Leopold III Quotes
Even if hostilities do not begin, the world is menaced by economic collapse. Mistrust and suspicion reign everywhere. Beneath our very eyes the camps are forming, armies are gathering and a fearful struggle is being prepared in Europe. Is our continent to commit suicide in a terrifying war at the end of which no nation could call itself victor or vanquished, but in which the spiritual and material values created by centuries of civilization would founder?
His appeal was also in the name of concurring heads of state of Finland, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Luxemburg, and Sweden.
Leopold III, 1901-1983, King of the Belgians, Appeal just before the outbreak of WWII in Europe
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The U. S. and Russia
Unusually for a scientist, Szilard was politically very astute. In this letter he predicted exactly what was going to happen in Europe which would be WWII. He was the leading scientist organizing the lobbying efforts with the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration to develop an atomic bomb.
Everyone could see the First World War coming, but the government leaders and diplomats were not able to prevent it.
Many wonder how the intelligence agencies missed predicting the fall of the Soviet Union. However, here is an example of a brilliant man whose mind-set was so fixed that he could not accept the fact even as it was happening.
In both the First and Second World Wars the Western nations had a multilateral defense pact which did little good in the face of German aggression.
Peruvian Revolutionary Group. This speech was made from prison.
Although the Yugoslav casualties were horrific, they inflicted great casualties on the Germans who lost more men fighting the Yugoslavs than they lost to any other of the allies except the Russians.
Trieste was occupied by the British and Americans theoretically, but Tito’s Yugoslavian troops had done most of the WWII fighting and dying in the area and wanted control for the Russian Allies of which Tito was then one. There were frequent armed standoff’s of Anglo Americans and Yugoslav troops that could easily have evolved to full scale fighting. Nine months later, Tito broke with Stalin. An interesting historical fact is that Richard M. Nixon was one of the Congressional Delegation then visiting Trieste.
Unfortunately, the prime minister turned out to be very accurate in his predictions. The Second World War functioned just as he said.
In retrospect Marshall was prescient and if his advice had been followed, the country would have been much better off at the beginning of WWII. The nation was isolated politically and militarily with Republicans and southern Democrats often opposing President Roosevelt’s attempts to help them defend themselves. There was of yet no political will for military preparedness.
