The Vanquished

September 26, 2016
In this controversial, persuasive, and impressively documented book, Gerwarth (Hitler’s Hangman), professor of modern history at University College Dublin, analyzes a war that was supposed to end war, yet was followed by “no peace, only continuous violence.” The war’s nature changed in its final years: Russia underwent a revolution, and the Western Allies committed themselves to breaking up the continental empires. The postwar violence was “more ungovernable” than the state-legitimated version of the preceding century. Gerwarth establishes his case in three contexts. The Central Powers, Germany and Austria-Hungary, enjoyed a taste of victory in the winter of 1917–18, only to suffer the shock of seeing their military, political, and diplomatic positions quickly collapse. Russia’s revolution immersed Eastern Europe in what seemed a “forever war” of only fleeting democratic triumphs. Fear of Bolshevism in turn stimulated the rise of fascism. And the Versailles negotiations proved unable to control the collapse of prewar empires, much less guide their reconstruction along proto-Wilsonian lines. The period of relative stability after 1923 was a function of exhaustion rather than reconstruction, Gerwarth ruefully notes, and by 1929 Europe was “plunging back once again into crisis and violent disorder” that set the stage for the Great War’s second round. Maps & illus. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency.

September 15, 2016
The first study of the disorders that shook all the defeated states of Europe following World War I.For the nations that lost the war, the fighting did not end with the armistice in November 1918. On the contrary, Gerwarth (Modern History/Univ. College, Dublin; Hitler's Hangman: The Life of Heydrich, 2011, etc.) asserts that between 1918 and 1923, postwar Europe was "the most violent place on the planet." Russia, of course, was swept up in its own revolution and civil war. While the victors connived in Paris to reorganize a continent previously dominated by land empires into one composed of nation-states, from the Baltic to the Caucasus, the territories of the collapsed Austro-Hungarian, German, and Ottoman empires were torn by civil wars and revolutions of their own and by interstate wars like the ill-advised Greek invasion of Turkey in 1919. As a result, writes Gerwarth, "none of the defeated states of the Great War managed to return to anything like pre-war levels of domestic stability and internal peace." Although the 1923 Conference of Lausanne ended the Greco-Turkish conflict and marked the exhaustion of this spasm of violence, the author contends that it laid the foundation for later ethnic cleansing because it "established the legal right of state governments to expel large parts of their citizens on the grounds of 'otherness.' It fatally undermined cultural, ethnic and religious plurality as an ideal." In this extensively researched and crisply written account, Gerwarth explores the political and military upheavals throughout central Europe, including those in unfamiliar nations like Bulgaria and radically dismembered Hungary. The author's consistent focus on national governments, paramilitary groups like the various German Freikorps, and statistical counts of victims of violence and famine at the expense of personal experiences of ordinary people caught up in the chaos sometimes renders the narrative a little dry, but it is certainly authoritative. A thorough explanation for the rise of the nationalist and fascist groups who set the stage for World War II.

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October 1, 2016

Historian Gerwarth (modern history, Univ. Coll. Dublin; Hitler's Hangman) writes an accessible and astute account of the interwar period, specifically the post-World War I years between 1918 and 1923. The author effectively details changes in violence after the end of World War I as postwar Europe devolved into interstate wars between Poland and the Soviet Union, Greece and Turkey, and Romania and Hungary along with several civil wars (e.g., Finland, Ireland, and Germany). The result of this bloodshed emerged in the 1920s as two radically different ideologies, Bolshevism and Facism, both of which led to violence in several countries such as the Red Terror in Russia and the rise of Benito Mussolini in Italy. Gerwarth succeeds in describing the sectarian violence, economic insecurity, and blame of "the other" (more often than not, Jewish communities) that was born out of the Great War and led to an even bloodier battle. Readers of European history will find much to contemplate. VERDICT This work does not have the glamour of World War theater, but it adequately provides an important bridge between two massive conflicts that still resonate with us today.--Keith Klang, Port Washington P.L., NY

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2016
On November 11, 1918, the guns fell silent as an armistice officially ended the fighting in what was then called the Great War. But, as historian Gerwarth illustrates, the slaughter and massive dislocation continued well into the following decade in central, eastern, and southern Europe. By 1918, the great European empiresRussia, Austro-Hungary, and Ottoman Turkeyhad collapsed. These multiethnic, multilingual anachronisms were oppressive and inherently unstable, yet they kept the lid on a welter of seething hopes, resentments, and hatred that now boiled over. The most massive of these explosions of violence was in Russia, where civil war pitted Whites against the Bolsheviks. Greeks, Turks, various southern Slavic groups, and German-speaking communities also went after each other, motivated by religion, ultra-nationalism, or political hostility, both with conventional armies and, more commonly, within small towns and villages where mixed ethnic and religious populations fought each other. Sadly, the end of these struggles was no end at all as WWII loomed. This is difficult, often horrifying reading, but Gerwarth provides an essential contribution to our understanding of the interwar years.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)