Europe between Democracy and Dictatorship

Conan Fischer is Professorial Fellow in the School of History, University of St Andrews, Scotland. He is the author of Stormtroopers: a Social, Economic and Ideological Analysis 1929-35 (1983), The German Communists and the Rise of Nazism (1991), The Rise of the Nazis (1995 & 2002) and The Ruhr Crisis 1923-1924 (2003) He is editor of The Rise of National Socialism and the Working Classes in Weimar Germany (1996) and co-editor of After the Versailles Treaty: Enforcement, Compliance, Contested Identities (with Alan Sharp, 2008). He is currently researching the history of Franco-German relations during the Great Depression (1929-32).

• List of Maps ixList of Figures xForeword xi1 The European Paradox 12 The Coming of War 72.1 A Balkans War 72.2 Why the War Need Not Have Spread 132.3 Why the War Spread 253 Fighting the War 403.1 The Opening Gambits: 1914 403.2 The Elusive Victory: 1915 473.3 The High Noon of Attrition: 1916 523.4 The Tipping Point: 1917 593.5 Defeat and Victory: 1918 664 Ending the War: Revolutions and Peacemaking 69 4.1 The Home Front in Wartime 694.2 Revolution in Russia 754.3 Revolution in Germany 904.4 The Legacy of War and the Treaty of Versailles 1004.5 Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean 1164.6 Western Upheavals 1304.7 The Fascist Revolution in Italy 1355 Revision and Recovery, 1919–1929 1435.1 From Versailles to the Dawes Plan 1435.2 From Locarno to the Young Plan 1715.3 Economy and Society: A Faltering Recovery 1805.4 A Contested Modernity 1876 The High Noon of the Dictators 1996.1 Economic Armageddon: The Great Depression in Europe 1996.2 The Rise of the Nazis, 1919–1933 2086.3 Hitler in Power, 1933–1939 2216.4 Dictatorship beyond Germany 2346.4.1 Challenges in the surviving democracies 2356.4.2 Nationalists, Fascists, and Bolsheviks 2487 The Return to War 2717.1 From Global Disarmament to War: 1932–1939 2717.2 The Reasons for War 2787.3 From Poland to the Fall of France: September 1939–June 1940 2867.4 From Vichy to Pearl Harbor: June 1940–December 1941 2998 Europe Eclipsed 3098.1 Competing Caesuras: 1940–1 or 1945? 3098.2 Hitler’s War – from Triumph to Oblivion, 1941–1945 3118.3 Holocaust 3229 Europe: An Honorable Legacy? 327Notes 331Bibliography 358Index 372

“Conan Fischer has written one of the finest short surveys of early twentieth-century Europe that I know, and one that will prove worthwhile to beginning students and advanced scholars alike.”  (European History Quarterly, 1 January 2015)"The book also contains a sufficient number of maps and illustrations, an important consideration from the point of view of students. In short, this is certain to become a standard text for the teaching of 20th-century European history. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All undergraduate collections." (Choice, 1 September 2011)