Last week’s online controversy was the interview with Darryl Cooper, whom host Tucker Carlson called “(maybe) the best and most honest popular historian in the United States.” In the interview, Cooper not only claimed that Winston Churchill was a psychopath but also that he was “the real villain” of World War II. Though Cooper admitted Hitler was evil, he also argued that history’s most notorious villain was, in fact, backed into a corner by Churchill, who was bent on war from the beginning. Thus, it is Churchill and not Hitler, Cooper claimed, who should bear most of the blame for the war and the Holocaust. Cooper, during the interview and afterward, chalked up opposition to his telling of the story to core elements of American identity since the war that are too deeply engrained to be questioned.
Typically, claims like these would be unworthy of a response, other than perhaps an eyeroll and quick dismissal. However, this interview has been viewed by millions and was conducted by the most popular news personality in the United States. Also, Cooper has since doubled down on his claims on X.
In his misrepresentation of the two most important figures of World War II, Cooper obscured several basic facts. First, in a claim that reveals his “extensive research” failed to consider basic history texts, he posited that historians never talk about why Hitler rose to power in Weimar Germany. In fact, many have and still do.
Cooper also argued that Hitler’s anger was the fault of England and France because they declared war on Germany after his invasion of Poland. Had they not, he claimed, the war would have been over before it really began. However, this claim ignores Hitler’s repeated goal of building “living space” for Germany in Eastern Europe, how he broke his word before the war by taking all of Czechoslovakia rather than just the German-speaking areas, and the treaty obligations England and France had to Poland.
It’s also important to note that Hitler invaded France through neutral Belgium the day Churchill became Prime Minister, so he can hardly be blamed for the escalation of the war. Cooper also argued that the war could have ended when France was conquered, and Hitler offered peace to England and promised it could keep its Empire. Churchill, he said, should have accepted Hitler’s terms.
However, to do so would have meant abandoning England’s allies, not to mention the rest of Europe, to Nazi domination. Bizarrely, Cooper assumes that Hitler could have been trusted to keep his word that he only really wanted peace. Because Churchill insisted on fighting, Cooper suggested, he is the real villain of the war. Churchill, he said, wanted war to make up for his part in the disaster at Gallipoli in World War I. Though nothing in Churchill’s writings suggests this, Hitler clearly articulated his intentions and, despite what Cooper claimed, it was not to pursue peace.
In fact, Churchill opposed Hitler before the war began. Thus, the simpler explanation is that Churchill understood the danger to the world posed by the Nazis and acted accordingly.
Cooper also claimed Hitler thought the U.S., rather than the Soviets, were his main threat, but decided to invade Russia anyway. And he justified the incredible death toll in Russia, which was far greater than anywhere else in the war, by claiming that Hitler didn’t plan for the massive number of prisoners of war and civilians that would be captured. Cooper also justified German death camps in this way, appealing to a letter written by a German officer suggesting that to kill the prisoners quickly would be more humane than allowing them to slowly starve to death. He failed to mention that the vast majority of those killed in the camps were civilians, not prisoners of war.
In general, both the quality of Cooper’s historical research and his moral compass is exposed by a statement he made in another context:
No god in any religious tradition is as consistently brutal and bloodthirsty as Yahweh in the Old Testament. That includes the various war gods, and deities of peoples like the Aztecs.
In other words, as always, flawed historical revisionism of this sort is always motivated by flawed beliefs about God, the human condition, and the world.
Of course, Churchill was a flawed individual and should not be considered above criticism. Still, it is safe to say that in the context of World War II, he was the good guy, and Hitler was the bad guy.
Cooper’s approach to history is essentially the same as Critical Theory, except from the right rather than from the left. Assuming accepted history to be not only wrong but corrupted by an agenda, historical narratives must be deconstructed and turned upside down. It’s no accident that they end up in the same place: the Jews and Churchill are evil, Hamas is good, and Hitler needs to be rehabilitated.
Christians shouldn’t fall for this, no matter where it comes from.