Primary Sources
H. W. V. Temperley, The History of the Peace Conference (6
volumes,
For French diplomacy see Ministere
Des Affaires Etrangeres, Documents Diplomatiques Francais 1932-1939, 2
volumes (
In order "to establish the record of German foreign policy preceding and during World War II," in June 1946 the United States, Britain and France published documents from captured archives of the German Foreign Ministry and the Reich Chancellery. The result was the multi-volume Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918-1945, 19 volumes (London, 1949-). Each installment contains a useful "analytical list of documents" indexed chronologically by date and containing a short abstract. In 1939 the German Foreign Office had published its own set of documents that reflect its version of events, Documents On The Events Preceding the Outbreak Of The War (Berlin, 1939; New York, 1940). The set includes chapters such as "Germany's Efforts to Secure Peaceful Relations With Her Neighbors," "Poland as the Instrument of Britain's Will to War" and "British Encirclement Policy Since February, 1939." Jeremy Noakes and Geoffrey Pridham, Documents on Nazism, 1919-1945 (London, 1974) is a useful collection of documents illustrating the rise of Nazism and the Third Reich. It contains chapters on the emergence of Nazism as a mass movement after 1928, the political structure of the Third Reich, and the nature of mass support for Nazi ideology.
General Works
Sally Marks, The Ebbing of European Ascendancy: An International History of the World 1914-1945 (London, 2002) is an essential work, a complex and balanced depiction of international relations among the European states during the 1920s and 1930s. Also see her insightful earlier study, The Illusion of Peace: International Relations in Europe 1918-1933 (New York, 1976) which focuses on the failure of the 1925 Locarno treaties. Marks sees the illusory peace of the Locarno era as ending with the French evacuation of the Rhineland in 1930, the Depression, and the subsequent rise of Hitler in Germany. J. M. Roberts, Europe 1880-1945, 3rd edition (London, 2001) is an excellent survey of the important political, social and diplomatic issues of the interwar period. His chapter on "social and cultural change, 1918-1939" describes the enormous changes in values and assumptions that characterized this period. His discussion of the nature of the new European dictatorships is also excellent. The bibliographic essay is a valuable resource. Raymond J. Sontag, A Broken World 1919-1939 (Berkeley, 1972) is a solid history of the period that emphasizes international affairs but also includes chapters on the new science, society, and culture. H. Stuart Hughes, Contemporary Europe: A History, 4th edition (New York, 1976) approaches contemporary European history from a social science perspective. His analysis focuses on politics and economics but also includes sections on the impact of technological and scientific change on European society during the interwar period. Felix Gilbert, The End of the European Era, 1890 to the Present, 3rd edition (New York, 1984) is another good general survey of the major themes of the interwar period, including the European economic crises, collective security and the alliance systems, appeasement, and the rise of Nazi Germany. Gilbert labels the era "the peace that failed."
Alan Sharp, The Versailles Settlement: Peacemaking in Paris, 1919 (New York, 1991) discusses the Paris Peace Conference in detail, including the creation of the League of Nations and how the various treaties were concluded. Sharp includes chapters on the German settlement, the Eastern European settlement, and the Colonial, Near and Middle Eastern settlements.
Arnold Toynbee (Ed.), Survey of International Affairs (London, 1920 - Annual volumes), edited by the historian Arnold Toynbee, provide a contemporary synopsis of the major international events for each year. The 1920-23 volume includes sections on each of the 18 international conferences held in Europe during this period and includes informative essays by Toynbee on topics such as the "Status of Danzig," the "Formation of the Little Entente," and the "Problem of Bulgarian Access to the Aegean Sea." Toynbee includes a short bibliography for each topic. The 1930 volume includes sections on the London Naval Conference and the Briand Plan. The 1934 survey includes an extensive section on Austrian-German relations, including a detailed account of the Nazi putsch of July 25th. These volumes also provide the full text of meetings, treaties, and speeches of the period, dates and places of occurrence, and lists of participants.
The Democracies
Dirk Berg-Schlosser and Jeremy Mitchell (Eds.), Conditions of Democracy in Europe, 1919-39: Systematic Case Studies, (New York, 2000), is a comprehensive collection of papers that provide a useful general introduction to political events in each European country. This book makes extensive use of maps and statistical tables to illustrate key points. Political events in countries such as Sweden, Ireland, Estonia and Portugal that receive marginal attention in other sources are discussed in-depth here. Benjamin F. Martin, France and the Apres Guerre 1918-1924: Illusions and Disillusionment (Baton Rouge, 1999) discusses the economic inflation caused by the war, the French economic recovery, and the failed peace with Germany that produced the 1923 French occupation of the industrialized Ruhr. This is also a good social history of France during the post-war period. Eugen Weber, The Hollow Years: France in the 1930s (New York, 1994) is a learned social, cultural and political history of France during the 1930s. Weber argues that the French fear of war was profound force during this "decadent" decade, which was characterized in France by rising unemployment, xenophobia, intractable domestic political bickering among the political parties, and a military establishment poorly prepared to fight another war.
A. J. P. Taylor, English History
1914-1945 (Oxford, 1965) insightfully describes British domestic politics,
British psychology, and British motivations and perceptions with regard to its
continental foreign policy during the crisis years of the 1930s. Taylor is unsparing of criticism of people
such as foreign secretary Anthony Eden: "He relied on moral disapproval:
strong words and no acts. Sooner or
later, he believed, Hitler and Mussolini would come begging for forgiveness, if
Anthony Eden continued to wag his finger at them." (page 421). A more sympathetic treatment of Eden is A. R.
Peters, Anthony Eden at the Foreign Office 1931-1938 (New York,
1986). John Young, Britain and the
World in the Twentieth Century (London, 1997) includes excellent chapters
on "The Locarno era, 1925-1936" and "Appeasement and global
conflict, 1937-1945." Young points
out that Chamberlain, like most British statesmen of the period other than
Churchill, assumed that Hitler preferred peace to war. In this regard Chamberlain seriously
underestimated Hitler's expansionist aims in Eastern Europe. Young suggests that Chamberlain was also
attempting to buy time before the inevitable conflict with Germany, "whose
rearmament was three years ahead of Britain's, which produced 50 percent more
steel and had a population of almost 70 million compared to Britain's 48
million." (page 116). For the
important British relationship with the United States, see D. C. Watt,
"United States Documentary Resources for the Study of British Foreign Policy,
1919-1939." International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-),
Volume 38, Issue 1 (January, 1962), 63-72.
Germany
Gordon Craig, Germany, 1866-1945 (Oxford, 1978) is a learned introduction to the subject of modern Germany by an expert in the field. Also see his Politics and culture in modern Germany: essays from the New York Review of Books (Palo Alto, 1999), a collection of thirty essays that span German history from 1800 to the present. V. R. Berghahn, Modern Germany: Society, economy, and politics in the twentieth century (Cambrige, 1987) contains extremely good chapters on Weimar, economic conditions, and Nazi foreign policy. Anton Kaes, Martin Jay, Edward Dimendberg (Eds.), The Weimar Republic Sourcebook (Berkeley, 1994) is a vast compilation (thirty chapters) of original documents from the fascinating and turbulent Weimar years. The editors sought "to juxtapose politics with culture, philosophy, social thought, and anecdotal material from everyday life." The result is a valuable book that presents a large variety of autobiographical and narrative source materials that cannot be found in traditional cultural and social histories of the ill-fated Weimar Republic. A. J. Nicholls, Weimar and the Rise of Hitler, 4th edition (New York, 2000) is a valuable introduction to the turbulent Weimar Republic that ended with Hitler's success in 1933. The research here is thoroughly documented and is strong on economics and the political reasons for Weimar's failure. Hans Mommsen, The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy (Chapel Hill, 1996) is a soundly researched, scholarly discussion of the political history of the Weimar period. Mommsen surveys the economic ups and downs of the era, the fall of the Republic, and the reasons for the success of the antirepublican coalition, which he argues was supported and drawn primarily from the middle classes. The extensive bibliography is forty pages long. Hans W. Gatzke, Stressemann and the Rearmament of Germany (New York, 1969) documents the considerable achievements of Gustav Stressemann, German Foreign Minister from 1923 to 1929. Gatzke explains how Stressemann managed to use peaceful diplomacy to avoid payment of reparations and revive the economic health of postwar Germany while concurrently steering Germany toward military rearmament.
Theodore Abel, Why Hitler Came Into Power (Cambridge, 1938) is a description of interviews with German followers of the National Socialist movement written by an American sociologist from Columbia University. In 1934 Abel proposed an essay contest for "the best personal life history of an adherent of the Hitler movement." (page xiii). The 600 essays he received provide insight into the psychology of German grassroots support for Hitler and the Nazi Party. Guntram Henrik Herb, Under the Map of Germany: Nationalism and Propaganda 1918-1945 (London and New York, 1997) is a scholarly and fascinating study of the use of maps as propaganda by German governments of the period and by independent geographers and volkisch political activists committed to the rejection of the territorial adjustments of the Versailles Treaty. Herb argues convincingly, with an extensive number of map examples, that this trend in map-making began immediately after World War I and had a profound influence on German popular attitudes. Michael Laffan (Ed.), The Burden of German History 1919-45: Essays for the Goethe Institute (London, 1988) is a collection of essays, many focusing on politics and foreign policy during the Weimar Republic. The essay by Imanuel Geiss, "The Weimar Republic between the Second and the Third Reich: Continuity and Discontinuity in the German Question, 1919-33" is particularly good in its consideration of Germany's central geographic position in Europe as a force in German history.
There are many biographies of Hitler. A recent study that has received excellent reviews is Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris (New York, 1998) and Hitler, 1936-45: Nemesis (New York, 2000). Alan Bullock, Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives (New York, 1992) compares the two dictators in a detailed work that extends to over one thousand pages. Hans Mommsen, The Third Reich Between Vision and Reality: New Perspectives on German History 1918-1945 (Oxford, 2001) is another excellent addition to current scholarship on the Third Reich. It includes a new economic reassessment of the "The Nazi Boom" by Christopher Buchheim and a reexamination of Hitler's popular support by Norbert Frei. Omer Bartov, Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis and War in the Third Reich (Oxford, 1994) analyzes the diaries and letters of the ordinary German soldier to make the case that the typical German soldier, a product of the Goebbels propaganda apparatus, had thoroughly internalized Nazi anti-Bolshevik and racist doctrine before going off to war in the East.
USSR and Eastern
Europe
Piotr S. Wandyck, Soviet-Polish Relations, 1917-1921 (Cambridge, 1969) covers the political and strategic background to the Soviet-Polish war, the military campaigns, and the peace settlement at Riga. Wandyck includes an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary materials, mainly in Polish. He notes in the introduction that these were crucial years that "inaugurated a quarter of a century during which a Bolshevik Russia faced a non-Communist Poland." The 1920 Diary of Isaac Babel (New Haven, 1995), edited and with an excellent introduction by Carol Avins, is a colorful and penetrating observation of the postrevolutionary era and the Polish-Soviet war by one of the Soviet Union's greatest writers. Babel was attached to the Red Army's First Cavalry Army as war correspondent and drew on this experience in Poland to write his famous "Red Cavalry" stories.
For the Soviet Union see E. H. Carr and R. W. Davies, A History of Soviet Russia (14 volumes, London, 1950-1978). This is a lengthy series, beginning with The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923 and continuing with several long volumes on Stalin's economic policies and the construction of "socialism in one country" during the 1920s. George Kennan, Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin (Boston, 1960), is particularly useful for its analysis of the early Soviet period, written by the foremost Soviet expert in the American State Department during this period. Kennan discusses in detail the American intervention in Siberia, the diplomatic background of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, and Stalin's ambivalent reactions to the Hitler dictatorship. James D. White, Lenin: The Practice and Theory of Revolution (New York, 2001) is an introduction to Leninism, the revolutionary movement in Russia, and the early years of the Bolsheviks in power. Jonathan Haslam, The Soviet Union and the Struggle for Collective Security in Europe, 1933-39 (London, 1984) details the Soviet reentry into the European alliance systems after 1933 as an attempt to ensure peace and security from Hitler's Germany. The USSR thus embraced the Versailles Treaty and entered the League of Nations in 1934, ending years of diplomatic isolation from European affairs. Haslam further argues that this shift in policy, inspired by Foreign Affairs Minister Maxim Litvinov, should also be viewed in the context of Stalin's desire to meet 1930s economic and industrialization goals. The system crumbled with the Munich settlement in 1938 and led Stalin into another attempt at security, the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact.
Aleksandr M. Nekrich, Pariahs, Partners, Predators: German-Soviet Relations, 1922-1941 (New York, 1997) makes extensive use of Russian archives that have come to light with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and renewed Russian interest in the origins of the German attack on the USSR in June 1941. The 1980s era of Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika had also renewed Russian interest in uncovering documented truths of the Stalinist past such as the nature of the deportations, purges, the Gulag system, and the military unpreparedness that encouraged Hitler to invade. As Nekrich points out in his introduction, "a scholarly reconsideration of Stalinist mythology is essential if Russia is to achieve genuine reform; an objective knowledge about Russia's past is a precondition to a true understanding of the present." The Annals of Communism series, a coordinated effort of Russian and American scholars, is an excellent example of this trend. The volume Stalinism as a Way of Life: A Narrative in Documents, edited by Lewis Siegelbaum and Andrei Sokolov (New Haven, 2000), was prepared "with the cooperation of the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History (RGASPI) of the State Archival Service of Russia." This collection of documents describes the social history of life on the collective farms, childhood, the brutality of the regime, the war against the kulaks, the prison system, and denunciations, among other issues. Another volume in the Annals of Communism series, Stalin's Letters to Molotov 1925-1936, edited by Lars T. Lih, Oleg V. Naumov, and Oleg V. Khlevniuk (New Haven, 1995), displays the mind of Stalin: his deep paranoia, indifference to suffering and death, and vindictive anger (see the introduction by Robert C. Tucker). Such documents further our understanding of the nature of Stalin's thinking and policies, the brutal system of state terror, and the complexion of Soviet society during the interwar period.
Chris Ward, Stalin's Russia 2nd edition (London, 1999) is a valuable, clearly written history of collectivization, the purges, and Soviet foreign policy during the 1920s and 30s. Ward points out, for example, that no Soviet or Czech representative was invited to the 1938 Munich Conference that agreed to all of Hitler's demands. At the eighteenth party congress in March 1939, Stalin described the British and French appeasement policy as "a capitalist ploy to push Russia into conflict with Germany and Japan." (page 166). J. Arch Getty and Roberta T. Manning, Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives (New York, 1993), is an informative series of essays and case studies by various authors, all focusing on aspects of Stalinism. The Great Purges of 1936-38, for example, are examined in different settings, including the Red Army, Moscow factories, and the Donbas coal-mining region. Robert W. Thurston, Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia 1934-1941 (New Haven, 1996) underestimates Stalin's criminal responsibility for the system, arguing that Stalin's "attitudes and deeds must be situated in a context of vast, popular suspicion generated in part by World War I and the Russian Civil War." (page 228). David M. Glantz, Stumbling Colossus: The Red Army On The Eve of World War (Lawrence, Kansas, 1998) is a military history of the Red Army that makes excellent use of Soviet primary sources and statistical data. Glantz also considers the effect of Stalin's purges on the Soviet military.
Origins of Second
World War
P. M. H. Bell, The Origins of the Second World War in Europe, 2nd edition (London, 1997) is the outstanding work, considered the standard textbook on the subject. Bell's account of the 1930s road to war is balanced, describing events in terms of each participant. Bell has written a reasoned narrative history while also presenting differing interpretations of events, focusing both on underlying forces and different interpretations of the causes of the war. Andrew J. Crozier, The Causes of the Second World War (Oxford, 1997) similarly balances historiography with narrative and is an excellent introduction to the subject. Richard Overy with Andrew Wheatcroft, The Road To War (London, 1989) begins with an informative essay on Polish foreign policy and the flashpoint issue of Danzig, which provided "the occasion not the cause of war." (page 20) The chapters in this excellent book describe the unique perceptions of Germany, Great Britain, France, Italy, and the USSR.
A. J. P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War, 2nd edition (Greenwich, Connecticut, 1961) generated a storm of controversy in its revisionist depiction of Hitler and Germany as having stumbled accidentally upon the war rather than planning and starting it. Though flawed and uneven, this influential book is required reading for any student of modern European history. The first history to challenge the standard post-war Western interpretations of the causes of the war, Taylor's work stimulated the entire field of World War Two history. Gordon Craig pointed out in The Germans (New York, 1982) that Taylor's view "placed him in the same position as those hapless leaders of the democracies in 1933 who refused to take any of Hitler's earlier utterances to heart and believed that he would play by their rules." (page 71). Gordon Martel (Ed.), The Origins of the Second World War Reconsidered: the A.J.P Taylor debate after twenty-five years (Boston, 1986) is a collection of essays on Taylor's work and interwar issues such as appeasement (Paul Kennedy), Italy (Alan Cassels), German foreign policy (Norman Rich), and the postwar era (Sally Marks). Gordon Martel (Ed.), Modern Germany Reconsidered 1870-1945 (London, 1992) is a second volume of scholarly "reconsiderations" of modern German history by various experts. This volume is more general in scope than the first and includes an informative bibliographic essay by Tracey Kay.
Anita J. Prazmowska, Eastern Europe and the Origins of the Second World War (New York, 2000) discusses the difficult and tenuous position of the geographically vulnerable and politically unstable Eastern European states lying between Germany and the Soviet Union. Robert J. Young, France and the Origins of the Second World War (New York, 1996) focuses on the failed French interwar diplomatic efforts to avoid war with Hitler's Germany. Young underscores French ambivalence with regard to military preparedness and national defense, maintaining that there was "an overriding uncertainty in the social psychology of interwar France" that contributed to French defeat. Geoffrey Roberts, The Soviet Union and the Origins of the Second World War: Russo-German Relations and the Road to War, 1933-1941 (New York, 1995) documents the Soviet Union's attempts to coexist with Nazi Germany. Roberts argues that Stalin's policy toward Germany (culminating in the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact) had a dual design: first, to shelter the USSR from war, and second, to thwart the western powers, who in Stalin's eyes "were plotting to precipitate a Soviet-German war that would destroy the hated Bolshevik regime."
Reference Works
European history is incomprehensible without a basic understanding of geography and maps. The Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of Eastern Europe (New York, 2001) and The Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of the Balkans (New York, 2001), both edited by Dennis Hupchick and Harold Cox, provide clear and detailed maps for particular subject areas accompanied by an explanatory essay. The essay on "Post-Trianon Romania, 1920-1938," for example, discusses Romanian nationalism since the 18th century and Romania's annexations of Hungarian and Soviet territory after the Paris Peace Conference's 1920 Treaty of Trianon. The essay and map on "Bulgaria, 1919-1940" explains why Bulgaria was the chief "loser" among the Balkan states at Versailles and then pursued a policy of territorial revisionism (threatening Yugoslavia, Greece, Romania and Turkey) throughout the interwar period. The Trianon Treaty was also tough on Hungary, which lost about two-thirds of its territory and one-half of its population.
Mark Grossman (ed.), Encyclopedia of the Interwar Years: 1919-1939
(New York, 2000) includes many useful essays on European subjects such as the
Versailles treaties, the League of Nations, German elections, and Italian
Fascism. Joseph L. Wieczynski (ed.), The
Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History, 55 volumes, (Gulf
Breeze, Florida, 1993), is a vast set that contains many entries relevant to
the interwar period such as "Petrograd defense of 1919" and
"Workers and peasant alliances, 1921-1929." Sheila Fitzpatrick and
Lynne Viola (Eds.), A Researcher's Guide to Sources on Soviet Social History
in the 1930s (London, 1990) is a useful reference for historians attempting
to understand Russian society during this period. Philip V. Cannistro, Historical Dictionary
of Fascist Italy (London, 1982) is a concise dictionary of Fascist
Italy. It includes useful maps as well
as appendices on subjects such as place names altered by the fascist
government. C. Paul Vincent, A
Historical Dictionary of Germany's Weimar Republic, 1918-1933 (London,
1997) includes a comprehensive bibliography on all aspects of the Weimar
years. There is also a useful glossary
of German acronyms and idiomatic expressions.
Dennis A. Trinkle, The History Highway: A Guide to Internet Resources (London, 1997) is a valuable source for online material on 20th century European history. It includes, for example, basic research sites such as H-Net (http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/) and WESSWeb, the Western European Studies Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries (http://www.lib.virginia.edu/wess/). The section on Russia and Eastern Europe includes Revelations from the Russian Archives, where one can read primary materials related to the Gulag and the inner workings of the Stalinist system of internal terror. WESSWeb also includes primary and secondary sources for 20th century German, Austrian and Swiss history. About half of the listed links are in German. The Library Catalog page provides links to German, Swiss and Austrian catalogs, digital projects, and bibliographies (http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wess/germ/hist.html). The Northwestern University Library's digital collection "League of Nations Statistical and Disarmament Documents" contains the full text of 260 League of Nations documents
(http://www.library.northwestern.edu/govpub/collections/league/). The Avalon Project at Yale Law School is another excellent source for 20th century primary source material in law, history and diplomacy (http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/avalon.htm).
The Yale University Library European History page includes listings of
bibliographies, primary sources, reference materials, and electronic links. It
is a valuable portal to this vast subject area (http://www.library.yale.edu/rsc/history/european/home.html). The University of Washington's European
History page is another good portal to primary and secondary sources (http://www.lib.washington.edu/subject/History/tm/europe.html).
Spartacus International (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/)
is valuable for the breadth of its coverage, excellent organization, and
inclusion of primary source materials. It includes sections on Nazi Germany, Britain,
the Spanish Civil War, and the USSR.
Russian History on the Web (http://www.russianhistory.org)
is an organized portal to many excellent web sites focused on modern Russian
history. It includes indexes, subject
bibliographies, and primary and secondary sources. The primary source pages are particularly
useful. Here students can read
translations of papers and letters of Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin, or consult
the complete text of the 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The image archive is also useful, including
photographic essays on the Gulag (http://www.osa.ceu.hu/gulag),
rural life in Russia from the first half of the twentieth century, and links to
the excellent Russian photography and digital exhibitions at the Howard Schickler Gallery in New York (http://www.schicklerart.com/euro/index.html).
The Karlsruhe Virtual Catalog (http://www.ubka.uni-karlsruhe.de/hylib/en/kvk.html) indexes “75 million books and serials” worldwide and links to the most important German library catalogs. It provides interfaces in German, English and Spanish. The Simon Wiesenthal Center's Survey of Nazi and Pro-Nazi Groups in Switzerland: 1930-1944 (http://www.wiesenthal.com/swiss/survey/noframes/index.html) includes a current Swiss response that terms the site “unrepresentative” and a “distortion” of the Swiss role during this period. The page also includes a Wiesenthal Center rebuttal with photographs. A powerful film on the subject of Switzerland and Jewish immigration attempts during the Nazi era is director Markus Imhoof’s award winning The Boat is Full (1981).
Useful Journals
Central European History
Contemporary European History
French Historical Studies
International Affairs
Journal of British Studies
Journal of Central European Affairs
Journal of Contemporary History
Journal of Modern History
Slavonic and East European Review
