Munich Agreement Quotes
In this case, the Speaker of the House attacked the President of his own party for being willing to conduct disarmament discussions with the Russians. He implied that the outcome could be the appeasement of the Russians just as British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain appeased Hitler in 1938 in Munich, giving the German Fuhrer the “green light” to take over Europe. The Conservative Caucus went even further and explicitly called it “appeasement”. Reagan however always talked about military strength and power, and provided plenty of money for the military and weapons a few of which were boondoggles but he was a very cautious American president in authorizing military force. And he not only was willing to discuss arms control and reductions and enter into treaties for disarmament, much to the distress of the hawks of his own party. Few American Presidents have so well balanced the use of diplomacy with the threat of military force as well as Reagan.
War between England and Germany had just commenced. The last sentence refers to the fact that Hitler had recently signed a peace pact with Stalin to everyone’s surprise as Hitler told the German people over and over that Russia was Germany’s biggest enemy. The pact was only a ruse on Hitler’s part to delay Russia’s entry into the war. Hitler broke the treaty and invaded Russia a little later.
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.
After a reception given by Lady Astor, Channon wrote in his diary that the “Cliveden Set” {598323} would be criticized because it was in favor of the policy of appeasement. The name came from the seat of Lord and Lady Astor, who were both supporters of the policy. To some the policy was seen as pro-Hitler, but Channon saw it as reasonable and in concert with Neville Chamberlain’s views. Even so, Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement was very controversial. This very policy prevented early Allied involvement in World War II and therefore gave Hitler time to buildup the German military while invading much of Eastern Europe.
The reference to Munich was to the famous appeasement of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. See {585941}.
