1939: Countdown to War

by Richard Overy

Overview

"Overy's book is easily the best account of Europe's descent into...death and destruction." --Evening Standard (London)

A brilliantly concise narrative of the days leading to the outbreak of history's greatest conflagration, 1939 takes readers hour by hour through the nail-biting decisions that determined the fate of millions. Richard Overy, a leading historian of the period, masterfully recreates the jockeying for advantage that set Europe's greatest powers on a collision course. Would Stalin join Hitler in a bid to divide Poland and flout the West? Would Britain and France succeed in forcing Germany to reason? And how far would a defiant Poland push its claim to exist? In the summer of 1939, the course of events was anything but assured, as this exceptionally absorbing book drives home.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101500415
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/23/2010
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	176
File size:	199 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Richard Overy is Professor of Modern History at King's College, London. He has written extensively on modern German and European history, and is the author of Russia's War and The Penguin Atlas of the Third Reich.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Simon Prebble's crisp British accent and pleasant, slightly gruff voice fit the no-nonsense reportage and occasional analysis of a dreadfully serious historical moment.... This is what listeners of serious nonfiction want: an intelligent book intelligently read." —-AudioFile

Editorial Reviews

…exceptionally lucid, concise and authoritative…
—The Washington Post

Jonathan Yardley

"Overy is one of the great historians of the second world war."— Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times (London)

"This country's most distinguished historian of the Second World War ... Overy's book is easily the best account of Europe's descent into the death and destruction that were Hitler's element" -- Michael Burleigh, Evening Standard (London)

"Nail-biting ... with rare narrative verve, he documents the ultimatums, emissaries, letters and increasingly desperate proposals that shuttled across Europe in the countdown to war.""-- Ian Thomson Independent (London)

"Even those who think they know it all about how war broke out will learn something from Richard Overy's book"-- Simon Heffer, Literary Review (London)

"One of the great historians of this conflict" — Simon Garfield, Observer (London)

From the Publisher

Overy (History/Univ. of Exeter; The Twilight Years: The Paradox of Britain Between the Wars, 2009, etc.) limns the annus horribilis in which World War II broke out in Europe.

By the author's account, the war was inevitable. Europe had nearly disintegrated into chaos, marked by "economic crisis, the rise of authoritarian dictatorships, deep ideological divisions, nationalist rivalries, and the collapse of the effort of the League of Nations to preserve peace." All of these elements virtually guaranteed conflict, though the so-called Polish question was the single great catalyst. After World War I, the Allies had both created an independent Polish state and carved access to the Baltic Sea for it out of German territory, another sure way to cause strife, especially since Germany never recognized many of the provisions even before Hitler's time. Yet it was Hitler who added the missing ingredient of revanchism, while his erstwhile treaty partner Joseph Stalin labored diligently to secure Soviet neutrality in the hope of winning some measure of control over Eastern Europe. As Overy writes, the Soviets were masterful in playing the Western Allies against Germany to gain concessions from both sides. Neither Germany nor Russia "regarded Poland as a permanent political fixture," so dividing it up was troublesome to neither party and indeed was "an acceptable outcome to both sides." The author gives Neville Chamberlain a slight rehabilitation, noting that by 1939 he had no illusions about Hitler or his intentions, and adding that very few ordinary Europeans actually wanted war. Yet in the end war was the only possible result of a great chess game in which Hitler played an Italian card even as Italy scrambled to maintain neutrality on its own, betting as well that England and France would not rescue Poland. That they did, the author concludes, was "not to save Poland from a cruel occupation but to save [them] from the dangers of a disintegrating world."

Inevitable? Perhaps not, but the events of 1939 made the war "hard to avoid." Lucid and to the point, as is Overy's custom—of much value to students of the political dimensions of WWII.

Kirkus Reviews