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Loading... Cry Havoc: How the Arms Race Drove the World to War, 1931-1941 (edition 2010)by Joseph Maiolo
Work InformationCry Havoc: How the Arms Race Drove the World to War, 1931-1941 by Joseph Maiolo
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. While I'm impressed with the research that went into this study, I also have to concure that Maiolo's efforts to tie the expression of the logic of total war that is an arms race to diplomatic developments doesn't quite come off. Perhaps the problem is that this book seems to sit uneasily between being a comparative study of the mobilization theories of the Great Powers in the Inter-War Period and a narrative history of the Thirties as an arms race. Another issue might simply be that I've read enough of Maiolo's sources that there's no way that this book can seem that fresh, though he is to be complimented on treating the twentieth century's history of arms races as a continuum and his prose does have snap. ( ) The author has a thesis of the arms race driving the diplomacy instead of the reverse. He's done a good job of researching the arms race but a less than stellar job of tying it to either the diplomacy or the internal politics. He also sees the need to make comments about things such as the US Bonus March that he clearly has no grasp of. This is a useful synthesis of the arms race but of little use to anyone who does not know the rest of the period well. Pity as the thesis is interesting. no reviews | add a review
Did the arms race of the 1930s cause the Second World War? In Cry Havoc, historian Joseph Maiolo shows, in rich detail, how the deadly game of the arms race was played out in the decade prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. In this exhaustively researched account, he explores how nations reacted to the moves of their rivals, revealing the thinking of those making the key decisions--Hitler, Mussolini, Chamberlain, Stalin, Roosevelt--and the dilemmas of democratic leaders who seemed to be faced with a choice between defending their nations and preserving their democratic way of life. This unparalleled account of an era of extreme political tension shows how the interwar arms race shaped the outcome of World War II before the shooting even began.--From publisher description. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)940.5311History and Geography Europe Europe 1918- World War II Social, political, economic history; Holocaust CausesLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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