Leadership

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Konrad Adenauer:
The Strategy of Humility

The Necessity of Renewal

In January 1943, at the Casablanca Conference, the Allies proclaimed that they would accept nothing less than the 'unconditional surrender' of the Axis powers. US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was the driving force behind the announcement, sought to deprive any successor government to Hitler of the ability to claim that it had been deluded into surrender by unfulfilled promises. Germany's complete military defeat, together with its total loss of moral and international legitimacy, led inexorably to the progressive disintegration of the German civil structure.

I observed this process as part of the 84th Infantry Division of the US army as it moved from the German border near the industrial Ruhr territory to the Elbe River near Magdeburg - just 100 miles away from the then-raging Battle of Berlin. As the division was crossing the German border, I was transferred to a unit responsible for security and prevention of the guerrilla activity that Hitler had ordered.

For a person like me, whose family had fled the small Bavarian city of F rth six years earlier to escape racial persecution, no greater contrast with the Germany of my youth could have been imagined. Then, Hitler had just annexed Austria and was in the process of dismembering Czechoslovakia. The dominant attitude of the German people verged on the overbearing.

Now, white sheets hung from many windows to signify the surrender of the population. The Germans, who a few years earlier had celebrated the prospect of dominating Europe from the English Channel to the Volga River, were cowed and bewildered. Thousands of displaced persons - deported from Eastern Europe as forced labor during the war - crowded the streets in quest of food and shelter and the possibility of returning home.

It was a desperate period in German history. Food shortages were severe. Many starved, and infant mortality was twice that of the rest

Henry Kissinger

An extraordinary book, one that braids together two through lines in the long and distinguished career of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The first is grand strategy: No practical geopolitical thinker has more assuredly mastered the way the modern global system works or how nations use the tools of statecraft to bend an often-resistant world to their will. But Mr. Kissinger is also an astute observer of the personal element in strategy the art and science of leadership, or how, on the executive level, decisions [are] made, trust earned, promises kept, a way forward proposed. In Leadership he presents a fascinating set of historical case studies and political biographies that blend the dance and the dancer, seamlessly. James Stavridis, The Wall Street Journal

Although Kissinger, now aged 99, has not held office since 1977, he has advised virtually every US president since Nixon. . . . Elder statesman is an overused term but Kissinger is the genuine article, and worth listening to. Financial Times

A must read. . . . [Kissinger] continues to contribute to our understanding of the world. His books including this one will hopefully be read well into the future. Indeed, our present and future leaders would benefit from reading all of Kissinger s books. They are timeless. New York Journal of Books 

Kissinger s combination of historical awareness, personal familiarity with the leaders, and diplomatic experience provides for a cogent read on the iconic statesmen of the Cold War era. The New Criterion

Kissinger fulfills expectations with a reflective, contextual analysis of 20th century political leaders he knew. . . . Recommended for Kissinger s distinctive perspectives imbedded in scholarly, readable prose. Library Journal (starred review)

One of America s most legendary diplomats finds the soul in statecraft in these enlightening sketches of world leaders. . . . Kissinger infuses his lucid policy