Word: nato
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...some extent, NATO is a victim of its own success. Statesmen, who are politicians when they get back home, have found it all too easy to believe that their security is the result, not of their own strength but of a change in Russian hearts. "The threat of war is diminishing." they chant...
Gone are the tremulous uncertainties of 1949, when small nations who had seen Czechoslovakia go under were wondering "who's next?"-those days, as one NATO official recalled last week, "when you could feel a tremor go around the council table every time one of the smaller nations received a Soviet note, and NATO, since we had no effective military organization, seemed more like a source of trouble than of strength...
Chief target for this chant is U.S. General Alfred Gruenther, Supreme Commander of all NATO forces in Europe. To the chanters, Gruenther retorts that the only change in the Russians is what NATO's strength has forced on them. With a cascade of facts drawn from an incredible memory, an inextinguishable smile and a dry Nebraska lucidity that is the admiration of every statesman in Europe, Al Gruenther fights that tired feeling with a combination of public optimism and private exhortation that is his specialty. To those who speak of Russian smiles, he recites precise figures of Russian forces...
...have been so superbly fitted to fill their time and place in history as General Alfred Maximilian Gruenther. As NATO's first Supreme Commander in Europe (SACEUR), Eisenhower and his towering prestige rallied and heartened Europe's terrified nations and gave them confidence that the thing could be done. His successor, General Matthew Ridgway, was a blunt soldier who demanded more troops than the Europeans were willing to supply, stepped on many toes, and left no happy memories. In a time of peace-mongering, Gruenther has inherited the demanding and delicate...
...European statesmen that borders on adulation. Admits one French news paper: a commander "less flexible and less informed on European politics-the short period of command by General Ridgway shows this-would have brought great peril not only to the military organization but the Atlantic alliance itself." Said able NATO Secretary-General Lord Ismay, who as personal chief of staff to Churchill in World War II, has seen many: "General Gruenther is the greatest soldier-statesman I have ever known...