Munich Quotes
The Parliament was paralyzed by the issue of wartime leadership when PM Neville Chamberlain failed so miserably in standing up to the Germans at Munich. The speech urging the termination of the Prime Minister’s government reminded all of the famous speech whereby Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell dismissed Parliament in 1655 (see related quote). In this case Amery had no power, but much influence as the Government fell a few days later and Winston Churchill assumed British leadership.
Bavaria was also the center of support and the birth of Nazism and Hitler support to drive Germany into its WWII effort just as it was the locus of aggression and militarism in WWI.
President Johnson had invited Ike to the White House to advise about the Vietnam War in general and the Rolling Thunder operation in particular. President Eisenhower’s quotation was one of the clearest statements of the so-called Domino Theory which was believed by almost all American Military and Foreign Policy leaders. It was tragically wrong, but it drove U. S. policy throughout the war. When the Communists took South Vietnam, there was no subsequent Communist takeover or attempt in any of the countries Eisenhower had enumerated. One of the reasons was that the Vietnam Communists were not very close to the Russians and for over 1000 years had considered China their worst enemy. They had little solidarity with the International communist movement, but American intelligence did not realize that. They did not believe that the ethnic hatred between Vietnam and China would inhibit the Vietnamese in modern times. It did. Even after the war, the Vietnamese developed better relations with the U. S. then they had with China. One of the major things the intelligence and policy operators missed was that there was not a single map in China that showed Vietnam as a country. To the Chinese, it has always been a part of China and they want it to be in the future. The Vietnamese have not agreed for a millennium.
The reference to Munich referred to British Prime Minister meeting with Adolf Hitler in Munich, giving Germany some of their demands while receiving assurances that there would be no further aggression. This appeasement just encouraged Hitler to take more and soon he had invaded all of Europe beginning World War II. The view since has been that a dictator must never be appeased in unjust aggression, even on relatively small items. What made the Vietnam War so complicated was that while it appeared that the attacks on South Vietnam by Communist North Vietnam was a first step of general Communist Aggression, the reality was that it was primarily a Civil War where the South was a massively corrupt, Catholic Controlled dictatorship and the North was a Communist dictatorship dominated by Buddhists. And there was major friction between the Vietnamese Communists and the Chinese Communists who were not working in concert for general Communist domination. The North Vietnamese were a nationalist movement. The Domino Theory had been wrong.
Most were tracked down and assassinated by Israeli agents. The mastermind, Abu Daud was seriously wounded but was not attacked again when the Israeli’s and Palestinians began their peace negotiations.
The “fool” was Neville Chamberlain, 1869-1940, the British Prime Minister who refused to stand up to Hitler and instead negotiated a peace pact, returned home declaring that he had preserved peace. (See {585941}.) Then Hitler invaded more of Europe and WWII was begun. Ford was a Hitler admirer and pro-German (Hitler supported him for the American Presidency--{586988}—and awarded him a medal) but he thought that England had bungled the negotiations by sending someone who was very weak. In this sense his views were the same as most who were anti-Hitler.
The reference to Munich was to the famous appeasement of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. See {585941}.
This was the week after he returned from his meeting with Hitler in Munich where he appeased the German Dictator. See {585941} for his famous naive statement.
