say, Charles de Gaulle (who was then only a colonel), Jean dernLattre de Tassigny, or Alphonse Juin. Part of the answer wasrnprovided at the postwar Nuremberg Trials by Alfred Jodl (onernof the planners of the Rhineland operation in 1936): “Consideringrnthe position we were in, the French covering army couldrnhave blown us to pieces.”rnSo much for the military certainty. But what of the politicalrnconsequences? The answer, I believe, is that a number ofrnsenior German officers, still smarting from the June 30, 1934,rnmurder by Nazi thugs of two of their leading generals (Kurt vonrnSchleicher and Kurt von Bredow), would have decided that therntime had come to get rid of that “dangerous madman” AdolfrnHitler—something that would probably have plunged Germanyrninto a civil war. Which, in view of what later happened,rnwould almost certainly have been a godsend to Europe and thernworld.rnMy reason for thinking so is that something very similarrncame close to happening in September 1938, at the height ofrnthe Sudetenland crisis. As we now know, thanks to Peter Hoffmann’srnmasterly History of the General Resistance, J933-J945rn(1977)—a book that ought to be required reading for allrnpresent-day students of political science—in early Septemberrnof that year a number of Germans, who were convinced thatrnHitler’s announced intention of invading Czechoslovakia torn”liberate” the captive German population of the Sudetenlandrnwould lead to a catastrophic war with France and Great Britain,rnmade elaborate plans to storm the Reichschancellery, to seizernand depose the Fiihrer (some of the plotters intended to murderrnhim on the spot), and to neutralize a number of keyrnGestapo and SS installations. The plot, which was to have gonerninto effect the day Hitler issued marching orders to his divisions,rnwas no hastily thought-up, harebrained scheme, for thernplotters included Franz Haider, the army’s chief of staff; hisrndeputy, Lt. General Karl-Heinz von Stiilpnagel; Major GeneralrnErwin von Witzleben, who headed the Third Military Districtrn(including Berlin); the commander of the 23rd Potsdam Division,rnWalter von Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt; Admiral Wilhelm Canarisrn(head of Germany’s secret services) and his fearlessrndeputy. Colonel Hans Oster; the deputy head of the Berlin policernforce (Fritz-Dietlof von der Schulenburg); as well as arnnumber of influential civilians, including the financier HjalmarrnSchacht. The September 28 storming of the Reichschancellery,rnhowever, had to be cancelled at the very last momentrnwhen it was learned that Neville Chamberlain and EdouardrnDaladier, yielding to Mussolini’s entreaties, had agreed to go tornMunich to negotiate a “settlement” of the Sudeten-Czechrncrisis. As Nevile Henderson, the British ambassador in Berlin,rnwrote to his Foreign Office boss. Lord Halifax, on October 6,rn”in keeping the peace, we have saved Hidcr and his regime.”rnLucius Clay, that rare bird—a general with a profound understandingrnof geopolitics—drew from these cmcial eventsrnof the 1930’s a conclusion that, in my opinion, deserves to berncalled “Clay’s Law”: that an act of aggression or intended aggression,rnif not promptly faced and thwarted by an appropriaternresponse, will simply encourage further acts of aggression,rnwhich may eventually require 10,20, or even 50 times as muchrnmilitary effort to combat as would have been necessary at thernoutset. This was why, in June 1948, when Stalin decided to cutrnthe Western allies’ lifeline to Berlin on the specious groundsrnthat a bridge on the Helmstedt-Potsdam Autobahn was inrndanger of “collapsing” and needed to be “repaired,” Clay, suspectingrnthat this was a piece of Soviet bluff, tried to persuadernPresident Truman to let him run an armored train through tornWest Berlin. Unfortunately, Harry Truman, who was in thernthick of an election campaign (which almost everyone expectedrnhim to lose) and who, to please American public opinion,rnhad “brought the boys home” from Europe at far too fast arnpace, felt that the risks were too great and rejected Clay’s boldrnproposal.rnGeneral Clay never ceased to regret that decision, considering,rnI think rightly, that the Berlin airlift was a poor, in extremisrnsubstitute for his armored train proposal. For the airlift—undertaken,rnwe should not forget, before NATO had beenrnestablished—did not provide conclusive evidence of UnclernSam’s military resolve. The result. Clay used to argue, was thernSoviet-planned invasion of South Korea, which plunged thernUnited States into a bloody war.rnI still vividly recall the evening in the late 1970’s when, in therncourse of a television “talk show” here in Paris, I explained allrnthis to Alfred Grosser, a highly intelligent professor of politicalrnscience and one of France’s leading authorities on Germany.rn”What?” he said, visibly surprised. ‘Ton mean to say that GeneralrnClay seriously believed that if he had been allowed to runrnan armored train through to Berlin in 1948, there would notrnhave been a Korean War in 1950?” “Yes,” I said, “that was GeneralrnClay’s firm conviction, and 1 know it because he told mernso himself.”rnNow what, the indulgent reader may be wondering, has thisrngot to do with the dreadful, present-day mess in Yugoslavia?rnMy answer—a great deal. For it is because a number of Westernrncountries failed to act forcefully in the early stages of thisrncrisis that it soon got completely out of hand, so much so indeedrnthat the damage already done—800 mosques destroyed,rnto cite but one statistic—now seems beyond repair, openingrnpsychological wounds that will take decades to heal.rnThough the countries of Western Europe are primarily culpable,rnit must be acknowledged that the Yugoslav “mess” wasrnfatally aggravated by serious errors committed by George Bush.rnThe first error was the casual manner in which he put a prematurernend to the Allied Blitzkrieg in Iraq by preventing GeneralrnSchwarzkopf and the British and French commandersrnfrom completing the rout of Saddam Hussein’s forces andrnseizing the port city of Basra. This error of judgment can berncompared to Eisenhower’s mistake in not allowing Allied forcesrnto cross the Elbe and enter Berlin in April 1945 (despiternChurchill’s pleas), an error compounded a couple of monthsrnlater by Harry Truman in ordering American forces to evacuaternthe Saxon heartland that had been overrun by Patton’s divisionsrnwithout obtaining in exchange iron-clad guarantees concerningrnAllied access routes to Berlin. Basra, as anyone couldrnsee by glancing at a map, was the trump card you do not throwrnaway if you really want to win the game and get rid of a dangerousrnaggressor. For if the Iraqi officer corps had been bluntlyrnmade to understand that Basra would not be returned torntheir country until they got rid of Saddam Hussein, they wouldrnhave been forced to act. As it is, Saddam Hussein is still inrnpower, and the United Nations seems powerless to do muchrnabout it—a lesson not lost upon another internationalrnmischief-maker, Slobodan Miloshevitch.rnGeorge Bush’s second major error was to trumpet the victoryrnin the Gulf War as though it had opened a new chapter inrnhuman history, a “New World Order.” So much has been writtenrnin the pages of this magazine to deflate this fatuous notionrnMARCH 1994/21rnrnrn