Conclusion

On 3 September 1939, Britain and France declared war. Hitler got his war, but it was not the localized war against the vulnerable Poles that he said he wanted. War against Britain and France came too soon for the completion of Nazi Germany's massive arms programmes.

Debating ideology and foreign policy in the 1930s

Many of the debates associated with the origins of the Second World War in Europe revolve around the complicated relationship between ideology and foreign policy.

For instance, the British historian A. J. P Taylor in his The Origins of the Second World War (London, 1961) sparked a bitter debate by describing Hitler as the 'supreme opportunist'in diplomacy. Hitler was a typical German statesman,Taylor argued, who sought to make the Reich dominant in Europe through the accumulation of power. As Taylor had intended, his dismissal of Hitler's beliefs as mere rhetoric designed to whip up popular sentiment at home shocked many historians. However, Taylor's challenge meant that his critics were forced to reconcile Hitler's remarkably consistent and often-stated views about race and living space with the fact that he did not have a fixed timetable for the completion of his programme.

The debate about the role of ideology is not restricted to the policies of the revisionists. Although Britain, the United States and France did not espouse monolithic, all-embracing ideologies, there is also no doubt that statesmen such as Chamberlain, Roosevelt and Daladier were in part guided by the essentials of liberal democracy as well as national values and identities. Indeed, some historians have argued that anti-Bolshevism in the West played a decisive role in blocking the formation of an anti-Hitler coalition between France, Britain and the Soviet Union. French and British statesmen were so blinded by their hatred and suspicion of the Soviet Union, according to this argument, that they failed to pursue the 'realistic' course of aligning themselves with Stalin against Hitler before it was too late.

Students should pay careful attention to the way in which arguments about ideology are framed. Normally, key personalities are categorized in one of two ways. First,there are the ideologues, who cannot grasp the dictates of balance-of-power politics because they cannot throw off their ideological blinkers. Second, there are the so- called realists, who transcend ideology and see the 'eternal'truths of power politics. So, for example, some argue that 'realists'such as Stalin and Churchill called for an alliance against Nazi Germany because they were not unduly influenced by their aversion to either capitalism or communism, while Chamberlain and Daladier could not overcome their hostility to communism and thus refused to consider an anti­German alliance with Russia. Here, the tacit assumptions are that there are 'eternal' truths about international politics and that human beings are capable of escaping their own world-views. Both of these assumptions, though widely shared by historians, are questionable.

Recommended reading

There are many very good general surveys of the 1930s, but the best two are Philip Bell’s The Origins of the Second World War in Europe, 3rd edn (London, 2007) and Richard Overy’s The Road to War (London, 1989). There are also some excellent essay collections: Gordon Martel (ed.), The Origins of the Second World War Reconsidered (London, 1992) focuses on the A. J. P. Taylor controversy, while Joseph A. Maiolo and Robert Boyce (eds), The Origins of World War Two: The Debate Continues (Basingstoke, 2003) deals with all the key Powers as well as major themes such as economics, intelligence and arms.

On the dual economic and political crisis, see Robert Boyce, ‘World War, World Depression: Some Economic Origins of the Second World War’, in Robert Boyce and Esmonde M. Robertson (eds), Paths to War (Basingstoke, 1989), and for a more general survey of the Depression in Europe, Patricia Clavin, The Great Depression in Europe, 1929—39 (Basingstoke, 2000).

For students, the most useful general studies of the origins and collapse of the Weimar Republic are Eberhard Kolb, The Weimar Republic (London, 1988) and Detlev J. K. Peukert, The Weimar Republic (London, 1991). On Chancellor Brüning, see William L. Patch, Heinrich Brüning and the Dissolution ofthe Weimar Republic (Cambridge, 1998). For a fascinating and well-written book that restores much of the contingency to the advent of the Nazi regime in Germany, see Henry Ashby Turner's Hitler’s Thirty Days to Power (London, 1996).

The best study of German foreign policy remains Gerhard L. Weinberg's The Foreign Policy ofHitlers Germany, vol. I: Diplomatic Revolution in Europe, 1933—36 and vol. II: StartingWorld War II, 1937—37 (Chicago, 1970 and 1980). Plenty of useful insights into the making of German foreign policy can be found in Adam Tooze's The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (London, 2006). For a comparative study of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, and one that particularly focuses on the relationship between internal revolution and foreign expansion, see MacGregor Knox, Common Destiny: Dictatorship, Foreign Policy and War in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany (Cambridge, 2000). On Italy, see also Knox's Hitler’s Italian Ally (Cambridge, 2000).

There are several accessible and comprehensive studies of French foreign and defence policy. Anthony Adamthwaite, Grandeur and Misery: France’s Bid for Power in Europe, 1914—1940 (London, 1995) is highly critical of French states­manship and statecraft. Robert J. Young provides a concise account in his France and the Origins of the Second World War (New York, 1996), which sympathetically explores the ambiguities and uncertainties of French policy in the 1930s. There are two other more detailed studies of France that students can read with enor­mous profit: Martin Alexander, The Republic in Danger: General Maurice Gamelin and the Politics of French Defence, 1933—40 (New York, 1992) and Peter Jackson, France and the Nazi Menace: Intelligence and Policy-Making 1933—39 (Oxford, 2000).

On British appeasement policy and the origins of the war, an excellent starting point is R. A. C. Parker's Chamberlain and Appeasement: British Policy and the Coming of the Second World War (Basingstoke, 1993), which should be read in tandem with David Dutton's Neville Chamberlain (London, 2001). On deter­rence, economic appeasement and naval issues, see Gaines Post Jr, Dilemmas of Appeasement: British Deterrence and Defence, 1934—1937 (Ithaca, NY, 1993), Callum A. MacDonald, ‘Economic Appeasement and the German “Moderates” 1937—1939', Past and Present (1972), vol. 56, pp. 105—35, Joseph A. Maiolo, The Royal Navy and Nazi Germany: A Study in Appeasement and the Origins of the SecondWorldWar (Basingstoke, 1998) and Scott Newton, Profits ofPeace: The Political Economy of Anglo-German Appeasement (Oxford, 1996).

On the policy of the Roosevelt administration, see Robert Dallek's classic, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy 1932—1945 (Oxford, 1979) and, more recently, David Reynolds, From Munich to Pearl Harbor: Roosevelt’s America and the Origins of the Second World War (Chicago, 2001). On the troubled Anglo- American relationship, students should read David Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance 1937—1941: A Study in Competitive Co-operation (London, 1981) and Callum MacDonald, The United States, Britain and Appeasement 1936-1939 (London, 1981).

Scholars await a history of Soviet foreign policy in the 1930s that exploits the newly available sources and matches the detail of Weinberg's study of German policy. By far the best book so far is Jonathan Haslam's The Soviet Union and the Struggle for Collective Security in Europe 1933-1939 (London, 1984). Geoffrey Roberts, in The Soviet Union and the Origins of the Second World War (London, 1995), argues that the Soviet Union was committed to collective security. See Haslam's review of Roberts's book in ‘Soviet-German Relations and the Origins of the Second World War: The Jury is Still Out', Journal of Modern History (1997), vol.

The richest and most readable survey of the period from Munich to the outbreak of war is Donald Cameron Watt's How War Came: The Immediate Origins of the Second World War, 1938—39 (London, 1989). On Eastern Europe and the war, students can now turn to Anita J. Prazmowska's Eastern Europe and the Origins of the Second World War (Basingstoke, 2000). Finally, there is now an excellent and wide-ranging collection of essays on Munich by Igor Lukes and Erik Goldstein (eds), The Munich Crisis, 1938: Prelude to WorldWar II (London, 1999). The essays by Richard Overy on Germany, Martin Thomas on France and Igor Lukes on Czechoslovakia are of particular value.