The Forced War

Introduction

The best litmus tests for today’s Dissident Right should include only one question: did the right side win the Second World War in Europe?

If you answer yes, most likely you’re not a dissident. If you answer no, most likely you are. In this case, degrees don’t matter—neither does intent. One can profess the saint-like innocence of the Nazis in the face of their genocidal enemies, or one can cop to all the atrocities ascribed to the Nazis and support them anyway. Dissident. On the other hand, one can carefully weigh the actions of both sides and conclude that the Nazis were slightly more in the right than the Allies. Doesn’t matter. Dissident.

To be sure, similar questions about similar wars can become similar litmus tests. Soviet citizens who believed the Whites should have beaten the Reds in the Russian Civil War were one example. Present-day Southern Nationalists who believed the wrong side won the American Civil War are another. But the most meaningful question involves the Second World War because that conflict was the most destructive, affected the most people, and has had the profoundest impact on Western Civilization.

Thus, to be a dissident one most likely needs a level of historical understanding that goes far deeper (although not necessarily broader) than that of the average educated person. David Hoggan’s 1961 work The Forced War: When Peaceful Revision Failed provides this historical understanding so comprehensively that it should be nearly impossible for anyone to subscribe to his thesis and not wind up a dissident.

RTWT