"Connecting the Dots": Munich, Iraq, and the Lessons of History.

Abstract

In SEPTEMBER 2002, during the build-up to the war in Iraq, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder ran for re-election on an anti-war platform. Taking stock of the tense international situation during the final days of the campaign, one of his cabinet members, Justice Minister Herta Daubler-Gemlin, noted that "[United States President] Bush wants to divert attention from his domestic problems. It's a classic tactic. It's one that Hitler also used." Schroder immediately distanced himself from the remark, stating "that anyone who compared Mr. Bush to a criminal would not have a seat in his cabinet." Still, the comment, as well as Schroder's own anti-war stance, played well with German voters, as indicated by his close victory at the polls a few days later. Ms. Daubler-Gemlin resigned on the first day of Schroder 's new term, and the chancellor himself apologized to President Bush in writing, if to little avail: the comment contributed to a chill in German-American relations that did not fully subside until Schroder's defeat in the subsequent elections of fall 2005. ThenWhite House spokesperson Ari Fleischer denounced the Hitler-Bush comparison as "outrageous" and "inexplicable," and within days of its first being uttered, Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor at the time, weighed in on the subject by asking, incredulously, "How can you use the name of Hitler and the name of the president of the United States in the same sentence?"1