Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941 [Paperback]

Ian Kershaw (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 27, 2008

The newest immensely original undertaking from the historian who gave us the defining two-volume portrait of Hitler, Fateful Choices puts Ian Kershaw’s analytical and storytelling gifts on dazzling display. From May 1940 to December 1941, the leaders of the world’s six major powers made a series of related decisions that determined the final outcome of World War II and shaped the course of human destiny. As the author examines the connected stories of these profound choices, he restores a sense of drama and contingency to this pivotal moment, producing one of the freshest, most important books on World War II in years—one with powerful contemporary relevance.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Tracing the thought processes behind crucial turning points in WWII's most crucial 19 months, Kershaw, the author of a major biography of Hitler and professor of modern history at the University of Sheffield, reminds us that nothing in that titanic struggle was predetermined. Events might have run a very different course had Great Britain decided to negotiate peace with Hitler in June 1940, or if Japan had attacked the Soviet Union from the east as Germany invaded from the west in June 1941. Kershaw shows that Germany's war on two fronts and Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor, though ultimately disastrous for those countries, were the results of chains of reasoning based on political and military goals, however despicable. Though the author makes deep, intelligent use of archival materials, he provides little new information. Rather, his analysis focuses on the structure of decision making and its consequences. Kershaw depicts Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union as severely hampered by one man giving the orders, getting input only from subordinates too fearful to say anything he didn't want to hear. The slower democratic process enabled many voices to be heard and better informed judgments to be made by Churchill and Roosevelt. This subtext adds a note of hope to a text depicting one of humanity's darkest periods. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Bookmarks Magazine

In Fateful Choices, Ian Kershaw, professor of history at England's University of Sheffield and author of multiple volumes on Hitler, including the acclaimed two-volume biography Hubris (1999) and Nemesis (2000), has done his research, and his arguments here possess the same reasoned analysis that he brought to the Hitler books. Not all key decisions were made in the opening months of the war, of course, and critics wonder whether the author might have chosen other events to examine, including the offensive attacks by Japan and Germany that were catalysts for the war in the first place. Nonetheless, Kershaw offers a solid primer on the war's early history and a fresh perspective on the events that avoids the "terrible bog of counterfactual history" (Guardian) so popular these days in history books. Fateful Choices is engaging, and its insights into the decision-making process valuable.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 656 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (May 27, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0143113720
• ISBN-13: 978-0143113720
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #271,587 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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115 of 121 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars History is not always pre-ordained. It only seems that way., June 9, 2007

By 

Mr. Truthteller (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941 (Hardcover)

Historian Sir Ian Kershaw is perhaps best known for his recent, monumental two-volume biography of Adolf Hitler. His latest effort, Fateful Choices, is a bit far afield from his studies of various aspects of Nazi Germany published in the last 20-30 years. This new book has a much broader focus as it examines, in the order they occurred, ten fateful decisions that changed the course, if not the outcome, of World War II. These decisions all took place in an 18-month period from May 1940 to December 1941.

These decisions were:
1. Britain's agreeing to fight on after the defeat of France.
2. Germany's deciding to wage war on the Soviet Union.
3. Japan's appropriating the colonies of countries at war with, or already defeated by, Germany, and allying itself with Germany and Italy.
4. Italy's deciding to invade Greece.
5. America's providing aid to England.
6. The Soviet Union's ignoring all signs that Germany was about to invade it.
7. America's intensifying its assistance to Britain by an "undeclared war" on Germany.
8. Japan's attacking the U.S.
9. Germany's declaring war against the U.S.
10. Germany's putting into operation the Final Solution.

Many of these decisions, in retrospect, seem strange, if not bizarre, or illogical, if not plain idiotic, amoral, or perverse.

The author's approach is to examine each of these these decisions by those primarily responsible for making them. (For example, Britain's heroic decision to soldier on is examined from the perspective of Churchill, and the War Cabinet.) In so doing, he demonstrates that each of these decisions was not automatic, or even axiomatic, but that they were reflective of the type of political system that produced them and were influenced deeply by the major personalities involved (i.e., Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt; the Japanese had no single dominant personality, despite Allied propaganda to the contrary, and engaged in a sort of collective decision-making process).

He also demonstrates that although each decision had a sort of logic to it (based on national, political, or military objectives), there were also countervailing logical arguments in play at the time these decisions were made which, if followed, would have produced a different outcome and perhaps changed the outcome of the war. (The author does provide an examination of what the other outcomes could have been had the countervailing logic been followed but that is completely secondary to the examination of "why" each decision was made.)

In exploring the background of how each decison was made, the author posits that there was no single meeting in which any of these decisions were made; instead each was the result of an accretion of thoughts and ideas. (Interestingly, the only country in which public opinion and perception apparently mattered in coming to these decisions was the U.S., however, this appears to discount the author's own findings in his work, The Hitler Myth, which is an examination of the opinion sampling by the Nazi Party, and others, in the Nazi era.)

The ten decisions analyzed in this book coalesced to forge many localized conflicts into a global inferno of death and destruction.

The lesson learned by examining how each was made may not be that earth-shattering: Democracies work best at reaching the decisions with the best outcome because even if a forceful personality is at the helm, there are usually many opportunities for opposing viewpoints to be heard and assayed; totalitarian dictatorshops are the worst at reaching decisions because a supreme leader can either ignore opposing viewpoints (or even opposing evidence) at his whim or is not provided opposing viewpoints because those surrounding him are too obeisant or too fearful to contradict his presumptions and conclusions.

Nonetheless, the book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the process by which the Second World War turned into a global conflict, including the reasons why both Germany and Japan made decisions that were huge risks and appear almost suicidal to the outsider but made sense to those in power and further explains why these nations did not, and could not, just give up when the war turned inexorably against them.

The cast of characters involved in these ten fateful decisions in six countries spanning the entire globe is a bit daunting for those who are not full-time or long-time students of the Second World War. This drawback is alleviated by the inclusion of an handy "dramatis personae", providing essential background information on the players.

In sum, the book is a fascinating and well-written account of these ten epochal choices.

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "The unpredictability inherent in human affairs, July 26, 2007

By 

Leonard Fleisig "Len" (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941 (Hardcover)

is due largely to the fact that the by-products of a human process are more fateful than the product". Eric Hoffer

Ian Kershaw's "Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940 - 1941" is an elegantly-written masterful work of history. In "Fateful Choices" Kershaw cast a critical eye over ten decisions (listed in a Comment below this review) during a 19-month period at the beginning of the Second World War that, according to Kershaw, determined not just the outcome of the war but also (in good part) the structure of the post-war world.

Taken as a whole, the greatest value in Kershaw's book is to be found in his comparison of the decision-making process engaged in by the five nations involved. Three of those nations (Germany, Italy, and the USSR) were totalitarian states where decisions were invariably made by Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin with little input other than sycophancy from those around them. Collective decision-making was the norm in the United States and Britain. Both Roosevelt and Churchill (more so during the early months of Churchill's leadership) had cabinet members who were not afraid to speak up and challenge their President or Prime Minister's approach to a specific issue. Japan's decision-making process was also a group process but Kershaw does an excellent job of explaining how the dominance of Japan's military created a very different decision making dynamic than that found in the U.S. and Britain. Kershaw advances a compelling argument that the dysfunctional decision-making methodology found in Germany, Italy, Japan, and the USSR led to some disastrous choices.

In each chapter, Kershaw starts with the decision in question then leads the reader back to a logical starting point and then through the series of events leading up to that decision. Kershaw adroitly shows how previous events have a way of narrowing ones options so that what may in retrospect look like an irrational choice is, however, one of the few options left at the time. What Kershaw has also done, and done very well, is to examine these decisions in the context of the times and on the basis of the information available at the time rather than through the prism of knowledge gained by historians after the fact.

Taken individually, Kershaw's examination of these ten decisions provides the reader with a wealth of information. For example, Kershaw's examination of the British War Cabinet decision taken after deiberations from May 25 - May 28, 1940 to stay in the war and not seek a settlement with Hitler was very informative. Churchill had only been PM for two weeks and had no real power base. His War Cabinet included former PM Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax, two of the architects of Britain's policy of appeasement. It is no small bit of irony that it was Chamberlain who eventually sided with Churchill's argument to stay in the war and that Chamberlain's decision caused Halifax to make the vote unanimous.

I was also struck by Kershaw's look at Mussolini's unilateral decision to invade Greece. As Kershaw notes, the resulting conflagration in Greece in the Balkans caused Hitler to delay his invasion of the USSR by five weeks. Kershaw does not adhere to the argument (advanced by Hitler as the war came tumbling back on his head) that this delay may have cost Hitler victory on the Eastern Front. However, Kershaw than moves on to the discussion of the Japanese government's decision to turn its interest towards southern Asia (including Indochina, Indonesia, and Singapore) rather than advance its claims against eastern Russia in the north. This decision allowed Stalin to relocate troops and munitions from its positions in the Far East to help mount the Red Army's first real counterattack as the Russian winter began to slow the advancing German armies. Those two decisions certainly had to have had an impact on the outcome of the war on the eastern front.

Kershaw devotes two chapters to Roosevelt's relationship with Britain in the months before the U.S. entered the war. Kershaw does an exemplary job with this discussion. I also very much appreciated his examination of Japan's decision-making before the war. Most of my reading on the war has focused on Europe and Kershaw discussion of Japan's deliberations provided a lot of information in a concise and eminently readable way.

Ian Kershaw's "Fateful Choices" is a compelling book. It is a book that manages to combine excellent academic research and first-rate thinking with a writing style that makes this book accessible to any reader with an interest in the period.

Highly recommended. L. Fleisig

33 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fateful Choices made by FDR; Churchill; the Japanese Government; Stalin, Mussolin and Hitler from May, 1940-June, 1941, July 2, 2007

By 

C. M Mills "Michael Mills" (Knoxville Tennessee) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941 (Hardcover)

The hinge of fate was about to open on the most horrible war in human history. Millions would die in gas chambers, on the battlefied, under the sea and the cities of the world. This outstanding work of seminal history from the pen of the eminent British historian Ian Kershaw (famed for his two volume work on Adolf Hitler: "Nemesis" and "Hubris") carefully examines the following ten decisions made by men in power:
1. The English government under new Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill
decides to fight on after the fall of France. Churchill took office on May 10, 1941 following the fall of the weak Neville Chamberlin's premiership. In three days of discussion it was Churchill who insisted and persuaded the government to never surrender. If England had made a negotiated peace with Nazi Germany the war would have taken a much different course. Kudos for Churchill!
2. Hitler made the decision to invade his erstwhile ally the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. The result was a two front war; disaster for the Reich and victory for the Allies. This is one of history's all time worst mistakes made by a national leader at the helm during war.Hitler thought he could defeat England in time to concentrate on the Soviet Union but he was fatally wrong!
3. Japan made the wrong decision to go southward into Indochina and refusing to launch an attack against Russia. This horrible decision would lead to total defeat meted out by the US Navy in the Pacific. Tojo and his militaristic/expansionistic government would lead Japan to total defeat.
4. Mussolini decided to launch his weak Italian legions against Greece hoping to capitalize on German victory in France. He wanted to hitch his horse to a winning team but as a result Italy lost the war and he was forced out of office by an officer coup. The Greeks were tougher foes than he had faced in weak Ethiopia. Hitler had to divert needed troops from the Russian front to Greece. A total fiasco for the Axis powers.
5. The consummate ability of Franklin Delano Roosevelt to maneuver the isolatistic waters of pre-war America led to his devising the lend-lease program of aid to Great Britain. Only a politician and statesmen of FDR's fabled stature could have pulled this miracle off in the political atmosphere of the USA in the late 1930's and 1940.
6. Stalin made the worst mistake of his infamous career when he failed to prepare the Soviet Union for the June, 1941 of the legions of Hitler. Due to his cruel purges of the military his armies were weak; his nation was not prepared for defensive warfare and over 20 millions Soviet military and civilian casualties would take place.
7. FDR and the American Congress allowed undeclared war to take place in the North Atlantic as America shipped needed weapons, fuel and food to Great Britain in its hour of greatest need in 1940-41. The US was doing everthying it could to help the Brits short of war which was not declared until the attack on Pearl Harbor on Decembner. 7, 1941.
8. Japan ruled by a military elite decides to launch the Pearl Harbor attack on the United States in a bold move to win the war.
9. Hitler demands the Reichstag approve his decision to go to war against the USA on December 13, 1941 supporting his Axis ally Japan. Hitler was ignorant of American power. The result would be a descent by German into the abyss of hellish defeat.
10. Over six million Jews died in concentration camps set up by Nazi Germany overseen by the SS head Himmler. Kershaw traces the terrible history of antisemitism in Germany and in Europe.
This is an outstanding book in which the reader feels as if he/she were at the desk of the leaders who are profiled. The history of the second world war could have turned out differently if different decisions had been made.
Kershaw has written an excellent history which could be utilized with profit in college courses dealing with World War II. The chapters are sure to provoke discussion.