| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

Michael Jabara Carley. 1939: The Alliance That Never Was and the Coming of World War II. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee. 1999. Pp. xxv, 321. $28.95.

Michael Jabara Carley offers fresh insights into the origins of World War II. Carley focuses on one question: why did France, England, and Soviet Russia fail to form a military alliance against Nazi Germany in the 1930s? He blames England and France for much of this failure. Between 1935 and late 1938, Soviet foreign minister Maxim Litvinov, an advocate of collective security, asked England and France for a military alliance against Adolf Hitler. Yet British and French prime ministers Stanley Baldwin, Neville Chamberlain, and Edouard Daladier rejected all overtures from Moscow. Carley persuasively argues that the British and French leaders were driven by an intense anticommunist ideology. They were afraid that an alliance with Russia would lead to war against Hitler. Russia alone would benefit from a war. The Soviets might encourage a war against Hitler and then stand aside and watch the capitalist countries weaken themselves. Perhaps war and devastation would create the breeding ground for a socialist revolution. Even if Russia joined England and France, victory against Hitler risked the spread of communism as the Red Army advanced into Central Europe. At this cost, victory over fascism was not a high priority for England and France. Indeed, the fear that a war against Hitler would result in Soviet gains "drove appeasement as much as fear of Nazi power" (p. 257). . . .

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