All Against All

March 6, 2020

Jankowski (Raymond Ginger Professor of History, Brandeis Univ.) narrates the significant developments in geopolitics during the pivotal years of 1932 and 1933. He gives special attention to the problems of disarmament, tariffs, reparations, and war-debt repayment. While he focuses on the actions of the major powers of the day--the United States, Germany, Japan, France, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain--he also gives attention to the roles played by Yugoslavia, Poland, and others. The League of Nations was unable to address the world's problems and the victorious allies of World War I were unable to agree on what to do. Dictatorial governments and ideological extremism exacerbated the crisis, Jankowski argues, which led to the Second World War. While filled with interesting insights into the thoughts and ideas of world leaders and newspapers, Jankowski's book suffers from a lack of a clear thesis or purpose. Is he trying to show that internationalism is essential? That disarmament or economic cooperation should have been pursued? VERDICT Readers with an interest in reflective philosophical history will appreciate this book. Those looking for a more straightforward narrative of the period and how the two world wars relate might find Ian Kershaw's To Hell and Back a better choice.--Michael Farrell, Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando, FL

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March 15, 2020
Brandeis history professor Jankowski examines world events from 1932 to 1933, and it is not a pretty picture. Three years into the Great Depression, everyone deplored the international crisis, and there was no shortage of claims that democracy, supposedly triumphant at the end of World War I, was on its way out. Although pundits draw parallels with today's world, where autocrats are growing increasingly popular, Jankowski points out that the Depression saw no rise in dictatorships except in Germany. Everywhere else--in Russia, Italy, Japan, China, Poland, and most of Eastern Europe--they were already up and running. Demagogues promised to restore national glory, but their audience at that time gave food and jobs equal priority. Throughout this bleak narrative history, the author shrewdly juxtaposes interminable peace and disarmament conferences and political events with the national mood in a dozen countries whose leaders revealed a distressing eagerness to discover the source of their misery in rival nations or undeserving minorities. Everyone hated the Treaty of Versailles, including those who imposed it. Far less populous than Germany, France feared invasion no less than it had before 1914: "The menace would return...if not today, then tomorrow." German representative government was moribund. Hemmed in by the left and right, centrist parties were a permanent minority in the Reichstag, and President Paul von Hindenburg appointed a series of ineffective chancellors--until Hitler, who "had entered...much as his immediate predecessors had--appointed by an aged president under no obligation to do so, after weeks of favoritism, speculation, and backstairs intrigue." Japan's year-old invasion of Manchuria and China already prefigured the next war, and Italy under Mussolini (not yet a comic-opera figure) announced its intention to reconquer an empire. "He promised...that in ten years," writes the author, "all Europe would be Fascist." An expert if discouraging history of the world 90 years ago, when "postwar became prewar." (8-page b/w photo insert)

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April 20, 2020
In this crisply written, well-documented account, Jankowski (Verdun), a history professor at Brandeis University, examines diplomatic, military, political and economic developments in a crucial period leading up to WWII. Arguing that the winter of 1932-–1933 was when post-WWI Europe and Asia shifted into a pre-WWII footing, Jankowski discusses Japan’s consolidation of its hold on Manchuria, and rearmament in Germany and the Soviet Union. When the Nazis seized power in January 1933, Jankowski writes, the German army was inferior to Poland’s, but Germany’s growing militarism, as well as violent anti-Semitism, was left largely unchecked by the democratic West, which remained in the throes of isolationism and pacifism. He notes that the March 1932 issue of Ladies Home Journal offered a disarmament plan in the name of “9 million mothers,” and the Oxford Union student society voted overwhelmingly against war of any kind in February 1933. Jankowski also delves into negotiations about war debts and currency exchange rates in Geneva and London among members of the faltering League of Nations, as well as political and diplomatic developments in Tokyo, Moscow, and Washington, D.C. Throughout, he shows how rhetorical and military muscle-flexing by rising totalitarian regimes was met by hesitancy on the part of the world’s democracies. This deeply informed and colorful history casts a stark warning about the dangers of unchecked aggression.