Finding the Life Narrative in History: Madeleine Albright's Prague Winter

Madeleine Albright's latest memoir, Prague Winter (2012) is a fascinating combination of personal narrative and world history. Set mostly during and immediately after World War Two, Albright takes us from Axis occupied Czechoslovakia to the seat of diplomatic resistance in London. Schooled in the diplomatic and military history of her native country, Albright makes smart connections between particular political decisions that were made prior to the outbreak of the War and more current instances of human rights violations. As cliche as it may sound, Albright is right to note that many of the decisions that the Allies made prior to and during the War are ones that we ought to--in more current times--avoid. The mistakes of the past, as her own experiences as secretary of state demonstrate, are indeed repeated time and time again. Albright wrote her dissertation on the political history of the Czech Republic but her memoir does not read like a history book. Infused with personal stories, interviews, letters and family photographs, Albright illuminates the singular history of her home country and the significant role it played during and after WWII. Born in 1937--right before the outbreak of the War--she outlines the rich cultural and political history of Czechoslovakia. A territory that was contested and invaded soon after Austria-German unification, the area to the West was home to a number of ethnic Germans; during WWII Hitler justified invading this territory because of its ties to German language and ethnicity. Through life narrative Albright shows us how this little country has, since its formation after World War One, come to stand for democracy. Its invasion by the Nazis during the second World War and the coup that brought the Soviets into power in 1948 notwithstanding, there have been a number of times where the significance of the government's ideological views were more than metaphorical. During WWII Czechoslovakia was the major compromise that ushered the Nazis into Eastern Europe, which also netted them major natural resources that helped to consolidate their war machine. After the War, the country became the last bastion of democracy in Eastern Europe (which faced total Soviet domination), until it fell under foreign control after the coup. Albright is smart about the way that she outlines world diplomatic history. Using memoir as a frame, she discusses human rights violations in Nazi controlled territories and their connection to later atrocities in Rwanda and the Balkans--conflicts she was involved in, first as US permanent representative to the UN and then as secretary of state. Connecting the "retirement community" of Theresienstadt, a former Czech fortress turned ghetto under Nazi control, to the international community's blind eye to genocide in Africa and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo, Albright explains why world leaders and custodian powers like the Red Cross ignored the rumors about Nazi death camps. A lack of unskilled Red Cross inspectors, political pressure, and wishful thinking created the perfect atmosphere for denial. The Nazis were masterful at creating a community that seemed legitimate, replete with an orchestra, tables full of rich food, an operating post office, and propaganda films that featured hordes of "happy" children playing in the streets. The holes in the image, such as the massive numbers of missing inmates, the months that Nazi officials prolonged the inspection date, and the cryptic answers that Theresienstadt inmates gave to inspectors failed to trigger suspicions that might have led to a more in-depth inspection. As Albright notes, "I cannot fault the inspectors for being impressed by what they saw and were told; I do blame them for failing to probe beneath the surface . . . There is a lesson in this for those who conduct inspections in our day, whether of prisons, sweatshops, refugee camps, polling places, or nuclear facilities: do not trust--push; control your own schedule; do your homework. Remember the adage that a little knowledge can be dangerous. The truth is more likely to be served by a canceled or aborted inspection than by a whitewash" (276). Statements such as this one bring together the history of Theresienstadt with the failure of the International community to uncover Nazi atrocities: these lessons are ones that ought to be carried into current diplomatic and political situations, as Albright smartly suggests. Perhaps her ability to bring together these different threads in Prague Winter is what helps make this such an engagingly written text. Albright is not only an experienced ambassador, and an expert in European languages, cultures, and history; she is also a direct descendant of diplomats. She literally cut her teeth in a politically and diplomatically chaotic world. Personally aware of Eastern Europe's fraught history, and the problems that small nations face when large ones go to war, her writing gestures towards current political issues that small, ethnically diverse nations face. I only wish she wrote more about her experience as secretary of state and the genocides in Rwanda and the Balkans in the 90's. The trajectory she traces through political exile first due to the Nazis and then the Soviets, as a child, is evidence of her living in history. Her life story is a remarkable one. The notion that Albright lives history is perhaps an obvious one, but in an age where the end of history (along with the death of the author, the text, and even poetry) is a common assertion, I think her memoir does well to situate a life story in history and to highlight history's impact on a life. In a speech commemorating the Battle of the Bulge, Albright addresses the veterans of the War, "history did not end here in these fabled woods; it did not end with the Nazi surrender or the fall of the Berlin wall. Each generation is tested; each must choose" (301). These moments of verbal clarity present themselves often throughout her memoir. Life narrative, she is saying, is a political and moral act as much as a personal one. However, her particular life story--her connection to a small European country that longed for democratic freedom throughout its various occupations--marks her as different from many other American government officials. In her memoir she reminds us of her autobiographic difference when she explores the choices that various world powers made before and during World War Two. While it seems easy to cast stones at inspectors and various politicians who sacrificed land and lives in the name of diplomacy, the point Albright drives home time and time again is that in hindsight all options are possible while in the moment the choices are much more difficult to make. Distance from experience (memory) allows us to interpret political decisions well after the fact in the hope of avoiding similar conflicts but in the moment we only have experience and hope to base our choices. It's scary how much hinges on personality and life experience in the world of diplomacy and politics. With this in mind, I'd like to end this post with a quote from the memoir that struck me as both very obvious and, sadly, one that I don't think Americans often consider when looking at international policy, which is the perspective of other countries: "The foreign policy of every small country begins with one question: how can we survive?" As with individual lives, countries have life narratives that uncover patterns, memories, and history: Albright brings humanity to policy and personality to diplomacy. No easy feat.