1939: The Alliance That Never Was and the Coming of World War II - Softcover

Carley, Michael Jabara

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1566637856 ISBN 13: 9781566637855

Publisher: Ivan R. Dee, 2009

Synopsis

At a crucial point in the twentieth century, as Nazi Germany prepared for war, negotiations between Britain, France, and the Soviet Union became the last chance to halt Hitler's aggression.

About this title

Review:

Any book named after that most fateful of years, 1939, is sure to tell a tragic tale. As Michael Jabara Carley writes in the opening pages of this volume, "This is not a pretty story. It is about appeasement and the failures of collective security in Europe against Nazi aggression. It is about moral depravity and blindness, about villains and cowards." Carley offers a provocative thesis: anticommunist passions in England and France prevented these countries from forming an antifascist alliance with the Soviet Union that might have headed off the bloodiest conflict in human history. This is not a totally original idea, but Carley makes a forceful case that just a few years ago was an especially tough sell: "Cold war ideology tended to overshadow Anglo-French culpability and responsibility for the path to war in 1939." In other words, the anticommunist sentiments that made it so difficult to deal with the Soviet Union during the 1930s also made it nearly impossible during the cold war to blame anticommunism for what went wrong. Carley's tale is not entirely bleak; he devotes a fair amount of attention to "a motley, imperfect group of heroes" who warned about the rise of Nazi power and urged a joint strategy with the Soviets to contain Germany. One of these Cassandras was Winston Churchill, but others have been nearly forgotten. Carley revives them on these pages in a thought-provoking--and certainly controversial--book that takes a fresh look at an old topic. --John J. Miller

About the Author:

Michael Jabara Carley, holds a doctorate from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and is professor of history at the Université de Montréal. He has published widely in twentieth-century international politics, notably Soviet relations with the West and the origins of World War II. Based on extensive research in U.S., British, French, and Soviet archives, his histories are narrated in an engaging style that brings watershed moments to life. Among his many publications are 1939: The Alliance That Never Was and the Coming of World War II (Ivan R. Dee, 1999), which has also been published in French, Russian, and Italian editions, and Revolution & Intervention: The French Government and the Russian Civil War, 1917-1919 (McGill-Queen's University Press, 1983).

About this edition

• Publisher: Ivan R. Dee
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1566637856
• ISBN 13: 9781566637855
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384