An Apology To or From Diana West?

Victor Davis Hanson

Recently, Diana West wrote a number of people and posted a long demand for an apology, on the grounds that I had disseminated a photo, a video title, and in my own short video had smeared her.

None of that was true.

See below her demands interspliced with my own answers in CAPITAL LETTERS to her charges:

A Retraction Is Required from VDH & The Daily Signal — ASAP

Below is the letter I just sent off to Hanson and The Daily Signal

Diana W

Sep 01, 2025

To: Victor Davis Hanson and The Daily Signal

CC: Newt Gingrich, Geert Wilders, Frank Gaffney, Richard Viguerie, J. Michael Waller, Ruth S. King, Andrew Bostom, and many others

I am 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 29, 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. Amazing but true, 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, Dave Collum & Darryl Cooper — as if we are all of us intellectual or political allies! Nothing could be further from the truth. Photos of Pat Buchanan and Herbert Hoover follow mine, in no way ameliorating the impression that I am in sync with Carlson, Cooper and the lesser-known Collum in some kind of neo-Bundist network, as conjured by the Daily Signal’s lurid headline: “WWII Revisionists Went Too Far With `We Should’ve Sided With Hitler’ Claim.”

DO YOU HAVE ANY EVIDENCE THAT I ADDED YOUR PHOTOGRAPH TO ANY MONTAGE? IF YOU DO HAVE DIRECT PROOF, PLEASE NOW ADDUCE IT.

IF NOT, PLEASE APOLOGIZE FOR THAT FALSE ACCUSATION.

MY CONTRACTUAL VIDEO AGREEMENT, AS IS OFTEN THE NORM WITH SYNDICATED COLUMNISTS WHOSE EDITORS EITHER CREATE OR ALTER THEIR TITLES, IS TO PRESENT A DAILY SHORT VIDEO TO THE DAILY SIGNAL.

AFTER IT IS SUBMITTED AND BECOMES THEIR OWN PROPERTY, THEIR EDITORIAL STAFF SELECTS A TITLE FOR THE VIDEO. THEY EDIT IT, AND THEY MAY OR MAY NOT ADD ADS, PHOTOS, OR ILLUSTRATIONS.

CONTRACTUALLY, I HAVE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR MY VIDEOS AFTER THEY ARE SUBMITTED AND ACCEPTED—EXCEPT TO CORRECT ANY ERRORS OF FACT WITHIN THEM FOR WHICH I AM RESPONSIBLE.

Both the remark and the headline are utterly unjust and quite injurious to my work and reputation. No, I have never made such a “Hitler Claim,” and the proof is in all of 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.

YOU DID NOT READ OR DID NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT I SAID IN THE VIDEO (SEE BELOW). I NEVER SAID YOU ADVOCATED JOINING HITLER.

YOU REFER TO “THESE MEN” WHO HAVE ALL QUESTIONED THE NEED FOR A WARTIME ALLIANCE WITH THE SOVIET UNION. BUT YOU HAVE AS WELL. AND FOR THAT REASON, ALL OF YOU HAVE QUESTIONED WHETHER THE WAR WAS A COMPLETE VICTORY FOR THE UNITED STATES.

IN THAT GENERAL FRAMEWORK (CF. MY USE OF “THE GIST”) THEY WOULD BE IN AGREEMENT WITH YOU, WITHOUT NECESSARILY SHARING ANY FURTHER SIMILAR VIEWS.

Nevertheless, here is what Victor Hanson publicly and recklessly stated about me: “Recently, there’s 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 of it was we should have never have allied with the Soviet Union, and we should have either let Hitler and Stalin fight it out, or, in the case of David Collum, he suggested we might have wanted to fight with Hitler.”

I AM GLAD YOU FINALLY QUOTED WHAT I SAID SO THE READER CAN SEE IT IS NOT WHAT YOU NOW WRITE.

SO, NOTE WHAT I SAID, WHICH IS QUITE DIFFERENT FROM WHAT YOU ALLEGE:

I SAID:

1) THAT COOPER/COLLUM/WEST/BUCHANAN WERE WORLD WAR II REVISIONISTS (“MORE REVISION ABOUT WORLD WAR II…”);

2) THAT THE GIST OF THIS REVISIONISM THAT I HAD FOCUSED ON (I.E., NOT ALL THE REVISIONS OF ALL THE REVISIONISTS), AND THUS WHICH THEY HAD ALL AGREED UPON WAS:

A) THAT WE SHOULD NOT HAVE ALLIED WITH THE SOVIET UNION,

B) AND THUS, WE SHOULD HAVE LET THE SOVIETS AND THE NAZIS FIGHT EACH OTHER ON THE EASTERN FRONT WITHOUT ALLIED HELP TO THE SOVIETS,

C) OR, IN THE SINGLE CASE OF JUST ONE OF THE FOUR REVISIONISTS, SPECIFICALLY, DAVID COLLUM, HE HAD ALSO SUGGESTED A PARTNERSHIP WITH HITLER.

SO, I DID NOT SUGGEST THAT EITHER YOU, COOPER, BUCHANNAN, OR HOOVER HAD SUGGESTED AN ALLIANCE WITH HITLER. (NOR DID I RAISE THE POINT THAT MANY REVISIONISTS HAVE ARGUED THAT IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE DEFEAT OF HITLER, WE SHOULD HAVE REENLISTED GERMAN VETERANS AND NEW GERMAN RECRUITS TO FIGHT ALONGSIDE THE ALLIES AGAINST THE SOVIETS.)

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 (“WWII Revisionists Went Too Far With `We Should’ve Sided With Hitler’ Claim”).

INSTEAD, I ASK FOR AN APOLOGY AND RETRACTION FOR YOUR FALSE STATEMENT THAT I INCLUDED YOU IN A “LURID” HEADLINE OR STATED THAT YOU HAD ADVOCATED SIDING WITH HITLER. YOU HAVE NO PROOF OF EITHER.

AGAIN, I HAVE HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE DAILY SIGNAL HEADLINE, NOR AM I CONTRACTUALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR IT. MOREOVER, I SPECIFICALLY EXEMPTED YOU IN FOCUSING SOLELY ON PROF. COLLUM’S ADVOCACY OF A GERMAN-U.S. ALLIANCE.

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.”

I AGREE, AND THAT IS WHY I SAID SPECIFICALLY “IN THE CASE OF DAVID COLLUM” AND DID NOT INCLUDE DIANA WEST. AND I USED A QUALIFIER “THE GIST” TO NOTE THE COMMONALITY OF YOUR PARTICULAR VIEW WITH OTHER REVISIONISTS WHO, LIKEWISE, CRITICIZED THE DECISION TO SIDE WITH THE SOVIET UNION WITH AID AND SUPPORT.

Indeed, I find no intersection between what Podcaster Cooper and I see when we look at World War II — which is exactly what I noted in one of my (numerous) earlier critiques. I had been bothered by Cooper’s Hitler argumentation from the start, (and I recorded a Patreon podcast about it on September 6, 2024, called “Hitler v. Churchill … v. Tucker?”). In March of this year, I wrote “What’s It All About, Carlson & Rogan: Pondering the Big Platforming of Darryl Cooper,” and in that Substack essay, I noted:

AGAIN, I INCLUDED YOU AS A REVISIONIST OF THE ORTHODOX VIEW OF WORLD II, ALONG WITH OTHER AUTHORS, IN THE ONE SENSE (“THE GIST”) OF CLAIMING THAT SIDING WITH THE SOVIET UNION AGAINST THE THIRD REICH WAS A MISTAKE.

As the saying goes, there are no coincidences, comrade — so, really, what was this all about? An air of contrivance still nags at me. I say this, I feel this, at least partly because I have a peculiar non-role in this whole — dare I use the Yiddish word? — geschrie. That’s because I, a journalist, not a historian, wrote a counter-conventional-history of World War II and the Cold War. It’s called American Betrayal, and it is a chronicle of the long-hidden war that no one wants to talk about, whether Conventional Churchillian or Carlsonian Hitlerite. It lays out the massive, secret war of communist subversion waged inside our policy- and war-making councils, which, once perceived, turns the World War II we all know and regularly commemorate into the war that actually made the world safe for communism. It turns the leaders we are taught to honor for “saving Western civilization” from Hitler into patsies of (see FDR), if not parties to (see FDR), Stalin’s long-term strategy to capture and destroy it. By the way, Stalin and FDR are AWOL from these online Cooper interviews.

IN TRUTH, WE WERE NOT PARTIES TO SOVIET STRATEGY BUT SERVED OUR OWN INTERESTS. WE ENDED THE WAR SUFFERING ABOUT 405,000 COMBAT DEATHS—NOT THE LIKELY COMBINED 50 MILLION OF THE RUSSIANS, CHINESE, GERMANS, JAPANESE, AND ITALIANS—WITH OUR HOMELAND VIRTUALLY UNTOUCHED, WITH A MONOPOLY FOR THE NEXT FOUR YEARS ON ATOMIC WEAPONS, AND WITH THE ONLY VIBRANT ECONOMY LEFT AMONG THE MAJOR BELLIGERENTS AFTER THE WAR.

OUR WARTIME AIMS OF DESTROYING GERMAN, ITALIAN, AND JAPANESE FASCISM, SAVING THE UNITED KINGDOM AND ITS ALLIES, ALONG WITH DEMOCRATIC WESTERN EUROPE, FROM FASCIST TOTALITARIANISM, AND FINISHING THE WAR WITH MILITARY SUPREMACY (THE LARGEST AIR FORCE AND NAVY IN THE WORLD, WITH A GDP LARGER THAN ALL THE MAJOR BELLIGERENTS COMBINED) WERE ACHIEVED.

IN CONTRAST, MUCH OF WESTERN RUSSIA WAS DESTROYED. ROUGHLY 20–25 MILLION RUSSIANS HAD BEEN KILLED OR DIED AS A RESULT OF THE WAR. AND EVEN A WELL-SUPPLIED AND LARGE POSTWAR RED ARMY WAS NOT ABLE TO ADVANCE INTO WESTERN EUROPE—AS WE SOON PREPARED TO SUCCESSFULLY DETER SOVIET RUSSIA FOR THE NEXT 45 YEARS.

Perhaps Mr. Hanson is somehow unfamiliar with my 2013 book American Betrayal. (See below for a review-essay explaining what American Betrayal is about by the late Vladimir Bukovsky.) 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 clip that went viral (8.5 million views), I posted and pinned to my Twitter/X account the following Tweet.

I AM ALL TOO WELL AWARE OF YOUR BOOK AND FOUND SOME OF ITS ARGUMENTS CONVINCING THAT THE ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION WAS STAFFED BY BOTH PROMINENT NAIFS, CLUELESS ABOUT THE DANGERS OF SOVIET COMMUNISM, AND ACTIVE SUPPORTERS OF COMMUNIST RUSSIA.

BUT MY REALIST ARGUMENTS FOR SUPPORTING THE DECISION TO SIDE WITH THE EVIL SOVIET UNION WERE SOLELY THAT IT WAS TO OUR IMMEDIATE MILITARY ADVANTAGE IN WORLD WAR II OF DESTROYING OUR ENEMIES AT THE LEAST POSSIBLE COST TO OURSELVES, EVEN WITH THE KNOWN RISK THAT WE WERE EMPOWERING A FUTURE ENEMY.

I THINK I AM CORRECT IN LABELING YOU A REVISIONIST IN TERMS OF CRITICIZING OUR USE OF THE SOVIET UNION TO KILL 70 PERCENT OF GERMAN SOLDIERS LOST IN WORLD WAR II.

YOU RECENTLY WROTE ABOUT YOUR BOOK:

It lays out the massive, secret war of communist subversion waged inside our policy- and war-making councils, which, once perceived, turns the World War II we all know and regularly commemorate into the war that actually made the world safe for communism. It turns the leaders we are taught to honor for “saving Western civilization” from Hitler into patsies of (see FDR), if not parties to (see FDR), Stalin’s long-term strategy to capture and destroy it. By the way, Stalin and FDR are AWOL from these online Cooper interviews.

SO I WOULD TAKE GREAT ISSUE WITH YOUR INSINUATION THAT WE AMERICANS ARE SOMEHOW WRONG OR NAÏVE IN COMMEMORATING WORLD WAR II FOR SAVING WESTERN CIVILIZATION.

THE ALLIES CERTAINLY DID JUST THAT BETWEEN 1941–45, WHICH WAS THE STATED AIM OF OUR GRAND STRATEGY: THE DESTRUCTION OF GERMAN, ITALIAN, AND JAPANESE FASCISM AND THE SALVATION OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION.

AS FOR YOUR MOCKING OF “THE LEADERS WE ARE TAUGHT TO HONOR FOR ‘SAVING WESTERN CIVILIZATION'”—YOU DO NOT FULLY APPRECIATE THAT CHURCHILL, FOR EXAMPLE, STOOD ALONE AGAINST HITLER AND MUSSOLINI, AND THEIR THEN DE FACTO ALLY STALIN, FROM THE START OF HIS PRIME MINISTERSHIP ON MAY 10, 1940 UNTIL THE GERMAN ATTACK ON THE SOVIET UNION ON JUNE 22, 1940.

ALL MAJOR WESTERN EUROPEAN RESISTANCE TO HITLER HAD BEEN DEFEATED BY LATE SUMMER 1940. THE U.S. HAD NOT ENTERED THE WAR. AND WITHOUT CHURCHILL’S SINGULAR LEADERSHIP, BRITAIN AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE MIGHT NOT HAVE STOOD ALONE FOR OVER A YEAR AGAINST NAZI GERMANY.

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,” which was published at Richard Viguerie’s Conservative HQ on April 22, 2025.

I DO NOT NEED ADVICE TO CHECK MY “FACTS,” GIVEN I HAVE READ YOUR BOOK AND STAND BY MY CHARACTERIZATION THAT IT IS CERTAINLY REVISIONIST, SOME OF WHOSE ARGUMENTS I SUPPORT, OTHERS I CLEARLY DO NOT—SPECIFICALLY YOUR HARSH CRITICISM FOR THE REALIST DECISION TO USE THE SOVIET UNION FOR OUR OWN INTEREST OF ENDING THE THIRD REICH AT THE LEAST COST TO OURSELVES.

I AM AWARE OF YOUR CONTROVERSIES. I WAS ASKED BY THE LATE DAVID HOROWITZ TO OFFER A CRITIQUE OF YOUR BOOK WHEN IT CAME OUT. I PASSED BECAUSE I THOUGHT MANY OF YOUR ZEALOUS CRITICS WERE UNFAIR TO YOU, AND YET YOU OFTEN REPLIED IN AN UNNECESSARILY FEVERISH FASHION—AS EVIDENCED IN YOUR CURRENT FRENZIED AND FACTUALLY INCORRECT ASSAULT ON MY OWN CHARACTER, FOR WHICH YOU OWE AN APOLOGY.

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.
Sincerely,
Diana West

I HAVE NEVER SMEARED YOUR WORK. INSTEAD, I WAS CAREFUL TO DISTINGUISH YOUR REVISIONISM BOTH BY DELIBERATELY NOTING IT SHARED WITH THE OTHERS’ OPPOSITION TO SIDING WITH STALIN, AS WELL AS NOTING ONLY THAT COLLUM HAD ADVOCATED AN ALLIANCE WITH HITLER.

NOR DID I HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH EITHER THE PHOTO OR TITLE THAT YOU ALLUDED TO. NEITHER WAS SHOWN TO ME BEFORE PUBLICATION.

SO, IT IS I WHO “LOOK FORWARD TO SWIFT RECTIFICATION OF THE MATTER”.

Author, American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character (St. Martin’s Press 2013)

The Death of the Grown-Up: How America’s Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization (St. Martin’s Press 2007)

A few links for your continuing edification:

1) “Big Lies, Viral Tweets and American Betrayal“

Excerpt: “All of a sudden, American Betrayal was enveloped in a stink bomb of a false binary — National Socialist Hitler or Communist Party Stalin. Pick a side. Never mind they are both evil Marxian spawn. And don’t forget to breathe in that whiff of Hitlerian revisionism (Cooper).”

Big Lies, Viral Tweets and American Betrayal

Diana W

AUG 23

From Putin in Magadan paying homage (with roses) to Lend- Lease, to the resurgence of the Harry Hopkins controversy, WWII and American Betrayal, to another hit of Hitler on Tucker Carlson, we’re back to the future again. What gives? Some thoughts in this video here.

Read full story

In light of the Daily Signal’s Heritage Foundation beginnings, here is my Heritage presentation on American Betrayal.

Here is one of two essays Vladimir Bukovsky and Pavel Stroilov co-wrote about American Betrayal:

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2013/09/28/its-worse-than-a-conspiracy-it%20-s-consensus/