5

"Mr. Kissinger is impatient with Hitler because he 'operated by instinct rather than analysis.'"

Professor May's unworthy innuendo towards a victim of Nazi persecution is drawn from a factual account of Hitler's governing style, and no more "impatient" than my ~~alleged~~ reference to Gladstone was contemptuous. What he omits is the phrase which begins that section: "Hitler's advent to power marked one of the greatest calamities in the history of the world....the orgy of killing and devastation it unleashed was the work of one demonic personality."

Professor May next turns to a hunt for errors. He claims to find one error of omission and three of commission, arguing that these would preclude me - a former colleague of his at Harvard - from achieving "a pass degree in history" were I a student and that they constitute "amateur history."

silly

6

Lardly

This snide and totally inappropriate comment is not supported by his evidence. Professor May describes the error of omission as follows: "Neither a line of text nor a footnote mentions Sir Harold Nicolson's elegant book of 1939, also entitled "Diplomacy."" A reviewer cannot be expected to check every footnote and every paragraph. But neither should he make criticisms contrary to the facts. Footnote 33 of Chapter 4 cites Nicolson's book, and the copyright page of "Diplomacy," in a prominent, set-off note, states the following:

> The title "Diplomacy" has been used before. Both the author and the publisher pay tribute to the late Sir Harold Nicolson's book (Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1939), which was quite different in scope, intentions, and ideas.

With respect to so-called errors of commission, Professor May returns to the method of ascribing to me views I neither

7

hold nor expressed and then rebutting them. Interpreting the
sentence (p. 222) that Wilson's doctrine of self-determination
"put European diplomats on thoroughly unfamiliar terrain" to
mean that they had never heard of the concept, he argues that
leading newspaper publishers in Milan and London had advocated
the same thesis previously. However, the issue was not whether
the doctrine was known - after all, I trace Wilson's

antecedents to Gladstone (p. 160-162) - but whether it had
*Once again Professor May says* ever been implemented. The sentence *following* the one quoted *even though it contains* by Professor May a precise definition of what I meant by "unfamiliar:"

The assumption behind European settlements had
been that borders could be adjusted to promote
the balance of power, the requirements of which
took precedence over the preferences of the
affected population.

8

The rest of the page explains in some detail how the principle of equilibrium had dominated various European congresses in the century preceding the First World War. It was in that sense, and not in the misleading interpretation of Professor May, that Wilson's challenge drew European diplomats onto unfamiliar terrain.

Professor May finds a second "error" in the quote attributed to Lloyd George in the winter of 1918 - that he would "squeeze Germany until the pips squeak" - calling the reference both wrong and unjust. Though the quote is often attributed to Lloyd George, it may well have originated with a member of Lloyd George's government. But far from misstating Lloyd George's views - as Professor May asserts - the quote is an accurate reflection of them: at Newcastle on November 29, 1918, Lloyd George insisted that Germany pay "the cost of the war up to the limit of her capacity;" at Bristol on December

9

11, he vowed that Germany "must pay to the very last penny" and that, in quest of the ultimate farthing, we will search their pockets for it." Lloyd George's attitude toward Germany at the end of the war was also reflected in his statement to the War Cabinet on October 26, 1918 (quoted on p. 270): "The question arose whether we ought not to continue lashing her as she had lashed France."

These statements make nonsense of Professor May's allegation that the disputed phrase "caused trouble for Lloyd George, who clung to a last-ditch hope that public opinion would not demand unreasonable reparations from just-defeated Germany." After all, Lloyd George had done as much as anybody to generate, or at least to exploit, that public opinion. True, in the course of the subsequent peace negotiations in the spring of 1919, Lloyd George substantially modified his earlier views, a change described on p. 241 of "Diplomacy" as

10

"too late" to affect the outcome. Professor May is beating a
debating quibble to death.

Professor May finds a third error in the description of the
so-called Hossbach memorandum on p. 309. Once again, he takes
two sentences devoted to another point to misrepresent the
thrust of the argument, which dealt exclusively with tracing
when Hitler first revealed his long-term objectives to his
military leaders. Professor May correctly points out that the
phrase that Hitler revealed his plans to "almost all of
Germany's general officers" is inaccurate. In fact - as my own
research showed - only ~~top general officers~~ (were present,
representing most of the German High Command). The mistake is
one of those technical errors that, in normal circumstances,
are corrected in later editions without comment. In the final
stages of copy-editing, the word "top" was inadvertently
 dropped. The rest of the paragraph would, moreover, suggest to

11

any unbiased reader that it deals with the top command.

Professor May argues that this technical error (which has been
corrected in the German and all other editions by restoring
the word "top" to its original place) skews the German postwar
debate about the responsibility of the German generals for the
war. I find it flattering though hard to believe that two
sentences could affect a debate to which they are not relevant
and which has generated many volumes of scholarly research.

Thus Professor May's harvest in a book of 912 pages
(including notes), hundreds of footnotes, and scores of events
yields a copyediting error which did not affect the narrative
or the conclusions.

Professor May has done significant historical research in
the past; it is therefore not possible to consider his
comments as inadvertent. He would have contributed more to
general understanding had he articulated and debated his

1

4/5/94 PM 3

With the collapse of Communism, the disappearance of a global military threat, and the simultaneous emergence of great powers in Asia and Europe, the problem of how to build a new world order has become central to American foreign policy.

In my recently released book "Diplomacy" I sought to examine how previous periods have dealt with such a change in their environment, from the emergence of the modern nation-state to the present. In particular, I tried to describe America's unique blend of its hopes and its necessities, of its sense of itself as a beacon and of the nation as a mission, to draw conclusions for our future.

A contrary approach views international relations in more normative ways as a conflict between good and evil. Professor May, who reviewed "Diplomacy", seems to belong to this school

N]

2

of thought. Had he elaborated this disagreement, he could
have sparked a significant dialogue.

Professor May has not done so. Instead of avowing his
philosophical disagreements with me, he tries to impose them
on me by indirection, ascribing value judgments incompatible
with my actual views to descriptive material. And he attacks
my scholarly qualifications with personal invective by a
specious and nitpicking search for errors.

Professor May's idiosyncratic treatment of quotes from
"Diplomacy" tempts him into blatant distortions. For example,
Professor May alleges that I wrote "contemptuously" about
Gladstone and then produces a quote which contains no
evaluation by me whatsoever, which in turn is drawn from a
respectful description of Gladstone's political thought
("Diplomacy" pp. 160-62). He claims that a reference to the
similarity between Napoleon III's quest for public approbation

3

and that of modern political figures is "elliptically" aimed
at Jimmy Carter. This is simply untrue. Carter is nowhere
mentioned, nor did the chapter on Napoleon III single out
American public figures.

Similarly, Professor May alleges that I "admit admiration"
of Stalin. I did no such thing. It takes unusual ingenuity or
bias to distill admiration from a quote which begins, "Stalin
was indeed a monster," and is followed by a sentence omitted
by Professor May, which conveys that I am talking about the
method by which Stalin concluded the Nazi-Soviet pact:
"Without knowing it, the Western democracies were tempting
fate by counting on an irreconcilable ideological conflict
between Stalin and Hitler, by teasing Stalin with a French
pact that foreswore military cooperation, by excluding the
Soviet Union from the Munich Conference..." Nor does Professor

[N]

4

May mention my discussions of Stalin's tyranny, for example,
*inter alia*, on pp. 411, 440-41, 499-50.

Continuing the same method, Professor May alleges that I
also express admiration for Mao and other "tyrants of
Beijing." Once again he separates a purely descriptive
sentence from its context, which deals with the way Nixon and
the Chinese leaders managed to come together despite profound
ideological differences. And he omits to mention that *the same
paragraph* (this time in a preceding sentence) refers to Mao as
a "visionary, ruthless, pitiless, occasionally murderous
revolutionary."

In his determination to demonstrate that I never met a
dictator I did not like, Professor May even implies, in a
sentence directly following the one charging me with
admiration for Stalin and Mao, that my objection to Hitler was
not so much moral as snobbish and intellectually fastidious:

5

Professor May's unworthy innuendo towards a victim of Nazi persecution is drawn from a factual account of Hitler's governing style, and no more "impatient" than my reference to Gladstone was contemptuous. What he omits is the phrase which begins that section: "Hitler's advent to power marked one of the greatest calamities in the history of the world....the orgy of killing and devastation that it unleashed was the work of one demonic personality."

Professor May next turns to a hunt for errors. He claims to find one error of omission and three of commission, arguing that these would preclude me - a former colleague of his at Harvard - from achieving "a pass degree" in history were I a student and that they constitute "amateurish history."

[N]

6

This silly comment is hardly supported by his evidence.

Yet footnote 33 of Chapter 4 cites Nicolson's book, and the copyright page of "Diplomacy," in a prominent, set-off note, states the following:

With respect to so-called errors of commission, Professor May returns to the method of ascribing to me views I neither hold nor expressed and then rebutting them. Interpreting the sentence (p. 222) that Wilson's doctrine of self-determination

7

"put European diplomats on thoroughly unfamiliar terrain" to mean that they had never heard of the concept, he argues that leading newspaper publishers in Milan and London had advocated the same thesis previously. However, the issue was not whether the doctrine was known - after all, I trace Wilson's antecedents to Gladstone (p. 160-162) - but whether it had ever been implemented. Once again Professor May omits the sentence *following* the one he quotes even though it contains a precise definition of what I meant by "unfamiliar:"

> The assumption behind European settlements had been that borders could be adjusted to promote the balance of power, the requirements of which took precedence over the preferences of the affected population.

8

the century preceding the First World War. It was in that
sense, and not in the misleading exegesis of Professor May,
that Wilson's challenge drew European diplomats onto
unfamiliar terrain.

Professor May finds a second "error" in the quote attributed
to Lloyd George in the winter of 1918 - that he would "squeeze
Germany until the pips squeak" - calling the reference both
wrong and unjust. Though the quote is often attributed to
Lloyd George, it may well have originated with a member of
Lloyd George's government. But far from misstating Lloyd
George's views - as Professor May asserts - the quote is an
accurate reflection of them: at Newcastle on November 29,
1918, Lloyd George insisted that Germany pay "the cost of the
war up to the limit of her capacity;" at Bristol on December
11, he vowed that Germany "must pay to the very last penny"
and that, in quest of the ultimate farthing, "we will search

9

After all, Lloyd George had done as much as anybody to generate, or at least to exploit, that public opinion. True, in the course of the subsequent peace negotiations in the spring of 1919, Lloyd George substantially modified his earlier views, a change described on p. 241 of "Diplomacy" as "too late" to affect the outcome. Professor May is beating a debating quibble to death.

10

Professor May finds a third error in the description of the
so-called Hossbach memorandum on p. 309. Once again, he takes
two sentences devoted to another point to misrepresent the
thrust of the argument, which dealt exclusively with tracing
when Hitler first revealed his long-term objectives to his
military leaders. Professor May correctly points out that the
phrase that Hitler revealed his plans to "almost all of
Germany's general officers" is inaccurate. In fact - as my own
research showed - only top general officers representing most
of the German High Command were present. The mistake is one of
those technical errors that, in normal circumstances, are
corrected in later editions without comment. In the final
stages of copy-editing, the word "top" was inadvertently
dropped from before general officers. The rest of the
paragraph would, moreover, suggest to any unbiased reader that
it deals with the top command. Professor May argues that this

11

technical error (which has been corrected in the German and
all other editions by restoring the word "top") skews the
German postwar debate about the responsibility of the German
generals for the war. I find it flattering though hard to
believe that two sentences could affect a debate to which they
are not relevant and which has generated many volumes of
scholarly research.

Professor May has done significant historical research in
the past; it is therefore not possible to consider his
comments as inadvertent. He would have contributed more to
general understanding had he articulated and debated his
philosophical differences instead of presenting petty

APR-06-1994 08:42

RIVER HOUSE

P.03

F.3

3

nor is any
unintentionally perniciously

for Stalin. I did no such thing. It takes unusual ingenuity or
bias to distill admiration from a quote which begins, "Stalin
was indeed a monster," and is followed by a sentence omitted
by Professor May, which conveys that I am talking about the
method by which Stalin concluded the Nazi-Soviet pact:

APR-06-1994 08:43

RIVER HOUSE

P.04

4

APR-06-1994 08:43

RIVER HOUSE

5

Professor May's unworthy innuendo ~~towards a victim of Nazi persecution~~ is drawn from a factual account of Hitler's governing style, and no more "impatient" than my reference to Gladstone was contemptuous. What he omits is the phrase which begins that section: "Hitler's advent to power marked one of the greatest calamities in the history of the world....the orgy of killing and devastation that it unleashed was the work of one demonic personality."

APR-06-1994 08:44

RIVER HOUSE

P.06

6

"Neither a line of text nor a footnote mentions Sir Harold Nicolson's elegant book of 1939, also entitled "Diplomacy." Yet footnote 33 of Chapter 4 cites Nicolson's book, and the copyright page of "Diplomacy," in a prominent, set-off note, states the following:

APR-06-1994 08:44

RIVER HOUSE

HMK 05 '94 17:36 212-759-0042

7

"put European diplomats on thoroughly unfamiliar terrain" to mean that they had never heard of the concept, he argues that leading newspaper publishers in Milan and London had advocated the same thesis previously. However, the issue was not whether the doctrine was known - after all, I trace Wilson's antecedents to Gladstone (p. 160-162) - but whether it had ever been implemented. Once again Professor May omits the sentence following the one he quotes even though it contains a precise definition of what I meant by "unfamiliar:"

APR-06-1994 08:44

RIVER HOUSE

r.o

P.08

Professor May finds a second "error" in the quote attributed to Lloyd George in the winter of 1918 - that he would "squeeze Germany until the pips squeak" - pulling the reference both wrong and unjust. Though the quote is often attributed to Lloyd George, it may well have originated with a member of Lloyd George's government. But far from misstating Lloyd George's views - as Professor May asserts - the quote is an accurate reflection of them: at Newcastle on November 29, 1918, Lloyd George insisted that Germany pay "the cost of the war up to the limit of her capacity;" at Bristol on December 11, he vowed that Germany "must pay to the very last penny" and that, in quest of the ultimate farthing, "we will search

APR-06-1994 08:45

RIVER HOUSE

P.09

9

These statements make nonsense of Professor May's allegation that the disputed phrase "caused trouble for Lloyd George, who clung to a last-ditch hope that public opinion would not demand unreasonable reparations from just-defeated Germany." After all, Lloyd George had done as much as anybody to generate, or at least to exploit, that public opinion. True, in the course of the subsequent peace negotiations in the spring of 1919, Lloyd George substantially modified his earlier views, a change described on p. 241 of "Diplomacy" as "too late" to affect the outcome. Professor May is beating a debating quibble to death.

APR-06-1994 08:45

RIVER HOUSE

HFR 03 34 11/30 412-133-0042

r.10

10

Professor May finds a third error in the description of the so-called Hossbach memorandum on p. 309. Once again, he takes two sentences devoted to another point to misrepresent the thrust of the argument, which dealt exclusively with tracing when Hitler first revealed his long-term objectives to his military leaders. Professor May correctly points out that the phrase that Hitler revealed his plans to "almost all of Germany's general officers" is inaccurate. In fact - as my own research showed - only top general officers representing the German High Command were present. The mistake is one of those technical errors that, in normal circumstances, are corrected in later editions without comment. In the final stages of copy-editing, the word "top" was inadvertently dropped from before general officers. The rest of the paragraph would, moreover, suggest to any unbiased reader that it deals with the top command. Professor May argues that this

APR-06-1994 08:45

RIVER HOUSE

HPR 103 '94 1:58 C12-759-0042

P.11

11.

technical error (which has been corrected in the German and
all other editions by restoring the word "top") skews the
German postwar debate about the responsibility of the German
generals for the war. I find it flattering though hard to
believe that two sentences could affect a debate ~~to~~ which they
are not relevant and which has generated many volumes of
scholarly research.

1

4/6/94 AM 1

With the collapse of Communism, the disappearance of a global military threat, and the simultaneous emergence of new power centers in Asia and Europe, the problem of how to build a world order has become central to American foreign policy.

In my recently published book "Diplomacy" I sought to examine how previous periods have dealt with such a change in their environment, from the emergence of the modern nation-state to the present. In particular, I tried to describe America's unique blend of hope and necessity, of the oscillation in American thought between building the nation into an example for others and seeing it as mission abroad to draw conclusions for our future.

2

May, who reviewed "Diplomacy", seems to belong to this school of thought. Had he elaborated this disagreement, he could have sparked a significant dialogue. But, instead of avowing his philosophical disagreements with me, Professor May tries to impose them on me by indirection, ascribing value judgments incompatible with my actual views to descriptive material. And he attacks my scholarly qualifications with personal invective and by means of a specious and nitpicking search for errors.

Professor May's idiosyncratic treatment of quotes from "Diplomacy" tempts him into blatant distortions. For example, Professor May alleges that I wrote "contemptuously" about Gladstone and then produces a quote which contains no evaluation by me whatsoever, and which was part of a respectful description of Gladstone's political thought ("Diplomacy" pp. 160-62). He claims that a reference to the similarity between Napoleon III's quest for public approbation

3

and that of modern political figures is "elliptically" aimed
at Jimmy Carter. This is simply untrue. Oddly enough, the
chapter on Napoleon III deals only with Napoleon's ________.
Carter is nowhere mentioned, nor is any contemporary
personality.

Similarly, Professor May alleges that I "admit admiration"
for Stalin. I did no such thing. It takes unusual ingenuity
or bias to distill admiration from a quote which begins,
"Stalin was indeed a monster," and is followed by a sentence
omitted by Professor May, which conveys that I am talking
about the method by which Stalin concluded the Nazi-Soviet
pact: "Without knowing it, the Western democracies were
tempting fate by counting on an irreconcilable ideological
conflict between Stalin and Hitler, by teasing Stalin with a
French pact that foreswore military cooperation, by excluding
the Soviet Union from the Munich Conference..." Nor does

[N]

4

Professor May mention my many discussions of Stalin's tyranny,
for example, *inter alia*, on pp. 411, 440-41, 499-50.

5

Professor May's unworthy innuendo is drawn from a factual account of Hitler's governing style, and no more "impatient" than my reference to Gladstone was contemptuous. What he omits is the phrase which begins that section: "Hitler's advent to power marked one of the greatest calamities in the history of the world....the orgy of killing and devastation that it unleashed was the work of one demonic personality."

6

With respect to so-called errors of commission, Professor May returns to the method of ascribing to me views I neither hold nor expressed and then rebutting them. Interpreting the sentence (p. 222) that Wilson's doctrine of self-determination "put European diplomats on thoroughly unfamiliar terrain" to mean that they had never heard of the concept, he argues that

7

The rest of the page explains in some detail how the principle
of equilibrium had dominated various European congresses in
the century preceding the First World War. It was in that
sense, and not in the misleading exegesis of Professor May,

8

Professor May finds a second "error" in the quote attributed
to Lloyd George in the winter of 1918 - that he would "squeeze
Germany until the pips squeak" - calling the reference both
wrong and unjust. Though the quote is often attributed to
Lloyd George, it may well have originated with a member of
Lloyd George's government. But far from misstating Lloyd
George's views - as Professor May asserts - the quote is an
accurate reflection of them: at Newcastle on November 29,
1918, Lloyd George insisted that Germany pay "the cost of the
war up to the limit of her capacity;" at Bristol on December
11, he vowed that Germany "must pay to the very last penny"
and that, in that quest, "we will search their pockets for
it." Lloyd George's attitude toward Germany at the end of the
war was also reflected in his statement to the War Cabinet on

9

10

two sentences devoted to another point to misrepresent the
thrust of the argument, which dealt exclusively with tracing
when Hitler first revealed his long-term objectives to his
military leaders. Professor May correctly points out that the
phrase that Hitler revealed his plans to "almost all of
Germany's general officers" is inaccurate. In fact - as my own
research showed - only top general officers representing the
German High Command were present. The mistake is one of those
technical errors that, in normal circumstances, are corrected
in later editions without comment. In the final stages of
copy-editing, the word "top" was inadvertently dropped from
before "general officers". The rest of the paragraph would,
moreover, suggest to any unbiased reader that it deals with
the top command. Professor May argues that this technical
error (which has been corrected in the German and all other
editions by restoring the word "top") skews the German postwar

11

debate about the responsibility of the German generals for the
war. I find it flattering though hard to believe that two
sentences could affect a debate going back over forty years,
to which they are not relevant and which has generated many
volumes of scholarly research.

Professor May has done significant historical research in
the past; it is therefore not possible to consider his
comments as inadvertent. He would have contributed more to
general understanding had he articulated and debated his
philosophical differences instead of presenting petty
distortions and personal aspersions.

1

4/6/94 AM 2

In my recently published book "Diplomacy" I sought to examine how previous periods have dealt with such a change in their environment, from the emergence of the modern nation-state to the present. In particular, to draw lessons for America's future, I tried to describe America's unique blend of hope and necessity, of the oscillation in American thought between building the nation into an example for others and seeing it as mission abroad.

A contrary approach views international relations in more normative ways as a linear conflict between good and evil.

2

Professor May, who reviewed "Diplomacy", seems to belong to this school of thought. Had he elaborated this disagreement, he could have sparked a significant dialogue. But, instead of avowing his philosophical disagreements, Professor May tries to impose them on me by indirection, ascribing value judgments incompatible with my actual views to descriptive material. And he attacks my scholarly qualifications with personal invective and by means of a specious and nitpicking search for errors.

3

and that of modern political figures is "elliptically" aimed
at Jimmy Carter. This is simply untrue. Oddly enough, the
chapter on Napoleon III deals only with Napoleon; Carter is
nowhere mentioned, nor is any contemporary personality.

[Y]

4

5

6

7

8

Professor May finds a second "error" in the quote attributed
to Lloyd George (in a chapter that in the main deals with
Wilson) - that he would "squeeze Germany until the pips
squeak". May calls the reference both wrong and unjust.
Though the quote is often attributed to Lloyd George, it may
well have originated with a member of Lloyd George's
government. But far from misstating Lloyd George's views - as
Professor May asserts - the quote is an accurate reflection of
them: at Newcastle on November 29, 1918, Lloyd George insisted
that Germany pay "the cost of the war up to the limit of her
capacity;" at Bristol on December 11, he vowed that Germany
"must pay to the very last penny" and that, in that quest, "we
will search their pockets for it." Lloyd George's attitude
toward Germany at the end of the war was also reflected in his

9

[Y]

10

two entirely peripheral sentences misrepresent the thrust of the argument, which dealt exclusively with tracing when Hitler first revealed his long-term objectives to his military leaders. Professor May correctly points out that the phrase that Hitler revealed his plans to "almost all of Germany's general officers" is inaccurate. In fact - as my own research showed - only top general officers representing the German High Command were present. Indeed, in the final stages of copy-editing, the word "top" was inadvertently dropped from before "general officers". The mistake is one of those technical errors that, in normal circumstances, are corrected in later editions without comment. The rest of the paragraph would, moreover, suggest to any unbiased reader that it deals with the top command. Professor May argues that this technical error (which has been corrected in the German and all other editions by restoring the word "top") skews the

11

German postwar debate about the responsibility of the German generals for the war. I find it flattering though hard to believe that two sentences could affect a debate going back over forty years, to which they are not relevant and which has generated many volumes of scholarly research.

1

4/6/94 AM 2

In my recently published book "Diplomacy" I sought to examine how previous periods have dealt with such a change in their environment, from the emergence of the modern nation-state to the present. In particular, to draw lessons for America's future, I tried to describe America's unique blend of hope and necessity, of the oscillation in American thought between seeing America's role as building the nation into an example for others and seeing it as mission abroad.

2

Professor May mention my many discussions of Stalin's tyranny,
for example, _inter alia_, on pp. 411, 440-41, 499-50.

Continuing the same method, Professor May alleges that I
also express admiration for Mao and other "tyrants of
Beijing." Once again he separates a purely descriptive
sentence from its context, which deals with the way Nixon and
the Chinese leaders managed to come together despite profound
ideological differences. And he omits to mention that _the same
paragraph_ (this time in a _preceding sentence_) refers to Mao as
a "visionary, ruthless, pitiless, occasionally murderous
revolutionary."

5

6

7

8

Professor May finds a second "error" in the quote attributed
to Lloyd George (in a chapter that in the main deals with Woodrow
and only principally with Lloyd George) (Wilson) - that he would "squeeze Germany until the pips
squeak". May calls the reference both wrong and unjust.

9

10

11

1

In my recently published book "Diplomacy" I sought to examine how previous periods have dealt with such a change in their environment, from the emergence of the modern nation-state to the present. In particular, to draw lessons for America's future, I tried to describe America's unique blend of hope and necessity, of the oscillation between seeing America's role as building the nation into an example for others and rebuilding the world in America's image.

A contrary approach portrays international relations as a permanent conflict between good and evil. Professor May, who

2

reviewed "Diplomacy", apparently belong to this school of
thought. Had he openly elaborated this disagreement, he could
have sparked a significant dialogue. Instead, Professor May
proceeds by innuendo, ascribing value judgments incompatible
with my actual views to entirely descriptive material. And he
attacks my scholarly qualifications in a specious and
nitpicking search for errors laced with personal invective.

3

Similarly, Professor May alleges that I "admit admiration"
for Stalin. I did no such thing. It takes unusual ingenuity
or bias to distill admiration from a quote which begins,
"Stalin was indeed a monster," and is followed by a sentence
omitted by Professor May, which clearly conveys that I am
talking about the method by which Stalin concluded the Nazi-
Soviet pact: "Without knowing it, the Western democracies were
tempting fate by counting on an irreconcilable ideological
conflict between Stalin and Hitler, by teasing Stalin with a
French pact that foreswore military cooperation, by excluding
the Soviet Union from the Munich Conference..." Nor does

4

Using the same method, Professor May alleges that I also
express admiration for Mao and other "tyrants of Beijing."
Once again he separates a purely descriptive sentence from its
context, which deals with the way Nixon and the Chinese
leaders managed to come together despite profound ideological
differences. And he omits to mention that *the same paragraph*
refers to Mao as a "visionary, ruthless, pitiless,
occasionally murderous revolutionary."

5

6

7

8

Professor May finds a second "error" in the quote attributed
to Lloyd George (in a chapter that deals principally with
Woodrow Wilson and only peripherally with Lloyd George) - that
he would "squeeze Germany until the pips squeak". May calls
the reference both wrong and unjust. Though the quote is often
attributed to Lloyd George, it may well have originated with a
member of Lloyd George's government. But far from misstating
Lloyd George's views - as Professor May asserts - the quote is
an accurate reflection of them: after all, he ran the khaki
election of December 1918 on the platform "Hang the Kaiser";
at Bristol on December 11, he vowed that Germany "must pay to
the very last penny" and that, in that quest, "we will search
their pockets for it." Lloyd George's attitude toward Germany
at the end of the war was also reflected in his statement to

9

10

out of context *two* sentences entirely peripheral to the thrust
of the argument, which dealt exclusively with tracing when
Hitler first revealed his long-term objectives to his military
leaders. Professor May correctly points out that the phrase
that Hitler revealed his plans to "almost all of Germany's
general officers" is inaccurate. In fact - as my own research
showed - only top general officers representing the German
High Command were present. In the final stages of copy-
editing, the word "top" was inadvertently dropped from before
"general officers". The mistake is one of those technical
errors that, in normal circumstances, are corrected in later
editions without comment. The rest of the paragraph would,
moreover, suggest to any unbiased reader that it deals with
the top command. Professor May argues that this technical
error (which has been corrected in the German and all other
editions by restoring the word "top") skews the German postwar

[N]

11
debate about the responsibility of the German generals for the
war. I find it flattering though hard to believe that one
misplaced adjective could affect a debate going back over
forty years, to which it was not addressed and which has
generated many volumes of scholarly research.

1

2

3

4

5

6

> With respect to so-called errors of commission, Professor May returns to the method of ascribing to me views I neither hold nor expressed and then rebutting them. Interpreting the sentence (p. 222) that Wilson's doctrine of self-determination "put European diplomats on thoroughly unfamiliar terrain" to mean that they had never heard of the concept, he argues that

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Professor May finds a second "error" in the quote attributed
to Lloyd George (in a chapter that deals principally with
Woodrow Wilson and only peripherally with Lloyd George) - that
he would "squeeze Germany until the pips squeak". May calls
the reference both wrong and unjust. Though the quote is often
attributed to Lloyd George, it may well have originated with a
member of Lloyd George's government. But far from misstating
Lloyd George's views - as Professor May asserts - the quote is
an accurate reflection of them: at Newcastle on November 29,
1918, Lloyd George insisted that Germany pay "the cost of the
war up to the limit of her capacity;" at Bristol on December
11, he vowed that Germany "must pay to the very last penny"
and that, in that quest, "we will search their pockets for
it." Lloyd George's attitude toward Germany at the end of the

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Professor May finds a third error in the description of the so-called Hossbach memorandum on p. 309. Once again, he takes out of context *two* sentences entirely peripheral to the thrust of the argument, which dealt exclusively with tracing when Hitler first revealed his long-term objectives to his military leaders. Professor May correctly points out that the phrase that Hitler revealed his plans to "almost all of Germany's general officers" is inaccurate. In fact - as my own research showed - only top general officers representing the German High Command were present. Indeed, in the final stages of copy-editing, the word "top" was inadvertently dropped from before "general officers". The mistake is one of those technical errors that, in normal circumstances, are corrected in later editions without comment. The rest of the paragraph would, moreover, suggest to any unbiased reader that it deals with the top command. Professor May argues that this

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technical error (which has been corrected in the German and
all other editions by restoring the word "top") skews the
German postwar debate about the responsibility of the German
generals for the war. I find it flattering though hard to
believe that two sentences could affect a debate going back
over forty years, to which they are not relevant and which has
generated many volumes of scholarly research.

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This silly comment is hardly supported by his evidence.
Professor May describes the error of omission as follows:

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Professor May finds a second "error" in the quote attributed
to Lloyd George (in a chapter that deals principally with
Woodrow Wilson and only peripherally with Lloyd George) - that
he would "squeeze Germany until the pips squeak". May calls
the reference both wrong and unjust. Though the quote is often
attributed to Lloyd George, it may well have originated with a
member of Lloyd George's government. But far from misstating
Lloyd George's views - as Professor May asserts - the quote is
an accurate reflection of them: *after all, he ran the khaki*
*at Newcastle on November 29,*
*election of December 1918 on the platform*
*1918, Lloyd George insisted that Germany pay "the cost of the*
*Hang the Kaiser";*
*war up to the limit of her capacity;"* at Bristol on December
11, he vowed that Germany "must pay to the very last penny"
and that, in that quest, "we will search their pockets for
it." Lloyd George's attitude toward Germany at the end of the

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