In Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War, Pat Buchanan gives Winston Churchill high marks for valor—but a flunks him on strategy.

[B]y his refusal even to consider a negotiated peace…Churchill caused Hitler to commit his fatal blunder: invading Russia. [This would bring] the downfall of Hitler…[but] add four more years to the war and bring death to tens of millions.

The war Churchill insisted on fighting would also cost Britain the empire that Churchill so dearly loved—and place half of Europe under Soviet domination for decades. “Britain fought Nazi tyranny,” Buchanan argues, “only to pave the path to power for a greater tyranny.”

Today on Uncommon Knowledge, Victor Davis Hanson and Christopher Hitchens grant a good deal of Buchanan’s argument—Hitch even adds that all decent people ought to find Churchill’s romantic notion of warfare repellent. But they insist even so that Churchill was right to fight.