H-Diplo Roundtable, Vol. XV, No. 4

2013 Roundtable Editors: Thomas Maddux and Diane H-Diplo Labrosse Roundtable Web/Production Editor: George Fujii H-Diplo Roundtable Review www.h-net.org/~diplo/roundtables Commissioned for H-Diplo by Thomas Maddux Volume XV, No. 4 (2013) 27 September 2013 Introduction by Peter Jackson Zara Steiner. The Triumph of the Dark: European International History 1933-1939. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. ISBN: 9780199212002 (hardcover, $70.00). Stable URL: http://www.h-net.org/~diplo/roundtables/PDF/Roundtable-XV-4.pdf Contents Introduction by Peter Jackson, University of Glasgow ............................................................. 2 Review by John Ferris, The University of Calgary ................................................................... 11 Review by Patrick Finney, Aberystwyth University ................................................................ 30 Review by Stacie Goddard, Wellesley College ........................................................................ 38 Review by Talbot C. Imlay, Université Laval ........................................................................... 43 Review by Jack S. Levy, Rutgers University ............................................................................. 50 Review by Martin Thomas, University of Exeter .................................................................... 61 Copyright © 2013 H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for non-profit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author(s), web location, date of publication, H-Diplo, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For other uses, contact the H-Diplo editorial staff at [email protected]. H-Diplo Roundtable Reviews, Vol. XV, No. 4 (2013) Introduction by Peter Jackson, University of Glasgow he publication of Zara Steiner’s two-volume history of European international relations between the wars is a true watershed moment in the study of this period. T The Lights that Failed1 and The Triumph of the Dark are the culmination of a monumental effort to understand both the impact of the First World War on the international system and Europe’s tragic descent into a second and even more destructive conflict in 1939. The two books are such an imposing landmark on a vast historiographical landscape that no scholar will be able to ignore them when writing about this period. It could be argued that The Lights that Failed and The Triumph of the Dark also bring to an end a long and exceptionally rich cycle of research and writing on inter-war international history. This cycle opened with the first self-consciously revisionist challenges to the post- war orthodoxy mounted by AJP Taylor and D. C. Watt in the early 1960s.2 Successive revolutions in our understanding of the period were stimulated by the opening of relevant national archives in the 1970s. The emergence of ‘revisionist’ and ‘counter-revisionist’ interpretations of the origins of the Second World War defined a period that spanned the end of the Cold War and stretched into the twenty-first century. We are now at a point where further archival releases pertaining to the foreign or defence policies of European states are unlikely either to provide definitive answers to existing puzzles or to transform the parameters of key debates.3 Historians may need to ask new questions and open new debates if they hope to push our understanding of this period forward. It is no coincidence that, in the essays that follow, all four historian-reviewers devote considerable time to speculating about possible fruitful new avenues of research for the international history of this period. Steiner’s careful narrative covers the two inter-war decades in unprecedented detail. It is based on a comprehensive survey of a truly enormous secondary literature. Any attempt to summarise it cannot hope to capture either the subtlety of the interpretation she advances or the carefully-balanced judgements upon which it rests. It begins with attempts to reconstruct the international system in the wake of the most destructive war in history up to that point. Steiner shows that this effort was compromised from the beginning by a combination of contending interests, conflicting principles, and ongoing structural imbalances in the distribution of power. These factors contributed mightily to ‘failure’ of 1 Zara Steiner, The Lights that Failed: European International History, 1919-1933 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). 2 See esp. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War (London, 1961) and Watt, ‘Appeasement: the rise of a revisionist school?’, Political Quarterly 36:2 (1965): 191-213. It is worth adding that Taylor and Watt were both drawing on the research of other scholars at the time as well; and that they criticised the prevailing orthodoxy from very different perspectives. 3 For a study that argues that archival releases have had little or no impact on the core structure of historiographical debates see Patrick Finney, Remembering the Road to World War Two: International History, National Identity, Collective Memory (Routledge, 2010). H-Diplo Roundtable Reviews, Vol. XV, No. 4 (2013) the internationalist ‘lights’ to illuminate the way forward to a more stable and peaceful international system. The single outstanding achievement of Steiner’s first volume may well be to have taken internationalism seriously as a potent and promising political force in its own right. Most surveys of twentieth century international history address the hopes placed in collective or multilateral action through the newly-created League of Nations. Fewer provide a systematic assessment of the politics of disarmament. And fewer still acknowledge the scale of internationalist ambitions or the variety of civil society initiatives aimed at creating a better global society. Steiner’s first volume provides an illuminating discussion of these important issues and in so doing underlines the richness and importance of a new vein of research on the aspirations and achievements of transnational civil society networks between the wars. At the same time, The Lights that Failed does not shrink from providing a fundamentally negative assessment of the ‘poisoned chalice’ of disarmament between the wars. The question of arms reductions divided the three victorious democratic powers throughout the 1920s in much the same way as the politics of reparations and war debts. There was no consensus as to the best means of preserving the basic structures of the post-1919 system, even, indeed especially, among those states that had dominated its construction. It is true that the new international norms that emerged out of the Great War had a common ancestry in pre-1914 internationalist doctrines of peace and co-operation. But among policy elites they were interpreted very differently depending not only on the national perspective from which they were approached, but also the character of the specific issue at hand. Steiner emphasises the fact that Germany was integrated into a system whose legitimacy it refused to recognise. Very few Germans were willing to accept either the territorial losses or the status of their state as a second-rate power that had been imposed at Versailles. The chief division was between those committed to unmaking the system by force and those willing to work towards its overthrow through peaceful means. The fact that there was a lack of common purpose among the creators of that system did not bode well for its long- term viability. The structural defects in the post-1919 order were only exacerbated by the existence of the Soviet Union. The USSR posed an ‘inside/out’ challenge to its neighbours the likes of which had not been seen in Europe since the 1790s. The effects of this challenge within and among the western powers were division and discord; what was needed was unity and co-operation. These fissures in the post-1919 liberal-capitalist order contributed mightily to the complete collapse of international co-operation caused by the great depression. Beginning with The Lights that Failed, and taking up the story in The Triumph of the Dark, Steiner illuminates the links between the Depression and the long international political crisis that culminated in war in 1939.4 The effects of the Depression worked at both the domestic and 4 On this question see also Robert Boyce’s recent The Great Inter-War Crisis and the Collapse of Globalization (London, 2009). 3 | Page H-Diplo Roundtable Reviews, Vol. XV, No. 4 (2013) international levels. Enduring economic privation heightened ideological tensions and led to ever-greater polarisation in the internal politics of virtually all continental states. It is impossible to understand the rise of Nazism in Germany, the emergence of the Popular Front in western Europe, the surge in radical nationalist politics in many east European states, or the Spanish Civil War without taking into account the baleful effects of this economic crisis. At the international level, meanwhile, the most important effect of the crisis was the near complete collapse of financial and commercial co-operation. The world’s most powerful economies took turns devaluing their currencies and imposing ever-greater barriers to the free flow of commerce. The domestic and international levels also inter- acted with one another. Internal tensions led directly or indirectly to aggressive external policies in a reciprocal dynamic of radicalisation that would destroy what remained of the system

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