Europe Between the Wars

This is a welcome revised edition of a book first published in 1988, and much valued by university teachers and students ever since. Readers of the present volume will find two completely new chapters; some rewriting and updating in the old ones; a larger and clearer format; and an enterprising selection of illustrations. There is a particularly striking photograph of Nazi swastika banners and Communist hammer-and-sickle flags flying together in Berlin, at a time when the two parties were co-operating against the Social Democrats— a picture which brings home a well-known phenomenon with an impact greater than words can achieve. The first new chapter, on ‘The Temper of the Times’ (pp. 1–28), offers a discussion of intellectual and cultural developments between the wars, emphasising the destruction of traditional certainties in the havoc of the 1914–18 war and the subsequent crisis of the European mind and spirit. Beginners (and also some...