This book is first and foremost a history of ruling-class diplomacy, but other factors are not ignored: the Bolsheviks, the Turks, and the insurgencies in Europe. This book provides detailed ...narrative and cogent analysis of the all that happened in Paris in 1919 and all that came out of it, with the aftermath of the peace process and the difficulty of avoiding war for twenty years. This book falls into two parts. Part 1 shows how the peacemakers and their successors dealt with the problems of a shattered Europe. The war had fundamentally altered both the internal structures of many of the European states and transformed the traditional order. The book shows that the management of the European state system in the decade after 1919, while in some ways resembling that of the past, assumed a shape that distinguished it both from the pre-war decades and the post-1933 period. Part II covers the ‘hinge years’ 1929 to 1933. These were the years in which many of the experiments in internationalism came to be tested and their weakness revealed. Many of the difficulties stemmed from the enveloping economic depression. The way was open to the movements towards étatism, autarcy, virulent nationalism, and expansionism which characterized the post-1933 European scene. The events of these years were critical to both Hitler's challenge to the European status quo and the reactions of the European statesmen to his assault on what remained of an international system.
Challenging the standard narrative of Interwar International History, this account establishes the causal relationship between the global political and economic crises of the period, and offers a ...radically new look at the role of ideology, racism and the leading liberal powers in the events between the First and Second World Wars.
This book traces the twisted road to war that began with Adolf Hitler's assumption of power in Germany. Covering a wide geographical canvas, from America to the Far East, this book provides a ...reassessment of the most disputed events of these tumultuous years. It underlines the far-reaching consequences of the Great Depression, which shifted the initiative in international affairs from those who upheld the status quo to those who were intent on destroying it. In Europe, the 1930s were Hitler's years. He moved the major chess pieces on the board, forcing the others to respond. From the start, the book argues, he intended war, and he repeatedly gambled on Germany's future to acquire the necessary resources to fulfil his continental ambitions. Only war could have stopped him — an unwelcome message for most of Europe. Misperception, miscomprehension, and misjudgment on the part of the other Great Powers leaders opened the way for Hitler's repeated successes in the area of diplomacy. It is ideology that distinguished the Hitler era from previous struggles for the mastery of Europe. Ideological presumptions created false images and raised barriers to understanding that even good intelligence could not penetrate. Only when the leaders of Britain and France realised the scale of Hitler's ambition, and the challenge Germany posed to their Great Power status, did they finally declare war.
Between 1919 and 1920, the eastern territories of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth were temporarily administered by the Civic Management of Eastern Territories, established by Józef ...Piłsudski. The residents of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania were to determine their future governance. Piłsudski placed the Civic Management outside the structures of the Polish government, while his opponents from the Polish nationalist wing wanted to suborn it to the government in Warsaw. Based on hitherto unknown archival documents, the author describes the reasons for the failure of Piłsudski’s federation idea, both on the Polish side, as well as errors by Belarusian leaders and the policy of the Lithuanian state.
The European Economy between the Wars, (OUP, 1997) has become the definitive economic history of Europe in the inter-war period. Placing the Great Depression of 1929-33 and the associated financial ...crisis at the center of the narrative, the authors comprehensively examined the lead-up to and consequences of the depression and recovery. Peter Temin and Gianni Toniolo (their former co-author, Charles H. Feinstein, has died) now expand their scope to include the entire world economy, and have created a new edition: The World Economy between the Wars. New material focuses on the structure of the world economy in the 1920s, including a special focus on the United States, Japan, and Latin America. In addition, chapters that discuss the post-depression recovery now cover The New Deal and recovery in general in the United States and Japan. This new edition is a necessary update, and invaluable resource for those who desire an overview of the inter-war area beyond the usual discussion of the 1929 stock market crash. The book's broad geographic coverage, as well as its clarity and chronological execution, will appeal to students of economic history, as well as those academics in other fields whose research involves the inter-war period. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/economicsfinance/9780195307559/toc.html
Source: National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, licensed by the Department of Internal Affairs for re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 New Zealand Licence.
