From the WSJ Opinion Archives
AT WAR
Not All Bad
In defense of (some) French and Germans.
It was really getting quite discouraging.
Two weeks ago I was sitting in the audience in an international security conference in Munich. With self-deprecating humor about his own age, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld tried to take some of the sting from his gibe about Germany and France representing the "old Europe," as distinct from the governments of the "new Europe" to the East, that support the U.S. in the current unpleasantness. But resisting his blandishments, the German foreign minister began to fulminate for the cameras. Then a prominent French attendee began booing, softly but audibly, during John McCain's straightforward but statesmanlike speech.
As we broke for coffee, another senior Frenchman began regaling several astonished Americans with the proposition that U.S. policy in the Middle East was driven by a White House plan (as Dave Barry says, I am not making this up) to solidify its political support within the Christian right and the Jewish community by moving large numbers of American Jews to West Bank settlements in order to begin to fulfill the prophesies of the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelations.
Asking myself whether the Germans and French had become completely hopeless, I was drawn back from even darker thoughts by noticing a friend, an older German gentleman, sitting quietly in the back of the audience. Ewald von Kleist sat alone, unrecognized by many. "Old Europe," I thought, is a problem--but there is something to be said for the sense of honor in the really old Europe from which this man came.
A Prussian aristocrat, he was 60 years ago a lieutenant in the Wehrmacht when he was approached with a proposition by a friend, also an officer from the ranks of the Prussian aristocracy. Hitler was coming to visit the base where Mr. von Kleist was stationed and his assignment was such that he would be the first to greet the Fuehrer as he descended from his aircraft. Would he consider strapping himself with explosives and killing them both, his friend asked? Mr. von Kleist said that he would want to ask his father's advice. This was a particularly interesting point because Mr. von Kleist's father was a senior German general. Gen. von Kleist's subsequent advice to his son--one man of honor to another--was that no loyal German should pass up such an opportunity.
So strapped with explosives, Lt. von Kleist waited on the tarmac for a plane that never landed: Hitler (as he often did) diverted at the last minute to another landing site as a routine security measure. History was left unchanged. Mr. von Kleist survived the war, although he was arrested and tortured because he had known von Stauffenberg and others, mainly fellow aristocrats, involved in the later plot to kill Hitler.
The subject of German and French heroes was pleasanter than that of German and French appeasers, and the former sparked the memory of a delightful recent dinner with another old friend, Jeannie Clarens. At the time that Ewald von Kleist was waiting for Hitler's plane, Jeannie, then all of 22, was using forged papers and flawless German to penetrate the Wachtel Group, responsible for the V-2 missile, and give British Intelligence its first information about the V-2 development. Due in no small measure to her reports, British air raids on the V-2 launchers were successful in delaying the first German use of the V-2 until September 1944.
A recent work on the history of ballistic missiles notes that Eisenhower once said that if the Germans had possessed the V-2 before D-Day--since there was no defense against it--they could have thwarted the invasion. The few ports in southern England had been jammed with supplies, troops, and ammunition in the months before June--an ideal target for V-2s if the British raids had not delayed their deployment.
Jeannie paid the same price as Mr. von Kleist for her heroism. Betrayed as part of a group that was being smuggled out to Britain just before D-Day, she somehow survived the ravages of three concentration camps, including the punishment camp at Koenigsberg, and never broke.
Our split with Germany and France is deep. These two governments are at the heart of NATO's inexcusable failure, for crucial weeks, to plan for military assistance to Turkey in the event of war, and for the Security Council's unwillingness to confront Saddam with anything more than additional inspections. President Chirac just took this split to extremes with his threats to exclude Eastern Europe from the EU for backing the U.S.
But although we have a serious dispute with their governments, we should not forget all we have been through together with the French and German people over the years--in the case of France, over the centuries. It is appeasement of Saddam by Messrs. Chirac and Schroeder that should draw our anger, and our satire--not the people of these two countries and their cultures.
To take only one case, Internet messages mocking French courage and denying that the French have ever successfully defended Paris not only should be beneath us but are quite false--the drafters of this nonsense should consult, among other things, the history of the Battle of the Marne in September 1914. Gen. Gallieni's mobilization of the taxis of Paris to rush reinforcements to the front and save the city is as famous in France as Washington's crossing the Delaware is to Americans. We diminish ourselves and our arguments by denying the noble side of these nations' history and slandering their national honor. Yes, the Germans had the Nazis and the French the Reign of Terror and Vichy. And we had slavery. We have both had our villains and our heroes--we have had our Audie Murphys, they their Ewald von Kleists and Jeannie Clarenses.
Together, we have now produced a Europe that is almost entirely democratic. There is much more to do, and it is understandable if the difficulties of dealing with the pathological predators and vulnerable autocracies of the Middle East produce disagreement among us. We should make our arguments, take a deep breath, make our decision about how to deal with Iraq, and do what we have to do. The French and German governments will not like it, but we may well be in this war against terrorists and rogue states with weapons of mass destruction for not just years but decades. We may need some friends along the way, including ones who are not with us right now. We should recall for our European friends the better angels of their natures--their days of courage and commitment to freedom--and urge them to listen to them.
Toward this end, we might consider naming our drive to bring about a decent government in Iraq after a man who embodied Europe's sense of honor and its partnership with the birth of freedom in the New World--and who indeed presented George Washington with the key to the Bastille some years after he led the decisive charge that won the Battle of Yorktown: "Operation Lafayette."
Mr. Woolsey was CIA director from 1993-95.
