The controversial figure, viewed as a hero by some and a war criminal by others, was born to a Jewish family in Bavaria around 1923, in the town of Fruth. The family would eventually emigrate out of Germany around 1938, and Kissinger would eventually go on to become National Security Adviser and Secretary of State. What if he and his family were unable to escape Germany, and they got trapped further with the outbreak of WW2 in Europe, and subsequently got rounded up and sent to the gas chambers, what would be the impact? How would US foreign policy be impacted? Who would fufill the roles Kissinger did IOTL? Does the Vietnam War end sooner?
WI: Kissinger dies in the Holocaust?
- Thread starter SunKing105
- Start date
-
- Tags
- henry kissinger holocaust
Placing Kissinger's political interventions as "determinate" to US foreign policy's broad outline is a specious greatman argument. Someone is going to play with Team B ideas. Someone is going to play with the Boys from Chicago. Someone is going to advocate the betrayal of humanist liberalism in order to sustain it politically. Because these are needs present in the American state formation. Maybe they won't be as erudite as Kissinger when revealing the contradictions of the enlightenment in the form of pushing Vietnamese or Chilean men and women out of helicopters. But given the erudition is a sideblow of the policy impetus, the divergence from the course of killing local nationalists or elected social democats won't be particularly great. The American state apparatus is after all made up of Ordinary Men.
yours,
Sam R.
yours,
Sam R.
As has been said before, that everything Henry Kissenger said was either blindingly obvious or midlessly stupid. Would someone who wasn't Kissenger realise that since the North Vietnamese were NOT going to budge on their demands - after four years arguing about the shape of the negotiating table the final "Peace Deal" was functionally identical to their initial offer - and just agree to it?
After all this would mean ending US combat invovement in the first year or so of Nixon's presidency. The political advantage of that might well have been enough to get a hard line Realist like him to go for it. He already had his plan to open up China, and it would be a solid first move. Also it might give him enough political strength to actually enforce the so called Peace Deal.
Someone more interested in getting the job done than feeding his own ego replacing Kissenger is what I am suggesting. Is that possible? Did there exist such a person at the appropriate level in US Foreign Policy circles?