Review of Stephen E. Ambrose's _The Good Fight_

[Michel Ryckx]

jbor :
"undergraduates around the world taking twentieth-century-history classes have found it hard to
avoid grappling with the "Taylor thesis" -- that is, his argument that World War II in Europe was
caused not so much by a megalomaniacal Adolf Hitler as by the misguided policies of Britain and
France.""

The only book I've ever stolen was a 1942 edition in my own language of 'Mein Kampf', which was
written by AH while in his so-called prison after the 1923 Bierkeller Putsch, if I remember well.
For those as stupid as me to actually have read the thing, it is fairly easy to see how the
'program' of the NSDAP, as described in that book,  has been carried out between 1933-1945 and on
which premises it was based, though one can hardly say it is a logical account.  The least one can
say is that the author is megalomaniacal.  And it can certainly be established that the book was
seldom read at the time (George Orwell a notable exception).

I have no opinion whether the policies of Britain and France are misguided (not even being an
undergraduate); of Chamberlain one can say, knowing what happened later on, that he may have been
naïve in Münich (1938); he wasn't any longer when German invaded Poland.  But that is only
knowledge-after-the-fact.  Looking backwards, knowing what happened later on, may tempt some
historians to describe an evolution as inevitable.  One can hardly think of such an assumption as
scientific.

The complex structure of Europe at the time, facing a tremendous economic crisis, experimenting with
democracy (Front Populaire in France, Republicanism in Spain, social democrats striving for a more
planned economy, several general strikes), trying to cope with popular communist parties all over
Europe, while fascism was attractive to many at the time leaves room for different views.  The
expression 'S'il est Minuit dans le Siècle' ('If it is Midnight in the Century') originated in the
Trotskyite movement in France at the time and describes the decade well.

Then jbf:
[snip but I agree]
"It was also the short-sighted policies of the Western "democracies" that made possible "left-wing"
dictators like Stalin."

The Russian industry before 1917 was mainly owned by Europeans and Americans.  It explains the anger
of Western politics after Brest-Litovsk.  The Civil War in Russia was largely financed by western
countries.  I do not think they were short-sighted; they wanted their money back. It isolated Russia
and made it easier to suppress democratic forces in the Soviet State, thus helping in developing the
so-called theory of 'socialism in one country', the ideological basis for the Stalin dictatorship.

[snip again; but I agree once more]

Kind regards,

Michel.