The Inter-War Crisis 1919-1939 - Couverture souple

When the world around you is crumbling and the end of civilization seems near, where do you turn? At the end of the First World War this was the crisis facing millions in the Western world.

In this second edition of his Seminar Studies volume, Richard Overy presents the history of a civilization scrambling to save itself from looming disaster which seemed as brutal and tragic as it was unavoidable.

By 1918 an entire generation across Europe felt themselves poised at a

crossroads: a choice between chaos and decline on the one hand or a whole new world political and economic order on the other. In this atmosphere of fear and uncertainty, entire populations strove to choose order over chaos by turning to the political extremes of fascism and communism. When explanation was required, blame was laid at the doors of enfeebled democracy, or communist subversion or Jewish plots.

Despite the yearning for peace, war appeared inescapable - not simply a reaction to Hitler's rise to power, war was also seen by some as a welcome way out of a bankrupt and crisis-ridden age, a violent ending that would clear the stale air of the inter-war world.

Areas covered include:

• A new chapter exploring the intellectual, scientific and cultural response to an age of anxiety and fear
• The Russian Revolution and the Great Crash of 1929
• How dictatorship came to replace democracy
• The irresistible slide toward a second world war

Richard Overy is Professor of History at the University of Exeter. He has authored 17 books on the Third Reich, the Second World War and air warfare these include:The Air War 1939-1945 (2nd ed, 2006), Why the Allies Won (2nd ed, 2006) andThe Dictators: Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia (2004) which won both the Wolfson and the  Hessell Tiltman Prizes for History in 2005.

Richard Overy is Professor in History at University of Exeter (previously Professor of Modern European History at King’s College, London). He has written widely on history of the Third Reich, the Second World War and the Soviet Union, including a number of critically acclaimed books such as Russia’s War (1999), the best-seller The Battle (2000),  and Interrogations: The Nazi Elite in Allied Hands (2002).

He was awarded the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize by the Society for Military History for a lifetime’s contribution to military history. He is also a regular contributor to radio and television.