The origins of the Second World War : with a preface for the American reader, and a new introduction, Second thoughts

Professor Taylor has put himself way out on a limb- and his book will unquestionably continue to arouse controversy on this side of the water as it already has in what is known as the British Battle of Oxford- with Trevor-Roper as chief combatant- in England. Taylor has been accused of pro-Hilterlism, of complete reversal of his own somewhat Vansittartism in an earlier book; scholars charge him with contradictions, of failure to substantiate his statements, of a mass of unsupported wishful thinking. Germany has hailed his position with considerable glee. Now- in preface to the American edition he opens a whole new territory going back to World War I in claiming that Germany would have own had not America intervened, that American membership in the league would have been detrimental to the Allies; that the election of F.D.R. was a victory for isolation- and that if he had stood pat on this ground World War II might have been avoided; that the Nuremberg evidence was collected so that lawyers could conceal the guilt of the prosecuting powers, and so on. The legacy of Versailles was the actual cause of World War II -- and Hitler capitalized on the mistakes of the Western Powers. He was -- says Taylor- no more wicked in principle and doctrine (he makes no mention of his national excesses) than other statesmen, though he outdid them in wicked deeds. Step by step Taylor traces the march of history between the wars,- Abyssinia, the Spanish Civil War, the death of the league, the reoccupation of the Rhineland, the Sino-Japanese War, the successive immediate steps to war with the Austrian Aruchluss, the Czechoslovakian betrayal, Danzig -- and war. Throughout he sees Hitler as making no plans, as unready; he accepts Munich as a triumph of British policy which desired to deter but not provoke Hitler. France's role, too, is not presented in complimentary terms. The give and take of negotiations, to determine where the Soviet stood, kept the Western powers jittery, and ultimately Britain was caught short. Nobody wanted to go to war over Danzig, but Hitler was betrayed by his own timetable. That ultimately he attacked Soviet Russia and declared war on the United States was an accident of history- not of a madman.... Taylor's book may deal with matters of historical curiosity, but scholars will rise up to dispute him. From the Back Cover: From the moment of its publication in 1961, A.J.P. Taylor's seminal work caused a storm of praise and controversy, and it has since been recognized as a classic: the first book ever to examine exclusively and in depth the causes of the Second World War and to apportion the responsibility among Allies and Germans alike. With crisp, clear prose and brilliant analysis, Taylor established that the war, "far from being premeditated, was a mistake, the result on both sides of diplomatic blunders." He argued that Hitler was more an opportunist than an ideologue who owed his successes to Great Britain's and France's tacking between resistance and appeasement, and to an American policy akin to "the significant episode of the dog in the night, to which Sherlock Holmes once drew attention. When Watson objected: 'But the dog did nothing in the night," Holmes answered: 'That was the significant episode.' "The Times Literary Supplement called The Origins of the Second World War "simple, devastating, superlatively readable, and deeply disturbing," and it remains so now-a groundbreaking book of enduring importance xxviii pages, [5]-296 : 21 cm Includes bibliographical references (pages 279-284) and index