The Lights that Failed: European International History 1919-1933 (Oxford History of Modern Europe Series) by Zara Steiner

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Synopsis

The peace treaties represented an almost impossible attempt to solve the problems caused by a murderous world war. In The Lights that Failed: European International History 1919-1933, part of the Oxford History of Modern Europe series, Steiner challenges the common assumption that the Treaty of Versailles led to the opening of a second European war. In a radically original way, this book characterizes the 1920s not as a frustrated prelude to a second global conflict but as a fascinating decade in its own right, when politicians and diplomats strove to re-assemble a viable European order. Steiner examines the efforts that failed but also those which gave hope for future promise, many of which are usually underestimated, if not ignored. She shows that an equilibrium was achieved, attained between a partial American withdrawal from Europe and the self-imposed constraints which the Soviet system imposed on exporting revolution. The stabilization painfully achieved in Europe reached it fragile limits after 1925, even prior to the financial crises that engulfed the continent. The hinge years between the great crash of 1929 and Hitler's achievement of power in 1933 devastatingly altered the balance between nationalism and internationalism. This wide-ranging study helps us grasp the decisive stages in this process.

In a second volume, The Triumph of the Night , Steiner will examine the immediate lead up to the Second World War and its early years.

Foreign Affairs

This huge study of Europe after the end of World War I is an awesome achievement, thanks to the author's extraordinary immersion in diplomatic and economic history and expertise in the complex issues of debts and reparations, security and disarmament, and nationalism. One of the many virtues of the book is Steiner's awareness of the domestic pressures that statesmen of the time faced, thanks to the collapse of the walls between domestic and foreign affairs. The first part deals with the attempt to put together the pieces of a "shattered Europe"; the second covers the "hinge years," 1929-33, when world recession, the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, and the rise of Hitler undermined the global system and destroyed the hopes of internationalism. Many of Steiner's insights (for example, that if the League of Nations "was accepted as part of the international landscape, it was because it did not attempt too much," or that "the equivocal nature of Britain's commitment to Europe" undermined France's position) are familiar. But her exploration is so thorough and incisive that, to this reader at least, her story felt as new as it was tragic.

Biography

New Hall, Cambridge University (Emeritus)