Forced War

Based on the author's Harvard University doctoral dissertation, this masterful study of the origins of the Second World War is diplomatic history of the first order.

  The Forced War earned praise from the eminent American historian and sociologist Harry E. Barnes, who called it "the first thorough study of the responsibility for the causes of the Second World War in any language ... likely to remain the definitive revisionist work on this subject for many years."

  David Hoggan explains why Hitler decided to attack Poland in 1939 and examines the shortsighted policies that made war all but inevitable. He examines the familiar claims about British "appeasement," the "shameful" Munich agreement, and the "rape" of Czechoslovakia. He dismantles the often-repeated charge of sole German responsibility for the 1939 war, which for many years has been a centerpiece of the prevailing narrative of twentieth century history.

  Britain's actual foreign policy moves following its fateful March 31, 1939, "blank check" guarantee to Poland, Hoggan writes, "were directed unrelentingly toward war." During the months leading to the outbreak of hostilities, he adds, "Britain was encouraging Poland to adopt a hostile policy toward Germany despite the generous terms which Hitler had offered for a lasting German-Polish settlement."

  "The unreasonable attitude adopted by the Polish government in 1939 is no mystery when one considers the grandiose British as- surances to Poland after August 1938," Hoggan concludes. "The Polish leaders made a German-Polish war inevitable by creating a permanent crisis and refusing to negotiate for its solution.

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