The Vanquished

September 26, 2016
In this controversial, persuasive, and impressively documented book, Gerwarth (Hitler’s Hangman), professor of modern history at University College Dublin, analyzes a war that was supposed to end war, yet was followed by “no peace, only continuous violence.” The war’s nature changed in its final years: Russia underwent a revolution, and the Western Allies committed themselves to breaking up the continental empires. The postwar violence was “more ungovernable” than the state-legitimated version of the preceding century. Gerwarth establishes his case in three contexts. The Central Powers, Germany and Austria-Hungary, enjoyed a taste of victory in the winter of 1917–18, only to suffer the shock of seeing their military, political, and diplomatic positions quickly collapse. Russia’s revolution immersed Eastern Europe in what seemed a “forever war” of only fleeting democratic triumphs. Fear of Bolshevism in turn stimulated the rise of fascism. And the Versailles negotiations proved unable to control the collapse of prewar empires, much less guide their reconstruction along proto-Wilsonian lines. The period of relative stability after 1923 was a function of exhaustion rather than reconstruction, Gerwarth ruefully notes, and by 1929 Europe was “plunging back once again into crisis and violent disorder” that set the stage for the Great War’s second round. Maps & illus. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency.