line was just starting to come under construction at the time and was not yet a real obstacle (as it was when Germany invaded Poland).

Simply put, had France and England invaded Germany in 1938, Germany would not have been able to get air superiority quickly enough to affect the outcome of the war – it really would have been over in two weeks.

War is never good, but sometimes the alternatives are worse as was the case when Neville Chamberlain forced France to ignore its treaty obligation to protect Czechoslovakia from German aggression, and that a very small war in 1938 could have prevented WW2 entirely.

Of course, had France and England invaded Germany in 1938, we would not know that doing so prevented a world war and 78 million deaths, as WW2 would never have happened. We can only see the wars we cause; we are blind to all of the wars we prevent.

Those who are anti-war in all circumstances are, frankly, naive on the topic, and that includes Tucker Carlson.

As for Daryyl Cooper, as a historian on WW2’, he’s not even qualified to be called a hack. Cooper, for example, claims that it was Churchill who turned the invasion of Poland into a war, and he then blames Churchill for England declaring war on Germany, but Churchill was still on the outside looking in at the time. Churchill was widely mocked by England’s leadership as a ‘warmonger’ throughout the 1930s, right up until Hitler proved Churchill right by invading Poland. At that time, an ‘oh shit’ leadership suddenly found use for Churchill again and made him Lord of the Admiralty. Churchill did not become Prime Minister until Dunkirk, so the notion that he caused England to declare war is laughable.

Most of England’s leadership wanted to cut a peace deal with Hitler. It was Winston Churchill and Winston Churchill alone who prevented that from happening, and it’s hard to say how much more powerful Hitler might have become had England sued for peace in May of 1940, giving Germany access to Argentinian crude oil and giving Hitler another ⅓ of his army to invade Russia with.

Cooper also says that the holocaust was Churchill’s fault. His argument is that Hitler did not want nor expect a real war when he invaded Poland and had absolutely no plan to deal with dislocated people, forcing Hitler to put them in camps. This may be the dumbest position Cooper takes, as it gives no explanation at all for why Hitler specifically targeted Jewish people.

I was stationed in Bamberg, Germany, from 1994-1997. I was an active member of a German/American group, and I became good friends with a number of Germans. We used to meet once a month in the coolest bar in the world, inside the medieval wall around Nuremberg. The bar looked like a medieval guard house. Some of these German friends had fathers, uncles, or grandfathers who had fought in WW2, and as my German friends learned that my father was a history teacher whose studies were focused primarily on the World Wars (and the period between them), I got to meet some of those fathers, uncles, and grandfathers.

Some of those fathers, uncles, and grandfathers were former members of the SS, and to a person, the former members of the SS I met justified not just sending people to camps but specifically the holocaust against the Jewish people. Their justification was that the Soviets left entire division-sized units hidden in forests and other places where the Germans could just go around, and these groups, supported by partisans, harassed Germany’s supply lines mercilessly. Given that the Germans were persecuting Jewish people (which the Nazis viewed as ‘sub-human’), the Germans suspected that Jews were also helping the Russians and the partisans in harassing Germany’s supply lines.

One former member of the SS told me (I’m paraphrasing, but this will be very close to a direct quote) that the partisans were hard to find, but that the SS could always find the Jews, and that in total war kill anyone who might be helping the enemy was justified.

I met former German soldiers who were as horrified by the holocaust as you and I, but I never met a former SS member who had any regrets about anything at all other than losing the war.

Incidentally, I’ve been to Dachau and Auschwitz. You can read my views on the holocaust at the following link.

Lessons from Auschwitz

Hitler did not put dislocated people in camps. That’s a lie. Hitler staffed dislocated people with fighter planes to herd them into enemy military columns such that the enemy’s ability to maneuver was reduced. The people in the camps were Jewish people, gypsies (of which not enough survived the war to complain), homosexuals, political dissidents, and other groups the Nazis considered ‘undesirable.’

Darryl Cooper is nothing more than a Nazi apologist, and Tucker Carlson has become so anti-war that he is suddenly open to that sort of thing.

Tucker Carlson needs to be very careful. Sitting by, nodding, while a historical hack justifies the holocaust does not make Tucker Carlson a Nazi apologist, but it’s still probably the dumbest thing Tucker Carlson has done over the course of his career.

Tucker Carlson needs to denounce Darryl Cooper.

As for the notion that Churchill ‘lost the West,’ we can’t blame Winston Churchill for things happening 65 years after he died. Winston Churchill preserved Western Society throughout his life and passed it safely on to future generations. The ball was dropped by others after Winston Churchill died.

Image: Compilation – Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons & Yousuf Karsh. Library and Archives Canada, e010751643