1939: The Alliance That Never Was and the Coming of World War II [Hardcover]

Michael, Jabara Carley (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1566632528 | ISBN-13: 978-1566632522 | Publication Date: May 25, 1999 | Edition: 1St Edition

At a crucial point in the twentieth century, as Nazi Germany prepared for war, negotiations between Britain, France, and the Soviet Union became the last chance to halt Hitler’s aggression. Incredibly, the French and British governments dallied, talks failed, and in August 1939 the Soviet Union signed a nonaggression pact with Germany. Michael Carley’s gripping account of these negations is not a pretty story. It is about the failures of appeasement and collective security in Europe. It is about moral depravity and blindness, about villains and cowards, and about heroes who stood against the intellectual and popular tides of their time. Some died for their beliefs, others labored in obscurity and have been nearly forgotten. In 1939 they sought to make the Grand Alliance that never was between France, Britain, and the Soviet Union. This story of their efforts is background to the wartime alliance created in 1941 without France but with the United States in order to defeat a demonic enemy. 1939 is based upon Mr. Carley’s longtime research on the period, including work in French, British, and newly opened Soviet archives. He challenges prevailing interpretations of the origins of World War II by situating 1939 at the end of the early cold war between the Soviet Union, France, and Britain, and by showing how anti-communism was the major cause of the failure to form an alliance against Hitler. 1939 was published on September 1, the sixtieth anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland and the start of the war.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Any book named after that most fateful of years, 1939, is sure to tell a tragic tale. As Michael Jabara Carley writes in the opening pages of this volume, "This is not a pretty story. It is about appeasement and the failures of collective security in Europe against Nazi aggression. It is about moral depravity and blindness, about villains and cowards." Carley offers a provocative thesis: anticommunist passions in England and France prevented these countries from forming an antifascist alliance with the Soviet Union that might have headed off the bloodiest conflict in human history. This is not a totally original idea, but Carley makes a forceful case that just a few years ago was an especially tough sell: "Cold war ideology tended to overshadow Anglo-French culpability and responsibility for the path to war in 1939." In other words, the anticommunist sentiments that made it so difficult to deal with the Soviet Union during the 1930s also made it nearly impossible during the cold war to blame anticommunism for what went wrong. Carley's tale is not entirely bleak; he devotes a fair amount of attention to "a motley, imperfect group of heroes" who warned about the rise of Nazi power and urged a joint strategy with the Soviets to contain Germany. One of these Cassandras was Winston Churchill, but others have been nearly forgotten. Carley revives them on these pages in a thought-provoking--and certainly controversial--book that takes a fresh look at an old topic. --John J. Miller

From Booklist

For decades after the start of World War II, appeasement was a byword for spineless surrender by Britain and France to Hitler's demands. In recent years, revisionist historians have tended to see a more complicated (or balanced) picture, stressing Anglo-French hopes for buying time and acknowledging their legitimate fears regarding Soviet designs in central Europe. Carley is a diplomatic historian who has mined newly accessible Soviet archives in order to present a counter-revisionist thesis. He asserts that reflexive and extreme anti-Communist paranoia on the part of British and French politicians and diplomats prevented a very achievable alliance against Hitler. As a result, a justifiably frustrated Stalin signed the Non-Aggression Pact with Hitler as a means for self-preservation. Carley clearly has an axe to grind and ignores inconvenient factors, including Stalin's own paranoia and the Soviet desire for ideological expansion westward. Still, his utilization of new sources is quite revealing, and his provocative, if slanted, argument is certainly a useful contribution to an ongoing debate among scholars. Jay Freeman

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Ivan R Dee; 1St Edition edition (May 25, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566632528
• ISBN-13: 978-1566632522
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,792,445 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exposing the Cold War mentality of the 1930s, April 23, 2000

By 

alvin Finkel (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 1939: The Alliance That Never Was and the Coming of World War II (Hardcover)

Michael Carley's 1939: The Alliance That Never Was demolishes the Cold War-inspired revisionism regarding the diplomacy that led to World War 2. From the Cold War perspective, Stalin, the left-wing dictator, betrayed the Western democracies who were wooing him, to form a dictators' pact with Hitler, the right-wing dictator. This allowed Hitler to invade Poland, giving the Soviets the chance to steal eastern Poland, a forewarning of how they would behave after World War 2 once the Nazis were beaten.

Wrong in every respect, argues Carley. The Soviets had been pressing for a front with the democracies to prevent Nazi rearmament and aggression since 1934. They still wanted this desperately in 1939, but after Munich, they did not think they would get it. Fanatic anti-communism on the part of most of the leadership of Britain and an important section of the French political class made such an alliance seem unlikely. Indeed the Western democracies appeared to prefer Nazi Germany to Communist Russia. While the Soviet Commissar of Foreign Affairs, Maxim Litvinov, worked tirelessly to press for collective security, and the Soviet Ambassador to London, Ivan Maiski, had an important network of friends in high places in Britain who trusted Soviet initiatives, the Soviet plans were always blocked by the "men of Munich." Led by Neville Chamberlain himself, they included key Cabinet members, members of the Foreign Affairs ministry, and the military. These men were impervious to pleas from Maiski, and from Winston Churchill, and Robert Vansittart for an alliance with the Soviets against the Nazis.

Carley's book is the result of painstaking research in the foreign affairs documents of all the principal players. Particularly important here is his work in the archives of the old Soviet Union that began to open a variety of once-closed documents in the era of glasnost.

While this book focuses almost exclusively on the events of 1939, it reinforces the views expressed in Clement Leibovitz and Alvin Finkel, In Our Time: The Chamberlain-Hitler Collusion, that in the years leading up to World War 2, the leaders of the Western democracies deliberately tried to build up Hitler's power in the hope that he would take on the hated Soviets. He could have all of eastern and central Europe as a reward if he could keep his hands off Britain and France, their empires, and their spheres of influence. Only when it became clear that Hitler would not do these things, did the Western countries reluctantly decide to fight him.

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Study Of The Year Leading To WWII!, March 15, 2001

By 

Barron Laycock "Labradorman" (Temple, New Hampshire United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: 1939: The Alliance That Never Was and the Coming of World War II (Hardcover)

This excellent recent work by author Michael Jabara Carley adds more fuel to the continuing fire of controversy regarding relative responsibility for the outbreak of general war in the fall of 1939. Indeed, in this well-written and well-documented work, the author's main argument contends that it was the collective failure of the so-called allies to overcome their own fears about communism and the perceived threats associated with the rise of international socialism that were responsible for the failure to bring the Soviet Union into the Allied orbit in time to stave off Hitler's rush into Poland. Given the well-documented facts and figures marshaled in defense of this argument, it is difficult to fault this view.

For example, Carley illustrates how the Soviet Union made attempt after attempt to solicit the support and agreement of the western allies to form an alliance against Germany, only to be slow-rolled and virtually ignored time after time. In this fashion, the Soviets were finally left with few obvious options other than to turn into the direction fo their greatest fear and accept terms with the Nazis, hoping that by cooperating them and acting as their key supplier in the face of growing intransigence on the part of the Allies, the Germans would leave them alone. The author masterfully shows how this consistent series of rebuffs of the Russians by the western Allies was related to a western phobia of the communism and its associated threats, and illustrates how these fears of all things socialistic blinded the Allies to the obvious dangers presented by the acts of the Nazi regime.

Thus, despite the fact that the Russians regularly tested the waters for a broad alliance against the Nazis during the late thirties, it was the western Allies who spurned such efforts to create a united front that did so much to engender the conditions allowing it to break out in the fall of 1939. In fact, as the author so well illustrates, a particularly virulent form of anti-socialist fervor seemed to affect both the British ruling class as well as many in the higher reaches within the French political community during this period of time, and this attitude did much to limit the discussion of the possibilities for compromise and joint action with the Russians. Of course, there were a few hardy souls with the vision and perspective to understand how important an early alliance with the Soviet Union, including Winston Churchill in Britain and Robert Vansittart in France. But few others listened to their emotional pleas for action and union with the Russians or their reasoning for taking such common cause with the dreaded socialists.

This is a carefully documented and painstakingly well-researched work that serves a much wider readership and appreciation for it as the work of careful scholarship that it is. I was especially impressed by the degree of information revealed from the archives of the former Soviet Union, which acts to shed a lot of light on the efforts made by Stalin and the Soviet cabinet during the time in question. This is an excellent book, and a worthy companion to a number of other excellent works such as "Grand Illusion" and "Dark Valley", each of which explores the nature of international politics in the years leading up to the outbreak of World War Two. Enjoy!

4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Two Cheers for Appeasement!, September 29, 2002

By 

Tom Holmberg "tholmberg" (Hoffman Ests., IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 1939: The Alliance That Never Was and the Coming of World War II (Hardcover)

Carley recounts the diplomatic story of 1939, the nadir of a "low, dishonest decade." Its characters are "Guilty Men" and "Gravediggers," whose "clever hopes" consisted mainly of appeasing Hitler. He reveals the failed negotiations to forge an alliance that "never was" with Russia which might have prevented war; the fear and short-sightedness that doomed that alliance; the ideological blindness that feared a victory that could lead to the spread of Communism more than a defeat that would spread Nazi terror. The book is a corrective to those who have blamed Russia and the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact for the outbreak of the war, ignoring the 5 years of efforts by the Soviets to form an effective anti-German alliance.

There are few heroes in this story. France, divided internally, found it easiest to follow the British. France wouldn't move to save Eastern Europe without Britain, and Britain wouldn't move. What the Russians wanted was an ironclad military alliance, with precise and concrete terms, staff talks and passage rights through Poland so that Russia could come to grips with Germany. Poland could not hold the eastern front against Germany alone. Without such an agreement Russia's options were to stay neutral or come to terms with Germany. One Foreign Office official in May 1939 summed it up, "The Russians have for years past been pressing for staff [talks]...and the French at our instigation have always refused them." Gen. Gamelin as early as 1936 told the French Staff that the only real help against Germany had to come from Russia and Russia needed passage rights to come to France's aid.

If the British and French were suspicious of Russian motives, the Russians were equally suspicious. They felt that the Allies would be happy to see Germany and Russia destroy each other. Chamberlain wrote that he was so "skeptical of the value of Russian help that [the Allies' position] was [not] greatly worsened if we had to do without them." (France estimated Britain had two divisions to send to its aid, Russia 100 divisions.) The British wouldn't fight to save the Baltics, but wanted Russia to fight to save Belgium.

Despite their awareness of this fundamental problem, the Allies couldn't see their way to a solution even after five years. Litvinov, the chief proponent of collective security, was finally replaced by Molotov as Russian frustrations grew and war neared. The British considered Molotov "totally ignorant," "an ignorant and suspicious peasant" with a peasant's "foolish cunning." In July 1939 Chamberlain was still arguing that the Allies did not need the offensive might to defeat Germany, only defensive forces to prevent a German victory.

When the Allies made a last ditch effort to string the Russians along it sent a delegation on a slow merchant vessel with instructions so vague as to be "almost useless," lacking written credentials and told to avoid discussions of passage rights. No wonder the Russians were suspicious. In the end the Russians signed a non-aggression pact with Germany; Poland, "an aggressor in 1938 and a victim in 1939," was partitioned. Even then, a month into the war, Chamberlain was still suggesting that Britain might have to unite with Germany "against the common danger."

Carley blames chiefly the British and interwar anti-communism for the failure of the Western Powers to form an alliance with Russia that might have prevented WWII. Using extensive research in French and British archives, Carley focuses narrowly on the diplomatic "dance" going on among the British, French and Soviets, other broader issues are only touched upon as they affect this diplomatic activity. The politics and diplomacy of the smaller Eastern European states is largely ignored as Carley concentrates on the "big picture."

The narrative bogs down in the middle as the British and the French repeatedly try to wiggle out of making any firm commitments to Russia. British and French obstinate un-Realpolitik grows tedious, but demonstrates the growing frustrations of the Russians. A frustration that had already driven the Italians onto the side of Hitler. Exceptionally well-researched, "1939" presents an important interpretation of the events leading to WWII.