Fritz Kramer's Letter to My Brother

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Kramer was a kind of idiosyncratic guy. He posed as a Prussian conservative. American thought of him as this kind of caricature, Juncker figure. And he had reinvented himself. He wasn't conservative at all. He was a big believer in international law and had written his doctoral thesis on that subject. But ultimately the discretion of the author is to decide is this special pleading, or is this just the true? You kind of have to use that judgment with great care.

No American statesman has been as revered and as reviled as Henry Kissinger. To the late Christopher Hitchens he was a war criminal who should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. To his admirers he is the greatest strategic thinker America has ever produced, the ‘indispensable man’, whose advice has been sought by every president from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush. Internationally renowned Harvard historian Niall Ferguson came to the Intelligence Squared stage to discuss his new appraisal of Kissinger. In his view, far from being the amoral arch-realist portrayed by his enemies, Kissinger owed a profound debt to philosophical idealism. In this exclusive London appearance, Ferguson was joined by the distinguished historian Andrew Roberts, who brought his expertise from writing about great statesmen of the past – from Napoleon to Churchill – to the examination of this controversial figure. How did Kissinger’s worldview develop over the course of his early years, as a Jew in Hitler’s Germany, a...

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/intelligencesquared.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices