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Title: The Origins of the Second World War: Seminar Studies in History Series, Second Edition by R. J. Overy ISBN: 0-582-29085-6 Publisher: Longman Publishing Group Pub. Date: 25 March, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)
Rating: 5
Summary: Wonderful Overview Of The Factors Leading To WWII!
Comment: In this interesting, provocative, and comprehensive overview of the antecedents leading up to and causing the onset of the Second World War, noted British historian Richard Overy ("Why The Allies Won", "Russia's War") presents a masterful summary of the complex welter of factors influencing the drift into conflict between the Axis powers and the more established powers of Britain and France. Overy carefully articulates the ways in which a multiplicity of factors created a power vacuum as well as an associated change in the balance of power such that the existing world order created at the close of the First World War became increasingly fragile and dysfunctional. It was into this moment of recognized weakness in both the British and French empires that the German, Japanese, and Italian governments sought to create their own empires at the expense of the existing order.
This, of course, varies from the conventional belief that World War Two was singularly Hitler's war, one that he alone created and prosecuted against the good will and conventional moral purposes of the powers that be. Yet Overy argues quite convincingly that this is hardly a fair or objective reading of the historical record, since the policies of appeasement pursued by both Britain and France were hardly moral, being rather more organized around preserving their own political, economic, and military advantage than around any kind of democratic values or concern for the common good. While it is true that Hitler aggressively sought to change the existing framework to the benefit of the German state, it is hardly true that the political or economic policies of the other world powers were in any fashion necessarily more selfless or altruistic. Indeed, the acts of appeasement were callously designed to give whatever they could over to Germany without endangering their own admittedly precarious strategic economic and political interests, with little regard for the consequences for the indigenous populations of the areas surrendered in the process.
Seen in this way, Hitler was feeding into the existing time-honored mode of empire creation, and one must remember that when general war was declared in the fall of 1939, it was Britain and France that declared war on Germany over the issue of the invasion of Poland. In this fashion, one must examine the reasoning behind the Allies decision to commence hostilities at that point rather than later. Given the fact that Hitler did not seek a wider war at that point, one must question the specific reasons that the Allies chose to prosecute a general war at that juncture. Overy argues that it was due as much to political self-interest more than altruism that they decided for a general mobilization. This becomes even clearer when one recognizes that Hitler wanted to avoid a two-front war, and the main objective of his reach eastward was to gain "lebensraum", or living room, for the rapidly expanding German population. In this sense, he made a fatal miscalculation of British and French resolve, and their decision to escalate the conflict in the Fall of 1939 rather than later resulted in the transformation of what Hitler expected to be a quick and easy regional war into a messy and prolonged general European war.
Overy argues that it was only when it became apparent to the Allies that Germany posed a real danger to "their common political and economic interests, a danger they would be unable to accommodate without endangering their own strategic interests did they decide to escalate" to general war. He also argues that only the Soviet Union or the United States might have helped to prevent the general European war that subsequently broke out, but that neither of these countries were in a position to do so, largely for domestic political and economic reasons. Yet in so avoiding participation, they ironically guaranteed it would later escalate into a world war when the Axis powers tragically underestimated the power and resolve of each to engage in and successfully prosecute a war neither originally sought.
This is wonderfully comprehensive book of barely 100 pages, part of a series of such "seminar studies in history" produced by a consortium of British academics who are central figures in a variety of contemporary history topics. The book is quite concise and yet eminently quotable, and Overy manages to pack in a lot of provocative and well substantiated points regarding the epoch leading up to the onset of hostilities that powerfully demonstrates the truth in the claim that in order to understand the outbreak of hostilities in 1939 that eventually became World War Two, one must understand the "international structure as a whole, its weaknesses and strengths, and the character and motives of the major powers that comprised it". This is a terrific book, and one I highly recommend to any serious student of 20th century history. Enjoy!
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Title: Origins of the First World War (2nd Edition) by James Joll ISBN: 0582418666 Publisher: Longman Publishing Group Pub. Date: 28 January, 2000 List Price(USD): $34.40 |
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Title: Russia, America, and the Cold War, 1949-1991 (Seminar Studies in History) by Martin McCauley ISBN: 0582279364 Publisher: Longman Publishing Group Pub. Date: 01 October, 1998 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Arms and Influence by Thomas C. Schelling ISBN: 0300002211 Publisher: Yale University Press Pub. Date: 01 June, 1966 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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Title: Honey and Vinegar: Incentives, Sanctions, and Foreign Policy by Richard N. Haass, Meghan L. O'Sullivan ISBN: 0815733550 Publisher: Brookings Institution Press Pub. Date: July, 2000 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict - revised edition (International Security Readers) by Michael E. Brown, Steven E. Miller ISBN: 0262523159 Publisher: MIT Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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