Posted on 01/10/2014 5:48:26 PM PST by dynachrome
I’m still not sure where I am on Ho. Once again, given what was going on in the world, our relations with France, and the fact that Asians equated white Americans with white Europeans, I doubt things would have been different with Ho. He was the local dictator wanna-be in a backwater imperial province in 1944. Our aim was to liberate France from Nazi Germany, and all our policy was driven by that. So we were aligned with the French. Even though FDR disfavored European colonialism, we were not going to distance ourselves from the French sufficiently to placate Ho.
As for Tuchman, I will at this point agree to disagree. I will at some point re-read the three books of hers that I own (Guns of August, A Distant Mirror, Stilwell) and reasses my opinions.
But it was a good discussion.
I distinctly remember an interview with Schwartzkopf in the command bunker before Desert Storm. They visited his little monk’s cell of a room, and Panzer Battles was on the table or the bed, I can’t remember which. But close at hand, obviously being (re)read.
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