From the Publisher
"Expert....[Jankowski] shrewdly juxtaposes interminable peace and disarmament conferences and political events with the national mood in a dozen countries whose leaders revealed a distressing eagerness to discover the source of their misery in rival nations or undeserving minorities." — Kirkus Reviews
"In this crisply written, well-documented account, Jankowski (Verdun), a history professor at Brandeis University, examines diplomatic, military, political and economic developments in a crucial period leading up to WWII....This deeply informed and colorful history casts a stark warning about the dangers of unchecked aggression." — Publishers Weekly
"Engaging and thoroughly researched." — Irish Times
"[One of] the most stimulating histories of the interwar period to have been published in recent years. Jankowski ranges beyond Europe, tracing developments in China, Japan and the US. He shines a valuable, detailed light on less familiar episodes such as the failure of the Geneva disarmament talks and London world economic conference in 1933." — Financial Times
Financial Times
"[One of] the most stimulating histories of the interwar period to have been published in recent years. Jankowski ranges beyond Europe, tracing developments in China, Japan and the US. He shines a valuable, detailed light on less familiar episodes such as the failure of the Geneva disarmament talks and London world economic conference in 1933."
Irish Times
"Engaging and thoroughly researched."
Financial Times
"[One of] the most stimulating histories of the interwar period to have been published in recent years. Jankowski ranges beyond Europe, tracing developments in China, Japan and the US. He shines a valuable, detailed light on less familiar episodes such as the failure of the Geneva disarmament talks and London world economic conference in 1933."
Kirkus Reviews
2020-03-01
Brandeis history professor Jankowski examines world events from 1932 to 1933, and it is not a pretty picture.
Three years into the Great Depression, everyone deplored the international crisis, and there was no shortage of claims that democracy, supposedly triumphant at the end of World War I, was on its way out. Although pundits draw parallels with today’s world, where autocrats are growing increasingly popular, Jankowski points out that the Depression saw no rise in dictatorships except in Germany. Everywhere else—in Russia, Italy, Japan, China, Poland, and most of Eastern Europe—they were already up and running. Demagogues promised to restore national glory, but their audience at that time gave food and jobs equal priority. Throughout this bleak narrative history, the author shrewdly juxtaposes interminable peace and disarmament conferences and political events with the national mood in a dozen countries whose leaders revealed a distressing eagerness to discover the source of their misery in rival nations or undeserving minorities. Everyone hated the Treaty of Versailles, including those who imposed it. Far less populous than Germany, France feared invasion no less than it had before 1914: “The menace would return…if not today, then tomorrow.” German representative government was moribund. Hemmed in by the left and right, centrist parties were a permanent minority in the Reichstag, and President Paul von Hindenburg appointed a series of ineffective chancellors—until Hitler, who “had entered…much as his immediate predecessors had—appointed by an aged president under no obligation to do so, after weeks of favoritism, speculation, and backstairs intrigue.” Japan’s year-old invasion of Manchuria and China already prefigured the next war, and Italy under Mussolini (not yet a comic-opera figure) announced its intention to reconquer an empire. “He promised…that in ten years,” writes the author, “all Europe would be Fascist.”
An expert if discouraging history of the world 90 years ago, when “postwar became prewar.” (8-page b/w photo insert)
