Versailles to Potsdam
To compress the history of Europe from 1919 to 1945 into 70,000 words, to be thorough yet lively, to combine a high level of scholarship with a simplicity which will attract the general reader: it is a task of awesome proportions. The field, of course, is now regarded as far more respectable in academic terms than was once the case, as the Munich In.stitut fur Zeit- geschichte and London's new Institute for Ad- vanced Studies in Contemporary History testify. But the weight of events and of documentary evidence presents the specialist with a problem which is magnified rather than diminished when he comes to range over a large tract of time and place. Neither the glittering impressionism of a Barbara Tuchman nor the heavy, pioneer- ing tread of an important work like Ernst Nolte's Three Faces of Fascism will suffice.
It is difficult to think of anyone in this coun- try better qualified to undertake this task than Miss Wiskemann. Her first-hand knowledge of Europe is extensive, and continued from the 1930s into the war years. The reissuing of her Rome-Berlin Axis in a revised edition ern- ' phasises her scholarship and insight, for it is remarkable how little it has had to be altered in the light of subsequent documentary know- - ledge, and the same is true of her Czechs and Germans, also to be reissued soon. Europe of the Dictators is not, I think. her finest work (Un- declared War would probably get my vote), though it might have come nearer to it with a'little more revision. It is still a remarkable acitievement - Inevitably there are gaps to be noticed, an error or two to be found, and judgments to be questioned. Some topics have deliberately been covered in outline only, and, where 'military matters are concerned, this seems perfectly acceptable. But though it is a welcome reversal of the usual way of things to have Britain treated
'only peripherally,' there are times—concerning Henderson and disarmament negotiations, for instance—when an important factor in the Euro- pean scene is missing as a result. Perhaps, too, Miss Wiskemann has been unduly anxious to compress some of those subjects on which she has written elsewhere. Oil sanctions do not get a mention with reference to Abyssinia, for in- stance; the British pledge concerning the remains of Czechoslovakia after Munich is not included, and the guarantee of Rumania is wrongly dated.
Less surprisingly, the treatment of the Soviet Union is not always as good as that of Central Europe. Western intervention in the civil war should find a place in the narrative, while it could be misleading to use the phrase 'take off' in relation to the Soviet economy of the 1930s, since Professor Rostow (with whom the phrase is usually associated) does so for the period 1900-14. Some will also feel that Miss Wiskemann allows an impression of Eden to emerge which overestimates his firmness, while others may question her judgment on the Corfu affair or her emphasis over the balance of German- Soviet-Japanese relations in May 1939.
But such reservations are of far less impor- tance than the merits of the work itself. The author's familiarity with the language, literature and politics of so much of the region frequently reveals little-known facets of the period, enrich- ing the book's character sketches (those of Benes, Briand and Stresemann are particularly good), sharpening its reminders, giving weight to its judgments. It is a work, in other words, written from a genuinely European standpoint, and thus far removed from many British offerings.
Above all, Miss Wiskemann succeeds in re- capturing the particular hope, turmoil and fear of the inter-war years. Though by 1945 a new hope—soon to fade before the realities of the cold war—had appeared in Europe, even at its height it differed from that of twenty years before. 'Arriere les canons, les fusils et les mitrailleuses. . . . Arriere les voiles de deuil.
. Place a l'arbitrage, a la security et a la paix!'; few in the new United Nations were likely to recapture the emotion of Briand as he wel- comed Germany to the League in 1926. Under the dictators Europe had aged beyond her years, and even the Wirtschaftswunder, the Common Market, and the elixir of Gaullism would not be able to recall that degree of innocence which somehow had survived Verdun and Ypres, if not Kronstadt and the Five-Year Plans. Not all the illusions had gone, of course, but, like power and money, they were more plentiful on the other side of the Atlantic.
CHRISTOPHER THORNE
Previous page
