How exceptional was the fight in the Oval Office? History has much more intense power conflicts

It can always be worse – even in the case of confrontation last Friday between the Ukrainian President Zensky and US President Trump and his vice president JD Vance. Commentators spoke of a diplomatic disaster of unprecedented proportions, but a glance at history teaches that negotiators often tackle each other – although it was usually not about allies.

Also notorious – also because of the dramatic consequences – is the fate of the three Mongolian ambassadors who went to the court of Muhammad II of Chorasmia (about the current Iran) in 1218 to tie commercial ties between his empire and that of their leader, Dzjengis Khan. Muhammad, however, turned out not to be interested in a good relationship with his neighbor: he had an ambassador beheaded and the other two shaved bare (or he scored their beard, the sources are unclear about that).

When Dzjengis Khan came up with this news, You can read in the 13th-century Persian History of the world« Scattered a whirlwind of anger dust in the eyes of patience and grace, while the fire of anger flared so high that the flames drove the water out of his eyes and could only be extinguished by the shedding of blood. »

Thus happened. Dzjengis Khan ended the war in China that he was at that time and pulled with a huge army to Chorasmia, which he destroyed. Or, in the language of the History of the world: « For every drop of blood (from the ambassadors), a whole (river) Oxus, for each hair on their heads, made dog -douses of heads. » The battle lasted three years and cost between two and fifteen million chorasmians.

Heart attack

A negotiation of more recent date in which the diplomatic mores were feeted was that of the night of 14 to 15 March 1939 between Adolf Hitler and the Czechoslovak President Emil Hácha. This was the last company in the destruction of his country, which had started with the much more famous Munich conference in September 1938.

The scene in the RijkskanSlaary as described by eyewitnesses was a bit like the unsavory scenes in the Oval Office last Friday. After they first had him waiting for hours, Hitler and his second husband Hermann Göring shouted against their guest that if he did not immediately give his country to Nazi Germany, the Luftwaffe Prague would bomb flat.

The German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop literally chased Hácha and tried to push him a pen to sign the papers. Somewhere that night the unfortunate president would have had a heart attack. He was helped with injections and accepted the inevitable at 3:55 am. Not much later, the Czech radio broadcasted a call from Hácha in which he stated that he « in full confidence handed over the Czech state and nation to the Führer of the German nation. « 

Gang to Canossa

Various diplomats, including Secretary General of NATO Mark Rutte, have advised Zensky to repair his ties with Trump. A historic parallel that immediately penetrates here is the famous corridor to Canossa that the German king Henry IV had to make in 1077 to make his fight with Pope Gregorius VII.

Prince and Kerk prince had disagreement about who had the right to name high clergy. The king found the king, the pope the deputy of Christ on earth. Hendrik drove this so -called investment struggle to the rush by declaring in 1076 that Gregorius was no longer a pope. He hit back with the announcement that Hendrik was no longer a king and excommunicated him.

The German prince had over played his hand and he had to begorius forgiveness. It was in a castle near the Italian city of Canossa. When Frederik arrived there on January 25, it snowed. To show his humility, the medieval monk and chronicler Lambert van Hersfeld wrote in AnnalsHendrik made « all signs of royal dignity. » He stood outside for three days – « barefoot, fasting from the morning to evening » – until the pope was finally prepared to forgive him.

Coquette

In diplomacy, such a appeal to forgiveness is not always successful. For example, Queen Louise van Prussia experienced this, when she asked Napoleon for pity with Prussia after he defeated the country in 1806. Louise, according to the French emperor, had been the driving force behind Prussian hostility. She inspected the Prussian troops, Napoleon wrote, while « in trance and constant state of excitement was wrong. She wanted blood ”.

When she came to ask the emperor for grace a year later, the queen feared the worst, but their meeting was not painful. Napoleon inquired at Louise what Prussia had moved to explain France to the war. She replied: « The fame of Frederik the Great has taken the sight on our strengths. » In a letter to his wife, Napoleon described Louise as 'koket', but gave the Empress the insurance that her charms had not had an effect on him.

Louise did not succeed in improving the fate of Prussia, and she died three years later at the age of 34. The diplomatic mission had therefore yielded nothing, but she had an enormous popularity in her performance. Until the Second World War, she was honored like the 'Prussian Madonna'.

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