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Penguin History of Europe #8
To Hell and Back: Europe, 1914-1949
In the summer of 1914 most of Europe plunged into a war so catastrophic that it unhinged the continent's politics and beliefs in a way that took generations to recover from. The disaster terrified its survivors, shocked that a civilization that had blandly assumed itself to be a model for the rest of the world had collapsed into a chaotic savagery beyond any comparison. In 1939 Europeans would initiate a second conflict that managed to be even worse - a war in which the killing of civilians was central and which culminated in the Holocaust.
To Hell and Back tells this story with humanity, flair and originality. Kershaw gives a compelling narrative of events, but he also wrestles with the most difficult issues that the events raise - with what it meant for the Europeans who initiated and lived through such fearful times - and what this means for us.
To Hell and Back tells this story with humanity, flair and originality. Kershaw gives a compelling narrative of events, but he also wrestles with the most difficult issues that the events raise - with what it meant for the Europeans who initiated and lived through such fearful times - and what this means for us.
624 pages, Paperback
First published September 24, 2015
About the author
Ian Kershaw
69 books982 followersIan Kershaw is a British historian, noted for his biographies of Adolf Hitler.
Ian Kershaw studied at Liverpool (BA) and Oxford (D. Phil). He was a lecturer first in medieval, then in modern, history at the University of Manchester. In 1983-4 he was Visiting Professor of Modern History at the Ruhr University in Bochum, West Germany. From 1987 to 1989 he was Professor of Modern History at the University of Nottingham, and since 1989 has been Professor of Modern History at Sheffield. He is a fellow of the British Academy, of the Royal Historical Society, of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, and of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung in Bonn. He retired from academic life in the autumn semester of 2008.
Ian Kershaw studied at Liverpool (BA) and Oxford (D. Phil). He was a lecturer first in medieval, then in modern, history at the University of Manchester. In 1983-4 he was Visiting Professor of Modern History at the Ruhr University in Bochum, West Germany. From 1987 to 1989 he was Professor of Modern History at the University of Nottingham, and since 1989 has been Professor of Modern History at Sheffield. He is a fellow of the British Academy, of the Royal Historical Society, of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, and of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung in Bonn. He retired from academic life in the autumn semester of 2008.
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May 30, 2018
Historically speaking, not many places on earth can be said to have had a boring 20th Century. Every corner of the globe was touched by one convulsion of another. Perhaps no place had as strange of a one hundred year trip than Europe. It began the Century in la Belle Époque, descended into a world war, followed that with an economic depression and political upheaval, fought another war, and came out of things, finally, as a relatively stable and peaceful community of nations. It was, to put it mildly, quite a journey.
Ian Kershaw attempts to cover approximately the first half of this tumultuous century in To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949. He starts in 1914, with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo precipitating the First World War, covers the Great Depression (and partial recovery) of the interwar years, takes us through the darkest days of the Second World War, and concludes with the descent of the “Iron Curtain” and the beginning of the Cold War. In case I haven’t made this clear, there aren’t a lot of jokes in this book. This is an account of a continent careening from one disaster to the next.
This is the first of a planned two-volume work, which is part of the Penguin History of Europe Series. Obviously, two books aren’t enough to fully cover Europe’s 20th Century. Two thousand books wouldn’t be enough. As Kershaw points out himself, every subject he touches on has been covered in a dozen, a hundred, a thousand (or in the case of World War II, infinite) books. Thus, the biggest challenge to any author attempting this feat is cramming enough information to be valuable, but not so much that the book becomes inaccessible.
I’ll be honest. I did not think that Kershaw (or anyone) could pull this off in 522 pages. This might seem like a big book, but for a topic this ambitious, it is relatively brief. As a person who has read his fair share of books on World War I and World War II (eventually, my wife’s divorce attorney will probably allege “more than” my fair share of World War I and II books), I feared that coverage would be so superficial that I wouldn’t learn anything. My fears were for naught.
To Hell and Back is a work of a particular kind of genius: the genius of synthesis. There is not a lot of primary research here. Kershaw readily admits this. Except for his own work on World War II, he is relying on secondary sources. Instead, Kershaw is trying to boil down an entire universe of scholarship into a narrative that is both engaging and informative. This is no small task. It’s a bit like getting Goldilocks’ porridge just right. Except that instead of making the perfect porridge (soak your oats, people!), you have to read a million books and cohere as many scholarly viewpoints into a single seamless presentation.
Take for instance the outbreak of World War I. Entire forests have been leveled to explain the chain of madness that ended with Germany invading Belgium over a squabble between Austrian-Hungary and Serbia. Kershaw has two or three pages devoted to this, with a paragraph on the motives of each of the Great Powers. This seems easy enough, except that it isn’t. I’ve been on my own World War I literary journey, and I’ve read close to a dozen books about the outbreak of war. Imagine reading a dozen books to write three pages. That’s a lot of reading. (I know, it sounds awesome. Where do I sign up?)
To Hell and Back is arranged with chronological chapters, each one devoted to a big chunk of Euro-history. The first chapter covers the lead-up to World War I; the second covers World War I; the third covers the immediate postwar crisis, etc. Within each chapter are subtopics that cover a variety of themes, including politics, economics, and culture. One chapter, at the end of the book, is entirely thematic. This structure allows Kershaw to give the big, bird’s eye overview, while giving him the opportunity to do deep-dives on certain topics. For example, the World War II chapter gives only the briefest of synopses of battlefield movements, just enough to give a rough contour to the ebb and flow of armies. After that synopsis, Kershaw devotes time to his selected subtopic of inhumanity, wherein he discusses the fundamental human cost of the conflict.
As I noted above, with a subject this colossal, Kershaw has to make decisions on what to leave in, and what to leave out. I found some of his focal choices to be fascinating. During the interwar era, he mostly avoids discussion of Germany’s Weimar Republic, and the schizophrenic political scene that allowed a nonentity like Hitler to rise to power. (Perhaps Kershaw, who wrote the Hitler biography, was bored with the topic). Instead, Kershaw devotes that space to Mussolini and the rise of fascism in Italy. Usually, Mussolini is seen as Hitler’s devoted puppet, being led by the nose by the stronger strongman. In Kershaw’s telling, Italian fascism is in many ways the precursor, and Hitler as oft as not the copycat.
Kershaw uses his subtopics to expand on his four causes of Europe’s catastrophic half century: nationalism (with a poisonous racial/ethnic twist); territorial ambitions (connected with nationalism); the rise of class conflict (exemplified by the Russian Revolution); and the “crisis of capitalism” (evidenced by the rollercoaster highs and lows following World War I).
The great value of a work like this is in creating a historical panorama in which you can see the connectivity of events. I’ll be the first to admit that – despite the amount of reading I do on World War I and II – I have huge historical blind-spots regarding this era. In a matter of pages, for instance, I learned more about the Spanish Civil War than I ever had before. (This is what happens when you spend your time in Spain getting drunk in Spain. Sangria is my kryptonite).
A book like To Hell and Back does an excellent job of contextualizing events. Kershaw methodically leads you down the path towards doom, before giving you a sliver of light at the end of the road. He begins with a fractious Europe comprised of selfish nation-states playing a high-stakes game of Risk with their inter-European alliances. That Europe plunges into World War I. In the aftermath, those same nation-states redraw the European map, in many cases reverting to narrow self-interests. This created simmering tensions over lost territory, lost homes, and lost economic opportunities. This in turn set the table for Hitler and the war that followed in his wake. Interestingly, the rise of the Soviet Union and the dawn of the Cold War created a kind of lasting stability. That stability was enforced in the Eastern-bloc by Soviet muscle, and in the West by American financial coercion (such as the Marshall Plan). In the ashes of the most fatal of European wars, Europe finally moved towards union. I’m interested to see how Kershaw deals with this notion in his next volume.
Kershaw’s book mostly deals with the major leagues of Europe. We’re talking Germany, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union, with supporting actors Spain and Italy. The other nation-states get short shrift. I’m okay with this. You can only slice and dice so much. I don’t think I could stand jumping manically from the Netherlands to Denmark to Portugal just for the sake of a more complete diversity of views.
Kershaw’s writing is pretty uniformly brilliant. He is a clear and engaging author. Despite the darkness and complexity of the subject matter, I burned through this pretty quickly. One thing I wanted was a better bibliography. To Hell and Back does not have source notes. According to Kershaw, that is per the way the Penguin History of Europe Series is constructed. Fine. But would a curated bibliography have been too much? At the end of the book, you will find page after page of marvelous secondary sources, none of arranged as to subject matter. I would have loved it if Kershaw would have told me what books he loved/found most important for each of the varying topics he covers. This seems like a small criticism, but this is a book that – above anything else – will make you want to learn more. It whets your appetite for deeper study. My dream-world bibliography would have facilitated that.
Right now, the world feels insane, and once again, Europe is at the heart of it. I think it’s instructive in tumultuous times to look back and realize how far we’ve come. That is certainly true with Europe. Things seem bleak but they have been bleak before, and some good has come from the bad.
(I received a free copy of this book from Viking in exchange for an honest review, and my first born child)
Ian Kershaw attempts to cover approximately the first half of this tumultuous century in To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949. He starts in 1914, with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo precipitating the First World War, covers the Great Depression (and partial recovery) of the interwar years, takes us through the darkest days of the Second World War, and concludes with the descent of the “Iron Curtain” and the beginning of the Cold War. In case I haven’t made this clear, there aren’t a lot of jokes in this book. This is an account of a continent careening from one disaster to the next.
This is the first of a planned two-volume work, which is part of the Penguin History of Europe Series. Obviously, two books aren’t enough to fully cover Europe’s 20th Century. Two thousand books wouldn’t be enough. As Kershaw points out himself, every subject he touches on has been covered in a dozen, a hundred, a thousand (or in the case of World War II, infinite) books. Thus, the biggest challenge to any author attempting this feat is cramming enough information to be valuable, but not so much that the book becomes inaccessible.
I’ll be honest. I did not think that Kershaw (or anyone) could pull this off in 522 pages. This might seem like a big book, but for a topic this ambitious, it is relatively brief. As a person who has read his fair share of books on World War I and World War II (eventually, my wife’s divorce attorney will probably allege “more than” my fair share of World War I and II books), I feared that coverage would be so superficial that I wouldn’t learn anything. My fears were for naught.
To Hell and Back is a work of a particular kind of genius: the genius of synthesis. There is not a lot of primary research here. Kershaw readily admits this. Except for his own work on World War II, he is relying on secondary sources. Instead, Kershaw is trying to boil down an entire universe of scholarship into a narrative that is both engaging and informative. This is no small task. It’s a bit like getting Goldilocks’ porridge just right. Except that instead of making the perfect porridge (soak your oats, people!), you have to read a million books and cohere as many scholarly viewpoints into a single seamless presentation.
Take for instance the outbreak of World War I. Entire forests have been leveled to explain the chain of madness that ended with Germany invading Belgium over a squabble between Austrian-Hungary and Serbia. Kershaw has two or three pages devoted to this, with a paragraph on the motives of each of the Great Powers. This seems easy enough, except that it isn’t. I’ve been on my own World War I literary journey, and I’ve read close to a dozen books about the outbreak of war. Imagine reading a dozen books to write three pages. That’s a lot of reading. (I know, it sounds awesome. Where do I sign up?)
To Hell and Back is arranged with chronological chapters, each one devoted to a big chunk of Euro-history. The first chapter covers the lead-up to World War I; the second covers World War I; the third covers the immediate postwar crisis, etc. Within each chapter are subtopics that cover a variety of themes, including politics, economics, and culture. One chapter, at the end of the book, is entirely thematic. This structure allows Kershaw to give the big, bird’s eye overview, while giving him the opportunity to do deep-dives on certain topics. For example, the World War II chapter gives only the briefest of synopses of battlefield movements, just enough to give a rough contour to the ebb and flow of armies. After that synopsis, Kershaw devotes time to his selected subtopic of inhumanity, wherein he discusses the fundamental human cost of the conflict.
As I noted above, with a subject this colossal, Kershaw has to make decisions on what to leave in, and what to leave out. I found some of his focal choices to be fascinating. During the interwar era, he mostly avoids discussion of Germany’s Weimar Republic, and the schizophrenic political scene that allowed a nonentity like Hitler to rise to power. (Perhaps Kershaw, who wrote the Hitler biography, was bored with the topic). Instead, Kershaw devotes that space to Mussolini and the rise of fascism in Italy. Usually, Mussolini is seen as Hitler’s devoted puppet, being led by the nose by the stronger strongman. In Kershaw’s telling, Italian fascism is in many ways the precursor, and Hitler as oft as not the copycat.
Kershaw uses his subtopics to expand on his four causes of Europe’s catastrophic half century: nationalism (with a poisonous racial/ethnic twist); territorial ambitions (connected with nationalism); the rise of class conflict (exemplified by the Russian Revolution); and the “crisis of capitalism” (evidenced by the rollercoaster highs and lows following World War I).
The great value of a work like this is in creating a historical panorama in which you can see the connectivity of events. I’ll be the first to admit that – despite the amount of reading I do on World War I and II – I have huge historical blind-spots regarding this era. In a matter of pages, for instance, I learned more about the Spanish Civil War than I ever had before. (This is what happens when you spend your time in Spain getting drunk in Spain. Sangria is my kryptonite).
A book like To Hell and Back does an excellent job of contextualizing events. Kershaw methodically leads you down the path towards doom, before giving you a sliver of light at the end of the road. He begins with a fractious Europe comprised of selfish nation-states playing a high-stakes game of Risk with their inter-European alliances. That Europe plunges into World War I. In the aftermath, those same nation-states redraw the European map, in many cases reverting to narrow self-interests. This created simmering tensions over lost territory, lost homes, and lost economic opportunities. This in turn set the table for Hitler and the war that followed in his wake. Interestingly, the rise of the Soviet Union and the dawn of the Cold War created a kind of lasting stability. That stability was enforced in the Eastern-bloc by Soviet muscle, and in the West by American financial coercion (such as the Marshall Plan). In the ashes of the most fatal of European wars, Europe finally moved towards union. I’m interested to see how Kershaw deals with this notion in his next volume.
Kershaw’s book mostly deals with the major leagues of Europe. We’re talking Germany, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union, with supporting actors Spain and Italy. The other nation-states get short shrift. I’m okay with this. You can only slice and dice so much. I don’t think I could stand jumping manically from the Netherlands to Denmark to Portugal just for the sake of a more complete diversity of views.
Kershaw’s writing is pretty uniformly brilliant. He is a clear and engaging author. Despite the darkness and complexity of the subject matter, I burned through this pretty quickly. One thing I wanted was a better bibliography. To Hell and Back does not have source notes. According to Kershaw, that is per the way the Penguin History of Europe Series is constructed. Fine. But would a curated bibliography have been too much? At the end of the book, you will find page after page of marvelous secondary sources, none of arranged as to subject matter. I would have loved it if Kershaw would have told me what books he loved/found most important for each of the varying topics he covers. This seems like a small criticism, but this is a book that – above anything else – will make you want to learn more. It whets your appetite for deeper study. My dream-world bibliography would have facilitated that.
Right now, the world feels insane, and once again, Europe is at the heart of it. I think it’s instructive in tumultuous times to look back and realize how far we’ve come. That is certainly true with Europe. Things seem bleak but they have been bleak before, and some good has come from the bad.
(I received a free copy of this book from Viking in exchange for an honest review, and my first born child)
December 14, 2020
''Οι πόλεμοι των λαών θα είναι τρομερότεροι από τους πολέμους των βασιλέων.''
Γουίνστον Τσώρτσιλ (1901)
Σπουδαίο βιβλίο στο οποίο ο Kershaw περιγράφει αδρά αλλά με αφηγηματική δεινότητα τριάντα πέντε χρόνια ιστορίας (1914 -1949). Από την "Μπελ Εποκ" και την Ευρώπη του τσάρλεστον, της τέχνης, του πολιτισμού και της ευημερίας έως την εδραίωση του Ψυχρού Πολέμου το 1949, που έμελλε να διαρκέσει 40 ολόκληρα χρόνια.
Το βιβλίο εστιάζει στην εποχή του Μεσοπολέμου, αφιερώνοντας ελάχιστες σελίδες στην περιγραφή των δύο πολέμων αυτών καθεαυτούς.
Αυτό που κυρίως θέλει να δείξει ο Kershaw είναι πως τη "Χρυσή Εποχή" της υποτιθέμενης ειρήνης και ευημερίας , υπήρχαν ήδη ο αντισημιτισμός, το όραμα της ευγονικής, η αρρωστημένη ιδεολογία της φυλετικής καθαρότητας που οδηγούσε στη στείρωση χιλιάδων ανθρώπων που αποτελούσαν κοινωνική απειλή για τη δημιουργία της Αρίας φυλής, ο εθνικισμός και οι ιμπεριαλιστικές βλέψεις, εκρηκτικό μείγμα που θα οδηγούσε την Ευρώπη στο έρεβος της απανθρωπιάς και θα κατασπάραζε βίαια τα ιδανικά του Διαφωτισμο��.
Παρ'όλα αυτά, μέσα από τις στάχτες της (όπως είναι και ο τίτλος του τελευταίου κεφαλαίου), καταφέρνει να ανασυνταχθεί, να ανθίσει οικονομικά και να θεσπίσει θεσμούς διεθνούς συνεργασίας.
Συμπυκνωμένο, ψύχραιμο και εύληπτο απ'το μέσο αναγνώστη βιβλίο, που ρίχνει φως στα σκοτάδια του πρώτου μισού του 20ου αιώνα.
(Να σημειώσω μόνο ότι με παίδεψε αρκετά στα σημεία που εξηγεί και αναλύει τις οικονομικές εξελίξεις και τα οικονομικά τεκταινόμενα της εποχής, όμως πρόκειται ξεκάθαρα για δική μου ανεπάρκεια. Το βιβλίο είναι άρτιο από όλες τις απόψεις.)
Γουίνστον Τσώρτσιλ (1901)
Σπουδαίο βιβλίο στο οποίο ο Kershaw περιγράφει αδρά αλλά με αφηγηματική δεινότητα τριάντα πέντε χρόνια ιστορίας (1914 -1949). Από την "Μπελ Εποκ" και την Ευρώπη του τσάρλεστον, της τέχνης, του πολιτισμού και της ευημερίας έως την εδραίωση του Ψυχρού Πολέμου το 1949, που έμελλε να διαρκέσει 40 ολόκληρα χρόνια.
Το βιβλίο εστιάζει στην εποχή του Μεσοπολέμου, αφιερώνοντας ελάχιστες σελίδες στην περιγραφή των δύο πολέμων αυτών καθεαυτούς.
Αυτό που κυρίως θέλει να δείξει ο Kershaw είναι πως τη "Χρυσή Εποχή" της υποτιθέμενης ειρήνης και ευημερίας , υπήρχαν ήδη ο αντισημιτισμός, το όραμα της ευγονικής, η αρρωστημένη ιδεολογία της φυλετικής καθαρότητας που οδηγούσε στη στείρωση χιλιάδων ανθρώπων που αποτελούσαν κοινωνική απειλή για τη δημιουργία της Αρίας φυλής, ο εθνικισμός και οι ιμπεριαλιστικές βλέψεις, εκρηκτικό μείγμα που θα οδηγούσε την Ευρώπη στο έρεβος της απανθρωπιάς και θα κατασπάραζε βίαια τα ιδανικά του Διαφωτισμο��.
Παρ'όλα αυτά, μέσα από τις στάχτες της (όπως είναι και ο τίτλος του τελευταίου κεφαλαίου), καταφέρνει να ανασυνταχθεί, να ανθίσει οικονομικά και να θεσπίσει θεσμούς διεθνούς συνεργασίας.
Συμπυκνωμένο, ψύχραιμο και εύληπτο απ'το μέσο αναγνώστη βιβλίο, που ρίχνει φως στα σκοτάδια του πρώτου μισού του 20ου αιώνα.
(Να σημειώσω μόνο ότι με παίδεψε αρκετά στα σημεία που εξηγεί και αναλύει τις οικονομικές εξελίξεις και τα οικονομικά τεκταινόμενα της εποχής, όμως πρόκειται ξεκάθαρα για δική μου ανεπάρκεια. Το βιβλίο είναι άρτιο από όλες τις απόψεις.)
November 24, 2015
To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949: Kershaw's Analytical History
My thanks to Random House/Viking/Penguin for the opportunity to read To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949 by Ian Kershaw and the opportunity to state my opinion of this work.
This is the first of a planned two volume history of Europe during the Twentieth Century by Kershaw. It was earlier released in the UK and hit American shelves on November 17, 2015.
Kershaw was the ideal author for this history. He is perhaps the pre-eminent historian regarding Germany, World War Two, and the author of the highly lauded two volume biography of Adolph Hitler.
It should come as no surprise that Germany occupies the central role in this history. Kershaw places the blame for both the First and Second World Wars at Germany's feet. All of the facts are impeccably documented. Kershaw's point to this thoughtful work is a question. Why?
This is not a military history. Nor do the personalities of the key players take center stage. Consider this a work of analytical history. Kershaw's analysis works from start to finish.
This is an astute portrait of nationalism, class struggle, and racial intolerance. Kershaw depicts the effects of the rise of Bolshevism resulting in the development of a movement to right wing politics and the development of fascism.
Kershaw also paints a portrait of a desperate Britain, France, and Soviet Union, all playing for time, delaying the onset of war with Hitler. The policy of Appeasement is painted with absolute clarity. Kershaw's treatment of Stalin's Non-Aggression Pact with Hitler seems a bit mild in light of Soviet atrocities committed during the invasion of Poland.
What is missing from this thorough history is the human touch. The result is a work that would be more at home in the University lecture hall. Kershaw's history would make an excellent textbook. This is one for those who take their history neat.
My thanks to Random House/Viking/Penguin for the opportunity to read To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949 by Ian Kershaw and the opportunity to state my opinion of this work.
This is the first of a planned two volume history of Europe during the Twentieth Century by Kershaw. It was earlier released in the UK and hit American shelves on November 17, 2015.
Kershaw was the ideal author for this history. He is perhaps the pre-eminent historian regarding Germany, World War Two, and the author of the highly lauded two volume biography of Adolph Hitler.
It should come as no surprise that Germany occupies the central role in this history. Kershaw places the blame for both the First and Second World Wars at Germany's feet. All of the facts are impeccably documented. Kershaw's point to this thoughtful work is a question. Why?
This is not a military history. Nor do the personalities of the key players take center stage. Consider this a work of analytical history. Kershaw's analysis works from start to finish.
This is an astute portrait of nationalism, class struggle, and racial intolerance. Kershaw depicts the effects of the rise of Bolshevism resulting in the development of a movement to right wing politics and the development of fascism.
Kershaw also paints a portrait of a desperate Britain, France, and Soviet Union, all playing for time, delaying the onset of war with Hitler. The policy of Appeasement is painted with absolute clarity. Kershaw's treatment of Stalin's Non-Aggression Pact with Hitler seems a bit mild in light of Soviet atrocities committed during the invasion of Poland.
What is missing from this thorough history is the human touch. The result is a work that would be more at home in the University lecture hall. Kershaw's history would make an excellent textbook. This is one for those who take their history neat.
June 3, 2020
Διεξοδικά πολυμερής καταγραφή της ιστορίας του Μεσοπολέμου περισσότερο, πάρα των ιδίων των παγκόσμιων πολέμων, ως γεγονότα στρατιωτικά. Τον Κερσοου τον ενδιαφέρει να παρουσιάσει το σκηνικό που διαμορφώθηκε μετά τον ΑΠΠ και πως αυτό καθόρισε την αναποδραστη πορεία μιας ηπείρου. Γι αυτό παρουσιάζει κυριολεκτικά τα πάντα, αλλά με ευσυνοπτο τρόπο. Η καταδειξη των αλλαγών, κοινωνικών, οικονομικών, πολιτικών κ ιδεολογικων, που διέσχισαν την ήπειρο μετά το πρώτο πόλεμο και πριν την καταστροφή του δεύτερου, είναι εξαντλητική και ακριβής, ανά χώρα και γεγονός. Ο Κερσοου δεν αφήνει ούτε μια χώρα της Ευρώπης που να μην θέλει να φωτίσει στο παρόν έργο του τόσο σε συνάρτηση με το γενικό ευρωπαϊκό πλαίσιο όσο και κατά μόνας. Ουσιαστικό βάρος όμως ρίχνει στην κεντρική κ ανατολική Ευρώπη καθώς εκεί αναδείχτηκαν οι νέες χώρες μετά την κατάρρευση της Αυστροουγγαριας και Γερμανίας και εκεί η Ευρώπη θρηνησε εκατομμύρια θύματα της ναζιστικής θηριώδιας.
Βιβλίο που κλείνοντας το, έχετε καταλάβει ότι η ιστορία δεν είναι μια αναγραφή ημερομηνιών κ γεγονότων αλλά κάτι πιο σύνθετο. Είναι η καταγραφή των ανθρώπων κ των ιδεών που τους έκαναν να ζήσουν αλλά και να σκοτώσουν, να πεθάνουν, να γκρεμίσουν κ να χτίσουν. Κύριος πρωταγωνιστής για τον Κερσοου παραμένει πάντα ο άνθρωπος και οι επιλογές του.
Βιβλίο που κλείνοντας το, έχετε καταλάβει ότι η ιστορία δεν είναι μια αναγραφή ημερομηνιών κ γεγονότων αλλά κάτι πιο σύνθετο. Είναι η καταγραφή των ανθρώπων κ των ιδεών που τους έκαναν να ζήσουν αλλά και να σκοτώσουν, να πεθάνουν, να γκρεμίσουν κ να χτίσουν. Κύριος πρωταγωνιστής για τον Κερσοου παραμένει πάντα ο άνθρωπος και οι επιλογές του.
June 21, 2021
Comprehensive, all encompassing and sweeping. Always difficult to tell a story well known but Kershaw manages to capture the many developments in Europe in an analytical and effective manner
The Habsburg empire only knew two speeds: slow and total standstill
The Penguin series on the history of Europe is an interesting read and Ian Kershaw has the challenging task to capture the low point of the continent, picking up at the First World War and ending at the establishment of West Germany and the seemingly permanent split of the continent between Communism and Capitalism. Earlier (and also excellent) instalment The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815-1914 was a sprawling work with quite a lot of different developments and not really one unifying theme; To Hell and Back: Europe, 1914-1949 has two singular events at the start and finish of the book that ground the narrative, but also slightly overshadow anything smaller happening in the interbellum.
There are eerie similarities to discover in how populist movements nowadays undermine institutions and how they’ve done it in the 1920’s and 30’s. Only because of established elites (or full on breakdown of the state due to the Great Recession), afraid of the turmoil of Communist revolution, supporting the right (which they thought of as reactionary, maintaining the status quo in an uncertain world) could Fascists grap power. Also quite interesting how the left could not profit from the economic turmoil, something similar to what we have seen after the financial crisis or Eurocrisis as well. Something slightly hopeful is that democracy was more resilient than might have been expected, with widespread autocratic tendencies emerging, but no revolutionary changes in most countries, except for Russia, Italy and Germany, who exported their vision on the world to countries surrounding them.
Kershaw makes the differences between both World Wars and the impact of their resolution very clear, and shows how the seeds of new conflict were already encapsulated in the lack of a total defeat of Germany in World War I. The book is very much, and understandably so, about the trajectory of this country, literally at the heart of the continent and its biggest economy.
Russia is a good second player, with its singular political experiment and staggering brutality (for instance 700.000 dead in Stalinist purges before the Second World War) of Word War I, Civil War, Purges and the brunt of the impact of the Second World War. Kershaw makes it clear that Eastern Europe in this period was constantly most impacted by upheaval, had its institutions most effected, compounded by ethnic tensions due to the collapse of the Habsburg empire. Western Europe in a sense has less focus, although this book is also the story of decline of the British Empire and France and their colonial power projection, and the unwilling ascendency to global power of the USA.
The impact of the Second World War is mind boggling: 56 million homes destroyed in Germany, 25 million people killed in the Soviet Union, most of the victims being civilians overall. The losses of the Western nations feel limited compared to the main theatre of battle in Central and Eastern Europe, a region later also not profiting from financial aid from the Marshall Plan. Overal its amazing how the continent managed to pick itself up after the war, something the author himself notes as well. A well written, easily readable and comprehensive story of a pivotal period of history.
Dutch quote:
Zelfs de veelgehoorde uitspraak dat bommen geen onderscheid maken tussen arm en rijk, bleek niet te kloppen. Het armere deel van de bevolking dat opeengepakt zat in de huurkazernes en krottenwijken van de industriesteden, kreeg veel vaker te maken met ernstige bombardementen. De wat rijkere buitenwijken can middenklassen en de voorname landhuizen hadden een veel grotere kans om de oorlog ongeschonden te doorstaan.
The Habsburg empire only knew two speeds: slow and total standstill
The Penguin series on the history of Europe is an interesting read and Ian Kershaw has the challenging task to capture the low point of the continent, picking up at the First World War and ending at the establishment of West Germany and the seemingly permanent split of the continent between Communism and Capitalism. Earlier (and also excellent) instalment The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815-1914 was a sprawling work with quite a lot of different developments and not really one unifying theme; To Hell and Back: Europe, 1914-1949 has two singular events at the start and finish of the book that ground the narrative, but also slightly overshadow anything smaller happening in the interbellum.
There are eerie similarities to discover in how populist movements nowadays undermine institutions and how they’ve done it in the 1920’s and 30’s. Only because of established elites (or full on breakdown of the state due to the Great Recession), afraid of the turmoil of Communist revolution, supporting the right (which they thought of as reactionary, maintaining the status quo in an uncertain world) could Fascists grap power. Also quite interesting how the left could not profit from the economic turmoil, something similar to what we have seen after the financial crisis or Eurocrisis as well. Something slightly hopeful is that democracy was more resilient than might have been expected, with widespread autocratic tendencies emerging, but no revolutionary changes in most countries, except for Russia, Italy and Germany, who exported their vision on the world to countries surrounding them.
Kershaw makes the differences between both World Wars and the impact of their resolution very clear, and shows how the seeds of new conflict were already encapsulated in the lack of a total defeat of Germany in World War I. The book is very much, and understandably so, about the trajectory of this country, literally at the heart of the continent and its biggest economy.
Russia is a good second player, with its singular political experiment and staggering brutality (for instance 700.000 dead in Stalinist purges before the Second World War) of Word War I, Civil War, Purges and the brunt of the impact of the Second World War. Kershaw makes it clear that Eastern Europe in this period was constantly most impacted by upheaval, had its institutions most effected, compounded by ethnic tensions due to the collapse of the Habsburg empire. Western Europe in a sense has less focus, although this book is also the story of decline of the British Empire and France and their colonial power projection, and the unwilling ascendency to global power of the USA.
The impact of the Second World War is mind boggling: 56 million homes destroyed in Germany, 25 million people killed in the Soviet Union, most of the victims being civilians overall. The losses of the Western nations feel limited compared to the main theatre of battle in Central and Eastern Europe, a region later also not profiting from financial aid from the Marshall Plan. Overal its amazing how the continent managed to pick itself up after the war, something the author himself notes as well. A well written, easily readable and comprehensive story of a pivotal period of history.
Dutch quote:
Zelfs de veelgehoorde uitspraak dat bommen geen onderscheid maken tussen arm en rijk, bleek niet te kloppen. Het armere deel van de bevolking dat opeengepakt zat in de huurkazernes en krottenwijken van de industriesteden, kreeg veel vaker te maken met ernstige bombardementen. De wat rijkere buitenwijken can middenklassen en de voorname landhuizen hadden een veel grotere kans om de oorlog ongeschonden te doorstaan.
February 9, 2020
Σπουδαίο βιβλίο!
February 8, 2017
I will be dipping into this overview from time to time over the next few months. The sections I have read so far are simply outstanding, reflecting both Kershaw's brilliant historical perspectives and his clean controlled writing style.
UPDATE 12/16/15 ... I have just read the section on the Spanish Civil War and it is the best, clearest account I have ever read.
UPDATE 12/20/15 ... likewise with the section on the Munich Agreement. Kershaw, who has a perhaps unmatched grasp of the details, shows a very deft hand in selecting those which most clearly show the essence of an event. Together with astute analytical comments, that makes "To Hell and Back" a superb overview.
UPDATE 12/16/15 ... I have just read the section on the Spanish Civil War and it is the best, clearest account I have ever read.
UPDATE 12/20/15 ... likewise with the section on the Munich Agreement. Kershaw, who has a perhaps unmatched grasp of the details, shows a very deft hand in selecting those which most clearly show the essence of an event. Together with astute analytical comments, that makes "To Hell and Back" a superb overview.
January 29, 2022
Autorul nu se limiteaza la prezentarea evenimentelor. Le si analizeaza, intr-un mod usor de inteles. De ce s-au instalat regimuri totalitare in Germania, Italia si Rusia? Care sunt diferentele dintre totalitarism si autoritarismul conventional? Ce impact a avut Marea Criza in fiecare tara europeana? Si multe alte probleme abordate.
August 10, 2015
This is the first of a two volume history of Europe from 1900 to the present; with this first volume taking us up to 1949, when peace had officially returned to Europe. Although this is a fairly hefty read, it covers an enormous amount and so is ideal for the casual reader, as well as being a fascinating account of Europe during a century of war. With two world wars and the Cold War, this is a portrait of a continent in violent and turbulent times.
Although the century would erupt into warfare, the pre-WWI years are very much seen as a ‘golden age’ - a time of culture and civilisation as well as a changing time of industrialisation. However, alongside literature and art, there is the rise of nationalism and international tension. Kershaw takes us through the lead up to WWI, as Europe stood on the brink of an unstoppable momentum towards conflict. War was changing and he makes the interesting point that nineteenth century armies went to fight a twentieth century war, as the ‘Great War’ marked the real beginning of Europe’s twentieth century.
At the end of the first world war there was poverty, economic and political turmoil throughout much of Europe, which now had a new map – with four Empires vanished, a revolution in Russia, the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany suffering under humiliating terms after the Treaty of Versailles. Not so much an end to conflict, but a turbulent peace. The brief joy of the Jazz age and the Bright Young Things interrupted by the Great Depression, which swept from Wall Street to engulf Europe and create a fragmentation of the political system in Germany – a vacuum filled by the National Socialist Party. By 1933, Hitler was Chancellor of Germany and the politics of Europe moved sharply to the right. Indeed, Kershaw names the 1930’s the ‘Decade of the Dictators,’ with Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin all in power as Europe headed towards a new war.
Again, we read of the lead up to war – the fear, but the growing realisation that it was fast approaching. By 1945 there was a death toll of forty million, just in Europe – with 25 million dead in the Soviet Union alone. Unlike WWI, the gulf between front line fighting and the home front was so closed it often merged. Of course, we also read of the horror of the holocaust and – at the end of the war – a Europe devastated by years of violence, with refugees and displaced people scattered throughout the continent, reprisals, violence and Nuremberg.
This volume ends with Europe facing the future after nearly self destructing. The Iron Curtain, Britain voting in the Labour Party and a changing political – and geographical map – again re-drawn. I have enjoyed Ian Kershaw’s books since reading his two volume biography of Hitler and this was an extremely interesting read. It is suitable for the casual reader, but also has something to offer those who have background knowledge. There is particular emphasis on the economic situation and reasons for war and this helps give the book an interesting viewpoint. A good introduction to the history of Europe and why they went to war twice within half a century.
Although the century would erupt into warfare, the pre-WWI years are very much seen as a ‘golden age’ - a time of culture and civilisation as well as a changing time of industrialisation. However, alongside literature and art, there is the rise of nationalism and international tension. Kershaw takes us through the lead up to WWI, as Europe stood on the brink of an unstoppable momentum towards conflict. War was changing and he makes the interesting point that nineteenth century armies went to fight a twentieth century war, as the ‘Great War’ marked the real beginning of Europe’s twentieth century.
At the end of the first world war there was poverty, economic and political turmoil throughout much of Europe, which now had a new map – with four Empires vanished, a revolution in Russia, the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany suffering under humiliating terms after the Treaty of Versailles. Not so much an end to conflict, but a turbulent peace. The brief joy of the Jazz age and the Bright Young Things interrupted by the Great Depression, which swept from Wall Street to engulf Europe and create a fragmentation of the political system in Germany – a vacuum filled by the National Socialist Party. By 1933, Hitler was Chancellor of Germany and the politics of Europe moved sharply to the right. Indeed, Kershaw names the 1930’s the ‘Decade of the Dictators,’ with Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin all in power as Europe headed towards a new war.
Again, we read of the lead up to war – the fear, but the growing realisation that it was fast approaching. By 1945 there was a death toll of forty million, just in Europe – with 25 million dead in the Soviet Union alone. Unlike WWI, the gulf between front line fighting and the home front was so closed it often merged. Of course, we also read of the horror of the holocaust and – at the end of the war – a Europe devastated by years of violence, with refugees and displaced people scattered throughout the continent, reprisals, violence and Nuremberg.
This volume ends with Europe facing the future after nearly self destructing. The Iron Curtain, Britain voting in the Labour Party and a changing political – and geographical map – again re-drawn. I have enjoyed Ian Kershaw’s books since reading his two volume biography of Hitler and this was an extremely interesting read. It is suitable for the casual reader, but also has something to offer those who have background knowledge. There is particular emphasis on the economic situation and reasons for war and this helps give the book an interesting viewpoint. A good introduction to the history of Europe and why they went to war twice within half a century.
April 29, 2019
"Hell" seems a good word to describe Europe from 1914 to 1949. The hell of Dante is the most suitable "hell" for comparison to Europe during this period, as there were clearly varying degrees of "hell" Europeans were in based on their ethnicity and location. If you're a white protestant in Sweden, for example, "hell" might not be a word you'd use to describe the period at all. If you're a Jew in Poland though, well, you're deep in the ninth circle.
Some countries, Western Europe as a whole really, truly did seem to have come "back" from hell by 1949, but others, I'm thinking of Poland primarily, though a large swathe of Eastern Europe would certainly qualify, never seemed to make the return journey. These unfortunate countries were occupied almost immediately by the Red Army once the Nazis had been forced back. If anything, countries like Poland seemed to come back from hell in the 1920s and 30s, only to be thrust back into an even greater furnace with the Nazi and then Soviet invasions.
For these countries, there was no "back" until the quasi-successful rise of independence movements in the 1980s at least, and ultimately the eventual fall of the Soviet Union in December 1991. Even then it took years of post-Soviet rule for Poland to recover, and other countries, like Russia and Ukraine, still haven't, as Soviet leaders have been merely swapped out for an unsavory alliance between greedy oligarchs and corrupt politicians.
So Kershaw's "Europe" is clearly Western, and that makes sense as the majority of "To Hell and Back" focuses on the countries that make up Western Europe. Kershaw's most recent book, "Roller-Coaster", the sequel to this one, tackles the second half of the 20th century, and the first 17 years of the 21st. I imagine that one will focus a great deal more on the countries of Eastern Europe as that is where most of the "action", for lack of a better word, takes place.
You may also have noticed that this isn't a small book. At 600 and some odd pages, it's actually quite large but, for a book that covers the most significant 35 years of the last few centuries, it's actually not nearly as large as it should be.
In fact, much of "To Hell and Back" feels like a summary. When you look at all the ground Kershaw attempts to cover, you almost wonder whether it might as well be called "Cliffsnotes: Europe 1914 - 1949". This is by no means an exhaustive account of the period, and I can't say I learned anything that I hadn't already learned in other, better books.
In particular, Margaret MacMillan's The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 and Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World provide much better insights into the First World War and the Treaty of Versailles, but why wouldn't they? Together, these two books are twice the length of "To Hell and Back".
Just take the events of 1919. Kershaw spends a few pages summarizing the Treaty of Versailles and all that to basically focus on the raw deal that Germany got. MacMillan's "1919" is over 600 pages on JUST that singular event (all 600+ pages are brilliant, btw). Of course Kershaw can't do the Treaty justice, he's got the entire European theater of WWII to get to!
I would be remiss not to mention G.J. Meyer's phenomenal A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918 here as well, which provides for the most riveting reading on WWI I've ever done.
It's easy for me to say to just skip the first half of "To Hell and Back" and read those three books instead, and skip the second half and read The Second World War or The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, but maybe you're reading "To Hell and Back" because you want a summary and don't have the time to read those other titles. That's a pity, but for a summary, you could do far worse than Kershaw.
With all that, I would just emphasize the point that this is not much more than a summary. Kershaw is a well-regarded historian, but "To Hell and Back" didn't click with me the way the titles I listed above did. If you're an author who's decided to tackle these events, which have been written about in countless books already, shouldn't you be bringing something new to the table? I'm not sure Kershaw does.
A monumental achievement? More like a monumental undertaking with lackluster results.
Some countries, Western Europe as a whole really, truly did seem to have come "back" from hell by 1949, but others, I'm thinking of Poland primarily, though a large swathe of Eastern Europe would certainly qualify, never seemed to make the return journey. These unfortunate countries were occupied almost immediately by the Red Army once the Nazis had been forced back. If anything, countries like Poland seemed to come back from hell in the 1920s and 30s, only to be thrust back into an even greater furnace with the Nazi and then Soviet invasions.
For these countries, there was no "back" until the quasi-successful rise of independence movements in the 1980s at least, and ultimately the eventual fall of the Soviet Union in December 1991. Even then it took years of post-Soviet rule for Poland to recover, and other countries, like Russia and Ukraine, still haven't, as Soviet leaders have been merely swapped out for an unsavory alliance between greedy oligarchs and corrupt politicians.
So Kershaw's "Europe" is clearly Western, and that makes sense as the majority of "To Hell and Back" focuses on the countries that make up Western Europe. Kershaw's most recent book, "Roller-Coaster", the sequel to this one, tackles the second half of the 20th century, and the first 17 years of the 21st. I imagine that one will focus a great deal more on the countries of Eastern Europe as that is where most of the "action", for lack of a better word, takes place.
You may also have noticed that this isn't a small book. At 600 and some odd pages, it's actually quite large but, for a book that covers the most significant 35 years of the last few centuries, it's actually not nearly as large as it should be.
In fact, much of "To Hell and Back" feels like a summary. When you look at all the ground Kershaw attempts to cover, you almost wonder whether it might as well be called "Cliffsnotes: Europe 1914 - 1949". This is by no means an exhaustive account of the period, and I can't say I learned anything that I hadn't already learned in other, better books.
In particular, Margaret MacMillan's The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 and Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World provide much better insights into the First World War and the Treaty of Versailles, but why wouldn't they? Together, these two books are twice the length of "To Hell and Back".
Just take the events of 1919. Kershaw spends a few pages summarizing the Treaty of Versailles and all that to basically focus on the raw deal that Germany got. MacMillan's "1919" is over 600 pages on JUST that singular event (all 600+ pages are brilliant, btw). Of course Kershaw can't do the Treaty justice, he's got the entire European theater of WWII to get to!
I would be remiss not to mention G.J. Meyer's phenomenal A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918 here as well, which provides for the most riveting reading on WWI I've ever done.
It's easy for me to say to just skip the first half of "To Hell and Back" and read those three books instead, and skip the second half and read The Second World War or The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, but maybe you're reading "To Hell and Back" because you want a summary and don't have the time to read those other titles. That's a pity, but for a summary, you could do far worse than Kershaw.
With all that, I would just emphasize the point that this is not much more than a summary. Kershaw is a well-regarded historian, but "To Hell and Back" didn't click with me the way the titles I listed above did. If you're an author who's decided to tackle these events, which have been written about in countless books already, shouldn't you be bringing something new to the table? I'm not sure Kershaw does.
A monumental achievement? More like a monumental undertaking with lackluster results.
May 27, 2022
Megírni az egész huszadik századot - ez, gondolom, épp olyan álma egy korszakkal foglalkozó történésznek, mint egy gyógyszervegyésznek kikeverni a rák ellenszerét vagy a Covid-vakcinát. A nehézségek viszont számosak. Mindenekelőtt a téma szerteágazó volta, aminek köszönhetően egy effajta összefoglalás alsó hangon is tízezersok oldalasnak ígérkezik - amennyiben pedig a szerző ezt szeretné egy jóval emberségesebb 1200 oldalnyira redukálni (ami azonban még mindig sok, azzal együtt, hogy bűnösen kevés), vagy meg kell barátkoznia a zanzásodás gondolatával, vagy ki kell választania egy speciális (lehetőleg eredeti) nézőpontot, és arra kell korlátoznia az írói figyelmet.
Kershaw előbbi mellett dönt, ami mindenképpen jogos, ha valaki összefoglalásban gondolkodik. Ebből következik, hogy ez a kötet inkább széles, mint mély. Nem igazán lehet kiemelni egyetlen revelatív, új gondolatot, ami köré szervezné a struktúrát - következésképp laikusoknak tökéletes, de aligha fognak parázs történelmi viták kialakulni a kötet kapcsán.
Mondjuk egy központi gondolat azért akad - bár forradalminak éppen nem nevezném. Kershaw a Nagy Kérdésre (vö.: "Hogyan jutott el oda a világ legprosperálóbb, talán legcivilizáltabb kontinense, hogy mintegy brahiból szétrobbantsa saját magát?") azt a választ adja, hogy az események ősoka a globalizálódó, alapvetően demokratikus kapitalizmus kifáradása volt, amely párhuzamosan zajlott az új ordas eszmék kialakulásával. Ráadásul nem is egy ordas eszméről beszélünk - egyfelől ugye ott vannak a bezárkózást hirdető nacionalizmusok, amelyek közvetlen kiváltó okai voltak az első világháborúnak, a két világháború között pedig némi forradalmi tónussal gazdagodva fasizmusként születtek újjá. Másfelől pedig a világháborús szenvedés felerősítette és radikalizálta a marxizmust, vagyis megjelent a politikai palettán a szélsőbal is, leánykori nevén kommunizmus. A huszadik század első fele tulajdonképpen leírható úgy, mint ennek a három ideológiának a véres birkózása. Nagyjából 1941-ig úgy tűnt, a demokrácia passzivitásának köszönhetően vereséget szenved - Hitler ekkorra uralma alá hajtotta Európa nagy részét, a Molotov-Ribbentropp-paktum pedig arra utalt, hogy a két szélsőség szövetséget kötött a közép felszámolására.
Ugyanakkor van itt egy bújtatott tanulság is - hogy végeredményben a szélsőségek hasonlítanak a Hegylakókhoz, jelesül közülük is csak egy maradhat. Így biztos távolságból már megállapítható, hogy a nácizmus (vagyis minden nacionalizmus legvirulensebb megnyilvánulási formája) törvényszerűen kellett megtámadja a bolsevizmust (ami meg a kommunizmus sajátosan orosz - mondhatni: ázsiai - változata volt). Hisz mindketten totalisták voltak, a lélek egészére tartottak igényt, és hát két totalista nem fér meg egy csárdában, de még egy kontinensen se. A demokrácia nagyobb rugalmassága ebben a közegben hasznos fegyvernek bizonyult - képes volt antikommunista meggyőződését zárójelbe tenni egy időre, és az egyik rosszal szövetkezve megsemmisíteni a másik rosszat.
Kershaw összefoglalásának első kötete itt ér véget: a két szélsőség közül az egyiknek a véglegesnek tűnő vereségével*. A porondon két szereplő maradt. Egyfelől a demokrácia, ami aztán tényleg úgy festett, hogy lesüllyedt a medence aljára - de hát onnan lehet elrugaszkodni felfelé. Másfelől a Szovjetunió, aki meglehetős renoméval emelkedett ki a világégésből, mint az ország, aki a legtöbbet áldozta a nácizmus legyőzéséért**. Hogy ők mire mennek egymással, nos, az a második kötetből kiderül.
(Megjegyz.: én ezt a második kötetet várom igazán. Az első kötet erényei nyilvánvalóak ugyan, hisz kvázi tökéletes és minden aspektusra kiterjedő összefoglalás, de nekem néhol - most dicsekedni fogok - inkább tűnt átismétlésnek, mint új információnak.)
* Most talán elspoilerezem a második kötetet - pedig meg se jelent -, de a Szovjetunió felbomlása tulajdonképpen megismételte azt a mintát, amit 1945-ben már láthattunk. Csak épp akkor a szélsőbal szenvedett olyan vereséget, amiből - úgy tűnik - nincs visszaút. Igaz, az ő abszolút hitelvesztése nem egy mindent felperzselő háború, hanem egy jóval lassabb gazdasági-politikai folyamat végeredménye, de attól még nem kevésbé totális. Sajnálatos, hogy úgy fest, az emberiségnek egy szélsőségre mindig szüksége van ahhoz, hogy komfortosan érezze magát a bőrében, mert a kommunizmus bukásával párhuzamosan az agresszív nacionalizmusok elkezdtek visszatérni az üresen maradt ideológiai térbe.
** A mítosz, miszerint az oroszok a nácik egyetlen hiteles ellenfelei, a mai napig az ország önképének integráns eleme. Aminek köszönhetően a putyini propaganda szerint Oroszhon bárki ellen visel háborút, valójában a nácik ellen visel háborút.
Kershaw előbbi mellett dönt, ami mindenképpen jogos, ha valaki összefoglalásban gondolkodik. Ebből következik, hogy ez a kötet inkább széles, mint mély. Nem igazán lehet kiemelni egyetlen revelatív, új gondolatot, ami köré szervezné a struktúrát - következésképp laikusoknak tökéletes, de aligha fognak parázs történelmi viták kialakulni a kötet kapcsán.
Mondjuk egy központi gondolat azért akad - bár forradalminak éppen nem nevezném. Kershaw a Nagy Kérdésre (vö.: "Hogyan jutott el oda a világ legprosperálóbb, talán legcivilizáltabb kontinense, hogy mintegy brahiból szétrobbantsa saját magát?") azt a választ adja, hogy az események ősoka a globalizálódó, alapvetően demokratikus kapitalizmus kifáradása volt, amely párhuzamosan zajlott az új ordas eszmék kialakulásával. Ráadásul nem is egy ordas eszméről beszélünk - egyfelől ugye ott vannak a bezárkózást hirdető nacionalizmusok, amelyek közvetlen kiváltó okai voltak az első világháborúnak, a két világháború között pedig némi forradalmi tónussal gazdagodva fasizmusként születtek újjá. Másfelől pedig a világháborús szenvedés felerősítette és radikalizálta a marxizmust, vagyis megjelent a politikai palettán a szélsőbal is, leánykori nevén kommunizmus. A huszadik század első fele tulajdonképpen leírható úgy, mint ennek a három ideológiának a véres birkózása. Nagyjából 1941-ig úgy tűnt, a demokrácia passzivitásának köszönhetően vereséget szenved - Hitler ekkorra uralma alá hajtotta Európa nagy részét, a Molotov-Ribbentropp-paktum pedig arra utalt, hogy a két szélsőség szövetséget kötött a közép felszámolására.
Ugyanakkor van itt egy bújtatott tanulság is - hogy végeredményben a szélsőségek hasonlítanak a Hegylakókhoz, jelesül közülük is csak egy maradhat. Így biztos távolságból már megállapítható, hogy a nácizmus (vagyis minden nacionalizmus legvirulensebb megnyilvánulási formája) törvényszerűen kellett megtámadja a bolsevizmust (ami meg a kommunizmus sajátosan orosz - mondhatni: ázsiai - változata volt). Hisz mindketten totalisták voltak, a lélek egészére tartottak igényt, és hát két totalista nem fér meg egy csárdában, de még egy kontinensen se. A demokrácia nagyobb rugalmassága ebben a közegben hasznos fegyvernek bizonyult - képes volt antikommunista meggyőződését zárójelbe tenni egy időre, és az egyik rosszal szövetkezve megsemmisíteni a másik rosszat.
Kershaw összefoglalásának első kötete itt ér véget: a két szélsőség közül az egyiknek a véglegesnek tűnő vereségével*. A porondon két szereplő maradt. Egyfelől a demokrácia, ami aztán tényleg úgy festett, hogy lesüllyedt a medence aljára - de hát onnan lehet elrugaszkodni felfelé. Másfelől a Szovjetunió, aki meglehetős renoméval emelkedett ki a világégésből, mint az ország, aki a legtöbbet áldozta a nácizmus legyőzéséért**. Hogy ők mire mennek egymással, nos, az a második kötetből kiderül.
(Megjegyz.: én ezt a második kötetet várom igazán. Az első kötet erényei nyilvánvalóak ugyan, hisz kvázi tökéletes és minden aspektusra kiterjedő összefoglalás, de nekem néhol - most dicsekedni fogok - inkább tűnt átismétlésnek, mint új információnak.)
* Most talán elspoilerezem a második kötetet - pedig meg se jelent -, de a Szovjetunió felbomlása tulajdonképpen megismételte azt a mintát, amit 1945-ben már láthattunk. Csak épp akkor a szélsőbal szenvedett olyan vereséget, amiből - úgy tűnik - nincs visszaút. Igaz, az ő abszolút hitelvesztése nem egy mindent felperzselő háború, hanem egy jóval lassabb gazdasági-politikai folyamat végeredménye, de attól még nem kevésbé totális. Sajnálatos, hogy úgy fest, az emberiségnek egy szélsőségre mindig szüksége van ahhoz, hogy komfortosan érezze magát a bőrében, mert a kommunizmus bukásával párhuzamosan az agresszív nacionalizmusok elkezdtek visszatérni az üresen maradt ideológiai térbe.
** A mítosz, miszerint az oroszok a nácik egyetlen hiteles ellenfelei, a mai napig az ország önképének integráns eleme. Aminek köszönhetően a putyini propaganda szerint Oroszhon bárki ellen visel háborút, valójában a nácik ellen visel háborút.
July 23, 2017
To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949, by Ian Kershaw, is a masterful look at the World War period of European history, and then eighth book in the Penguin History of Europe series. The book examines both World War I and World War II, as well as the period in between, from the perspectives of the various belligerents and neutral nations. An examination of the political necessities of each nation, and the reasons why events happened the way they did, is present within the book.
Kershaw starts by examining the road to World War I. Austria-Hungary, a multi-ethnic empire stretching across much of Central/Southern Europe, and comprising of Germans, Hungarians, Slavs, Czechs and Poles, suffered the assassination of its crown prince - Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand, by Serbian nationalists. Austria-Hungary wished to get revenge for the assassination, nominally supported by extremists within the Serbian government. Serbia's ally, Russia, began to mobilize to support Serbia. Germany, looking to cut Russia down to size, offered a "blank cheque" of full support to its ally, and began to mobilize. France, allied to Russia, and looking for revenge against Germany for its 1871 territorial losses in Alsace-Lorraine, mobilized against Germany. And so WWI began. The United Kingdom, at first remaining slightly aloof, joined the war on paper to protect Belgium neutrality after German troops invaded the country. This was a war where tens of millions of soldiers would die in trench warfare, where attacks were suicidal, and defenses strong (at least on the Western front). In the east, between the Central Powers and Russia, battles were more mobilized and fronts moved back and forth by large amounts. Initially, Austria-Hungary fared poorly. Germany began to win a series of victories against the Russian army, and soon pushed the front deeper into Russian territory, and by 1917, the once mighty Russian Empire began to crumble.
Even so, on the Western front Germany ground to a halt in the face of stiff French resistance. With the entry into the war of the United States, the Entente powers (now excluding Russia after the treaty of Brest-Litovsk) were victorious. An exhausted Germany came to terms, where they accepted full responsibility for the war (the war guilt clause) lost a chunk of their territory to France, and newly created Poland, Lithuania and Czechoslovakia, and saw their allies, the Ottoman Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, carved up into small states and colonial possessions of the victorious Entenete powers. Brest-Litovsk was revoked, and Germany's last Emperor, Kaiser Whilhelm II, abdicated. Germany became a Republic. The League of Nations was created to try and curb aggressive wars and ensure war did not break out on the continent again.
However, this was not to be so. The Treaty of Versailles in 1919 would inevitably lead to a new war just 20 years later, one that was much more brutal, and with casualties many times large than WWI. In the east, the new small states created at Versailles - Hungary, Austria, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and the Baltic states, all suffered from massive internal divisions based on ethnic and religious minorities, and external issues derived from border disputes with their neighbours. This fertile ground led the way to a rise of nationalist governments in Central and Eastern Europe in the decades between wars. One by one, due to internal and external pressures, these states would all fall to authoritarian regimes as the weakness of their own democratic societies became evident, and external support from Entente powers evaporated. In Russia, a civil war raged which would claim many millions of lives - more than Russian losses in WWI. The victors that emerged were the Soviets - communist rebels with a radical vision for change in Russia. In Germany, the nascent Weimar Republic began to struggle with internal political divisions, and external hostility from Western powers. France in particular looked on warily at Germany, and harshly enacted retribution on the German state through economic concessions, and outright occupation of the Saarland and Rhineland - the industrial heartlands of Germany.
Fascism, however, came to the fore not in the defeated East, but in victorious Italy. Italy had joined the Entente at the prospect of territorial concessions from its rival, the Austro-Hungarians. However, Italian troops had not fared well in the war, and Italy had gained little outside of South Tyrol territoriality. The newly created Yugoslavian state had territory in Fiume, Trieste and the Dalmatian coast that Italy had coveted, and a growing nationalistic movement was gaining ground. The Italian government was dysfunctional, and a series of political scandals soon turned popular opinion toward a stronger authoritarian structure. Bentio Mussolini, leader of the Italian Fascists, led a march on Rome and was able to take power largely with the acquiescence of most Italian citizens. The Fascist movement in Italy became a beacon for other authoritarian idealists in Europe, as fledgling democracies struggled for legitimacy and political unrest was the norm on the continent.
Nationalistic governments often took ideas from Italy, but most remained nationalistic and authoritarian, looking to uphold the conservative status quo as opposed to radically altering society, as the Fascists wish. Germany fell to the Nazi's - radical fascists under the rule of Adolf Hitler. Most other states, however, went for a more nationalistic authoritarianism. Kershaw closely examines the differences in regimes that ruled Europe in between the wars, and the results are a fascinating and in depth analysis and comparison of regime ideologies, objectives and policy initiatives. Germany and the Soviet Union both had radical ideas about reforming their states, both operated under a charismatic and influential dictator (Hitler and Stalin, respectively) and both had ideas about radically transforming their states along totalitarian lines. Stalin's Russia came closest to enacting these ideals. Kershaw notes that the Communist Party in Russia held ultimate power, and was able to enact far reaching changes that affected the lives of tens of millions of people. Many would starve to death under forced collectivisation, and many more were purged from the party under Stalin's brutal police force. Stalin espoused loyalty to the state and party above all, and compliance was forced. People were afraid to think, and those acting out of turn were brutally punished with forced exile or execution.
In Germany, by contrast, many people initially supported Hitler's regime. Although minorities and those considered "degenerate" to society were targeted, the average German citizen did not live in abject fear of arbitrary arrest and execution. Hitler's radical views of society were primarily racial, and focused on ideas of eugenics, "biological hygiene" and political order. Many political prisoners were targeted - especially from the Socialist and Communist Left, but after years of political instability and street violence during the Weimar years, most German citizens were indifferent or even supportive of Hitler's crackdown. Religious and racial minorities were targeted (especially Jews). Hitler's Germany was political totalitarian in a similar fashion to Soviet Russia, but public support was more widespread in Germany that in Russia. Russian citizens were loyal through fear and respect for Stalin. German citizens were loyal due to past political instability and the hope for a peaceful and ordered future.
Kershaw also examines Italy, the only state that explicitly stated its desire for totalitarianism, but the one which was least able to attain it. Italian's were largely accepting of Mussolini - especially after the Lateran Pacts of 1929, and the annexation of Ethiopia in 1935. However, Mussolini's Italy had great difficulty economically, and was unable to match the radical successes in Germany and Russia during their industrialization moves and their radical transformation of the respective economic spheres. Germany rapidly rearmed in this time period, and this drove economic growth to dizzying heights. Italy, by contrast, suffered from economic malaise and had great difficulty in rearming.
The road to war again became clear through primarily German aggression. The Nazi's rapidly rearmed at a time when the Western powers were suffering from economic depression. The Rhineland was reoccupied - breaching the Treaty of Versailles. The Saarland was reincorporated into the Reich. Austria - suffering from political chaos, was joined to Germany. The final nail in the coffin was the destruction of Czechoslovakia. In a drive to appease Germany and avoid war, Britain and France had allowed Germany to regain territory ceded after WWI - the Sudetenland - largely populated by Germans. After this, Nazi forces had entered Czechoslovakia and forced the state to submit as a "Protectorate." This forced Western powers to guarantee the independence of Poland - Hitlers next target. When Poland refused Germany the annexation of Danzig (a German city under League of Nations mandate), Germany entered Poland, and WWII began.
Kershaw walks us through the war and its aftermath - the destruction of millions of innocent civilians in Eastern Europe, the targeting of Jews for genocide by Hitler, the crushing of Germany and its division between the West and Russia, and the fall of the Iron Curtain - zone of influence between the West and East. Kershaw walks through the war, and the radical ideologies of its belligerents, as well as the response from Western leaders. The fall of Germany and the rise of Cold War ideology between a Western Europe dominated by the United States, and an Eastern Europe dominated by the Soviet Union is examined. The terrible war and its large human cost, as well as the aftermath, is examined in detail. The book ends in 1949, setting up a sequel that Kershaw is writing on the years following, focusing more on the Cold War, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the rise of European Union politics in Europe.
Kershaw has written a fascinating and in depth analysis of this 35 year period of history, which radically altered Europe and the world as we know it. Competing aristocracies and monarchies gave way to an ideological war between Democracy, Fascism and Communism, with Fascism eventually crushed between the other two ideologies. Europe spent 35 years in flames of war, political upheaval and ideological and ethnic violence that cost the lives of possibly a hundred million people. Hundreds of years old Empires crumbled, colonial empires fell, and whole swathes of peoples were eliminated in pogroms, and in state sponsored genocidal policies. This is a brutal period in history, and Kershaw has done a wonderful job chronicling the vast political, social and economic factors that described this period in time. This is a masterful work of history, and one that should not be missed by those interested in modern European history. Highly recommended for history buffs.
Kershaw starts by examining the road to World War I. Austria-Hungary, a multi-ethnic empire stretching across much of Central/Southern Europe, and comprising of Germans, Hungarians, Slavs, Czechs and Poles, suffered the assassination of its crown prince - Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand, by Serbian nationalists. Austria-Hungary wished to get revenge for the assassination, nominally supported by extremists within the Serbian government. Serbia's ally, Russia, began to mobilize to support Serbia. Germany, looking to cut Russia down to size, offered a "blank cheque" of full support to its ally, and began to mobilize. France, allied to Russia, and looking for revenge against Germany for its 1871 territorial losses in Alsace-Lorraine, mobilized against Germany. And so WWI began. The United Kingdom, at first remaining slightly aloof, joined the war on paper to protect Belgium neutrality after German troops invaded the country. This was a war where tens of millions of soldiers would die in trench warfare, where attacks were suicidal, and defenses strong (at least on the Western front). In the east, between the Central Powers and Russia, battles were more mobilized and fronts moved back and forth by large amounts. Initially, Austria-Hungary fared poorly. Germany began to win a series of victories against the Russian army, and soon pushed the front deeper into Russian territory, and by 1917, the once mighty Russian Empire began to crumble.
Even so, on the Western front Germany ground to a halt in the face of stiff French resistance. With the entry into the war of the United States, the Entente powers (now excluding Russia after the treaty of Brest-Litovsk) were victorious. An exhausted Germany came to terms, where they accepted full responsibility for the war (the war guilt clause) lost a chunk of their territory to France, and newly created Poland, Lithuania and Czechoslovakia, and saw their allies, the Ottoman Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, carved up into small states and colonial possessions of the victorious Entenete powers. Brest-Litovsk was revoked, and Germany's last Emperor, Kaiser Whilhelm II, abdicated. Germany became a Republic. The League of Nations was created to try and curb aggressive wars and ensure war did not break out on the continent again.
However, this was not to be so. The Treaty of Versailles in 1919 would inevitably lead to a new war just 20 years later, one that was much more brutal, and with casualties many times large than WWI. In the east, the new small states created at Versailles - Hungary, Austria, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and the Baltic states, all suffered from massive internal divisions based on ethnic and religious minorities, and external issues derived from border disputes with their neighbours. This fertile ground led the way to a rise of nationalist governments in Central and Eastern Europe in the decades between wars. One by one, due to internal and external pressures, these states would all fall to authoritarian regimes as the weakness of their own democratic societies became evident, and external support from Entente powers evaporated. In Russia, a civil war raged which would claim many millions of lives - more than Russian losses in WWI. The victors that emerged were the Soviets - communist rebels with a radical vision for change in Russia. In Germany, the nascent Weimar Republic began to struggle with internal political divisions, and external hostility from Western powers. France in particular looked on warily at Germany, and harshly enacted retribution on the German state through economic concessions, and outright occupation of the Saarland and Rhineland - the industrial heartlands of Germany.
Fascism, however, came to the fore not in the defeated East, but in victorious Italy. Italy had joined the Entente at the prospect of territorial concessions from its rival, the Austro-Hungarians. However, Italian troops had not fared well in the war, and Italy had gained little outside of South Tyrol territoriality. The newly created Yugoslavian state had territory in Fiume, Trieste and the Dalmatian coast that Italy had coveted, and a growing nationalistic movement was gaining ground. The Italian government was dysfunctional, and a series of political scandals soon turned popular opinion toward a stronger authoritarian structure. Bentio Mussolini, leader of the Italian Fascists, led a march on Rome and was able to take power largely with the acquiescence of most Italian citizens. The Fascist movement in Italy became a beacon for other authoritarian idealists in Europe, as fledgling democracies struggled for legitimacy and political unrest was the norm on the continent.
Nationalistic governments often took ideas from Italy, but most remained nationalistic and authoritarian, looking to uphold the conservative status quo as opposed to radically altering society, as the Fascists wish. Germany fell to the Nazi's - radical fascists under the rule of Adolf Hitler. Most other states, however, went for a more nationalistic authoritarianism. Kershaw closely examines the differences in regimes that ruled Europe in between the wars, and the results are a fascinating and in depth analysis and comparison of regime ideologies, objectives and policy initiatives. Germany and the Soviet Union both had radical ideas about reforming their states, both operated under a charismatic and influential dictator (Hitler and Stalin, respectively) and both had ideas about radically transforming their states along totalitarian lines. Stalin's Russia came closest to enacting these ideals. Kershaw notes that the Communist Party in Russia held ultimate power, and was able to enact far reaching changes that affected the lives of tens of millions of people. Many would starve to death under forced collectivisation, and many more were purged from the party under Stalin's brutal police force. Stalin espoused loyalty to the state and party above all, and compliance was forced. People were afraid to think, and those acting out of turn were brutally punished with forced exile or execution.
In Germany, by contrast, many people initially supported Hitler's regime. Although minorities and those considered "degenerate" to society were targeted, the average German citizen did not live in abject fear of arbitrary arrest and execution. Hitler's radical views of society were primarily racial, and focused on ideas of eugenics, "biological hygiene" and political order. Many political prisoners were targeted - especially from the Socialist and Communist Left, but after years of political instability and street violence during the Weimar years, most German citizens were indifferent or even supportive of Hitler's crackdown. Religious and racial minorities were targeted (especially Jews). Hitler's Germany was political totalitarian in a similar fashion to Soviet Russia, but public support was more widespread in Germany that in Russia. Russian citizens were loyal through fear and respect for Stalin. German citizens were loyal due to past political instability and the hope for a peaceful and ordered future.
Kershaw also examines Italy, the only state that explicitly stated its desire for totalitarianism, but the one which was least able to attain it. Italian's were largely accepting of Mussolini - especially after the Lateran Pacts of 1929, and the annexation of Ethiopia in 1935. However, Mussolini's Italy had great difficulty economically, and was unable to match the radical successes in Germany and Russia during their industrialization moves and their radical transformation of the respective economic spheres. Germany rapidly rearmed in this time period, and this drove economic growth to dizzying heights. Italy, by contrast, suffered from economic malaise and had great difficulty in rearming.
The road to war again became clear through primarily German aggression. The Nazi's rapidly rearmed at a time when the Western powers were suffering from economic depression. The Rhineland was reoccupied - breaching the Treaty of Versailles. The Saarland was reincorporated into the Reich. Austria - suffering from political chaos, was joined to Germany. The final nail in the coffin was the destruction of Czechoslovakia. In a drive to appease Germany and avoid war, Britain and France had allowed Germany to regain territory ceded after WWI - the Sudetenland - largely populated by Germans. After this, Nazi forces had entered Czechoslovakia and forced the state to submit as a "Protectorate." This forced Western powers to guarantee the independence of Poland - Hitlers next target. When Poland refused Germany the annexation of Danzig (a German city under League of Nations mandate), Germany entered Poland, and WWII began.
Kershaw walks us through the war and its aftermath - the destruction of millions of innocent civilians in Eastern Europe, the targeting of Jews for genocide by Hitler, the crushing of Germany and its division between the West and Russia, and the fall of the Iron Curtain - zone of influence between the West and East. Kershaw walks through the war, and the radical ideologies of its belligerents, as well as the response from Western leaders. The fall of Germany and the rise of Cold War ideology between a Western Europe dominated by the United States, and an Eastern Europe dominated by the Soviet Union is examined. The terrible war and its large human cost, as well as the aftermath, is examined in detail. The book ends in 1949, setting up a sequel that Kershaw is writing on the years following, focusing more on the Cold War, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the rise of European Union politics in Europe.
Kershaw has written a fascinating and in depth analysis of this 35 year period of history, which radically altered Europe and the world as we know it. Competing aristocracies and monarchies gave way to an ideological war between Democracy, Fascism and Communism, with Fascism eventually crushed between the other two ideologies. Europe spent 35 years in flames of war, political upheaval and ideological and ethnic violence that cost the lives of possibly a hundred million people. Hundreds of years old Empires crumbled, colonial empires fell, and whole swathes of peoples were eliminated in pogroms, and in state sponsored genocidal policies. This is a brutal period in history, and Kershaw has done a wonderful job chronicling the vast political, social and economic factors that described this period in time. This is a masterful work of history, and one that should not be missed by those interested in modern European history. Highly recommended for history buffs.
February 24, 2019
We’re at Book 8 in the series by now (I managed to read 6 in 2018 in the end – The book covering the Renaissance period not due out until later this month) so including this one I have 3 books left on my journey/Quest.
The book follows the usual format of maps (at critical junctures during the period) as well as a list of illustrations. The chapters are chronological which for this shorter period makes sense (the prior books written by topic covering whole eras) & again broken down into sections. At the rear you have a bibliography & Index, the timeline that was present in early books is absent.
Short review - 3.5 stars overall for me, a solid History read for sure with detail aplenty but not overloaded with trivial facts/figures as some have done in the series. Despite already being familiar with the period I still learnt a fair bit on some subjects however in other areas I did want more information as I felt it sparse on detail as the author mostly gave the pertinent information, a difficult juggling act I know but i would say if you don’t know this period of history the narrative is spot-on. The downside was the lack of personnel stories which for the period was a surprise, I expected the narrative to be awash with them & for me a real omission. I also felt more social history could have been covered although I appreciate the two world wars & their causes would be front & centre of any narrative for the period.
As to the series i’m taking a break as the book covering the renaissance period is still not out & i have no real desire to read onwards from 1949 to 2017 which covers the final period, also written by this author.
It’s been quite a mixed bag overall, some books I would highly rate in the series whilst others have been a real drag but it’s been a good challenge & one that took me 2 months longer than envisaged.
Longer review by chapter giving content......
Chapter 1 is titled with “On the Brink” & starts with “The Golden Age?” as the opening section. It’s a whirlwind tour of Europe & the state of play in the years leading upto 1914 which in reality you would be better served reading the prior book in the series as this is VERY surmised & almost has a disjointed/abbreviated feel to the writing, it also doesn’t include many references or point of facts. Whereas the section “Slithering to war?” is a very detailed blow by blow account of how the great powers slithered towards the inevitability of war through 1914 as seen by all the major empires citing detail, dates etc
Onwards to Chapter 2 with “The Great disaster” where the war in it’s entirety is surmised into the concise opening section “ The tragedy unfolds” giving an overlay of the prominent campaigns & major battles. The casualty lists are truly horrendous compared to what has occurred in prior wars. There are no personnel stories included in the narrative which is a disappointment & summit I had enjoyed in the series when rationed, all we have is the synopsis which if yer not aware of the events of the Great War is fine.
The next section “Living through the war” relays one or two snippets from letters although the author makes a qualifying statement that many letters written at the time had to pass censor plus letters written didn’t want to convey the horror of war to their loved ones, he also makes the valid point that literature written post war doesn’t necessarily convey the emotion/psychology of the time/event accurately as over time memories distort or can even be altered (real or subconsciously) to reflect what is currently in vogue/popular belief/political dogma. Along with memoirs/letters the section tells of morale both at the front & at home & the varying difference between the Western & Eastern front in terms of desertion/rebellion. Stories about the plight of the Jewish population in the East are retold along with those that hoped for the creation of their own homeland, like the Poles..... all set to the background of the Great War.
“The state under pressure” gives the story a more political edge & tells the reader of the major upheavals for each empire during the war, it features mainly on the central & Eastern Powers with minimal about France & Britain who seemed to remain fairly unaffected. The Germans too were mostly unaffected as all political parties aligned to the war effort until the later stages of the war where wide scale revolt (instigated from the left), after the failure of the Spring offensive (1918), caused open revolt & lead to numerous desertions & surrender finally over throwing the Kaiser’s regime & declaring a democratic republic which sued for peace. The Russian revolution is covered where the peoples of Russia went through a similar overthrow of an autocratic regime to end the war. Austro-Hungary sees the Habsburgs relinquish the throne which results in the formation of many nation states within the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, the same too occurs with the Ottoman Empire throughout the Balkans & the Middle East after a disastrous war for them. Italy also sees political change as the Fascists rise from the embers of war. It’s a time of major upheaval throughout central Europe & the Balkans created on the back of Bolshevism & nationalist fervour. A satisfying read throughout the chapter albeit brief, its a good synopsis for someone not familiar with the events of the era.
With Chapter 3 we start with the peace after the war? “The turbulent peace” being its challenging title with an opening section called “Lands fit for heroes?” The war dead are detailed by country, demobilisation effects on the populous, ruination of economies, landscapes laid waste by war, the suffering/hardship of the returning soldiers be it due to physical handicap or mental trauma, starvation..... all subjects touched upon across the nations of Europe, some in worse states than others depending on where the front lines were. “Champions of Counter-revolution” touches upon the continuation of war across many countries, such as the British in Ireland (Black & Tans) followed by the civil war, The Greek & Turks fighting over territories leading to the eventual “repatriation” of around a million Greeks from Turkey, the expulsion of Bolshevism from central & eastern European countries as they find their new nations under threat from day 1, in Germany we learn of the rise of the Freikorps to combat the communists. Out of this comes an association of Jews with Bolshevism which ferments across the Central/eastern countries leading to Jews being targeted/blamed. The next section tells of Russia’s path through “Bolshevism triumphant” including stories from the civil war versus the whites as well as the revolution in a rather short section. Whilst the new states formed out of the war are introduced through “The great carve-up”, there further stories told through “Fragile democracy” which gives us a whistle stop tour of jus about every European country post war who for the vast majority have excepted democracy over their existing (pre-war) monarchies & autocracies albeit they’ve had to fight off communism or nationalism along the way.... with only Hungary (Bolshevik state briefly before it was overthrown) & Italy (Fascism) being the exceptions. Italy has a section to herself “fascism victorious” which relays how Mussolini & his blackshirts came to power, the landscape is laid out & the rise of the fascists is talked about in general terms. The chapter concludes with “Democracy prevails in Germany” which it does so by putting down a number of putsches with the army remaining behind the fragile elected government despite the communist/socialist threat & the rise of nationalism in the early 1920’s.
The post-war era sees conflict continuing & this chapter (it takes us to 1924) gives a mere snapshot, for instance when they talk of Ireland, Michael Collins isn’t even mentioned..... it really is a whirlwind of the post war climate, too short for my observation, I would like to have read more on the subject matter by country as it was a period of great upheaval for the continent. I would like to have read more personal experiences in amongst the narrative but there were none which seems so far to the overall style of the writer.
Chapter 4 is aptly named “Dancing on the Volcano” which takes us through the 20’s often known as the Golden years in Germany, the Roaring Twenties to the rest of us, however it would seem it didn’t apply to all nations with the more agrarian based countries experiencing little capital growth compared to the more industrialised focused countries like France & Germany. Standards of living generally improved, there was food to eat, hyper inflation was brought under control, millions flocked to urban areas & most bought into an optimistic future during the “boom” years which the first section is titled. Meanwhile in Russia we have communism opposing the capitalist dogma of the rest of Europe & the early years sees an improvement in agrarian output & a rise in living standards compared to that of 1913 Russia...... however an internal power struggle is happening within the Bolshevik hierarchy over there varying economic strategies which is played out through the mid-late 20’s leaving Stalin as the supreme leader who then implements his first 5 year plan which aims at giving high industrial output for the Soviets, the flip side is that agriculture suffers & millions die of starvation during the period, reputedly 3.3Million alone in the Ukraine region. “The cultural mirror” talks of the arts, first through art & literature the most common medium of the early post war years leading onto film/cinema which exploded onto the scene with the advent of “talkies” as well as music both imported from America in the most, the chapter for the most part focuses on German cultural icons of the era talking around the avant garde movement. Its a short chapter with jus two more sections “bright prospects?” & “faltering democracies” which again take us on a whirlwind tour of all the nation states before finishing with the surge in popularity in Germany of the Nazis party. The majority of the East of Europe falling back into autocracies due to too many parties / factions within the infant democracies to hold together for more than a few months, Yugoslavia & Poland being examples of newly formed nations with multiple ethnicities to contend with that followed that path.
Chapter 5 is called “gathering Shadows” & sees us in the early 30’s with the grip of the depression firmly entrenched across Europe. We started chapter 4 with a section called Boom, this time it’s “Bust” (Actually it’s “Slump” – I prefer my title!) where America’s depression has seen devaluation in all currencies, mass unemployment especially in the areas of heavy industry, governments turning back to autocracy with only the democracies in North-West Europe surviving, starvation & poverty abound across the continent, even Eugenics raises it’s head as a result of the depression & a ways to curtail (sterilise certain members of society) the population which was brought into law in Scandinavia & in Germany (1932) before being taken to another level after the Nazis got into power. “The worst possible outcome” focuses on events in Germany through to Hitler becoming the Fuhrer after Von Hindenburg’s death giving an overview of his rise to being a dictator. “Routes to economic recovery” follows which as usual takes us on a whirlwind tour of all the European powers illustrating each ones solutions with some recovering quicker than others, it’s mostly so far a chapter of names, dates & important events, again its devoid of any human experiences or touch of the period. The chapter ends giving a summary of the 16 states that are ruled by autocracy or Fascism on the eve of war the majority being countries formed out of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire with the democracies left being countries that were neutral or on the victorious side in WWI.
Chapter 6 is called “The Danger Zone” starting with “The international order crumbles” which in effect tells of the story of how Britain & France stood aside as the leading states within the League of Nations & did nothing as Japan invaded Manchuria & Italy Abyssinia emboldening Hitler’s Germany to re-arm & finally march into the Rhineland (which was a demilitarised zone established after the treaty of Versailles). The section gives good detail & insight into the political machinations of the era letting the reader see how events unfolded & questions that without appeasement shown from Britain during the early-mid 1930’s there could have been a different outcome to war. The (non) actions of the league are also laid out as are the democracies (that are left) in Europe. With the democracies taken care of the author moves onto the dictatorships splitting them into reactionary & dynamic type, the dynamic types being “The Big Three” who get a section each to themselves whilst the reactionary dictatorships of Poland, Estonia, Greece, Hungary & even Portugal are detailed in one section by paragraph, many following a monarchical path than one of fascism, the common theme of those countries being to keep communism/fascism at bay. Again the little people aren’t covered & the focus is on the dictators themselves, their policies & reign of terrors they imposed. My review on the chapter is fairly Spartan which in essence is what I feel about the information provided within each section, its almost presented like a summary of the facts.
Chapter 7 “Into the Abyss” starts with a sub-chapter called “The defeat of the left” which covers sections about the “fall of the left in France” & “The Spanish Cauldron” the later being self-explanatory whilst the prior lays out what is perceived to be the final attempt at the socialists/communists to gain accent within the Western democracies of the time. Its something I’d never encountered before about France & fills in some of the gaps in going some ways to explaining how Vichy France came into effect later. The Spanish Civil war narrative outlines the salient points succinctly; again no personnel touches or stories are relayed about the turbulent time which is a real remiss in my book. The next sub heading is “The arms race” where it would seem everyone but Hitler is putting their money into rearmament, mind, it’s hard for democracies to do so when they have to keep their people happy, an autocratic state like Germany had no such ideals. Then there’s the disaster which was Russia after all the purges of the late 1930’s...... “Hawks & doves” is jus that, it tells of Hitler’s aggression in the face of the Western democracies appeasement, it’s painful reading but there again we have hindsight on our side, even so with different leaders in the West, things may have played out a lot differently? We finish the chapter with “The last Rites of Peace” which leads us through the final two years of 38/39 centring mainly on the fall of Czechoslovakia & the plight of the Poles with the Danzig corridor being the Nazis objective (premise for war with Poland).
Chapter 8 is “Hell on Earth” and covers the entire second world war in a mere 10 pages, it really is a summarised version of events giving only details at campaign level. The subsequent sections tell of the horrors & brutality through the peoples/regions of warfare which features heavily on the Jews, the Poles & the Russians but also tells of the atrocities in Croatia, Romania & the Baltic states. The war in the East & West is split where the East is based on Nationalistic fervour & ethnicity as opposed to a conventional war fought on the Western & North African fronts. “The bottomless pit of humanity” goes deeper & covers German ideology & the subsequent atrocities starting in Poland with the “removal” of the intelligentsia/opposition to the Nazis. Actions in Yugoslavia are briefly covered which don’t often get a mention but was a very brutal theatre/occupation during WWII with the Croatian Pavelic being particularly evil/insane in his dealings. The real genocide starts with the launch of operation Barbarossa in 1941 where slaughter starts on an unprecedented scale with death among civilians far outweighing that of combatants, Soviet prisoners being mostly starved/worked to death after capture in the early part of the war. The Holocaust also features in this section from the early days of Poland through to the “final solution” and the death camps. In all it makes for hard reading but is mostly factual timelines interjected with only a few personnel stories. “Hell on Earth’s many meanings” is a sub chapter which begins with “fighting troops” where we at last begin to read of some of the personnel stories, which the read has been lacking somewhat, starting with home letters/diaries from ardent Nazis either justifying actions or simply turning a blind eye, apparently there is evidence of only a 100 or so German soldiers who actually intervened in saving lives, one such being Wilm Hosenfeld who helped save the life of the Pianist Wladislaw Szpilman, whose story was retold by the film “The Pianist” (which is exceptional for those who’ve not seen it). All the combatants are covered, with the focus being mostly on morale & ideologies for fighting where perhaps not surprisingly it’s the Germans & Russians who come out with the strongest motives to fight compared to the Italians & Romanians who had little will/reason to fight, often laying down their arms without a shot being fired. “Home front” is the next title in the sub-chapter & due to the nature of the war in the East (conflict was throughout) talks mostly of the Western theatre being the Home Front at first but does conversely describe the phenomenon throughout Europe come the end. It even describes the situation in the neutral countries which varied from nation to nation for example the Swiss allowed Germans to continue banking & trading with them whilst the Swedes exported iron Ore to the Germans in return for coal, Eire allowed the British to repair ships in Irish harbours whilst the Spanish refuelled German U-Boats..... many more examples are given of each countries bending of the word “neutrality”. Occupation & resistance is talked about, with examples given (but without individual experiences) along with the civil wars that fostered come wars end in countries like Italy & Greece which aren’t often mentioned alongside Yugoslavia under General Tito being the more obvious example. Each minor as well as major country is discussed giving a flavour of each nations position during the war. “The final solution of the Jewish Question” is revisited again as we run through the occupied western European countries, we also explore Vichy France which isn’t often discussed, finally Germany where even the Germans tried to portray themselves as “victims” of the war as the Red Army was unleashed on them in the final months on German soil..... Boo Hoo says I, the author contents himself with mentioning that they forget how many millions cheered Hitler on at the numerous rallies in the 30’s.....
Chapter 9 welcomes us with “Quiet transitions in the dark decades” & explores the social-economics of the era overall, broken into different spheres which cover aspects like Birth rates, Death rates, industrial capacity, immigration, GDP, State intervention ie the Welfare state, the church & it’s influence (decline) which covers a section of only about 20 pages, a far reduction in it’s impact on our lives than in prior eras (one of the books in the series devoting about 50% to church/religion), the Catholic church/Pope’s reaction to the Jewish solution is also a telling part in the narrative where it would appear that at ground roots level they did far more to help the Jews (hide them) than decry what was happening at a political level, to say the pope turned a blind eye may not be far wide of the truth.
Cut short.............
The book follows the usual format of maps (at critical junctures during the period) as well as a list of illustrations. The chapters are chronological which for this shorter period makes sense (the prior books written by topic covering whole eras) & again broken down into sections. At the rear you have a bibliography & Index, the timeline that was present in early books is absent.
Short review - 3.5 stars overall for me, a solid History read for sure with detail aplenty but not overloaded with trivial facts/figures as some have done in the series. Despite already being familiar with the period I still learnt a fair bit on some subjects however in other areas I did want more information as I felt it sparse on detail as the author mostly gave the pertinent information, a difficult juggling act I know but i would say if you don’t know this period of history the narrative is spot-on. The downside was the lack of personnel stories which for the period was a surprise, I expected the narrative to be awash with them & for me a real omission. I also felt more social history could have been covered although I appreciate the two world wars & their causes would be front & centre of any narrative for the period.
As to the series i’m taking a break as the book covering the renaissance period is still not out & i have no real desire to read onwards from 1949 to 2017 which covers the final period, also written by this author.
It’s been quite a mixed bag overall, some books I would highly rate in the series whilst others have been a real drag but it’s been a good challenge & one that took me 2 months longer than envisaged.
Longer review by chapter giving content......
Chapter 1 is titled with “On the Brink” & starts with “The Golden Age?” as the opening section. It’s a whirlwind tour of Europe & the state of play in the years leading upto 1914 which in reality you would be better served reading the prior book in the series as this is VERY surmised & almost has a disjointed/abbreviated feel to the writing, it also doesn’t include many references or point of facts. Whereas the section “Slithering to war?” is a very detailed blow by blow account of how the great powers slithered towards the inevitability of war through 1914 as seen by all the major empires citing detail, dates etc
Onwards to Chapter 2 with “The Great disaster” where the war in it’s entirety is surmised into the concise opening section “ The tragedy unfolds” giving an overlay of the prominent campaigns & major battles. The casualty lists are truly horrendous compared to what has occurred in prior wars. There are no personnel stories included in the narrative which is a disappointment & summit I had enjoyed in the series when rationed, all we have is the synopsis which if yer not aware of the events of the Great War is fine.
The next section “Living through the war” relays one or two snippets from letters although the author makes a qualifying statement that many letters written at the time had to pass censor plus letters written didn’t want to convey the horror of war to their loved ones, he also makes the valid point that literature written post war doesn’t necessarily convey the emotion/psychology of the time/event accurately as over time memories distort or can even be altered (real or subconsciously) to reflect what is currently in vogue/popular belief/political dogma. Along with memoirs/letters the section tells of morale both at the front & at home & the varying difference between the Western & Eastern front in terms of desertion/rebellion. Stories about the plight of the Jewish population in the East are retold along with those that hoped for the creation of their own homeland, like the Poles..... all set to the background of the Great War.
“The state under pressure” gives the story a more political edge & tells the reader of the major upheavals for each empire during the war, it features mainly on the central & Eastern Powers with minimal about France & Britain who seemed to remain fairly unaffected. The Germans too were mostly unaffected as all political parties aligned to the war effort until the later stages of the war where wide scale revolt (instigated from the left), after the failure of the Spring offensive (1918), caused open revolt & lead to numerous desertions & surrender finally over throwing the Kaiser’s regime & declaring a democratic republic which sued for peace. The Russian revolution is covered where the peoples of Russia went through a similar overthrow of an autocratic regime to end the war. Austro-Hungary sees the Habsburgs relinquish the throne which results in the formation of many nation states within the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, the same too occurs with the Ottoman Empire throughout the Balkans & the Middle East after a disastrous war for them. Italy also sees political change as the Fascists rise from the embers of war. It’s a time of major upheaval throughout central Europe & the Balkans created on the back of Bolshevism & nationalist fervour. A satisfying read throughout the chapter albeit brief, its a good synopsis for someone not familiar with the events of the era.
With Chapter 3 we start with the peace after the war? “The turbulent peace” being its challenging title with an opening section called “Lands fit for heroes?” The war dead are detailed by country, demobilisation effects on the populous, ruination of economies, landscapes laid waste by war, the suffering/hardship of the returning soldiers be it due to physical handicap or mental trauma, starvation..... all subjects touched upon across the nations of Europe, some in worse states than others depending on where the front lines were. “Champions of Counter-revolution” touches upon the continuation of war across many countries, such as the British in Ireland (Black & Tans) followed by the civil war, The Greek & Turks fighting over territories leading to the eventual “repatriation” of around a million Greeks from Turkey, the expulsion of Bolshevism from central & eastern European countries as they find their new nations under threat from day 1, in Germany we learn of the rise of the Freikorps to combat the communists. Out of this comes an association of Jews with Bolshevism which ferments across the Central/eastern countries leading to Jews being targeted/blamed. The next section tells of Russia’s path through “Bolshevism triumphant” including stories from the civil war versus the whites as well as the revolution in a rather short section. Whilst the new states formed out of the war are introduced through “The great carve-up”, there further stories told through “Fragile democracy” which gives us a whistle stop tour of jus about every European country post war who for the vast majority have excepted democracy over their existing (pre-war) monarchies & autocracies albeit they’ve had to fight off communism or nationalism along the way.... with only Hungary (Bolshevik state briefly before it was overthrown) & Italy (Fascism) being the exceptions. Italy has a section to herself “fascism victorious” which relays how Mussolini & his blackshirts came to power, the landscape is laid out & the rise of the fascists is talked about in general terms. The chapter concludes with “Democracy prevails in Germany” which it does so by putting down a number of putsches with the army remaining behind the fragile elected government despite the communist/socialist threat & the rise of nationalism in the early 1920’s.
The post-war era sees conflict continuing & this chapter (it takes us to 1924) gives a mere snapshot, for instance when they talk of Ireland, Michael Collins isn’t even mentioned..... it really is a whirlwind of the post war climate, too short for my observation, I would like to have read more on the subject matter by country as it was a period of great upheaval for the continent. I would like to have read more personal experiences in amongst the narrative but there were none which seems so far to the overall style of the writer.
Chapter 4 is aptly named “Dancing on the Volcano” which takes us through the 20’s often known as the Golden years in Germany, the Roaring Twenties to the rest of us, however it would seem it didn’t apply to all nations with the more agrarian based countries experiencing little capital growth compared to the more industrialised focused countries like France & Germany. Standards of living generally improved, there was food to eat, hyper inflation was brought under control, millions flocked to urban areas & most bought into an optimistic future during the “boom” years which the first section is titled. Meanwhile in Russia we have communism opposing the capitalist dogma of the rest of Europe & the early years sees an improvement in agrarian output & a rise in living standards compared to that of 1913 Russia...... however an internal power struggle is happening within the Bolshevik hierarchy over there varying economic strategies which is played out through the mid-late 20’s leaving Stalin as the supreme leader who then implements his first 5 year plan which aims at giving high industrial output for the Soviets, the flip side is that agriculture suffers & millions die of starvation during the period, reputedly 3.3Million alone in the Ukraine region. “The cultural mirror” talks of the arts, first through art & literature the most common medium of the early post war years leading onto film/cinema which exploded onto the scene with the advent of “talkies” as well as music both imported from America in the most, the chapter for the most part focuses on German cultural icons of the era talking around the avant garde movement. Its a short chapter with jus two more sections “bright prospects?” & “faltering democracies” which again take us on a whirlwind tour of all the nation states before finishing with the surge in popularity in Germany of the Nazis party. The majority of the East of Europe falling back into autocracies due to too many parties / factions within the infant democracies to hold together for more than a few months, Yugoslavia & Poland being examples of newly formed nations with multiple ethnicities to contend with that followed that path.
Chapter 5 is called “gathering Shadows” & sees us in the early 30’s with the grip of the depression firmly entrenched across Europe. We started chapter 4 with a section called Boom, this time it’s “Bust” (Actually it’s “Slump” – I prefer my title!) where America’s depression has seen devaluation in all currencies, mass unemployment especially in the areas of heavy industry, governments turning back to autocracy with only the democracies in North-West Europe surviving, starvation & poverty abound across the continent, even Eugenics raises it’s head as a result of the depression & a ways to curtail (sterilise certain members of society) the population which was brought into law in Scandinavia & in Germany (1932) before being taken to another level after the Nazis got into power. “The worst possible outcome” focuses on events in Germany through to Hitler becoming the Fuhrer after Von Hindenburg’s death giving an overview of his rise to being a dictator. “Routes to economic recovery” follows which as usual takes us on a whirlwind tour of all the European powers illustrating each ones solutions with some recovering quicker than others, it’s mostly so far a chapter of names, dates & important events, again its devoid of any human experiences or touch of the period. The chapter ends giving a summary of the 16 states that are ruled by autocracy or Fascism on the eve of war the majority being countries formed out of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire with the democracies left being countries that were neutral or on the victorious side in WWI.
Chapter 6 is called “The Danger Zone” starting with “The international order crumbles” which in effect tells of the story of how Britain & France stood aside as the leading states within the League of Nations & did nothing as Japan invaded Manchuria & Italy Abyssinia emboldening Hitler’s Germany to re-arm & finally march into the Rhineland (which was a demilitarised zone established after the treaty of Versailles). The section gives good detail & insight into the political machinations of the era letting the reader see how events unfolded & questions that without appeasement shown from Britain during the early-mid 1930’s there could have been a different outcome to war. The (non) actions of the league are also laid out as are the democracies (that are left) in Europe. With the democracies taken care of the author moves onto the dictatorships splitting them into reactionary & dynamic type, the dynamic types being “The Big Three” who get a section each to themselves whilst the reactionary dictatorships of Poland, Estonia, Greece, Hungary & even Portugal are detailed in one section by paragraph, many following a monarchical path than one of fascism, the common theme of those countries being to keep communism/fascism at bay. Again the little people aren’t covered & the focus is on the dictators themselves, their policies & reign of terrors they imposed. My review on the chapter is fairly Spartan which in essence is what I feel about the information provided within each section, its almost presented like a summary of the facts.
Chapter 7 “Into the Abyss” starts with a sub-chapter called “The defeat of the left” which covers sections about the “fall of the left in France” & “The Spanish Cauldron” the later being self-explanatory whilst the prior lays out what is perceived to be the final attempt at the socialists/communists to gain accent within the Western democracies of the time. Its something I’d never encountered before about France & fills in some of the gaps in going some ways to explaining how Vichy France came into effect later. The Spanish Civil war narrative outlines the salient points succinctly; again no personnel touches or stories are relayed about the turbulent time which is a real remiss in my book. The next sub heading is “The arms race” where it would seem everyone but Hitler is putting their money into rearmament, mind, it’s hard for democracies to do so when they have to keep their people happy, an autocratic state like Germany had no such ideals. Then there’s the disaster which was Russia after all the purges of the late 1930’s...... “Hawks & doves” is jus that, it tells of Hitler’s aggression in the face of the Western democracies appeasement, it’s painful reading but there again we have hindsight on our side, even so with different leaders in the West, things may have played out a lot differently? We finish the chapter with “The last Rites of Peace” which leads us through the final two years of 38/39 centring mainly on the fall of Czechoslovakia & the plight of the Poles with the Danzig corridor being the Nazis objective (premise for war with Poland).
Chapter 8 is “Hell on Earth” and covers the entire second world war in a mere 10 pages, it really is a summarised version of events giving only details at campaign level. The subsequent sections tell of the horrors & brutality through the peoples/regions of warfare which features heavily on the Jews, the Poles & the Russians but also tells of the atrocities in Croatia, Romania & the Baltic states. The war in the East & West is split where the East is based on Nationalistic fervour & ethnicity as opposed to a conventional war fought on the Western & North African fronts. “The bottomless pit of humanity” goes deeper & covers German ideology & the subsequent atrocities starting in Poland with the “removal” of the intelligentsia/opposition to the Nazis. Actions in Yugoslavia are briefly covered which don’t often get a mention but was a very brutal theatre/occupation during WWII with the Croatian Pavelic being particularly evil/insane in his dealings. The real genocide starts with the launch of operation Barbarossa in 1941 where slaughter starts on an unprecedented scale with death among civilians far outweighing that of combatants, Soviet prisoners being mostly starved/worked to death after capture in the early part of the war. The Holocaust also features in this section from the early days of Poland through to the “final solution” and the death camps. In all it makes for hard reading but is mostly factual timelines interjected with only a few personnel stories. “Hell on Earth’s many meanings” is a sub chapter which begins with “fighting troops” where we at last begin to read of some of the personnel stories, which the read has been lacking somewhat, starting with home letters/diaries from ardent Nazis either justifying actions or simply turning a blind eye, apparently there is evidence of only a 100 or so German soldiers who actually intervened in saving lives, one such being Wilm Hosenfeld who helped save the life of the Pianist Wladislaw Szpilman, whose story was retold by the film “The Pianist” (which is exceptional for those who’ve not seen it). All the combatants are covered, with the focus being mostly on morale & ideologies for fighting where perhaps not surprisingly it’s the Germans & Russians who come out with the strongest motives to fight compared to the Italians & Romanians who had little will/reason to fight, often laying down their arms without a shot being fired. “Home front” is the next title in the sub-chapter & due to the nature of the war in the East (conflict was throughout) talks mostly of the Western theatre being the Home Front at first but does conversely describe the phenomenon throughout Europe come the end. It even describes the situation in the neutral countries which varied from nation to nation for example the Swiss allowed Germans to continue banking & trading with them whilst the Swedes exported iron Ore to the Germans in return for coal, Eire allowed the British to repair ships in Irish harbours whilst the Spanish refuelled German U-Boats..... many more examples are given of each countries bending of the word “neutrality”. Occupation & resistance is talked about, with examples given (but without individual experiences) along with the civil wars that fostered come wars end in countries like Italy & Greece which aren’t often mentioned alongside Yugoslavia under General Tito being the more obvious example. Each minor as well as major country is discussed giving a flavour of each nations position during the war. “The final solution of the Jewish Question” is revisited again as we run through the occupied western European countries, we also explore Vichy France which isn’t often discussed, finally Germany where even the Germans tried to portray themselves as “victims” of the war as the Red Army was unleashed on them in the final months on German soil..... Boo Hoo says I, the author contents himself with mentioning that they forget how many millions cheered Hitler on at the numerous rallies in the 30’s.....
Chapter 9 welcomes us with “Quiet transitions in the dark decades” & explores the social-economics of the era overall, broken into different spheres which cover aspects like Birth rates, Death rates, industrial capacity, immigration, GDP, State intervention ie the Welfare state, the church & it’s influence (decline) which covers a section of only about 20 pages, a far reduction in it’s impact on our lives than in prior eras (one of the books in the series devoting about 50% to church/religion), the Catholic church/Pope’s reaction to the Jewish solution is also a telling part in the narrative where it would appear that at ground roots level they did far more to help the Jews (hide them) than decry what was happening at a political level, to say the pope turned a blind eye may not be far wide of the truth.
Cut short.............
July 11, 2019
Europe’s Close Shave
I actually wanted to make Ian Kershaw’s To Hell and Back. Europe 1914 – 1949 one of my holiday reads, and knowing that it takes me quite a while to get through a history book of that length and that I am often intrigued with fictional books that tear me away from large monographs, making their perusal an on-and-off-enterprise, I started two weeks before my actual holidays. And what shall I say but this: Kershaw’s book proved so riveting and fascinating an experience that I even neglected my weekly dose of Dickens in order to find enough time to go on reading about the first half of the 20th century in Europe. It’s been a long time since a work of non-fiction has had such a masterful hold over my attention and interest.
This may be for different reasons, the major one probably being that the history of the 19th and 20th centuries in particular has always been a hobby-horse of mine and that I was moving in a fairly familiar landscape, which meant that I was able to read at a good pace, carrying knowledge in my backpack that enabled me to know my bearings, and yet learning lots of new things at the same time. A second reason is undoubtedly Kershaw’s way of presenting the history of Europe in readable and unstilted prose, which is not just a matter of style but also of the ability to strike a perfect balance between narration and the inclusion of detail on the one hand, and the analysis of structures and larger-scale developments on the other. Unlike some historians, Kershaw always steers clear of amassing piles of details, thus straining both the reader’s patience and memory, while at the same time he collects enough of it in order to illustrate what he makes out to be the major causes of Europe’s tragedy in the first half of the 20th century. In his introductory chapter, he identifies four factors whose coaction paved the baleful path for Europe, ensuring that the Great War of 1914 – 1918 was to be followed by an even more murderous and barbarous conflagration that called into question Europe’s heritage of the Enlightenment and of humanism. The first of these factors is the emerge of an ethnic-racist type of nationalism, especially after the First World War; this kind of nationalism was enhanced by and also gave encouragement to broad feelings of territorial revisionism, especially but not only in Central and Eastern Europe, to which the end of the First World War gave additional fuel. Another component was the intensification of class conflict, which also got an international dimension through the rise of the Soviet regime after a particularly fierce civil war. Last but not least, the economic crisis, which was even aggravated by the fact that every nation tried to find its own way out of the predicament instead of trusting to cooperation, played its part in destabilizing the already brittle European post-war map, intensifying the lures of fascism and suggesting to many people that traditional liberal democracies were unable to deal with problems of such a vast scale.
Kershaw says that while his own research centred on the Third Reich, he mainly depended on other historians’ work with regard to other fields he covers in his book, and this is probably also one reason why the view on Germany seems to be the predominant perspective for much of this first volume, although, all in all, the author’s perspective is remarkably well-balanced and wide. I learnt, for instance, a lot about the Spanish Civil War here. The other reason why Germany is one of the main actors on Kershaw’s stage is, of course, obvious, given the deleterious role Germany played after the First World War since it was particularly (although not exclusively) in this country that the four developments singled out by Kershaw were festering most violently.
How then could the maelstrom of violence and large-scale annihilation of human lives be pacified? This is, indeed, the foremost question readers of this book might keep asking themselves as they go from chapter to chapter. At the end of his book, Kershaw suggests certain reasons why the end of the Second World War, instead of providing a hotbed for hatred, division, rancour and revisionism, actually provided the basis for a long period of stability and wealth, although at the cost of states in Central and Eastern Europe which, having barely escaped from Nazi occupation, now fell into the ruthless sway of Soviet dominion. One of the reasons is definitely that Germany, as the country in which the four factors – an aggressive nationalism, geographical revisionism, fierce class struggles and the impact of the economic crisis that seemed to call into question the survival of capitalism itself – were extremely virulent and which at the same time had the potential (economically, technologically and militarily) to pose a threat to international peace, [1] went through a total breakdown instead of simply being weakened but not crushed, like in 1918. Another reason is the fact that the Second World War made short work of the Great Power status of even Britain and France, who were on the side of the victors but were in debt up to their ears, which, for instance, led to first measures to grant independence to some of their overseas possessions by the British. Only the U.S. and the Soviet Union were left as big powers, and their spheres of interest now met in Europe, from whose two sides of the Iron Curtain they would soon start glowering at each other. What came of the Cold War, will be the subject of Kershaw’s second part of this history of Europe.
All that is left for me to say here is that Kershaw wrote an impressive and convincing history of the first half of the 20th century in To Hell and Back, and that no one interested in modern history should miss reading this book!
[1] Kershaw points out more often than once that all the other states in which fascist or out-and-out right-wing regimes came to replace liberal democracies lacked the power to threaten peace and stability outside their own borders.
I actually wanted to make Ian Kershaw’s To Hell and Back. Europe 1914 – 1949 one of my holiday reads, and knowing that it takes me quite a while to get through a history book of that length and that I am often intrigued with fictional books that tear me away from large monographs, making their perusal an on-and-off-enterprise, I started two weeks before my actual holidays. And what shall I say but this: Kershaw’s book proved so riveting and fascinating an experience that I even neglected my weekly dose of Dickens in order to find enough time to go on reading about the first half of the 20th century in Europe. It’s been a long time since a work of non-fiction has had such a masterful hold over my attention and interest.
This may be for different reasons, the major one probably being that the history of the 19th and 20th centuries in particular has always been a hobby-horse of mine and that I was moving in a fairly familiar landscape, which meant that I was able to read at a good pace, carrying knowledge in my backpack that enabled me to know my bearings, and yet learning lots of new things at the same time. A second reason is undoubtedly Kershaw’s way of presenting the history of Europe in readable and unstilted prose, which is not just a matter of style but also of the ability to strike a perfect balance between narration and the inclusion of detail on the one hand, and the analysis of structures and larger-scale developments on the other. Unlike some historians, Kershaw always steers clear of amassing piles of details, thus straining both the reader’s patience and memory, while at the same time he collects enough of it in order to illustrate what he makes out to be the major causes of Europe’s tragedy in the first half of the 20th century. In his introductory chapter, he identifies four factors whose coaction paved the baleful path for Europe, ensuring that the Great War of 1914 – 1918 was to be followed by an even more murderous and barbarous conflagration that called into question Europe’s heritage of the Enlightenment and of humanism. The first of these factors is the emerge of an ethnic-racist type of nationalism, especially after the First World War; this kind of nationalism was enhanced by and also gave encouragement to broad feelings of territorial revisionism, especially but not only in Central and Eastern Europe, to which the end of the First World War gave additional fuel. Another component was the intensification of class conflict, which also got an international dimension through the rise of the Soviet regime after a particularly fierce civil war. Last but not least, the economic crisis, which was even aggravated by the fact that every nation tried to find its own way out of the predicament instead of trusting to cooperation, played its part in destabilizing the already brittle European post-war map, intensifying the lures of fascism and suggesting to many people that traditional liberal democracies were unable to deal with problems of such a vast scale.
Kershaw says that while his own research centred on the Third Reich, he mainly depended on other historians’ work with regard to other fields he covers in his book, and this is probably also one reason why the view on Germany seems to be the predominant perspective for much of this first volume, although, all in all, the author’s perspective is remarkably well-balanced and wide. I learnt, for instance, a lot about the Spanish Civil War here. The other reason why Germany is one of the main actors on Kershaw’s stage is, of course, obvious, given the deleterious role Germany played after the First World War since it was particularly (although not exclusively) in this country that the four developments singled out by Kershaw were festering most violently.
How then could the maelstrom of violence and large-scale annihilation of human lives be pacified? This is, indeed, the foremost question readers of this book might keep asking themselves as they go from chapter to chapter. At the end of his book, Kershaw suggests certain reasons why the end of the Second World War, instead of providing a hotbed for hatred, division, rancour and revisionism, actually provided the basis for a long period of stability and wealth, although at the cost of states in Central and Eastern Europe which, having barely escaped from Nazi occupation, now fell into the ruthless sway of Soviet dominion. One of the reasons is definitely that Germany, as the country in which the four factors – an aggressive nationalism, geographical revisionism, fierce class struggles and the impact of the economic crisis that seemed to call into question the survival of capitalism itself – were extremely virulent and which at the same time had the potential (economically, technologically and militarily) to pose a threat to international peace, [1] went through a total breakdown instead of simply being weakened but not crushed, like in 1918. Another reason is the fact that the Second World War made short work of the Great Power status of even Britain and France, who were on the side of the victors but were in debt up to their ears, which, for instance, led to first measures to grant independence to some of their overseas possessions by the British. Only the U.S. and the Soviet Union were left as big powers, and their spheres of interest now met in Europe, from whose two sides of the Iron Curtain they would soon start glowering at each other. What came of the Cold War, will be the subject of Kershaw’s second part of this history of Europe.
All that is left for me to say here is that Kershaw wrote an impressive and convincing history of the first half of the 20th century in To Hell and Back, and that no one interested in modern history should miss reading this book!
[1] Kershaw points out more often than once that all the other states in which fascist or out-and-out right-wing regimes came to replace liberal democracies lacked the power to threaten peace and stability outside their own borders.
February 11, 2023
To Hell and Back is a dense but well-written and accessible history of the first half of the twentieth century. It is a book I would happily recommend to anyone with an interest in the period. Be aware, however, that if you are looking for a compelling narrative that brings the past back to live by means of telling anecdotes and lively characterizations of the main protagonists, this book may not exactly be the one that you are looking for.
Sure enough, the book recounts the main events taking place in Europe between the outbreak of the First World War and 1949, but it does so rather summarily and in a somewhat dry, factual manner. Kershaw is not the greatest anecdotalist or storyteller (or he may very well be but it does not show in this book). His main interest clearly lies elsewhere, not with the story as such but with the main drivers of the historical events and their significance for the people affected by it.
Hence the frequent interruptions of the narrative flow to make room for questions and reflections of a more essayistic nature. Why did events unfold the way they did? Could history have taken a different a turn? What is the relative importance of the various factors that contributed to the course of history as we know it? Kershaw frequently throws up questions like these and provides short but insightful and nuanced answers.
Even more interesting are the sections in the book where the historian interrogates the meaning of past events for those that lived through them or had to deal with their legacy. The chapter on the significance of the Second World War for the various people that fought it and their offspring is a good example. It clearly demonstrates that the same events can acquire very different meanings depending on the point of view one takes and makes this book stand out among the various other single-volume histories of the twentieth century that I am familiar with.
I also appreciated the chapter about the continuities and longer-term trends which have not been fundamentally disrupted despite the massive damage caused by the two world wars. In it, Kershaw rightly recalls a number of facts which are often overlooked because of a too narrow focus on the more spectacular events: that the economies and socio-economic value systems of the various European people have been growing more like each other throughout the first 50 years of the twentieth century, that living standards rose quite significantly (at least for the majority of those whose lives were not ruined by the fighting), that Europe remained a predominantly Christian continent in which the main Catholic and Protestant denominations continued to exert a profound influence, etc.
Despite all the well-deserved praise it has received here and elsewhere, the book suffers from two minor flaws in my opinion.
I found that some sections or episodes were a bit too Western-European centric. This is the case, in particular, for the chapter on the First World War. It is true that the Great Powers very quickly following the assassination of Franz-Ferdinand turned their attention away from the Balkan and almost seemed to forget about why they declared war on each other in the first place. That does not mean, however, that the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913 and the developments in the region during the Great War itself did not merit more attention.
Secondly, I also very much regret the total absence of any footnotes and bibliographic references to support the arguments made in the text itself. This is a feature of the Penguin History of Europe series and, as such, beyond the control of the author but nonetheless unfortunate. Quite often I was left wondering about a specific claim or a quoted figure, asking myself on which sources the author based them or how it should be interpreted exactly. In the absence of endnotes, footnotes and references, though, it is very difficult to get a more complete picture about those things that strike you as a reader.
That said, the book is definitely worth four stars. As it happens, I am already half way through the sequel and enjoying it just as much.
Sure enough, the book recounts the main events taking place in Europe between the outbreak of the First World War and 1949, but it does so rather summarily and in a somewhat dry, factual manner. Kershaw is not the greatest anecdotalist or storyteller (or he may very well be but it does not show in this book). His main interest clearly lies elsewhere, not with the story as such but with the main drivers of the historical events and their significance for the people affected by it.
Hence the frequent interruptions of the narrative flow to make room for questions and reflections of a more essayistic nature. Why did events unfold the way they did? Could history have taken a different a turn? What is the relative importance of the various factors that contributed to the course of history as we know it? Kershaw frequently throws up questions like these and provides short but insightful and nuanced answers.
Even more interesting are the sections in the book where the historian interrogates the meaning of past events for those that lived through them or had to deal with their legacy. The chapter on the significance of the Second World War for the various people that fought it and their offspring is a good example. It clearly demonstrates that the same events can acquire very different meanings depending on the point of view one takes and makes this book stand out among the various other single-volume histories of the twentieth century that I am familiar with.
I also appreciated the chapter about the continuities and longer-term trends which have not been fundamentally disrupted despite the massive damage caused by the two world wars. In it, Kershaw rightly recalls a number of facts which are often overlooked because of a too narrow focus on the more spectacular events: that the economies and socio-economic value systems of the various European people have been growing more like each other throughout the first 50 years of the twentieth century, that living standards rose quite significantly (at least for the majority of those whose lives were not ruined by the fighting), that Europe remained a predominantly Christian continent in which the main Catholic and Protestant denominations continued to exert a profound influence, etc.
Despite all the well-deserved praise it has received here and elsewhere, the book suffers from two minor flaws in my opinion.
I found that some sections or episodes were a bit too Western-European centric. This is the case, in particular, for the chapter on the First World War. It is true that the Great Powers very quickly following the assassination of Franz-Ferdinand turned their attention away from the Balkan and almost seemed to forget about why they declared war on each other in the first place. That does not mean, however, that the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913 and the developments in the region during the Great War itself did not merit more attention.
Secondly, I also very much regret the total absence of any footnotes and bibliographic references to support the arguments made in the text itself. This is a feature of the Penguin History of Europe series and, as such, beyond the control of the author but nonetheless unfortunate. Quite often I was left wondering about a specific claim or a quoted figure, asking myself on which sources the author based them or how it should be interpreted exactly. In the absence of endnotes, footnotes and references, though, it is very difficult to get a more complete picture about those things that strike you as a reader.
That said, the book is definitely worth four stars. As it happens, I am already half way through the sequel and enjoying it just as much.
April 27, 2017
A detailed, readable and well-written history in Europe from 1914-1949, although there isn’t much depth. It is also more focused on the politics than the wars.The era that this volume sets out to cover is mostly defined by war in our popular imagination. Kershaw covers this in detail, as well as cultural and religious developments, and how the importance of these in some respects declined following the experience of the world wars. A good deal of the book is focused on Germany, which Kershaw argues was the continent’s “pivotal center.” The book is mostly focused on states and statesmen; social, religious, and cultural developments are covered, but not as thoroughly. Politics and economics seem to be the main focus.
Among his arguments, Kershaw dismisses the idea that the Great War was an accident, blames Germany for its expansion, and argues that the Russian Revolution was the single most important event of this time period. Kershaw’s rendition of this period’s history comes off as a bit deterministic, as if there is a straight line between the Versailles settlement to the outbreak of war in 1939. Not that this is invalid, but maybe a broader approach might have been possible.
Kershaw’s coverage of the Hitler era is also strong and he rams home the brutality of his war in the east; while the goal in the West was conquest, in the East it was all destruction. Kershaw’s coverage of the politics of the European nations at this time is thorough, especially Nazi Germany and the Stalin era. Kershaw also compares the totalitarian states of Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini in one of the best sections of the book, and his account of post-World War II Europe is vivid in the way he shows how violence continued in the form of score-settling by various individuals, groups, and governments. Kershaw covers all of the various “isms” with passion and detail. Kershaw also examines the many famous what-ifs: he doubts that the left could have won the civil war in Spain, believes that Pius XII could have done more to help the Jews, and finds it “highly unlikely” that the Cold War could have been avoided. Kershaw also doubts that war-weariness was universal among soldiers following the horrors of the First World War, given that plenty of veterans chose to enlist in paramilitary organizations that saw different kinds of combat.
Kershaw’s style is a bit dry and dull at times, but mostly strong, clear and readable. The book itself is well organized and probably as comprehensive as can be managed given the breadth of the subject matter, although inevitably some readers will find areas of personal interest overlooked. Also, he focuses a lot of attention on bit players like Estonia, while his coverage of events in France seems a bit thin. As expected, the book doesn’t provide anything new in the way of either research or revisionism, and there are no citations.
A thorough, well-written, and gloomy volume overall.
Among his arguments, Kershaw dismisses the idea that the Great War was an accident, blames Germany for its expansion, and argues that the Russian Revolution was the single most important event of this time period. Kershaw’s rendition of this period’s history comes off as a bit deterministic, as if there is a straight line between the Versailles settlement to the outbreak of war in 1939. Not that this is invalid, but maybe a broader approach might have been possible.
Kershaw’s coverage of the Hitler era is also strong and he rams home the brutality of his war in the east; while the goal in the West was conquest, in the East it was all destruction. Kershaw’s coverage of the politics of the European nations at this time is thorough, especially Nazi Germany and the Stalin era. Kershaw also compares the totalitarian states of Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini in one of the best sections of the book, and his account of post-World War II Europe is vivid in the way he shows how violence continued in the form of score-settling by various individuals, groups, and governments. Kershaw covers all of the various “isms” with passion and detail. Kershaw also examines the many famous what-ifs: he doubts that the left could have won the civil war in Spain, believes that Pius XII could have done more to help the Jews, and finds it “highly unlikely” that the Cold War could have been avoided. Kershaw also doubts that war-weariness was universal among soldiers following the horrors of the First World War, given that plenty of veterans chose to enlist in paramilitary organizations that saw different kinds of combat.
Kershaw’s style is a bit dry and dull at times, but mostly strong, clear and readable. The book itself is well organized and probably as comprehensive as can be managed given the breadth of the subject matter, although inevitably some readers will find areas of personal interest overlooked. Also, he focuses a lot of attention on bit players like Estonia, while his coverage of events in France seems a bit thin. As expected, the book doesn’t provide anything new in the way of either research or revisionism, and there are no citations.
A thorough, well-written, and gloomy volume overall.
May 5, 2021
25/12/2020 (****)
Saggio estremamente corposo nei contenuti, che ripercorre la storia d'Europa nel trentennio di fuoco 1914-1949.
Due cose ho molto gradito: l'impostazione del libro, che si concentra sulla descrizione generale della situazione socio-politica del continente, relegando la sintesi delle due guerre a poche pagine ciascuna; l'inquadramento politico europeo del decisivo periodo 1919-1939, trattato con grande competenza, accuratezza e spirito critico.
Sull'introduzione e sullo sviluppo della prima guerra mondiale ho notato, insieme a un bel brio narrativo, una sostanziale scarsa accuratezza e superficialità di giudizi: pesano in questo la scelta delle fonti, che necessariamente si riconducono alla storiografia anglosassone, nota per il suo malcelato sciovinismo di fondo.
Invece nella parte finale di saggio riguardante il secondo dopoguerra ho trovato una narrazione più stanca, farraginosa e ripetitiva, pur con analisi e contenuti di alto livello.
La necessità di limitare la sterminata bibliografia esistente sull'argomento, che comprende anche il problema di trattare una moltitudine di paesi con lingue e specificità diverse, porta al limite principale del libro, ossia aver attinto alle aree culturali e storiografiche di origine (britannica) e di studio (tedesca) dell'autore, con conseguente perdita di informazioni e dettaglio per il resto. Il problema si sente particolarmente nella prima parte, meno nel prosieguo.
L'attenzione dell'autore si concentra pervalentemente sulla Germania, ritenuta l'area cruciale per l'equilibrio del continente, ieri come oggi: cosa certamente vera, ma in un continente culturalmente e economicamente da sempre intrecciato in maniera strettissima gli eventi si ripercuotono ovunque, e non è necessariamente vero che nel centro (posta l'esistenza, in Europa, di più centri interconnessi) gli effetti si ripercuotano con maggior vigore e con conseguenze più importanti rispetto alle periferie.
Libro godibile, di cui c'è un seguito (L'Europa nel vortice. Dal 1950 a oggi) che merita sicuramente la lettura.
Saggio estremamente corposo nei contenuti, che ripercorre la storia d'Europa nel trentennio di fuoco 1914-1949.
Due cose ho molto gradito: l'impostazione del libro, che si concentra sulla descrizione generale della situazione socio-politica del continente, relegando la sintesi delle due guerre a poche pagine ciascuna; l'inquadramento politico europeo del decisivo periodo 1919-1939, trattato con grande competenza, accuratezza e spirito critico.
Sull'introduzione e sullo sviluppo della prima guerra mondiale ho notato, insieme a un bel brio narrativo, una sostanziale scarsa accuratezza e superficialità di giudizi: pesano in questo la scelta delle fonti, che necessariamente si riconducono alla storiografia anglosassone, nota per il suo malcelato sciovinismo di fondo.
Invece nella parte finale di saggio riguardante il secondo dopoguerra ho trovato una narrazione più stanca, farraginosa e ripetitiva, pur con analisi e contenuti di alto livello.
La necessità di limitare la sterminata bibliografia esistente sull'argomento, che comprende anche il problema di trattare una moltitudine di paesi con lingue e specificità diverse, porta al limite principale del libro, ossia aver attinto alle aree culturali e storiografiche di origine (britannica) e di studio (tedesca) dell'autore, con conseguente perdita di informazioni e dettaglio per il resto. Il problema si sente particolarmente nella prima parte, meno nel prosieguo.
L'attenzione dell'autore si concentra pervalentemente sulla Germania, ritenuta l'area cruciale per l'equilibrio del continente, ieri come oggi: cosa certamente vera, ma in un continente culturalmente e economicamente da sempre intrecciato in maniera strettissima gli eventi si ripercuotono ovunque, e non è necessariamente vero che nel centro (posta l'esistenza, in Europa, di più centri interconnessi) gli effetti si ripercuotano con maggior vigore e con conseguenze più importanti rispetto alle periferie.
Libro godibile, di cui c'è un seguito (L'Europa nel vortice. Dal 1950 a oggi) che merita sicuramente la lettura.
December 4, 2015
The Penguin History of Europe is an uneven series, but Kershaw does an excellent job here. There's no reason not to read this book. He covers the major developments of the period, whether they be military, economic, social or cultural. His book is well organized, the sentences are crisp, and the interpretation sane. The best compliment a history book deserves on goodreads is a short review, because what can one say about a good history book? It's good. It's worth noting that he has a comparatively easy job, though. This volume covers 35 years. Those writing on earlier time periods generally get the same number of pages for, say, 350.
Anyway, there's even a little bit of argumentation, which I didn't expect (how does he fit so much in? I'm wracked with envy). Kershaw suggests that the second world war might have been averted if it had been possible for more European countries to remain/become democratic in the inter-war period. In this book, at least, that claim is entirely unsupported, and I don't find it terribly convincing. But so good is the book that I value the argument anyway. It's good to know where a historian stands, and Kershaw tells us. Now we, his readers, can read him with more understanding.
Wait, though, I do have one complaint! The bibliography is not divided up in any way. Hopefully for the next volume, Kershaw or Penguin will spring for some graduate student to spend a few hours separating the economic histories of Latvia from the military histories of Spain. Kershaw makes me want to read more about the period; it's easier to do that if I have some guidance at least.
Anyway, there's even a little bit of argumentation, which I didn't expect (how does he fit so much in? I'm wracked with envy). Kershaw suggests that the second world war might have been averted if it had been possible for more European countries to remain/become democratic in the inter-war period. In this book, at least, that claim is entirely unsupported, and I don't find it terribly convincing. But so good is the book that I value the argument anyway. It's good to know where a historian stands, and Kershaw tells us. Now we, his readers, can read him with more understanding.
Wait, though, I do have one complaint! The bibliography is not divided up in any way. Hopefully for the next volume, Kershaw or Penguin will spring for some graduate student to spend a few hours separating the economic histories of Latvia from the military histories of Spain. Kershaw makes me want to read more about the period; it's easier to do that if I have some guidance at least.
December 27, 2020
I had the pleasure to read three of Kershaw's books this year (Das Ende, Rollercoaster Europe and To Hell and Back), and can only highly recommend each and every one of them.
Kershaw's writing is lucid, easy to follow and engaging. On the book itself: it is a tour de force. It takes quite the skill to be able to give a 360 overview of Europe during the period 1914-1949, and especially to do so if one wants to go beyond the "great powers". But Kershaw does so wonderfully, and also addresses the smaller nations of Europe very adequately. I especially liked the fact that the book does not delve to deep into the military history of Europe in this period (interesting on its own of course, but capable to detract from the larger narrative), and included several fascinating mini-stories in the book (for example, I very much liked his nuanced treatment of the relationship between the catholic church and Pope Pius XII and the holocaust).
Kershaw's writing is lucid, easy to follow and engaging. On the book itself: it is a tour de force. It takes quite the skill to be able to give a 360 overview of Europe during the period 1914-1949, and especially to do so if one wants to go beyond the "great powers". But Kershaw does so wonderfully, and also addresses the smaller nations of Europe very adequately. I especially liked the fact that the book does not delve to deep into the military history of Europe in this period (interesting on its own of course, but capable to detract from the larger narrative), and included several fascinating mini-stories in the book (for example, I very much liked his nuanced treatment of the relationship between the catholic church and Pope Pius XII and the holocaust).
Read
July 1, 2016This book mainly describes what happened in Europe between WW1 and WW2; the wars are discussed briefly in the context of the interwar period. For me, the major take-away was the overall view it provided of the toxic mixture of revanchism, ethnic nationalism, and the weaknesses of liberal democracy in the twenties and thirties that led to the rise of Nazi regime in Germany and the slaughter of WW2.
May 21, 2021
Soberbio. Reseña pronto
October 27, 2022
The subtitle says it. This is a history of Europe from the outset of WWI through the early stages of the Cold War. WWII per se gets about fifty pages of the six hundred, the rest of the book attempting, with some success, to outline the broad currents of European history: demographical, economic, religious, cultural, intellectual, technological, political etc. There's substantial discussion regarding the three main world systems, the liberal, the communist and the fascist, both in terms of broader considerations regarding authoritarianism and totalitarianism, and as regards the polities of individual European states. Throughout Kershaw peppers his descriptions with considerations of how matters might have occurred otherwise. Often Kershaw underscores the human costs of war and its consequences.
This is the first of a projected two-volume history of Europe, the second of which will concern itself with the Cold War that dominated the second half of the 20th century.
This is the first of a projected two-volume history of Europe, the second of which will concern itself with the Cold War that dominated the second half of the 20th century.
December 19, 2015
Kershaw's writing is crisp and his research is thorough. But I don't know what this book is; if it's an overview of Europe, it's too heavy on Germany and if it's the story of Germany's impact on Europe, many connections were not made. While there are dozens of interesting thoughts and strains to follow (The rise of Fascism, a panoramic look at the Church, the goal of Appeasement), I am unclear what central question it addresses. But the prose is great and the pages turn easily.
January 17, 2021
Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. I have purchased this book as I found it was so dense at times (and I mean every paragraph contains so much information) that I liked to be able to re-read certain chapters. The two wars were not covered in great detail, but in a way so that one could appreciate the political, economic nd social build-ups and aftermaths. The interwar years are covered brilliantly. This is one of my favourite history books.
September 25, 2017
Yet another book portraying the official, establishment view on the two world wars and the inter war period. Although it does make a number of valid points, it is stridently anticommunist. Should be a big hit among the centre right and/or the Blairites
December 12, 2020
Europe went through amazing changes in the last 100 years.
From a continent with a zero sum philosophy of power where various powers (especially Germany) are aiming to gain on the expense of other people of the continent (and world) to a (mostly) peaceful continent where the key moto is cooperation.
This book describes the first and bloody part of this transformation, spanning 2 world wars and many political, economic, moral and military transformations on the way.
As usual with these types of books, I was aware of much of the events and processes of the era, but the book organized it in my mind and combined it into a clear picture. While the book has informational value in many areas, I was mostly impressed by the last part describing how, following the devastation and trauma of the war, the people and states of the continent managed to transform from a wrecked combination of people, races, states and states to be, into a stable group of states on the highway to economic and political success.
The process was different and took different time in each country, and especially was different in the west as opposed to the east of Europe.
I am aware that I cannot summarize a book of this scope in a few sentences. I highly recommend reading this book for all people that are interested in this part of the Europe’s (and the world’s) history.
From a continent with a zero sum philosophy of power where various powers (especially Germany) are aiming to gain on the expense of other people of the continent (and world) to a (mostly) peaceful continent where the key moto is cooperation.
This book describes the first and bloody part of this transformation, spanning 2 world wars and many political, economic, moral and military transformations on the way.
As usual with these types of books, I was aware of much of the events and processes of the era, but the book organized it in my mind and combined it into a clear picture. While the book has informational value in many areas, I was mostly impressed by the last part describing how, following the devastation and trauma of the war, the people and states of the continent managed to transform from a wrecked combination of people, races, states and states to be, into a stable group of states on the highway to economic and political success.
The process was different and took different time in each country, and especially was different in the west as opposed to the east of Europe.
I am aware that I cannot summarize a book of this scope in a few sentences. I highly recommend reading this book for all people that are interested in this part of the Europe’s (and the world’s) history.
January 11, 2016
I've always found historical series to be curious in a way. A series suggests a degree of homogenization: a number of books grouped together by a common theme or goal. In the case of the Penguin History of Europe series, the goal to to provide an overview of Western/European history from ancient times through the twentieth century. Most of the volumes have been published and for the most part they're excellent surveys of their eras and likely to remain the standard works on their periods for the next generation. Yet the volumes are not uniform, and the closer they come to present times the more narrow the period being covered, with the ancient world covered in a single volume, the thousand-year span of the Middle Ages in three, and the 167 years between 1648 and 1815 covered in just one volume.
Because of this, it is not surprising that Ian Kershaw was given an entire volume to cover the 20th century. What is interesting, though, is that at some point he concluded that to do the job properly it would require two volumes, and that Penguin assented. Thus, this is simply the first half of Kershaw's overview of the century passed, providing a level of detail unprecedented in the series. That it doesn't feel bloated or dragged out is in part due to Kershaw's ability to analyze the events of this 35-year span in a way that never exhausts the reader's attention. Clearly his many years of award-winning scholarship in the era are a factor here, as he brings all of the insights he gained over the course of his career to bear in explaining the broader developments of this period.
Yet Kershaw's background also defines some of his limitations: his opening chapters on the First World War are the weakest in the book, reflecting little of the fascinating insights provided recently by such authors as Christopher Clark and Adam Tooze -- this despite the fact that their recent books The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 and The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931 are both listed in the bibliography. Once Kershaw moves into the interwar period, however, his narrative begins to shine. His focus is primarily on the political and economic developments of the time, seeking to explain (as the title indicates) how Europe descended into the hell of war and chaos and then clawed their way back. Yet he does not ignore the social and cultural changes that took place during this period, and his coverage of these areas give the reader the well-rounded narrative that such a series requires. It ends on what amounts to a cliffhanger, as readers will have to wait until the succeeding volume to discover whether Kershaw can maintain the high standards he has set with this volume when explaining the developments that followed.
Because of this, it is not surprising that Ian Kershaw was given an entire volume to cover the 20th century. What is interesting, though, is that at some point he concluded that to do the job properly it would require two volumes, and that Penguin assented. Thus, this is simply the first half of Kershaw's overview of the century passed, providing a level of detail unprecedented in the series. That it doesn't feel bloated or dragged out is in part due to Kershaw's ability to analyze the events of this 35-year span in a way that never exhausts the reader's attention. Clearly his many years of award-winning scholarship in the era are a factor here, as he brings all of the insights he gained over the course of his career to bear in explaining the broader developments of this period.
Yet Kershaw's background also defines some of his limitations: his opening chapters on the First World War are the weakest in the book, reflecting little of the fascinating insights provided recently by such authors as Christopher Clark and Adam Tooze -- this despite the fact that their recent books The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 and The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931 are both listed in the bibliography. Once Kershaw moves into the interwar period, however, his narrative begins to shine. His focus is primarily on the political and economic developments of the time, seeking to explain (as the title indicates) how Europe descended into the hell of war and chaos and then clawed their way back. Yet he does not ignore the social and cultural changes that took place during this period, and his coverage of these areas give the reader the well-rounded narrative that such a series requires. It ends on what amounts to a cliffhanger, as readers will have to wait until the succeeding volume to discover whether Kershaw can maintain the high standards he has set with this volume when explaining the developments that followed.
June 27, 2021
As I planned to read Tony Judt’s “Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945” (which tells the history of Europe after World War Two), I thought that it would be nice to precede it with this book by Ian Kershaw (which tells the history of Europe from World War One to World War Two).
Yeah, it’s a good combo in principle. These two books are very similar in structure and approach (if I didn’t know the authors, I would easily presume that they are Volume I and Volume II of the same historical work written by the same author), and if you like one of them, you should try the other one, too.
The book is interesting, intelligent, provides a lot of important details, etc.
However, I quickly understood that such “all-encompassing” formats are not for me. I prefer to learn about history bit by bit, researching more or less deeply in a punctuated manner, i.e. learning about one particular person/event/series of related phenomena/developments depending on what interests me right now — and then gradually connect all those dots and building my own mosaic of history in my head. When I read about all the necessary sequences of events, with dates and names and all this stuff, my brain just refuses to process all this. I already know the basic sequence of events and most of the key names from school and general informational background, but I cannot go through all of them again and again in all the details. It’s tiresome and unproductive for me.
It’s my own problem, of course, and I am sure that most people would find Ian Kershaw’s and Tony Judt’s books excellent and very useful for them. For me, a lot of information was just “over my head” — i.e., I did not feel that I was ready to learn so much and yet still relatively superficially about many of the subjects discussed in the book.
Yeah, let’s talk about superficiality. Considering that this is an overview of the most important and saturated-by-mind-blowing-events 35 years of our recent history, the book is relatively superficial, of course. I cannot say that it’s a bad thing — sometimes we need exactly this, a wide panorama of all this complicated stuff, to see the general connections and summarize the common trends and concepts for ourselves. And the author really did a very good job in presenting complex history through concise and yet very intelligent and correct summaries. However, sometimes the superficiality looks ridiculous. To represent the Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917 on 6 pages? sure )). To tell all the factual course of World War Two on about 12 pages? easy )). (Yes, of course, he discusses later various specific aspects of World War Two and its consequences in more detail later, but if you expected to learn about the war itself here, this book is not the best choice.)
I was especially amused by this mentioning of the Siege of Leningrad:
“The hardships endured and the scale of difficulties that Soviet citizens had to face are scarcely describable. Around 25 million citizens were left homeless in the wake of the German invasion in 1941. Food, apart from potatoes, was drastically rationed, and almost all civilians had to cope with acute food shortages. Around a million people in Leningrad actually starved to death. Even in the rest of the Soviet Union, the urban population existed at little more than starvation level.”
Yeah, that’s all )). I mean: I did not expect that he would describe the Siege of Leningrad in detail. I would be OK if he never even mentioned it. World War Two was CHOKE FULL of various atrocities, and it’s impossible to talk about all of them in one book. However, such casual mentioning of one of the most horrific and contradictory phenomena of the war, in line with other “hardships endured by Soviet citizens,” looks completely inadequate here, in my opinion.
No, you shouldn’t think that this is his normal level of informativity and correctness. Most of the other information is quite adequate and, as I already said, even in this superficial form was often “too much” for me (i.e., too detailed). I feel that I should have paid more attention to the chapter about the Spanish Civil War, for example, or those remarkable pro-Socialist developments in France in 1936-37 (which gives keys to all the further leftist trends in this country, I suppose, up to our days). I think I would return to some specific chapters in the book later when I will be more ready for this information.
Some chapters, though, interested me a lot, and I was especially impressed by his overview of the Great Depression. Again, this is not something original or new, and Ian Kershaw did not talk about anything that you cannot find in Wikipedia, I suppose. However, exactly because of his approach of a very generalized covering, I understood that I had tons of misconceptions about the Great Depression previously and now I am ready for more detailed information. You see, I had a (completely wrong) notion that the Great Depression is a term related to the USA exclusively, and all I had in mind regarding it was those famous photographs by Dorothea Lange, and “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck, and everything similar. And if I heard some mentioning about the impact of the Great Depression somewhere else, in particular in Europe, I thought that those were very secondary effects of the devastated American economy. However, the Great Depression was, of course, a global economic crisis that only started in the USA (and was represented by the Americans most brightly), but it had HUGE impacts and consequences in Europe as well. Ian Kershaw shows this perfectly, describing both the general trends and specifics in different regions/countries. Moreover, the Great Depression was one of those key “polarizing and radicalizing” factors that facilitated the development of dictatorships in the susceptible societies and strengthened democracies in the societies that were more independent and secure, which eventually defined the division of the world at the dawn of World War Two.
And, of course, one of the most interesting and unexpected (for me) aspects of the Great Depression was that it actually was much less devastating for the economy of Germany (that was loudly complaining about the unbearable burden of the Treaty of Versailles for dozens of years) than for the economy of strong imperial Britain, for example. Moreover, “The Nazis were fortunate in that their takeover of power coincided with the bottom point of the Depression, so that some cyclical recovery would have taken place under any government. However, the speed and scale of the German recovery – reviving faster than the world economy in general – went beyond any normal rebound from recession.” So yeah, tons of very interesting details.
Some chapters feel extremely “contemporary” in terms of how the world reacts to unprecedented atrocities and challenges (especially about the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in September 1931 and the brutal invasion of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) by Italy in 1935).
The author pays a lot of attention to the phenomenon of dictatorship in general and analysis of various dictatorships in Europe.
“The 1930s were the decade of the dictators. Some dictatorships had been formed in the 1920s. Others would follow as occupation regimes in the 1940s. But the 1930s were the decade above all in which dictators thrived. By 1939 more Europeans lived under dictatorships than democracies.”
“By the eve of the Second World War, democracy was confined to eleven north-western countries (Britain, Ireland, France, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and tiny Iceland). All had been either victorious or neutral during the First World War. About three-fifths of Europeans (leaving aside for now the people of the Soviet Union) lived in sixteen states under some form of repressive, authoritarian rule where civil rights were strongly curtailed and minorities faced discrimination and persecution: Italy, Germany (now incorporating Austria), Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Slovakia, the former Czech lands (now the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, under German rule), Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Greece, Yugoslavia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Of the democracies created after the First World War to succeed the Austro-Hungarian Empire, only Czechoslovakia had survived – until it was destroyed by German invasion in March 1939. The failure of democracy in the successor states to the Austro-Hungarian Empire was the clearest indicator of the bankruptcy of the post-war settlement.”
I found fascinating his description of differences and specifics of the “cults of personalities” of the key dictators (especially the Duce cult and the Hitler cult). Overall, I think that the part “DICTATORSHIP” and especially its chapter “DYNAMIC DICTATORSHIPS IN COMPARISON,” where he compares Stalin’s Soviet Union, Mussolini’s Italy, and Hitler’s Germany, is a treasure and should be studied in schools.
However, I should say that I found his book quite “Hitlerocentric.” Ian Kershaw is a prominent and very respected historian, but his professional interests have always focused on Hitler and the Nazis. He is regarded by many as one of the world’s leading experts on Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, and is particularly noted for his biographies of Hitler (yes, “biographies” — i.e., multiple books). Ian Kershaw served as a historical adviser on numerous BBC documentaries, notably “The Nazis: A Warning from History and War of the Century” (which I also intend to watch sometime). If you look at the list of his published books, you will notice the repeating pattern -- it's mostly Hitler-Hitler-Hitler everywhere.
You feel this “Hitlerocentric” trend in this book as well. Very often, you notice that he pays too much attention to Hitler and his ideas and behavior, as if he were the evil genius of this historical period who eventually turned all the wheels. Instead, he dedicates surprisingly little attention to Stalin and the Soviet Union overall. Sometimes it looks like just innocent omissions “for brevity,” but very often you notice that he probably has never studied these aspects of history very much and did not bother to represent them in the book. My biggest complaint about the quality of the information represented, is that it almost completely excludes the Soviet Union from all those forces that “turned the wheels.” You would never learn from this book how closely Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union collaborated in the pre-WWII days, for example, and how the Soviet Union actually helped Germany to “circumvent” the Treaty of Versailles in its powerful militarization and economic thriving while Europe was still mostly struggling with the consequences of the Great Depression, and even the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact is mentioned very casually, as something quite ordinary and insignificant. Overall, every time when he mentioned Stalin and the Soviet Union I was surprised by how superficial (comparing to everything else) and seemingly “inconsequential” for the history of Europe their role looks from Ian Kershaw’s perspective. It’s a pity, because the history of Europe actually was seriously affected by the Soviets at all levels, in my opinion, but you cannot learn this from Ian Kershaw’s book, I am afraid. Apart from this, the book mostly is very decent and correct.
Yeah, it’s a good combo in principle. These two books are very similar in structure and approach (if I didn’t know the authors, I would easily presume that they are Volume I and Volume II of the same historical work written by the same author), and if you like one of them, you should try the other one, too.
The book is interesting, intelligent, provides a lot of important details, etc.
However, I quickly understood that such “all-encompassing” formats are not for me. I prefer to learn about history bit by bit, researching more or less deeply in a punctuated manner, i.e. learning about one particular person/event/series of related phenomena/developments depending on what interests me right now — and then gradually connect all those dots and building my own mosaic of history in my head. When I read about all the necessary sequences of events, with dates and names and all this stuff, my brain just refuses to process all this. I already know the basic sequence of events and most of the key names from school and general informational background, but I cannot go through all of them again and again in all the details. It’s tiresome and unproductive for me.
It’s my own problem, of course, and I am sure that most people would find Ian Kershaw’s and Tony Judt’s books excellent and very useful for them. For me, a lot of information was just “over my head” — i.e., I did not feel that I was ready to learn so much and yet still relatively superficially about many of the subjects discussed in the book.
Yeah, let’s talk about superficiality. Considering that this is an overview of the most important and saturated-by-mind-blowing-events 35 years of our recent history, the book is relatively superficial, of course. I cannot say that it’s a bad thing — sometimes we need exactly this, a wide panorama of all this complicated stuff, to see the general connections and summarize the common trends and concepts for ourselves. And the author really did a very good job in presenting complex history through concise and yet very intelligent and correct summaries. However, sometimes the superficiality looks ridiculous. To represent the Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917 on 6 pages? sure )). To tell all the factual course of World War Two on about 12 pages? easy )). (Yes, of course, he discusses later various specific aspects of World War Two and its consequences in more detail later, but if you expected to learn about the war itself here, this book is not the best choice.)
I was especially amused by this mentioning of the Siege of Leningrad:
“The hardships endured and the scale of difficulties that Soviet citizens had to face are scarcely describable. Around 25 million citizens were left homeless in the wake of the German invasion in 1941. Food, apart from potatoes, was drastically rationed, and almost all civilians had to cope with acute food shortages. Around a million people in Leningrad actually starved to death. Even in the rest of the Soviet Union, the urban population existed at little more than starvation level.”
Yeah, that’s all )). I mean: I did not expect that he would describe the Siege of Leningrad in detail. I would be OK if he never even mentioned it. World War Two was CHOKE FULL of various atrocities, and it’s impossible to talk about all of them in one book. However, such casual mentioning of one of the most horrific and contradictory phenomena of the war, in line with other “hardships endured by Soviet citizens,” looks completely inadequate here, in my opinion.
No, you shouldn’t think that this is his normal level of informativity and correctness. Most of the other information is quite adequate and, as I already said, even in this superficial form was often “too much” for me (i.e., too detailed). I feel that I should have paid more attention to the chapter about the Spanish Civil War, for example, or those remarkable pro-Socialist developments in France in 1936-37 (which gives keys to all the further leftist trends in this country, I suppose, up to our days). I think I would return to some specific chapters in the book later when I will be more ready for this information.
Some chapters, though, interested me a lot, and I was especially impressed by his overview of the Great Depression. Again, this is not something original or new, and Ian Kershaw did not talk about anything that you cannot find in Wikipedia, I suppose. However, exactly because of his approach of a very generalized covering, I understood that I had tons of misconceptions about the Great Depression previously and now I am ready for more detailed information. You see, I had a (completely wrong) notion that the Great Depression is a term related to the USA exclusively, and all I had in mind regarding it was those famous photographs by Dorothea Lange, and “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck, and everything similar. And if I heard some mentioning about the impact of the Great Depression somewhere else, in particular in Europe, I thought that those were very secondary effects of the devastated American economy. However, the Great Depression was, of course, a global economic crisis that only started in the USA (and was represented by the Americans most brightly), but it had HUGE impacts and consequences in Europe as well. Ian Kershaw shows this perfectly, describing both the general trends and specifics in different regions/countries. Moreover, the Great Depression was one of those key “polarizing and radicalizing” factors that facilitated the development of dictatorships in the susceptible societies and strengthened democracies in the societies that were more independent and secure, which eventually defined the division of the world at the dawn of World War Two.
And, of course, one of the most interesting and unexpected (for me) aspects of the Great Depression was that it actually was much less devastating for the economy of Germany (that was loudly complaining about the unbearable burden of the Treaty of Versailles for dozens of years) than for the economy of strong imperial Britain, for example. Moreover, “The Nazis were fortunate in that their takeover of power coincided with the bottom point of the Depression, so that some cyclical recovery would have taken place under any government. However, the speed and scale of the German recovery – reviving faster than the world economy in general – went beyond any normal rebound from recession.” So yeah, tons of very interesting details.
Some chapters feel extremely “contemporary” in terms of how the world reacts to unprecedented atrocities and challenges (especially about the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in September 1931 and the brutal invasion of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) by Italy in 1935).
The author pays a lot of attention to the phenomenon of dictatorship in general and analysis of various dictatorships in Europe.
“The 1930s were the decade of the dictators. Some dictatorships had been formed in the 1920s. Others would follow as occupation regimes in the 1940s. But the 1930s were the decade above all in which dictators thrived. By 1939 more Europeans lived under dictatorships than democracies.”
“By the eve of the Second World War, democracy was confined to eleven north-western countries (Britain, Ireland, France, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and tiny Iceland). All had been either victorious or neutral during the First World War. About three-fifths of Europeans (leaving aside for now the people of the Soviet Union) lived in sixteen states under some form of repressive, authoritarian rule where civil rights were strongly curtailed and minorities faced discrimination and persecution: Italy, Germany (now incorporating Austria), Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Slovakia, the former Czech lands (now the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, under German rule), Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Greece, Yugoslavia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Of the democracies created after the First World War to succeed the Austro-Hungarian Empire, only Czechoslovakia had survived – until it was destroyed by German invasion in March 1939. The failure of democracy in the successor states to the Austro-Hungarian Empire was the clearest indicator of the bankruptcy of the post-war settlement.”
I found fascinating his description of differences and specifics of the “cults of personalities” of the key dictators (especially the Duce cult and the Hitler cult). Overall, I think that the part “DICTATORSHIP” and especially its chapter “DYNAMIC DICTATORSHIPS IN COMPARISON,” where he compares Stalin’s Soviet Union, Mussolini’s Italy, and Hitler’s Germany, is a treasure and should be studied in schools.
However, I should say that I found his book quite “Hitlerocentric.” Ian Kershaw is a prominent and very respected historian, but his professional interests have always focused on Hitler and the Nazis. He is regarded by many as one of the world’s leading experts on Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, and is particularly noted for his biographies of Hitler (yes, “biographies” — i.e., multiple books). Ian Kershaw served as a historical adviser on numerous BBC documentaries, notably “The Nazis: A Warning from History and War of the Century” (which I also intend to watch sometime). If you look at the list of his published books, you will notice the repeating pattern -- it's mostly Hitler-Hitler-Hitler everywhere.
You feel this “Hitlerocentric” trend in this book as well. Very often, you notice that he pays too much attention to Hitler and his ideas and behavior, as if he were the evil genius of this historical period who eventually turned all the wheels. Instead, he dedicates surprisingly little attention to Stalin and the Soviet Union overall. Sometimes it looks like just innocent omissions “for brevity,” but very often you notice that he probably has never studied these aspects of history very much and did not bother to represent them in the book. My biggest complaint about the quality of the information represented, is that it almost completely excludes the Soviet Union from all those forces that “turned the wheels.” You would never learn from this book how closely Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union collaborated in the pre-WWII days, for example, and how the Soviet Union actually helped Germany to “circumvent” the Treaty of Versailles in its powerful militarization and economic thriving while Europe was still mostly struggling with the consequences of the Great Depression, and even the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact is mentioned very casually, as something quite ordinary and insignificant. Overall, every time when he mentioned Stalin and the Soviet Union I was surprised by how superficial (comparing to everything else) and seemingly “inconsequential” for the history of Europe their role looks from Ian Kershaw’s perspective. It’s a pity, because the history of Europe actually was seriously affected by the Soviets at all levels, in my opinion, but you cannot learn this from Ian Kershaw’s book, I am afraid. Apart from this, the book mostly is very decent and correct.
May 14, 2018
Por lo poco que entiendo este libro es un esfuerzo historiográfico por empezar a pensar las dos guerras mundiales como un solo suceso ("La Guerra de los 30 años del Siglo XX"). El libro está muy bien escrito, es muy ameno. De todas formas, me dala sensación de que se le nota a Kershaw su especialidad. Más ganas me dejó de leer su libro más famoso: Hitler.
Creo que entendí más del contexto general. Especialmente de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Porque se llega a la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Me deja la sensación de que lo que propone (veladamente porque no se puede decir una cosa así) es que no fue porque haya sido muy agresivo el tratado de Versalles, sino al contrario, porque se lo dejó demasiado viva a Alemania. Después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, fue imposible un resurgimiento de (esa) violencia porque Alemania se destruyó totalmente. Más que en otros libros, insiste en esa imagen: Europa estuvo al borde de la autodestrucción, la guerra fue un infierno, no quedó nada y hubo que volver a empezar.
Decidí que el siguiente libro sea Ser y Tiempo. Me preocupa no entender ni jota, pero en todo caso creo que este libro me da un buen pantallazo del contexto histórico, de la discusión histórica. También por eso quiero leer a Heidegger. Este fue otro libro más antinazi. Me quiero meter un poco más en la discusión de fondo, no me conforma el "eran todos unos loco asesinos".
Tal vez referido a lo anterior, una cosa que no terminé de entender: Kershaw dice que los nazis eran de derecha. Busco en internet y encuentro diferentes opiniones. Pareciera que los "de derecha" dicen que Hitler era de izquierda, y los de izquierda dicen que Hitler era "de derecha". Obvias razones. A tal punto llego en la confusión que ya no tengo bien en claro a que se refieren con eso de "izquierda" y "derecha". No parecen términos muy académicos que digamos.
Primero que leo de la serie de Penguin sobre la Historia de Europa, que tiene pinta incluso de merecer ser leída de corrido.
Creo que entendí más del contexto general. Especialmente de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Porque se llega a la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Me deja la sensación de que lo que propone (veladamente porque no se puede decir una cosa así) es que no fue porque haya sido muy agresivo el tratado de Versalles, sino al contrario, porque se lo dejó demasiado viva a Alemania. Después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, fue imposible un resurgimiento de (esa) violencia porque Alemania se destruyó totalmente. Más que en otros libros, insiste en esa imagen: Europa estuvo al borde de la autodestrucción, la guerra fue un infierno, no quedó nada y hubo que volver a empezar.
Decidí que el siguiente libro sea Ser y Tiempo. Me preocupa no entender ni jota, pero en todo caso creo que este libro me da un buen pantallazo del contexto histórico, de la discusión histórica. También por eso quiero leer a Heidegger. Este fue otro libro más antinazi. Me quiero meter un poco más en la discusión de fondo, no me conforma el "eran todos unos loco asesinos".
Tal vez referido a lo anterior, una cosa que no terminé de entender: Kershaw dice que los nazis eran de derecha. Busco en internet y encuentro diferentes opiniones. Pareciera que los "de derecha" dicen que Hitler era de izquierda, y los de izquierda dicen que Hitler era "de derecha". Obvias razones. A tal punto llego en la confusión que ya no tengo bien en claro a que se refieren con eso de "izquierda" y "derecha". No parecen términos muy académicos que digamos.
Primero que leo de la serie de Penguin sobre la Historia de Europa, que tiene pinta incluso de merecer ser leída de corrido.
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