Overview

This book tells the story of how America's national leadership failed the nation and produced the greatest foreign policy disaster in American history to that time. It is foremost, however, the story of a great man who tried to halt his nation's drift into what became an American tragedy. It is also a story that has never before been told. As the war escalated, a variety of critics emerged to challenge the war policy and thus my book is about the national debate in which University of Chicago Professor Hans J. Morgenthau emerged as the chief opponent of the war. Morgenthau argued relentlessly in teach-ins around the country, in public debates and in hundreds of articles that Vietnam was never a threat to America's security and that the war should never have been fought. In the history of the national debate on Vietnam, it is Morgenthau who is the hero of the anti-war movement and the centerpiece of my study. Morgenthau had written the basic text on foreign policy, Politics Among Nations, and had established the field of international relations as an independent discipline of study. His arguments against the war derive from these earliest writings and are elaborated in this book, the principles of which remain valid today. The war ended in 1975 as North Vietnamese troops marched into Saigon after over 58,000 American servicemen and millions of Vietnamese had died in the fighting. The war could have been averted, Morgenthau was ignored, American policy-makers misunderstood the nature of the civil conflict in Vietnam. As Morgenthau told an interviewer in July, 1965, ""What I have said recently I have been saying for years, without anybody paying any attention.""

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Hans Morgenthau was my teacher, mentor and friend. He recommended me for my law professorship. It was my great honor and distinct pleasure to have studied with Morgenthau while he was heroically leading the forces of opposition to the genocidal Vietnam War at great personal cost to himself and his family. Morgenthau 's stellar example of brilliance in the service of courage, integrity and principles has inspired and motivated me now for over four decades. After reading Zimmer 's compelling book, Morgenthau will do the same for you. Zimmer vividly brings back to life Morgenthau, his epic battle against the Vietnam War, and those tumultuous and tragic events that shaped my generation and determined the destinies of two nations only now beginning to reconcile a volte-face preternaturally predicted by Morgenthau during the darkest days of the wars. This book is required reading for all those seeking to pursue peace with justice in today 's increasingly troubled and endangered world. Humani

Louis B. Zimmer has written a compelling study of Hans J. Morgenthau, international foreign policy expert and principal critic of the American war in Vietnam. Through extensive research, Zimmer s book provides a thorough account of Morgenthau s arguments and demonstrates clearly how history has proven him to be right. Endorsing Morgenthau, Zimmer makes a strong argument against ideological bases for foreign policy decisions and the strength of his book lies in his voluminous research that draws both an explicit and implicit parallel to contemporary foreign policy decisions. Pamela A. Pears, Washington College

Author Information

Louis B. Zimmer is professor emeritus of history at Montclair State University.

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