Word: munich
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...heart of Munich was struck by a fire-bomb raid. The incendiaries that crashed through the 160-ft.-high roof of the National-theater ignited a fire that burned for three days, melting the crystal chandeliers, blackening what remained of the ornate bas-reliefs and frescoes, consuming even the ranks of ivory chairs. For nearly two decades, the ruins of the 125-year-old home of the Bavarian State Opera stood as a grim souvenir of the war, a macabre memorial to its own glorious past...
Outrage & Loss. Newspapers had their greatest impact beyond television's reach, and there they brought the message home as no transitory broadcast could ever do. In Munich, crowds waiting impatiently for the first editions broke into scuffles when the supply proved inadequate; in Rio, beleaguered news vendors called for police protection. Dailies in South Korea's capital, Seoul, were trapped by a time differential, worked all night with skeleton staffs to publish extras at dawn...
...shortly after the Nazis and Russians invaded Poland, Kennedy returned or his senior year at Harvard. To make up time lost the previous spring he took additional courses and received B's in all of them. But his major work of the year was his thesis: Appeasement at Munich--The inevitable Result of the Slowness of the Conversion of the British Democracy form a Disarmament to a Rearmament Policy...
...thesis is a long, complex analysis of the reasons for Britain's slow response to the rearmament of Germany. Its crux is the contention that men like Chamberiain and Baldwin do not carry the principal responsibility for Munich, but, rather, that Munich was caused by deeper forces inherent in democracy and capitalism. These forces Kennedy saw as apathy, concern with profits and security, pacifism, and fear of regimentation...
Kennedy concluded: "Most of the critics have been firing at the wrong target. The Munich Pact itself should not be object of criticism but rather the underlying factors, such as the state of British opinion and the condition of Britain's armaments which made 'surrender' inevitable. To blame one man, such as Baldwin, for the unpreparedness of British armaments is illogical and unfair, given the conditions of democratic government...