Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.
Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. I had a recent podcast that I hope you all enjoyed about the new revisionism of World War II. Specifically, I talked about an interview that a Cornell chemist, David Collum, had given with Tucker Carlson, in which I disagreed with his suggestion that not only should we have not allied with the Soviet Union, but that we might have considered allying with Hitler. He didn’t really say that specifically, but he said that would be a possibility.
And I had a vehement demand for an apology from the journalist-historian Diana West. She said that I had defamed her. And I want to read the two sentences or three sentences I said because not only do I think I was correct in my assessment, but I think rather than me giving an apology, I think she needs to give me an apology to me, because she misconstrued what I said and then she put it all over the internet.
Let me go back to that broadcast I gave you and read exactly, exactly what I said.
“Recently, there has been more revision about World War II. Tucker Carlson had on his show the other day a chemistry professor from Cornell University, David Collum, that was sort of resonating what a prior blogger, Darryl Cooper, had said about World War II, in the vein of Diana West, Pat Buchanan, all the way back to Herbert Hoover. The gist”—let me repeat that. “The gist of it was that we should have never allied with a Soviet Union, and we should have either let Hitler and Stalin fight it out or”—emphasis here—“in the case of David Collum, he suggested that we might have wanted to fight with Hitler.”
Now, I’m going to read you what her demand is, but I think if you heard what I just said, I said three things, that there was a school of people who had been revisionists about World War II, and I mentioned two interviewees of Tucker Carlson, Mr. Cooper and Mr. Collum, and then I mentioned people in the past who had been World War II revisionists, including Diana West and Pat Buchanan and Herbert Hoover. And then I said, as I just quoted, that the gist of it was they thought that we should not have allied ourselves with the Soviet Union in World War II after the German invasion of June 22, 1941.
And then I said, in one particular case, and again, I want to say that, in the case of David Collum—so I was talking about David Collum alone, not Darryl Cooper, not Diana West, not Patrick Buchanan, not Herbert Hoover—he suggested we might have wanted to fight with Hitler. OK?
So, I did not suggest that Diana West said that I had said that she wanted us to have fought with Hitler. She never said that. Let me make clear: She never wrote that, and I never said she did. Let me read you, now, this long letter very quickly, asking for an apology.
“To Victor Davis Hanson and The Daily Signal.” Now, she’s copied on her demand Newt Gingrich, Geert Wilders, Frank Gaffney, Richard Viguerie, Michael Waller, Ruth King, Andrew Bossom, and many others. That’s unfortunate because she misspoke about me and misrepresented me, and then she sent it all over the internet, and here’s what she says:
“I’m writing to demand the retraction of a remark Victor Hanson made about me during his recent Daily Signal podcast and column concerning World War II history (August 29th, 2025). Below, verbatim, is Mr. Hanson’s remark in which he pairs the noxious Hitlerian provocation promoted by podcaster Darryl Cooper with my name, Diana West, referencing my book ‘American Betrayal.’”
I paired her with Darryl Cooper only in the connection that both of them questioned why we allied ourselves with the Soviet Union and wished we had not.
Let me continue.
“Mr. Hanson has actually expanded on the original smear, which first appeared last month in an interview with Dave Collum on ‘The Tucker Carlson Show,’ by adding my photograph to a montage of images of Tucker Carlson, David Collum and Darryl Cooper—as if we were all of us intellectual or political allies!”
Ms. West, I don’t know about the photography or the photo that you’re referring to. I never created any photo, I never published it on my own, I have no knowledge of it, never have. When I do a Daily Signal or my own podcast, thousands of images appear. Some are people who platform, they want to add to it without my knowledge or consent, some are just AI-generated. But I have no control over it.
If there was a picture that circulated on the internet, maybe from The Daily Signal, maybe from somewhere else, I had nothing to do with it. My permission was not asked, nor was I given, and I really resent the accusation that you think that I did it when you had no proof that I did, and I did not.
In addition, “Cooper and the lesser-known Collum in some kind of neo-Bundist network, as conjured by The Daily Signal’s lurid headline, ‘WW II Revisionists Went Too Far With “We Should Have Sided With Hitler” Claim.’”
I guess she’s objecting to the plural World War II revisionists. She has a legitimate complaint there because I only specified one revisionist, David Collum, who actually advocated for an alliance with Hitler. The other revisionists, as I said, the gist of their arguments was that the United States should not have allied ourselves with the Soviet. That’s two different things.
I have no control over the title that the editors or anybody uses when I issue my video. The video is produced each day for The Daily Signal, and then they package it, they entitle it, they publish it. My job and my contractual obligations are to send them a five-minute video every day, and that’s exactly what I did. For her to insinuate that I made the title, again, is about as fallacious as I circulated a photo with her picture, along with these other revisionists.
“Both the remark and the headline are utterly unjust and quite injurious to my work and reputation.”
And they are to mine, to accuse me of that, Ms. West.
Nor have I ever made “a ‘Hitler Claim,’ and the proof is in all my widely published books, columns, blogs, and interviews. On the contrary, my work has nothing to do with these men; and, further, I have published numerous articles, statements and made podcasts making my criticism and opposition to the corrosive agendas they (Tucker Carlson being the most influential) promote loud and clear.”
I have no doubt you’re doing that. I never suggested that you did not.
“Nevertheless, here is what Victor Hanson publicly and recklessly stated about me.” And then she quoted that. But again, “publicly and recklessly,” when all I said is that you were a revisionist about World War II, the gist of which you suggested that we should not ally ourselves with the Soviet Union.
If you want to take this occasion and say that I misspoke and that you really did want us to ally with the Soviet Union, then I will apologize, but that’s not what I read, and I did read your book, that is not the impression that I got and which that you intended to give.
And of course, I never said, as I said earlier, that you wanted to ally with Hitler. Had you read very carefully before you shot off this demand for an apology, it would’ve said I specified one person, David Collum, and in the case of David Collum.
“I demand a retraction from Mr. Hanson on his podcast, social media and in his Daily Signal column, and alerts to Hanson’s retraction by The Daily Signal on its website and social media, [alongside a] Daily Signal correction for having erroneously included me under the lurid ‘Hitler Claim’ headline, (‘World War II Revisionists Went Too Far With’ [“We Should’ve Sided With Hitler” Claim’)]. The reason for this demand is as simple as it urgent: ‘What … Darryl Cooper has said about World War II’ is NOT NOT NOT ‘in the vein of Diana West.’ Nor have I ever advocated ‘[siding] with Hitler.’”
You’ve never advocated siding with Hitler, and I’ve said that very specifically. I said David Collum did, not you. But, like other revisionists, you have suggested that the alliance with the Soviet Union was disastrous or should have never taken place.
Now, I can see why you would’ve said that there. And I read your book. I thought the part about Soviet espionage was very telling. The Venona Project, Harry Dexter White, Alger Hiss, they all had influence with the Roosevelt administration, they all wanted closer ties with the Soviet Union. They were all strong advocates for Lend-Lease. They all may have been determinative in the decision of the Roosevelt administration to begin giving quite important materials to the Soviet Union. And you made that clear in your book.
And you also made clear, as I remember, and correct me if I’m wrong, that you questioned the wisdom of the D-Day campaign. You thought it might’ve been better to invade up the underbelly of Europe, according to [Winston] Churchill.
My disagreement with you is not about whether there were communists—there were—that associated with [President Franklin D.] Roosevelt. And I agree with you entirely, they had influence on his policy, the Soviet Union. My argument is a military one.
On June 22, 1941, and before, we had very little influence on the war. We were unprepared. Europe was all overrun. Every capital in the EU or NATO today was either under Nazi occupation, actively a Nazi ally, or a pro-Nazi neutral. Britain alone was standing there. And when Hitler blew it, made a big, I think his most colossal error, invaded the Soviet Union, we made a decision to supply, along with Britain, about 20% to 23% or 24% of their war material.
The result of that was that the Soviet Union grew to over 500 divisions, it became a colossal juggernaut, and it killed approximately three out of four German soldiers on the Eastern Front in the entire war.
Let me say that again. On the Western Front, they killed the equivalent of three out of four German soldiers who were killed in the war.
In other words, all the other theaters killed just 25% of the German soldiers. In the process, they lost—either to their incompetence, to their disastrous earlier alliance under the Molotov-Ribbentrop alliance with Hitler, and through the fighting against Hitler, and to the efforts of Hitler to slaughter and starve Russian civilians—about 20 million people. We lost about 450,000, depending on how you count combat fatalities.
In other words, we fought World War II and won the war, and we came away with losing very few soldiers.
At the end of the war, the Soviet Union had no intention, I agree with you entirely, of honoring their commitments made both at Yalta and then before the Japanese theater had ended at Potsdam.
But nevertheless, when the war was over, the United States was the preeminent power in the world—except for Britain—had lost fewer combatants than any of the major three allies, Britain, the United States, Russia, and China as well, and had lost fewer than Japan and Germany.
So, we fought that war very economically by giving material aid to the Soviet Union, who used their manpower and lost 20 million people to kill three out of every four German soldiers.
That’s not an argument that you like the Soviet Union. I detest the Soviet Union. But it’s an argument that in the ability of the United States to defeat Germany in 1941, it was a wise military strategy to use a third party to kill the German army, kill it off, and that’s what happened, it was a success.
After the Cold War started, there were naivete that you pointed out very, I think, adroitly. And we were unprepared for the betrayal of the Soviet Union. The Cold War ensued.
But the idea that World War II was not worth it or had been fought under false auspices, I don’t think is correct. I’m not suggesting you said it, but other people have. And all in all, World War II was a brilliant work of American strategy, productivity, and courage and sacrifice. And the result was we destroyed the greatest threat to mankind, and we did it as economically as we could in American cost and lives.
And then you also say, and I don’t want to read quotes from you, perhaps Mr. Hanson is somehow [unfamiliar] with my 2013 “American Betrayal.” No, I’m very familiar with it.
In fact, I was asked to comment, and I think by the late David Horowitz. I passed on that because I felt that people were actually ganging up on you. And you had made some good comments about the infiltration of strategic thinking in the United States administration of Franklin Roosevelt, and that may or may not have affected our attitude on grand strategy in the war.
I don’t think it was determinative, and I agree in this case with Conrad Black, who has addressed some of your theories and points and analyses. But nevertheless, you’re quite right that the United States was overly influenced by the Soviet Union. But I don’t think that we had much choice, and I don’t think that influence would’ve determined us in a wise way just to let them fight that out or not to ally with the Soviet Union or not to help them, because again, they were primarily responsible for destroying the German army on the ground.
“Aside from my book, however, it would have been very easy for him to learn the truth [about] my reflexive consternation at having been smeared by Collum on Tucker’s show. As soon as I saw what had been said about me in the Collum-Tucker interview, and which was included in the clip that went viral (8.5 million views), I posted and pinned to my Twitter/X account the following.”
I don’t read your text or your Twitter account, but again, I did not smear you. David Collum may have smeared you—I didn’t listen to the entire text or interview with Tucker Carlson. But I did not smear you, unless you think I was smearing you by saying the gist, the gist of these revisionists, in which I included you—and I think you would call yourself a World War II revisionist in a positive sense—was that you doubted the wisdom of allying ourselves and aiding the Soviet Union during World War II.
If that’s wrong and you were an advocate of that alliance, then I will issue apology. If I was correct that you were suspicious and disapproved of that alliance, and I am correct that I never said that you advocated an alliance with Hitler—and I didn’t say that, I think you can see by the text I didn’t say that—then I think you owe me an apology, I really do.
And finally, she says, “Had Mr. Hanson bothered to check his facts before speaking/writing, he could have seen this. Or, had he bothered to conduct a quick Google search of my name and ‘Darryl Cooper,’ he would have found that what tops the queue is another essay I wrote titled: ‘Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan and the Creeping Poison [of Darryl Cooper].”
Again, Ms. West, I have no doubt that you do not support the views of either Darryl Cooper or David Collum. I did not say you did.
I said the gist of these revisionists, of which you were included, and the comment in which I was talking about was solely allying ourselves with the Soviet Union, whether it was a wise or wrong-headed decision. I think you think it was a wrong-headed decision. They did too.
I did not associate your name, however, with all of their other views, which I made clear by saying that only in my knowledge had David Collum argued for an actual alliance or at least helping Hitler. You did not say that. I did not say you did.
And then, finally, “I am sure that Mr. Hanson and The Daily Signal do not wish to remain party to this continuing smear of my work and reputation. I look forward to swift rectification of the matter.”
I think you’ve got it right here.
Let me just recap: I have nothing to do with the title of my video with The Daily Signal. That decision is made elsewhere by others. I have nothing to do with any photographs, and to suggest that I did and I’m responsible is not a professional thing to say. I am aware of your book. I read it. I did not participate in the severe criticism which you incurred from historians. I don’t prejudice a historian, whether their professional training is in journalism, as is yours, or whether it’s through a doctorate or a Ph.D. program, and you’ve insinuated that maybe that was a question. It was not. I have respect for your historical analyses.
Again, where I differ from you is I think there were military, strategic, tactical, logistic concerns that warranted helping, at that particular time, the lesser of two evils. And then, after the war, when Hitler was eliminated, then dealing with the now greater of the two, because the Hitler threat was over with and Germany had been defeated, and now we had to deal with the Soviet Union.
And you’re right, as I have written in my own book, that we empowered the Soviet Union to destroy Hitler. And then we had to live with that, and we did so in the Cold War, defeated it and Stalin, as he had planned, never got into Western Europe.
And with that, I think I’ve covered everything, where as I have given a clear exposition of what I said, of the title, of the photograph, of my fix, my clear reasoning that David Collum alone had argued for an alliance with Hitler, and that you and Pat Buchanan and Herbert Hoover and others had questioned the gist, again, the gist of what I was saying, that you had questioned the wisdom of alliance with the Soviet Union.
Other than that, I did not associate you with any of these people on any other historical matter, other than two things: general revisionism of World War II and, in particular, the alliance with the Soviet Union.
And I wish you would tell your readers to clarify that and that you withdraw the accusation that I had anything to do with the title, I didn’t; with the photograph, I didn’t; or that I suggested that you wanted to ally with Hitler, which you did not and which I didn’t say.
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