Letter from Germany

The easiest way to misinterpret a political document is to confine the analysis to its text. The Stalin- Hitler Pact of 1939, for instance, turns out, on rereading it in 1970, to be a perfectly harmless experiment in making small talk. Yet is there anyone in Foggy Bottom, or even in Academe, who, contemplating the meaning and effect of the Stalin-Hitler Pact, would confine himself to “what it says”? If there is such a one, his name most certainly is not Henry A. Kissinger. A first-rate scholar, and a passionate advocate of political science as a decisive weapon in man’s intelligent fight for freedom, Professor Kissinger is, on the contrary, the world’s leading expert in correct interpretation of the Stalin-Hitler Pact: Whatever its wording may have been, the Pact, he contends, was the one decisive instrument in unleashing World War II.

I have begun my contemplation of the recent Brandt-Brezhnev Pact with these complementary thoughts on Henry Kissinger for two compelling reasons: One, the Brandt-Brezhnev Pact is, in intent and effect, comparable only to the Stalin- Hitler Pact; and two, Professor Kissinger, the man actually in charge of America’s foreign and security policies, seems to have advised the President that a perfectly harmless document was signed in Moscow. This is an unexpected and rather sensational situation. For not only is Kissinger a scholar of unblemished record in scrutinizing recent political history, he is also (and Iamina privileged position to testify from an inside knowledge of several years) indubitably America’s most competent and most intimately informed expert on German affairs. Whence, then, his apparent failure to comprehend and evaluate the most fateful event in recent German history— nay, the most fateful in America’s struggle for a balance of Atlantic power?

WS

About the Author

William S. Schlamm

Featured Tags

The easiest way to misinterpret a political document is to confine the analysis to its text. The Stalin- Hitler Pact of 1939, for instance, turns out, on rereading it in 1970, to be a perfectly harmless experiment in making small talk. Yet is there anyone in Foggy Bottom, or even in Academe, who, contemplating the meaning and effect of the Stalin-Hitler Pact, would confine himself to “what it says”? If there is such a one, his name most certainly is not Henry A. Kissinger. A first-rate scholar, and a passionate advocate of political science as a decisive weapon in man’s intelligent fight for freedom, Professor Kissinger is, on the contrary, the world’s leading expert in correct interpretation of the Stalin-Hitler Pact: Whatever its wording may have been, the Pact, he contends, was the one decisive instrument in unleashing World War II.

I have begun my contemplation of the recent Brandt-Brezhnev Pact with these complementary thoughts on Henry Kissinger for two compelling reasons: One, the Brandt-Brezhnev Pact is, in intent and effect, comparable only to the Stalin- Hitler Pact; and two, Professor Kissinger, the man actually in charge of America’s foreign and security policies, seems to have advised the President that a perfectly harmless document was signed in Moscow. This is an unexpected and rather sensational situation. For not only is Kissinger a scholar of unblemished record in scrutinizing recent political history, he is also (and Iamina privileged position to testify from an inside knowledge of several years) indubitably America’s most competent and most intimately informed expert on German affairs. Whence, then, his apparent failure to comprehend and evaluate the most fateful event in recent German history— nay, the most fateful in America’s struggle for a balance of Atlantic power?