The Forced war by David L. Hoggan

[Mkk]

First off I'd like to say thankyou to the moderators who have opened the WW2 revisionist forum on my and others suggestion.

The following is one of the most famous revisionist books on the origins of the Second World war, and is reccomended reading for anyone wanting to see the "other side" of the debate.

The Forced War

When Peaceful Revision Failed


By David L. Hoggan

[Full book found here:

http://www.unz.com/book/david_l_hoggan__the-forced-war/

Webmaster]

Many other WW2 and Holocaust books, some revisionist and some not, can be found at this link (it takes some time to load)

http://wnlibrary.org/

[Kingfisher]

Hoggan's book is very long, some 600 pages of tight print. On the negative side, he takes a very partisan position that Halifax wanted war and forced it on Germany (though I have to say I am largely convinced by this), and announces as fact, without supporting evidence that no one died on Kristallnacht, but it is amazing for the sheer amount of detail, an almost day by day countdown to the war.

Although partisan it is probably no more so than the mainstream books by Shirer, etc. and is a very healthy antidote.

An easier read, more recent and a bit shorter, perhaps better perused before tackling Hoggan, is Pat Buchanan's Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War. The other classic, which appeared in 1961, the same year as Hoggan's, is A J P Taylor's Origins of the Second World War.

All three books put the events of the period into their context, and show that in foreign policy all countries involved acted in much the same way for what they perceived as their national advantage, and all were prepared to use force. How many in the general public realise that not only were the Poles as much in conflict with their Jewish population as was Germany, but were very militaristic with an inflated sense of their own place in Europe, that they had threatened to invade Germany in 1932 when Germany had almost defenceless, that they coveted East Prussia and participated in the break-up of Czechoslovakia?

[Mkk]

he takes a very partisan position that Halifax wanted war and forced it on Germany

I have to say this was the biggest revelation of the book for me. I'd never been able to join the dots between Chamberlain's peaceful policy and Britain's shift to war mongering in less than a year ; the book explains it was never Chamberlain who was behind it at all.

and announces as fact, without supporting evidence that no one died on Kristallnacht

This is one of the flaws of his book, but to be fair it doesn't affect his central thesis.

Although partisan it is probably no more so than the mainstream books by Shirer, etc. and is a very healthy antidote.

Shirer's work isn't taken seriously anymore, right? Even mainstream historians have described it as 10 years behind the times even when it was printed.

[Kingfisher]

Although partisan it is probably no more so than the mainstream books by Shirer, etc. and is a very healthy antidote.

Shirer's work isn't taken seriously anymore, right? Even mainstream historians have described it as 10 years behind the times even when it was printed.

To tell the truth, I don't really know. I chose him as an example of a contemporary of Hoggan. I read a book of his on the Fall of Berlin many, many years ago.

[john p]

Some of the best and apparently accurate works on the years between the two wars that I have read,are available on the SWEET LIBERTY WEB SITE under the heading HOW WARS ARE MADE.There is plenty of reading but well worth it,much of it from official documents.

[Haldan]

This is one of the best, but the English translation/edition is more or less useless for reference, and it's wrecked compared with the German. Barnes...

-haldan

[Haldan]

and announces as fact, without supporting evidence that no one died on Kristallnacht

This is one of the flaws of his book, but to be fair it doesn't affect his central thesis.

Just a friendly question to both of you. Have any of you read the German edition, the one published by Grabert Verlag? The English edition can't be compared,it's wrecked. Even the introduction.

Thanks for linking to WNLibrary, Mkk. The "Portabel Documents" folder takes a fair amount of time to load because it contains so many items. Perhaps it would be wiser of me to group them by category or alphabetically spread out in folders, like a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h, et cetera?
We have two of Leslies books (both in English, unfortunately):
http://wnlibrary.org/?directory=./&search=Hoggan

-haldan

[Mkk]

Haldan,

I can't speak German too well, so I've only read the English. What's wrong with that version?

[Haldan]

Haldan,

I can't speak German too well, so I've only read the English. What's wrong with that version?

Maybe the best explanation comes from Carlos Porter in this reply to Ernst Zündel regarding Howard Fertig edition of Hitler Speeches:

I think the same thing (British provocation of the war) would have happened even without the Jews, more or less because of the influence of Soviet communism on the British intellectual classes and British snobbery, but of course Hoggan leaves Jews out of the equation entirely, which is going too far. All anti-Communists are always smeared, always, even Goldwater, who was part Jewish. Of course, making a distinction between Jews and Communists is like taking an apple pie and cutting it in half. But just the same… Hoggan is right on one very important point: he hates the British. This allows him to see certain things very clearly. In DER UNNOETIGE KRIEG he says the British have followed one principle throughout history: never keep your word “das gegebene Wort nie zu halten” [never to keep their pledged word]. Of course the book has never been published in the English original. He also speaks of “Millionen von amerikanischen Narren”... [millions of American fools] etc.

[..] deletions

I am d-i-s-g-u-s-t-e-d at the treatment of Hoggan by Elmer Barnes and others, Barnes disagreed with Hoggan on a few minor points so he sabotaged the publication of the book FORCED WAR in English for almost 30 years, Devin-Adair was going to publish it. If Barnes doesn’t like the book, why the hell didn’t he write his own book, or pan it in a book review? No, he insisted that certain changes be made or it couldn’t get published, Hoggan got mad, and said, the hell with it, no changes. So the world lost the benefit of this priceless book in English for 30 years because of a bitchy cat fight between a couple of so-called intellectuals (forgive the mixed metaphor, mea culpa). Hoggan was right, and anyway when they DID publish it in English it wasn’t even complete, there are whole paragraphs missing. Plus an introduction full of boring essays on “what is revisionism”, running down the book they were trying to sell, super-apologetic, etc., saying the critics didn’t like the footnotes, etc. What kind of salesmanship is that? Answer: Typical IHR. They acted like they were ashamed of the product. They deleted whole sections. The original two-page introduction in German is dynamite, but the IHR introduction is just typical IHR: wish-washy, apologetic, pretentious and boring.

http://holocaust-history.net/main/artic ... undel1.php

I can get back to this later with other details, but this is basically it.

Best wishes,
-haldan

[Marcy Fleming]

I have read The Forced War twice and it is by far the best diplomatic history of the origins of that war. Taylor only comes close in his excellent The Origins Of The Second World War. I know people who have read the German edition of Forced and prefer it but still have very high praise for the english language edition.
I read Forced twice plus Hoggan's 1948 Harvard Doctoral thesis (prepared under William L. Langer) on which The Forced War was based.
As a secular Jew I have long understood that no Jews died in the Crystal Night. There was a lot of hoodlumism and property damage but no deaths. So I don't see that statement of Hoggan's as controversial. My boyfriend met Hoggan a couple of times in the early 70s before I was born. Hoggan lived near Stanford in Menlo Park.
The infighting with Barnes was unfortunate and it was partly because Hoggan came under the influence of a fundamentalist minister named Rushdoony. Barnes was a strong atheist. Rushdoony is long deceased but his son-in-law Gary North writes for Lew Rockwell and is a sort of revisionist on both world wars.
The Shirer book is worthless and as Barnes noted it would take a work of equal length to rebut all the errors of both fact and interpretation in his book on Nazi Germany.
Unfortunately Taylor denigrates the work of great American WW2 revisionists like Barnes, Chamberlin, Sargent, Beard, Tansill and Sanborn. All of those works are more scholarly than Taylor's Origins, which is his only revisionist book. I do recommend Taylor highly for beginners as is much shorter than Hoggan's and the authors just listed above.

[Kingfisher]

Marcy:

At the risk of going off topic, on what do you base your assertion that no one died on Crystal Night? The precise number usually quoted (92, I think, from memory) is suspicious, suggesting single source, and I have read some revisionist source (can't remember where now) alleging that it was the result of provocation, that the riots were not organised by the regime, that in fact attempted to contain and repress them. I accept that getting any kind of reliable info is very difficult, but I'm interested in your source.

[Marcy Fleming]

I think I was actually told that when I visited Vad Vashem back in the 90s when I lived in Israel for two years. My boyfriend had a very long two decades correspondence with Dr. James J. Martin and Martin specifically wrote him that there were no deaths at Crystal Night. I don't know if Martin gave a source but Mike did save all of Martin's letters so we can look it up. I won't repeat this again until I can give a source.

[NLH]

After Carlos Porter did an excellent job of getting the ball rolling with Bellingers book on Himmler (viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2202), Porter ended his email with:

"Trying to find David L Hoggan's next of kin."

I asked what he meant by this as I only knew of Hoggan's book, The Forced War, which is now out of print and very expensive. To this I got the interesting reply:

"He also wrote several other 3-volume sets of history books which were published in German but never English. What the hell is the logic of that? They were written in English, he was American and lived in America. One was called THE BLIND CENTURY and another was called THE AMERICAN DISASTER. Those are the titles translated back into English. Where the hell did the manuscripts go? I think there are others as well. I'll publish them myself if I get permission. Also THE FORCED WAR is shorter in English than it was in German. They interfered with everything he did. -- CARLOS"

* http://codoh.com/library/authors/2335/
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hoggan

[Mortimer]

First off I'd like to say thankyou to the moderators who have opened the WW2 revisionist forum on my and others suggestion.

The following is one of the most famous revisionist books on the origins of the Second World war, and is reccomended reading for anyone wanting to see the "other side" of the debate.

The Forced War

When Peaceful Revision Failed


By David L. Hoggan

http://www.gnosticliberationfront.com/T ... 20War1.htm

Many other WW2 and Holocaust books, some revisionist and some not, can be found at this link (it takes some time to load)

http://wnlibrary.org/

Both of the above links are now kaput but you can find an English version of The Forced War here - https://archive.org/details/TheForcedWar

[Deitrich]

First off I'd like to say thankyou to the moderators who have opened the WW2 revisionist forum on my and others suggestion.

The following is one of the most famous revisionist books on the origins of the Second World war, and is reccomended reading for anyone wanting to see the "other side" of the debate.

The Forced War

When Peaceful Revision Failed


By David L. Hoggan

http://www.gnosticliberationfront.com/T ... 20War1.htm

Many other WW2 and Holocaust books, some revisionist and some not, can be found at this link (it takes some time to load)

http://wnlibrary.org/

Both of the above links are now kaput but you can find an English version of The Forced War here - https://archive.org/details/TheForcedWar

I have not read the forced war but it is recommended by Butz and by Metapedia which is careful to avoid mistakes as being solid. However I disagree.

There's not a single reference in it. Maybe that's why the CODOH book store does not include it at all! Because they seem to only include books that pass a stringent quality screen. I think it should take a low priority until someone can provide a convincing answer as to why without any scholarly references.