The Road to War: The Origins of World War II - Softcover

Overy, Richard; Wheatcroft, Andrew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1845951301 ISBN 13: 9781845951306

Publisher: Vintage Books, 2009

Synopsis

In the years between the two great wars, the nations of the world, ravaged by war and depression, struggled to maintain a delicate peace. Torn between pressing social needs — massive unemployment and the threat of revolutions — Western Europe played for time in which to repair its economies and to strengthen its governments. No one wanted war. Yet, determined to win the “living space” he was convinced Germany needed, Adolf Hitler made war unavoidable, despite the pronounced reluctance of the rest of the world.

Almost seventy years after the start of World War II, historians Richard Overy and Andrew Wheatcroft return to the question of why the nations of the world found themselves embroiled in conflict once more. Step by step, Overy and Wheatcroft reconstruct the perspective of each country as it marched down the road to war: Germany, Great Britain, France, Italy, the Soviet Union, Japan, and the United States, each with its own domestic problems and international ambitions.

Hailed in England for its accessibility as well as its scholarship, The Road to War is a handbook for anyone interested in how war came.

About this title

About the Author:

Richard Overy is Professor in History at the University of Exeter. He has written several books on the subject of the Second World War and its origins.

Andrew Wheatcroft has written many books on early modern and modern history and is currently Director of The Centre for Publishing Studies.

From Library Journal:

This companion to a BBC-TV series is an eminently readable revision of the causes of World War II. Expanding upon earlier revisionist studies such as A.J.P. Taylor's Origins of the Second World War (LJ 4/15/62; Atheneum, 1983. pap.), Overy presents the 1920s and 1930s as perceived by the major powers at the time without the benefit of hindsight. There are no "pure knights" here preparing for the "good war," only paranoid politicians haunted by the effects of World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the Great Depression weaving alliances motivated by an all-pervading social Darwinism. Even Poland is not the "innocent victim" of hindsight; among other things, the idea for resettling Jews in Madagascar was originally Polish. One could fault Overy for playing down Stalin's more sinister machinations, but suspicious as the Western powers were of Bolshevism, they did see Russia as a deterrent to German expansion. A major contribution to renewed interest in the 1930s.
-Robert Stenzel, New York
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Books
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1845951301
• ISBN 13: 9781845951306
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 560