The Rooms Where It Happened | Hacker News Reader

The Rooms Where It Happened

wilsonquarterly.com

67 pointsbehoove22 comments

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Sometimes it's not indoors.

- Germany surrenders to France in a railroad car.[1]

- France surrenders to Germany in the same railroad car.[2]

- Japan surrenders to Allies on the deck of the battleship Missouri. [3]

- S. Vietnam surrenders to N. Vietnam, outdoors at the presidential palace.[4]

Formal surrenders are rare today.

[1] https://www.history.com/.image/c_limit%2Ccs_srgb%2Cq_auto:go...

[2] https://4.bp.blogspot.com/_YYMeAu4i7gA/SvrDBSDOr4I/AAAAAAAAG...

[3] http://media.cleveland.com/world_impact/photo/japan-surrende...

[4] https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/08/14/world/14buitan/14...

These are not the diplomatic events described by the article. Surrender events are dominated by military personnel and not diplomats from places other than the belligerent. In fact, there are separate diplomatic events related to each of your examples. The more relevant event for [3] took place at san francisco.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_San_Francisco

(You were probably biased by the appomatox court house surrender, which was an outlier in that article, which, presumably, the author had to include out of fervent provincialism)

That last one is not S. Vietnam surrendering, that's an American meeting Bui Tin, N. Vietnam Colonel, in 1973 as they implemented the Paris Peace Accord.

My understanding is there was no formal handover in 1975. In fact when the N. Vietnam knocked down the gate of the Presidential Palace and went inside, the S. Vietnam Prime Minister said he was handing over S. Vietnam and the response was "You have nothing left to handover at this point".

> Germany surrenders to France in a railroad car

And almost 22 years later, in the same carriage, parked in the same place, France surrendered to Germany [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armistice_of_22_June_1940

that's the next line in the comment you are replying to...

Huh, I'm not sure how I missed that...

I love how the era of Zoom lawmaking has killed decorum for so many of these state public functions. The pompous elected officials now have to connect from what often look like very pedestrian suburban homes, with either bare walls or run-of-the-mill family pics on them, bad lighting, cameras too close to them and too high or too low... They no longer project the institutional authority of big, carpeted, wainscoted, pillared halls of power, and it's just as well: I like that they should think of themselves as mere managers of public administration, not historical figures destined to leave grandiose legacies...

Our leaders are no better than us, the entire concept of "nobility" and its resulting pomp and circumstance is the product of selfishness, artifice, and imagination stretched out over millenia. I rather like seeing that the emperors have no clothes

Amusing is the inevitable bookshelf in the background, with a carefully curated selection of books designed to impress the viewer. Has the person even read any of them?

These are the rooms where documents were signed. Actual negotiation and agreement happen in much more humble places. The french revolution famously began in a tennis court. Every peace plan for the last thousand years was first agreed over either a bar or dinner table. The dive bars of any world capital have better stories to tell than any government auditorium.

I thought a lot was fomented in coffeehouses.

Ah, open the link and first thing I see is Finlandia Hall's main concert hall. I worked there as an event assistant and host as young student back in the day. Was very nice to listen to classical music concerts and other on the work there. Nice place, great historic atmosphere. :) No events anywhere near as important as the Helsinki Process during my days though. This was between 2005-2010.

I understand why (historically), but it is still one of those things that cannot be unseen once you see them - there are no women in those paintings/photos. It really boggles the mind of a modern human.

> It really boggles the mind of a modern human.

I'm not sure it would, since it would still be unlikely today for them to be there in these military positions.

Yup, that's a bunch dudes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Chiefs_of_Staff#Current_...

bunch of white dudes and token minority :)

>> there are no women in those paintings/photos.

Except the last one, the one from 1995. Progress happened. I"m glad to see that the first woman to be depicted is actually sitting at the table. I'd be unhappy if the one woman in the article was servant or mistress to one of the men. This woman is clearly a world leaders, although I cannot figure out who she is.

(Is the woman leaning over the table Hillary Clinton?)

I think the seated woman is Pauline Neville-Jones, who was leading the UK's delegation. She was a senior civil servant (director of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office) rather than a world leader.

I think the woman in green leaning over the table is some sort of aide rather than a person of power in her own right. See e.g. the picture here https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/11/20/dayton-25-years where she's apparently sorting out a document for the president of Bosnia while others to her left and right are doing likewise for the presidents of Serbia and Croatia.

> I think the seated woman is Pauline Neville-Jones, who was leading the UK's delegation.

It is her: https://www.c-span.org/video/?68521-1/bosnia-peace-agreement

There are woman in the 1975 one as well - its sorta hard to tell but one is right in the middle-left foreground.

The others in the distance are less clear - but there are clearly some in the press pool? on the middle balcony.

Not sure who the woman is, however it's not Clinton.

Yes, until the Dayton accords, though likely at Helsinki too, though there’s no way to see.

I thought I saw a flash of white in the Versailles treaty photo but when I zoomed in it was just some man in a lightly colored suit.

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