Helmut Schmidt Quotes
When I became a soldier, I was drafted in 1937, and instead of being released two years later, I had to stay on because the war had started in the meantime. I was a soldier for more than eight years, as long a time as I was Chancellor.
Schmidt, Helmut. Was ich noch sagen wollte. C.H. Beck, 2015.
What is particularly interesting about this quotation is that it shows the role that vengeance played in the support of the war effort. Revenge is a “baser” motive than making the world safe for democracy or preserving freedom or stopping dictators. Yet the political and military leadership did not shy away from revenge as a war aim. Contrast this with later wars. Arguably the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor created a different dimension than existed in the Korean or Vietnam wars. Yet in the War on Terror, the attack of 9-11, created a situation like Pearl Harbor did. Yet President Bush and other political and military leaders had a definite policy of never acknowledging that revenge was a factor, despite the fact that many Americans openly saw this as a major war aim.
The line was delivered by Dustin Hoffman.
Veiled threat to England to stop Confederate agents from building ships in Britain. In one of the great, artfully worded, diplomatic messages, Adams threatened to take direct action in British territory without ever threatening anything. It worked, and the vessel construction was curtailed by the British.
He allowed one of his statements to appear on the Democratic Party radio response to the President’s weekly broadcast.
See {637982} for one of the major reasons.
Helmut Heinrich Waldemar Schmidt was a German politician and member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), who served as Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) from 1974 to 1982.
