The Road to War

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Excellent - Rated
I purchased this after reading "Interrogations" by the same author. It's even better. Chapter by chapter it deals with the years running up to the outbreak of war from the perspective of the major combatant nations. What makes it stand out, in my opinion, is the fact that it is careful to place the outlook and decisions taken by countries in the context of what was known and believed at the time, i.e. without hindsight.
I found the chapter about Japan particularly interesting as although many people are familiar with European politics of the period, I previously knew very little of pre-war Japanese foreign policy and objectives.
I hope that "The Dictators" is as good.

Exhaustive Overview of the Road to WW2 - Rated
This book, written by one of today's most reputed historians of WW2, focuses on the years immediately preceding the war. Each chapter is devoted to one of the future belligerants and describes how they perceived the approaching crisis, what their objectives were, and what choices they faced. This approach is very successful in showing how each nation saw the situation at that time, as opposed as we see it today.

Although all sections are stimulating, a few are especially worth mentioning. The section on Germany makes it clear that a "readjustment" of Germany's post-WW1 eastern frontiers was inevitable and that indeed western powers themselves recognized it as inevitable. The section on Poland is very interesting and iconoclastic, balancing today's popular image of Poland as a helpless victim (which indeed she became AFTER its defeat in 1939) with a well-documented picture of an arrogant, racist state that western European states in the 30s generally despised. The chapter on England highlights the key importance that the English attributed to the Empire, and shows how Great Britain tried to defend this anachronistic creation against the revisionist powers, even in the face of its own economic decline.

The book is valuable both for its convincing general arguments and for its analysis of specific issues. At the general level, the picture of the 30s that emerges is that of a world constrained by a geopolitical straitjacked that was growing increasingly inadequate. The author argues that Britain and France, who were (and clearly perceived themselved to be) the biggest beneficiaries of the status quo, tried as long as possible to defend it against appeasing the revisionist powers while preparing for the worst with rearmament. The appeasement phase bought them time mostly at the expense of countries outside their direct sphere of influence, which they abandoned to Germany and Russia. However, Britain and France finally became convinced that the Axis powers were after a more radical reshaping of the international order. This, almost by definition, implied sacrificing parts of the English and French empires themselves; this Britain and France were not willing to do, so when they got ready they declared war. The rest is known.

This book makes its case very convincingly, and clearly states (the Introduction is fantastic) that the "fairy tale" version of WW2, where Britain and France are the white knights that go to war to save Europe's freedom, is ludicrous. They declared war, as every power in the history of the world has always done, in order to defend their own interests. They cared about Poland as much as they had cared about SChekoslovakia - something that the events both in september 1939 and in 1945 made abundantly clear.

The book is also full of delightful smaller issues, like: antisemitism in pre-war Poland (I did not know that it was the Poles, not the Germans, who first wanted to deport Jews to Madagascar, and this well before the war); the way racism affected the international relations between the US/England and Japan; and the almost universal belief, in Germany as in France as in England as in Italy as in Japan, that no great power could survive without some sort of Lebensraun (very interesting in light of how all these countries prospered after the war even after the colonial empires collapsed).

This is a wonderful book. It is dense with concepts and provocative thoughts. After you read it, you will want to get back to it time after time.