Prague Winter (Albright)

Prague Winter:  A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948
Madeleine Albright, 2012
HarperCollins
467 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062030344


Summary
Before Madeleine Albright turned twelve, her life was shaken by the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia—the country where she was born—the Battle of Britain, the near total destruction of European Jewry, the Allied victory in World War II, the rise of communism, and the onset of the Cold War.

Albright's experiences, and those of her family, provide a lens through which to view the most tumultuous dozen years in modern history. Drawing on her memory, her parents' written reflections, interviews with contemporaries, and newly available documents, Albright recounts a tale that is by turns harrowing and inspiring. Prague Winter is an exploration of the past with timeless dilemmas in mind and, simultaneously, a journey with universal lessons that is intensely personal.

The book takes readers from the Bohemian capital's thousand-year-old castle to the bomb shelters of London, from the desolate prison ghetto of Terezín to the highest councils of European and American government. Albright reflects on her discovery of her family's Jewish heritage many decades after the war, on her Czech homeland's tangled history, and on the stark moral choices faced by her parents and their generation.

Often relying on eyewitness descriptions, she tells the story of how millions of ordinary citizens were ripped from familiar surroundings and forced into new roles as exiled leaders and freedom fighters, resistance organizers and collaborators, victims and killers. These events of enormous complexity are nevertheless shaped by concepts familiar to any growing child: fear, trust, adaptation, the search for identity, the pressure to conform, the quest for independence, and the difference between right and wrong.

"No one who lived through the years of 1937 to 1948," Albright writes, "was a stranger to profound sadness. Millions of innocents did not survive, and their deaths must never be forgotten. Today we lack the power to reclaim lost lives, but we have a duty to learn all that we can about what happened and why."

At once a deeply personal memoir and an incisive work of history, Prague Winter serves as a guide to the future through the lessons of the past—as seen through the eyes of one of the international community's most respected and fascinating figures. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—May 15, 1937
• Where—Prague, Czechoslovakia
• Education—B.A., Wellesley College; M.A., Ph.D.,
   Columbia University
• Currently—lives in Washington, DC, and the state
   of Virginia, USA


Madeleine Albright was the first woman to become the United States Secretary of State. She was nominated by US President Bill Clinton on December 5, 1996, and was unanimously confirmed by a U.S. Senate vote of 99–0. She was sworn in on January 23, 1997.

A Professor of International Relations at Georgetown University, Albright holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University and numerous honorary degrees. In May 2012, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by US President Barack Obama. Secretary Albright also serves as a Director on the Board of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Albright is fluent in English, French, Russian, and Czech; she speaks and reads Polish and Serbo-Croatian as well.

Early years
Albright was born Marie Jana Korbelova in the Smichov district of Prague, Czechoslovakia. At the time of her birth, Czechoslovakia had been independent for less than twenty years, having gained independence from Austria-Hungary after World War I. Her father, Josef Korbel, was a Czech Jewish diplomat and supporter of the early Czech democrats, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk and Edvard Benes. She was his first child with his Jewish wife, Anna (nee Spieglova), who later also had another daughter Katherine (a schoolteacher) and son John (an economist).

At the time of Albright’s birth, her father was serving as press-attache at the Czechoslovak Embassy in Belgrade. However, the signing of the Munich Agreement in March 1938 and the disintegration of Czechoslovakia at the hands of Adolf Hitler forced the family into exile because of their links with Benes. Prior to their flight, Albright's parents had converted from Judaism to Roman Catholicism. Albright spent the war years in England, while her father worked for Bene’s Czechoslovak government-in-exile. They first lived on Kensington Park Road in Notting Hill, London, where they endured the worst of The Blitz, but later moved to Beaconsfield, then Walton-on-Thames, on the outskirts of London. While in England, a young Albright appeared as a refugee child in a film designed to promote sympathy for all war refugees in London.

Albright was raised Catholic, but converted to Episcopalianism at the time of her marriage in 1959. Albright did not learn until late in life that her parents were Jewish and that many of her Jewish relatives in Czechoslovakia had perished in The Holocaust, including three of her grandparents.

After the defeat of the Nazis in the European Theatre of World War II and the collapse of Nazi Germany and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Albright and family moved back to Prague, where they were given a luxurious apartment in the Hradcany district (which later caused controversy, as it had belonged to an ethnic German Bohemian industrialist family forced out by the Benes decrees. Korbel was named Czechoslovak Ambassador to communist Yugoslavia, and the family moved to Belgrade. Communists governed Yugoslavia, and Korbel was concerned his daughter would be indoctrinated with Marxist ideology in a Yugoslav school, so she was taught by a governess and later sent to the Prealpina Institut pour Jeunes Filles in Chexbres, on Lake Geneva in Switzerland. Here, she learned French and went by Madeleine, the French version of Madlenka, her Czech nickname.

However, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia took over the government in 1948, with support from the Soviet Union, and as an opponent of Communism, Korbel was forced to resign from his position. He later obtained a position on a United Nations delegation to Kashmir, and sent his family to the United States, by way of London, to wait for him when he arrived to deliver his report to the U.N. Headquarters, then in Lake Success, New York. The family arrived in New York City, New York, in November 1948, and initially settled in Great Neck, on Long Island, New York. Korbel applied for political asylum, arguing that as an opponent of Communism, he was now under threat in Prague. With the help of Philip Mosely, a professor of Russian at Columbia University in New York City, Korbel obtained a position on the staff of the political science department at the University of Denver in Denver, Colorado. He became dean of the university’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies, and later taught future U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Life in the United States
Albright spent her teen years in Denver, and graduated from the Kent Denver School in Cherry Hills Village, a suburb of Denver, in 1955, where she founded the school’s international relations club and was its first president. She attended Wellesley College, in Wellesley, Massachusetts, on a full scholarship, majoring in political science and graduated in 1959 Her senior thesis was written on Czech Communist Zdenek Fierlinger. She became a U.S. citizen in 1957, and joined the College Democrats of America.

While home in Denver from Wellesley, Albright worked as an intern for The Denver Post, where she met Joseph Medill Patterson Albright, the nephew of Alicia Patterson, owner of Newsday and wife of philanthropist Harry Frank Guggenheim. The couple were married in Wellesley in 1959, shortly after her graduation. They lived first in Rolla, Missouri, while he served his military service at nearby Fort Leonard Wood. During this time, she worked at the Rolla Daily News.

In January 1960, the couple moved to his hometown of Chicago, Illinois, where he worked at the Chicago Sun-Times as a journalist, and Albright worked as a picture editor for Encyclopedia Britannica. The following year, Joseph Albright began work at Newsday in New York City, and the couple moved to Garden City on Long Island. That year, she gave birth to twin daughters, Alice Patterson Albright and Anne Korbel Albright. The twins were born six weeks premature, and required a long hospital stay, so as a distraction, Albright began Russian classes at Hofstra University in the Village of Hempstead, New York.

In 1962, the family moved to Georgetown in Washington, D.C., and Albright began studying international relations and continued studying Russian at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC. However, in 1963 Alicia Patterson died, and the family returned to Long Island with the notion of Joseph taking over the family business Albright gave birth to another daughter, Katherine Medill Albright, in 1967, and continued her studies at Columbia University. She earned a certificate in Russian, a Masters of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy, writing her Master's thesis on the Soviet diplomatic corps, and her doctoral dissertation on the role of journalists in the Prague Spring of 1968. She also took a graduate course given by Zbigniew Brzezinski, who would later be her boss at the U.S. National Security Council.

Early career
Albright returned to Washington in 1968, and commuted to Columbia for her Ph.D., which she received in 1975. She began fund-raising for her daughters' school, involvement which led to several positions on education boards. She was eventually invited to organize a fund-raising dinner for the 1972 presidential campaign of U.S. Senator Ed Muskie of Maine. This association with Muskie led to a position as his chief legislative assistant in 1976. However, after the 1976 U.S. presidential election of Jimmy Carter, Albright's former professor Brzezinski was named National Security Advisor, and recruited Albright from Muskie in 1978 to work in the West Wing as the National Security Council’s congressional liaison.

Following Carter's loss in 1980 to Ronald Reagan, Albright moved on to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., where she was given a grant for a research project. She chose to write on the dissident journalists involved in Poland's Solidarity movement, then in its infancy but gaining international attention. She traveled to Poland for her research, interviewing dissidents in Gdansk, Warsaw and Krakow. Upon her return to Washington, her husband announced his intention to divorce her for another woman.

Albright joined the academic staff at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., in 1982, specializing in Eastern European studies. She has also directed the University's program on women in global politics. She has also served as a major Democratic Party foreign policy advisor, and briefed Vice-Presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 and Presidential candidate Michael Dukakis in 1988 (both campaigns ended in defeat).

In 1992, Bill Clinton returned the White House to the Democratic Party, and Albright was employed to handle the transition to a new administration at the National Security Council. In January 1993, Clinton nominated her to be U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, her first diplomatic posting.

Ambassador to the UN
Albright was appointed Ambassador to the United Nations, her first diplomatic post, shortly after Clinton was inaugurated, presenting her credentials on February 9, 1993. During her tenure at the U.N., she had a rocky relationship with the U.N. Secretary-General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, whom she criticized as "disengaged" and "neglect[ful]" of genocide in Rwanda.Albright wrote:

My deepest regret from my years in public service is the failure of the United States and the international community to act sooner to halt these crimes.

In Shake Hands with the Devil, Romeo Dallaire claims that in 1994, in Albright's role as the U.S. Permanent Representative to the U.N., she avoided describing the killings in Rwanda as "genocide" until overwhelmed by the evidence for it; this is now how she describes these massacres in her memoirs. She was instructed to support a reduction or withdrawal (something which never happened) of the U.N. Assistance Mission for Rwanda but was later given more flexibility. Albright later remarked in PBS documentary Ghosts of Rwanda that

it was a very, very difficult time, and the situation was unclear. You know, in retrospect, it all looks very clear. But when you were [there] at the time, it was unclear about what was happening in Rwanda.

Also in 1996, after Cuban military pilots shot down two small civilian aircraft flown by the Cuban-American exile group Brothers to the Rescue over international waters, she announced, "This is not cojones. This is cowardice." The line endeared her to President Clinton, who said it was "probably the most effective one-liner in the whole administration's foreign policy."

On May 12, 1996, Albright defended UN sanctions against Iraq on a 60 Minutes segment in which Lesley Stahl asked her

We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" and Albright replied "we think the price is worth it.

Albright later criticized Stahl's segment as "amount[ing] to Iraqi propaganda"; said that her question was a loaded question;  wrote "I had fallen into a trap and said something I did not mean"; and regretted coming "across as cold-blooded and cruel." Sanctions critics took Albright's failure to reframe the question as confirmation of the statistic. The segment won an Emmy Award.

Secretary of State
When Albright took office as the 64th U.S. Secretary of State on January 23, 1997, she became the first female U.S. Secretary of State and the highest-ranking woman in the history of the U.S. government. Because she was not a natural-born citizen of the U.S., she was not eligible as a U.S. Presidential successor and was excluded from nuclear contingency plans. In her position as Secretary of State, Albright reinforced the U.S.'s alliances; advocated democracy and human rights; and promoted American trade and business, labor and environmental standards abroad.

During her tenure, Albright considerably influenced American policy in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Middle East. She incurred the wrath of a number of Serbs in the former Yugoslavia for her role in participating in the formulation of US policy during the Kosovo War and Bosnian war as well as the rest of the Balkans. But, together with President Bill Clinton, she remains a largely popular figure in the rest of the region, especially Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Croatia. According to Albright's memoirs, she once argued with Colin Powell for the use of military force by asking, "What’s the point of you saving this superb military for, Colin, if we can't use it?"

As Secretary of State she represented the U.S. at the Transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong on July 1, 1997. She boycotted the swearing-in ceremony of the China-appointed Hong Kong Legislative Council, which replaced the elected one, along with the British contingents.

According to several accounts, U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Prudence Bushnell repeatedly asked Washington for additional security at the embassy in Nairobi, including in an April 1998 letter directly to Albright. Bushnell was ignored. In Against All Enemies Richard Clarke writes about an exchange with Albright several months after the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed in August 1998. "What do you think will happen if you lose another embassy?" Clarke asked. "The Republicans in Congress will go after you." "First of all, I didn't lose these two embassies," Albright shot back. "I inherited them in the shape they were." Albright was booed in 1998 when the brief war threat with Iraq revealed that citizens were opposed to such an invasion, although this is often overlooked.

In 1998, at the NATO summit, Albright articulated what would become known as the "three Ds" of NATO, "which is no diminution of NATO, no discrimination and no duplication—because I think that we don't need any of those three "Ds" to happen."

Both Bill Clinton and Albright insisted that an attack on Hussein could be stopped only if Hussein reversed his decision to halt arms inspections. "Iraq has a simple choice. Reverse course or face the consequences," Albright said.

In 2000, Albright became one of the highest level Western diplomats ever to meet Kim Jong-il, the communist leader of North Korea, during an official state visit to that country.

In one of her last acts as Secretary of State, Albright on January 8, 2001, paid a farewell call on Kofi Annan and said that the U.S. would continue to press Iraq to destroy all its weapons of mass destruction as a condition of lifting economic sanctions, even after the end of the Clinton administration on January 20, 2001.

Post-2001 career
In 2001, Albright was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The same year, she founded the Albright Group, an international strategy consulting firm based in Washington, D.C. It has Coca-Cola, Merck, Dubai Ports World, and Marsh & McLennan Companies among its clients, who benefit from the access that Albright has through her global contacts. Affiliated with the firm is Albright Capital Management, which was founded in 2005 to engage in private fund management related to emerging markets.

Albright currently serves on the Council on Foreign Relations Board of directors and on the International Advisory Committee of the Brookings Doha Center. She is also currently the Mortara Distinguished Professor of Diplomacy at the Georgetown University Walsh School of Foreign Service in Washington, D.C..

In 2003, she accepted a position on the Board of Directors of the New York Stock Exchange. In 2005, Albright declined to run for re-election to the board in the aftermath of the Richard Grasso compensation scandal, in which Grasso, the chairman of the NYSE Board of Directors, had been granted $187.5 million in compensation, with little governance by the board on which Albright sat. During the tenure of the interim chairman, John S. Reed, Albright served as chairwoman of the NYSE board's nominating and governance committee. Shortly after the appointment of the NYSE board's permanent chairman in 2005, Albright submitted her resignation.

On October 25, 2005, Albright guest starred on the television drama Gilmore Girls as herself.

On January 5, 2006, she participated in a meeting at the White House of former Secretaries of Defense and State to discuss U.S. foreign policy with George W. Bush administration officials. On May 5, 2006, she was again invited to the White House to meet with former Secretaries and Bush administration officials to discuss Iraq.

In an interview given to Newsweek International published July 24, 2006, Albright gave her opinion on current U.S. foreign policy. Albright said: "I hope I'm wrong, but I'm afraid that Iraq is going to turn out to be the greatest disaster in American foreign policy – worse than Vietnam."

Albright has mentioned her physical fitness and exercise regimen in several interviews. She has said she is capable of leg pressing 400 pounds. Albright was listed as one of the fifty best-dressed over 50s by the Guardian in March 2013. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/20/2013.)

Book Reviews
A gripping account of World War II.... In taut prose, Albright weaves a powerful narrative that wraps her family’s story into the larger political drama unfolding in Europe.
Philadelphia Inquirer


A riveting tale of her family’s experience in Europe during World War II [and] a well-wrought political history of the region, told with great authority.... More than a memoir, this is a book of facts and action.
Los Angeles Times


A compelling personal exploration of [Albright’s] family’s Jewish roots as well as an excellent history of Czechoslovakia from 1937 to 1948.... Highly informative and insightful.... I can’t recommend Prague Winter highly enough.
Washington Post Book World


In the crowded field of memoirs written by former secretaries of state, Madeleine Albright’s books stand out... Albright is a charming and entertaining storyteller.
New York Review of Books


Albright’s book is a sprightly historical narrative of this long decade.... Her account of the destruction of inter-war Czechoslovakia, both as a geographical entity and as an idea of democracy, first by the Nazis and then by the Communists, is balanced and vivid.
Economist


A blend of history and memoir that reveals in rich, poignant and often heartbreaking detail a story that had been hidden from her by her own parents.... The beating heart of the book is Albright’s searing account of her intimate family saga.
Jewish Journal


An extraordinary book.... Albright artfully presents a wrenching tale of horror and darkness, but also one in which decent and brave people again and again had their say.
New Republic


(Starred review.) The author’s childhood reminiscences of her first 11 years and savvy grasp of history inform this absorbing account of Czechoslovakia’s travails and Albright’s family’s suffering in the Holocaust.... The story is enriched by Albright’s colorful thumbnails of Eduard Benes, Jan Masaryk, and other principals and by her insights into geopolitics, which yield sympathetic but clear-eyed assessments of the compromises statesmen made to accommodate the ruthless powers surrounding Czechoslovakia. Showing us villainy, heroism, and agonizing moral dilemmas, Albright’s vivid storytelling and measured analysis brings this tragic era to life.
Publishers Weekly


Most people are aware of the result of the Munich agreement in 1938. Albright (born Marie Jana Korbelova), the first female U.S. secretary of state, provides a deeper account of the Czech Republic's road to independence. From Prague to the Terezin concentration camp (where many of her Jewish relatives perished) to the "winter" of the republic's existence as it endured the dictatorships of the Nazis and then the Communists, Albright details the situations and personalities prominent in this struggle.... The accessible style and inclusion of notes and timelines make this an excellent addition to any library. —Maria Bagshaw, Elgin Community Coll. Lib., IL
Library Journal


The former U.S. secretary of state blends World War II-era history and memoir.... The most gripping parts are those personal stories; the others mostly repeat what can be found in many histories of the war and Holocaust. Retellings do not, of course, diminish the horror, but Albright sometimes focuses more on the politics and the war than on the remembrance.... Also engaging are the later sections, which deal with the postwar politics in Czechoslovakia, especially the communists' moves to subvert the fledgling democracy.... [T]he personal...animates and brightens the narrative.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

1. Talk abouth the book's title. What is meant by the term "Prague Winter"?

2. Describe the cultural differences between the Czechs and Slovaks.

3. Follow-up to Question 2: What were the differing visions for the country, during the intervening war years, of Masaryk and Benes vs. those of Stefanik and Hodza?

4. Discuss the impact of the 1938 Munich Agreement on Czechoslavakia as described by Albright. In what way is Munich a scar on the nation's psychic? What is meant by the famous outcry"about us, without us"? Who does Albright blame for the sell-out? What was (or was not) the role of the US?

5. Albright delivers a history lesson about the World War II era from the Czechoslovakian prospective. Has that approach altered or enlarged your understanding of the war years?

6. How does Albright describe Tito's takeover in 1948?

7. To what does Albright attribute the Czech Republic's "Atlanticism," it's strong attachment to America?

8. How does Albright view the 2009 "open letter" to Barak Obama from Central European intellectuals and politicians in which they bemoaned the decline in transatlantic ties? Why does Albright consider it "whiny"? Is she correct?

9. Why do Albright's parents convert to Catholicism? Talk about her shock at the later discovery of her Jewish heritage. How would such a discovery affect your own sense of identity?

10. Near the end of her book, Albright writes about "the capacity within us for unspeakable cruelty or...at least some degree of moral cowardice....

There is a piece of the traitor within most of us, a slice of collaborator, an aptitude for appeasement, a touch of the unfeeling prison guard. Who among us has not dehumanized others, if not by word or action, then at least in thought? From the maternity ward to the deathbed, all that goes on within our breasts is hardly sweetness and light. Some have concluded from this that what is needed from our leaders is an iron hand, an ideology that explains everything, or a historical grievance that can serve as a center of our lives.

Do you agree with those sentiments? Do you see yourself in that statement?

11. In the same vein as Question 10: What do you make of Vaclav Havel who saw humanity divided into two groups: those who "wait for Godot" and those who insist on "speaking the truth." What did Havel mean? Which group would you place yourself under?

12. In what way might Albright's book serve as a guidepost for our own times? What lessons can we learn from the history of world events recounted in Prague Winter?

13. The book is both history and memoir. Which parts most engaged you—the personal or the historical?

14. Why, according to Madeleine Albright, is it important that the world remember the events of 1938-1945?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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