Tucker Carlson and Darryl Cooper want to rewrite the history of World War II so that they can justify appeasing Vladimir Putin today.
Tucker Carlson’s plaudits for an obscure crackpot writer, Darryl Cooper, who argues that Winston Churchill, not Adolph Hitler, is the “chief villain” of World War II, have been widely condemned and rightly so. The historical narrative that Cooper presents is riddled with glaring errors, not the least of which is a basic timeline or chronology of events.
Indeed, as historian and Churchill biographer Andrew Roberts points out:
Cooper’s first argument was that Churchill “was primarily responsible for that war becoming what it did, something other than an invasion of Poland.” Yet in the moment that Adolf Hitler invaded Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg at dawn on May 10, 1940, Winston Churchill was not even prime minister.
Unless Mr. Cooper is arguing that from his position as First Lord of the Admiralty—the head of Britain’s navy—Churchill was somehow able to force Hitler to unleash Blitzkrieg in the West, his first argument falls to the ground.
But the bigger question that has not been addressed is: why, at this moment in time, is Carlson elevating and promoting the false and inaccurate notion that Winston Churchill is the “chief villain” of World War II?
Ukraine. The answer is not hard to discern. He is doing so because of Ukraine.
“I’m just highly distressed,” Carlson told Cooper, “by the uses to which the myths [sic] about World War II have been put in the context of modern foreign policy, particularly the war in Ukraine.”
Churchill, remember, was a fierce critic of the British government’s policy of appeasement in the years leading up World War II. He warned repeatedly of the grave and gathering Nazi German threat. Hitler had to be stopped, not appeased, Churchill argued.
Carlson and Cooper, by contrast, are modern-day appeasers. They want to appease Putin. They recognize the obvious parallels between Europe in the 1930s and Europe today.
They understand quite well that if yesterday’s appeasers can be vindicated and Churchill vilified, then it will be easier for today’s appeasers to prevail in Ukraine and in other parts of Eastern Europe (the Baltic States and Poland), which Putin views as rightful parts of a new Russian empire.
As Faulkner famously put it, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
Myopic Critics. Yet, inexplicably, even critics who heap opprobrium on Carlson and Cooper feel compelled to downplay or deny this obvious fact.
For example, in an otherwise superb takedown of Cooper’s false and inaccurate history, Mark Antonio Wright writes:
I will go ahead and concede at the outset Carlson and Cooper’s complaint that the “Munich 1938: Churchill vs. Chamberlain and the Appeasers” dynamic has been used and abused in the post-war period, often to our detriment. Not every foreign adversary is Adolf Hitler, and not every international negotiation is Munich 1938.
This is obviously true, but Wright concedes too much. He ignores the obvious parallels between Nazi Germany and modern-day Russia. He ignores the echoes of Adolph Hitler in Vladimir Putin. He ignores Russia’s horrific war crimes and attempted genocide of Ukraine.
1930’s Style Appeasement. In truth, Putin’s Russia is attempting to conquer and subjugate Eastern Europe, just as Hitler’s Germany tried to do in the 1930s and ’40s. Then as now we heard all of manner of excuses for appeasing the fascist aggressors. But the appeasers were wrong then and they are wrong today.
As Yale historian Timothy Snyder has observed, our present-day historical moment is similar to that of 1938:
This is 1938, but Czechoslovakia [read: Ukraine] has chosen to fight… So you have an imperfect democracy… [that], when threatened by a larger neighbor [read: Russia], it chooses to resist. In that world, where Czechoslovakia resists, there’s no Second World War.
Snyder’s argument is that we can avoid a great powers war with Russia in Europe if we learn the lesson of the 1930s and stop Russia in Ukraine. A Russia that has subsumed Ukraine, he explains, will be a far more formidable enemy to combat, just as Nazi Germany was a far more formidable enemy to combat after it had subsumed Czechoslovakia.
Modern-Day Appeasers. Carlson and Cooper see this obvious historical parallel even if Wright and other critics choose to ignore it. But unlike most of us, and unlike most historians, Carlson and Cooper don’t care.
They don’t care about Europe, especially Eastern Europe. They believe, erroneously, in a fortress America that can largely ignore what happens in Europe.
Their erstwhile ally, Trump Vice Presidential nominee JD Vance, agrees with them. “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another,” he said when running for the Senate in 2022.
Indifference and History. But their indifference to the fate of Europe is contrary to the British and American historical experience. It runs counter to our historical understanding. Churchill cared and Franklin Delano Roosevelt cared because they understood that the fate of Britain and the United States is inextricably linked to the fate of Europe.
Carlson and Cooper think differently. That’s why they are attempting, unsuccessfully, to rewrite the history of World War II and to cast Hitler as misunderstood and Churchill as the villain.
The implications of their historical analysis for what is transpiring in Ukraine today are clear and frightening, and we ignore these implications at our peril.
Feature photo credit: Darryl Cooper and Tucker Carlson, courtesy of their online Twitter interview.