B8
B Jonathan Yardley
Decision after fateful decision T
1939 Countdown to War By Richard Overy Viking. 159 pp. $25.95
his exceptionally lucid, concise and authoritative book (which publishes at the
end of September) tells the story of “the extraordinary ten days of drama that separated the conclusion of the German-Soviet [non-aggression] pact early in the morning of 24 August [1939] and the late afternoon of 3 September when France joined Britain in declaring war on Germany.” Richard
Overy continues: “The final outbreak of war was sealed by decisions taken under the immense strain of knowing that Europe risked being plunged once again into a conflict that many feared would mean the eclipse of European civilization. In the end, resolving the crisis fell to the lot of a handful of men compelled, whether they liked it or not, to act out a drama that involved the lives of millions of ordinary Europeans.” Overy, a professor of history at the University of
Exeter in England and author, co-author or editor of more than two dozen books dealing in various ways with World War II, has long argued that the root causes of the war were deeper and more complex than is commonly acknowledged. Here, however, he is less concerned with underlying causes than with the brutal pressures that came to bear on the leaders of the future antagonists as they maneuvered to protect their own interests on the one hand and to stave off continentwide warfare on the other. “The outbreak of war,” he writes, “now seems a natural consequence of the international crisis provoked principally by Hitler’s Germany. What follows is intended to show that nothing in history is inevitable.” By late August 1939, the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia had been completed, and Hitler had gotten his hands on parts of that woebegone country that he regarded as central to “establishing German ‘living space’ and uniting all ethnic Germans in the east with the new Reich.” There is little reason to believe that at this point he wanted to attack Britain and France with the aim of conquering them. “Hitler’s ambition for conquest in the East was consistent with much German geopolitical fantasy going
back decades,” Overy writes, “and Hitler was as absorbed as any provincial central European German nationalist might be with the idea of carving out from Eastern Europe a larger and more savage version of the Habsburg Empire, armed with a new model of economic exploitation (the so-called ‘large area economy’) and nourished on dreams of a racial utopia.” That all of this was essentially insane is obvious, but it was limited in scope. Hitler “is scarcely a reliable witness in his own defence,” Overy writes, but “the evidence of the last weeks before the outbreak of war shows him again and again repeating to those around him in the political and military elite that he wanted to localize the conflict.” As he turned his attention to Poland, he persisted in that illusion, or delusion. It infuriated him that after World War I “the victorious Allied powers decided to create an independent Polish state and to grant it a land corridor to the sea through former German territory, with the prospect of using the German city of Danzig as a major port for the Polish import/export trade.” He completely rejected Danzig’s status as a “Free City” and demanded its return to Germany. Though Britain and France had declared themselves in full support of Poland and prepared to go to war in its defense, Hitler believed that these were mere paper promises — a belief reinforced by the Munich agreement of 1938 by which Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister, authorized the breakup of Czechoslovakia — and that he could seize not merely Danzig but all of Poland without British or French armed resistance. He was emboldened in this conviction by his bellicose foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop. Hitler “believed Ribbentrop’s many assurances that Britain would not fight, because he wanted to believe them.” This is one of the broad themes of “1939”: that as the crisis grew ever more urgent, each party to it withdrew into a “narrow mental box” that “contained its own moral universe.”Germany’s leaders “almost certainly convinced themselves that the war against Poland was entirely justified on moral terms, however criminal the actual plans for war.” By the same token, “on the British and French side the search for a justification that had an immediate meaning was found in the concept of honour.... It had a simplicity that cut through all the other arguments surrounding the justification or otherwise for launching war, and narrowed the moral outlook of the democracies to a single word.” Like the American leaders of 2003, impelled by the self-created illusion that Iraq harbored weapons of mass destruction, the leaders of 1939 went to war as much on the wings of fantasy as out of political, military or diplomatic necessity.
On the question of leadership, Overy believes that history has been unkind to Chamberlain,
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who “is often painted as a man who searched for any way of evading conflict in 1939, but though he always thought peace preferable to war, he had few illusions about Hitler by the beginning of 1939,” regarding him as “the blackest devil he had ever met.” Later, after all of Chamberlain’s efforts to achieve a negotiated peace had failed and Britain had declared war on Sept. 3, Overy writes: “Against all his better instincts and
expectations, Chamberlain found himself compelled to declare a war he had not wanted. Though history has generally found Chamberlain wanting in courage, the final step of making a declaration whose implications were profound and far-reaching was certainly a courageous act. No less courageous, though often overlooked, was the declaration of war made later on the same day by [French Prime Minister Édouard] Daladier, whose moral rejection of war had been as powerful as Chamberlain’s but who also came to recognize the futility of avoiding a direct confrontation with Hitler’s Germany. Democratic leaders had none of the simplicity enjoyed by dictators in choosing war.” It didn’t help that every party to this confrontation was in a state of near-total exhaustion — Chamberlain perhaps most visibly but also Hitler and Daladier and many of their foremost lieutenants: “Insufficient account is taken in all the final days of the drama of the extraordinary toll imposed on those at the very centre of events that tumbled over each other in bewildering profusion in the course of just a week.” Not surprisingly, “the narrowing of vision generated by the conditions of crisis provoked a growing irrationality in which the wider picture or the longer causes of the confrontation were abandoned in favour of a restricted ‘mental box’ in which decisions now had to be made.” As to the issue of the war’s inevitability, this is perhaps a trifle more ambiguous than Overy would have us believe. To be sure, it was far from inevitable that war should begin in early September 1939. It wouldn’t have been easy, but a peaceful settlement to the Polish problem could have been negotiated and enforced, though of course this would have denied Hitler a second opportunity to flex his military muscle and would have left him as eager as ever to put his war machine through the bloody practice run he believed it needed. It is difficult to imagine, though, that sooner or later some incident or controversy would not have set the great powers of Europe at each other’s throats once again. Too much had been left unresolved by World War I and the Treaty of Versailles, too many grievances and resentments and enmities lingered. War itself surely was inevitable, though the date and place on which it would commence were not.
yardleyj@washpost.com
LITERARY CALENDAR SEPTEMBER 13-19, 2010
13 MONDAY 7 P.M. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer discusses his new book, “Making Our Democracy Work: A Judge’s View,” at the National Archives, William G. McGowan Theater, 700 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. A book signing follows; call 202-357-5000. 7P.M. Gary Shteyngart reads from and signs his new novel, “Super Sad True Love Story,” at Politics and Prose Bookstore, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW, 202-364-1919. 14 TUESDAY 6:30 P.M. Adam Taylor discusses and signs his new book, “Mobilizing Hope: Faith-Inspired Activism for a Post-Civil Rights Generation,” at Busboys and Poets, 2021 14th St. NW, 202-387-7638. He will be introduced by theologian and activist Jim Wallis, the editor of Sojourners magazine, who also provided the book’s foreword. 7:30 P.M. Anne Fortier reads from and signs her new Shakespeare-inspired novel, “Juliet,” at Borders Books, Route 7 at Columbia Pike, Baileys Crossroads, Va., 703-998-0404.
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15 WEDNESDAY 6:30 P.M. Gregory Levey, author of “Shut Up, I’m Talking: And Other Diplomacy Lessons I Learned in the Israeli Government,” discusses and signs his new book, “How to Make Peace in the Middle East in Six Months or Less: Without Leaving Your Apartment,” at Borders Books-Downtown, 18th & L Sts. NW, 202-466-4999. 7 P.M. Journalist Eliza Griswold discusses and signs her new book, “The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches From the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam,” at Politics and Prose Bookstore, 202-364-1919. 7P.M. Ramola D, a creative writing teacher at George Washington University and the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, reads from and discusses her new book of short stories, “Temporary Lives,” at the Arlington Central Library, 1015 N. Quincy St., Arlington, Va., 703-228-5990. 7:30 P.M. Thomas W. Young, a veteran flight engineer for the Air National Guard, reads from and signs his new political thriller, “The Mullah’s Storm,” at Borders Books-Baileys Crossroads, 703-998-0404. 8P.M. Tilar J. Mazzeo, a cultural historian and assistant professor at Colby College in Maine as well as the author of “The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It,” discusses her forthcoming book, “The Secret of Chanel No. 5: The Intimate History of the World’s Most Famous Perfume,” as part of the Jenny McKean Moore Reading Series at George Washington University, Marvin Center amphitheater, 800 21st St. NW. For details,
call 202-994-6180 or visit
www.gwenglish.blogspot.com. 16 THURSDAY 6 P.M. Sam Kean,a reporter at Science magazine, discusses and signs his new book, “The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World From the Periodic Table of the Elements,” at the Georgetown University Bookstore, 3800 Reservoir Rd. NW, 202-687-7482. 6:30 P.M. Writer and filmmaker Tariq Ali, an editor of the New Left Review, discusses and signs his new book, “The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad,” at Busboys and Poets, 14th & V Sts. NW, 202-387-7638. 7P.M. Gina Cavallaro,a war correspondent and writer for Army Times, and Matt Larsen, an expert in hand-to-hand combat and a former sniper in both the Marines and Army Rangers, discuss and sign their new book, “Sniper: American Single-Shot Warriors in Iraq and Afghanistan,” at Barnes & Noble-Market Commons, 2800 Clarendon Blvd., Arlington, Va., 703-248-8244. 17 FRIDAY 7 P.M. Novelist, playwright and poet Ntozake Shange joins her sister,
playwright and conceptual theater artist Ifa Bayesa, for a reading and discussion of their new collaborative venture, the novel “Some Sing, Some Cry,” at the National Museum of Natural History, Baird Auditorium, 10th St. & Constitution Ave. NW, 202-633-1000. A book signing follows.
18 SATURDAY 2 P.M. Artist and author James Prosek, author of “Trout: An Illustrated History” (his first book, penned while he was a student at Yale) and the children’s book “A Good Day’s Fishing,” reads from and discusses his children’s picture book “Bird, Butterfly, Eel” at the National Sporting Library & Fine Art Museum, 102 The Plains Rd., Middleburg, Va. Following the presentation, those attending can watch Prosek at work on an original painting. Copies of Prosek’s children’s books, as well as his new book of nonfiction, “Eels: An Exploration, From New Zealand to the Sargasso, of the World’s Most Mysterious Fish,” will be available for sale and signing. For details, visit
www.nsl.org; to RSVP, call Judy Sheehan 540-687-6542, ext. 10 or e-mail
jsheehan@nsl.org. 19 SUNDAY 1 P.M. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson reads from and discusses “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration” at Politics and Prose Bookstore, 202-364-1919.
For more literary events, go to
washingtonpost.com/gog/ and search “book event.”
KLMNO
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2010
WASHINGTON BESTSELLERS PAPERBACK
FICTION 1 THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO
2 THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE 3 TRUE BLUE (Vision, $9.99) 63
(Vintage, $14.95). By Stieg Larsson. First book in the late Swede’s “Millennium Trilogy”; basis of new film.
24
(Vintage, $15.95). By Stieg Larsson. Sex trafficking between Sweden and Eastern Europe is exposed.
2
By David Baldacci. A cop (her sister is the D.C. chief of police) aims to resurrect her career and solve a murder.
4 1022 EVERGREEN PLACE (Mira, $7.99) 5 PURSUIT OF HONOR (Pocket, $9.99) 1
By Debbie Macomber. This new Cedar Cove tale finds a single mom smitten with the man next door.
1
By Vince Flynn. A shocking al-Qaeda attack in D.C. summons Mitch Rapp and his team to action.
6 TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (Warner, $7.99) 6
(HarperPerennial, $15.99). By Harper Lee. The Pulitzer Prize-winning tale set in the Depression-era South.
7 THE SCARPETTA FACTOR (Berkley, $9.99) 1
By Patricia Cornwell. Scarpetta, wary of accepting a program offer from CNN, tackles yet another crime.
8 MIDNIGHT CRYSTAL (Jove, $7.99). By Jayne Castle 9 LORD OF THE FLIES (Berkley, $9.99)
By William Golding. The classic, unsettling tale of English schoolboys stranded on a deserted isle.
10 SPARTAN GOLD (Berkley, $9.99). By Clive Cussler
NONFICTION/GENERAL 1 EAT PRAY LOVE: ONE WOMAN’S SEARCH FOR
1
with Grant Blackwood. Twelve bottles of rare wine hold the key to an ancient, long-lost treasure.
144
EVERYTHING ACROSS ITALY, INDIA AND INDONESIA (Penguin, $15). By Elizabeth Gilbert. New feature film.
2 THE OFFICIAL SAT STUDY GUIDE (SECOND EDITION) 3 THREE CUPS OF TEA: ONE MAN’S MISSION
TO PROMOTE PEACE (Griffin, $19.95) By Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
4 MENNONITE IN A LITTLE BLACK DRESS: A MEMOIR 5 WHERE MEN WIN GLORY: THE ODYSSEY OF
PAT TILLMAN (Anchor, $15.95) By Jon Krakauer. The NFL star turned soldier.
6 THE U.S. CONSTITUTION AND FASCINATING FACTS 7 MERRIAM-WEBSTER’S SPANISH-ENGLISH
DICTIONARY (Merriam-Webster, $6.50) Another staple of back-to-school lists.
8 OPEN: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Vintage, $15.95) 9 NIGHT (FSG, $9). By Elie Wiesel 1
By Andre Agassi. Revelations abound in this memoir by the eight-time Grand Slam tennis champ.
67
The terrifying account of his experiences in Nazi concentration camps during World War II.
10 THE GIFT OF FEAR: AND OTHER SURVIVAL SIGNALS
THAT PROTECT US FROM VIOLENCE (Dell, $15). By Gavin de Becker
Rankings reflect sales for the week ended Sept. 5, 2010. The charts may not be reproduced without permission from Nielsen BookScan. Copyright © 2010 by Nielsen BookScan. (The right-hand column of numbers represents weeks on this list, which premiered in Book World on Jan. 11, 2004. The bestseller lists in print alternate between hardcover and paperback; the complete list can be found online.)
6
Hardback Bestsellers @
voices.washingtonpost.com/political-bookworm
3 1
ABOUT IT (Oak Hill, $2.95). By Terry L. Jordan Also includes copies of the other Charters of Freedom.
1 20
OF GOING HOME (Holt, $14). By Rhoda Janzen Coping, all at once, with a stray husband and car crash.
4 40
(College Board, $21.99). This revised manual offers 10 practice tests and loads of tips.
173 1
The Winters clan may have found the key to salvation in this final chapter of the Dreamlight Trilogy.
1
Wednesday IN STYLE: Emma Donoghue
NINA SUBIN
BOOK WORLD THIS WEEK
COMING IN STYLE MONDAY Private eye V.I. Warshawski investigates a
murdered clubgoer in Sara Paretsky’s new mystery, Body Work.
TUESDAY In his novel C, Tom McCarthy combines disparate histories and cultures in a surreal mix.
WEDNESDAY Inspired by harrowing true stories, Emma Donoghue’s brilliant novel Room centers on a mother and
child held prisoner for years. In Giles Foden’s novel Turbulence, the planners of the D-Day invasion must convince a pacifist meteorologist to help them with a forecast.
THURSDAY The Saddest Music Ever Written: The Story of Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings,” by Thomas Larson.
FRIDAY Robert Hellenga’s Snakewoman of Little Egypt is a wonderful novel of anthropology, snake-handling and familial love.
SATURDAY Nashville Chrome, by Rick Bass, is a richly written novel about the real-life Browns, singers admired by Elvis and the Beatles.
voices.washingtonpost.com/political-bookworm
Join us as we debate the issues and authors making news today.
6
Read our blog, Political Bookworm, which focuses on books that stir the national political conversation.
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