__________________________________________________________________________
H-DIPLO ROUNDTABLE

Michael Jabara Carley,  __1939: The Alliance That Never Was and the Coming
of World War II__ (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1999) xxvii + 325pp, $28.95 US.

Roundtable Editor: William Keylor
Reviewers: Igor Lukes, Sally Marks, and Robert Young
__________________________________________________________________________

Response by Michael J. Carley
University of Akron
mjcarley@uakron.edu


        Before turning to the comments of my critics, I would like to
explain how I came to write this book.  Robert Young has identified one of
the reasons, but let me go on.  My first work, which I began as a graduate
student, focused on the French intervention in the Russian civil war,
1917-1920 and on the Russo-Polish war in 1919-1920.  In the course of
these early studies I noticed that there was not always uniform
ideological hostility to Soviet Russia;  sometimes generals or
politicians, Ferdinand Foch or David Lloyd George, for example in early
1918, entertained the idea of cooperating with the Bolsheviks against the
common German enemy.  Anti-communist enmity and fear overcame these
tendencies toward _Realpolitik_.

        As my research moved forward into the 1920s and the 1930s, I
discovered that the same tendencies continued.  Some British and French
traders and some French politicians saw profit and strategic advantage in
at least business-like if not cordial relations with the Soviet Union.
These pragmatists, or realists, as Robert Vansittart would eventually call
them, were overwhelmed by the anti-communist ideologues who nurtured a
deep, abiding hostility toward the Soviet Union.  If the Bolsheviks wanted
business with the west, said the ideologues, they would have to play by
western rules, and renounce the October Revolution.

        Conversely, the Soviet government, instead of practicing foreign
policy largely through the Communist International (the Comintern), did so
through the increasingly important commissariat for foreign affairs, the
Narkomindel.  It was led not by imprudent and quixotic revolutionaries,
but by careful, calculating pragmatists who disdained the amateurish and
self-defeating activities of the Comintern.  Unlike the stereotypical view
of the Bolsheviks as bloody, irrational, double-crossing revolutionaries,
I found businessmen and diplomats offering accommodation, refused by
Britain, France, and the United States in the 1920s (see, e.g., my
articles in the _Canadian Journal of History_ [1994 & 1995] and _French
Historical Studies_ [1997]).  This, by the way, at a time long before the
Stalinist purges, when the west hoped for the victory of the "moderate" I.
V. Stalin over the "permanent revolutionary" L. D. Trotskii.  The same
pattern continued in the following decade when strategic considerations
rather than trade became the main motivator of rapprochement.

        I also began to notice that there was much of interest in the
Soviet published diplomatic documents.  Most of our understanding of
Soviet foreign policy has until recently come through the eyes of western
observers.  In the histories of Soviet foreign policy Soviet diplomats
rarely spoke for themselves.  With the partial (and still problematic)
opening of Soviet papers and the publication of many others, it has become
possible to give direct voice to Soviet diplomats and officials.  But
these papers are also important for what they reveal of the foreign
policies of other countries.  Soviet diplomats were good analysts and good
record keepers.  When they held meetings with western interlocutors, they
made records of their conversations.  From these records we can often
learn more of western foreign policy than we have done through western
archives alone.  There are many examples of this in _1939_.

        Finally, I have increasingly felt that early western
anti-communism and Soviet pragmatism have been overlooked by historians.
Many consider such attention passe; "obsolete", as Igor Lukes puts it.  I
do not agree.  I also think that the diplomatic negotiations in 1939 must
be viewed in the context of hostile western-Soviet relations during the
inter-war years just as the post-1945 cold war should be viewed within the
context of the post-1917 _early_ cold war, as I have called it.  For all
these reasons I have written _1939_.

        Now, to my critics' commentaries.  First, Sally Marks for whose
kind observations, I thank her.  Her main criticisms are focused on my
unsystematic use of secondary sources--as one _rat des archives_ to
another--and on my unwillingness to stray further afield than the
Anglo-Franco-Soviet-German relationships.  I was a little surprised by
these comments for I acknowledge that _1939_ is based on "the work of many
historians, both my contemporaries and those who came before me" (p.
xiii).  And the selected bibliography covers the field well enough, as
Sally Marks acknowledges.  Beyond that, it is not uncommon for critics to
suggest that an author should have taken up this or that angle, included
additional information or data, made this or that qualification, or indeed
have written another kind of book altogether, which the critic might have
really preferred.  Sally Marks does not go that far by any means, but I
think the appropriate reply is that the critic is free to write the book
which I have not.  Indeed, I know that Sally Marks is working on a
manuscript in which she may wish to address some of these issues.

        Let me also say what this book is not.  It is not a scholarly
monograph, full of dull, impenetrable prose, loaded down with long
commentaries in the endnotes, examining all the angles and variants of all
the possible interpretations of the issues at hand.  This is a story, a
historical and interpretive narrative, my narrative, as I see it, of key
events leading up to World War II.  The research base of this book is
extensive and ranges across _all_ the inter-war years from French,
British, Soviet, and United States archives and from various published
sources of diplomatic papers.  One need only consult my previously
published (and forthcoming) work to see how my research has led to _1939_.

        Having dealt with the generalities, I think some of Sally Marks'
specific points require qualification.

        On the "frank 19 July declaration to the Czechs that France would
not honor its alliance", I am not sure what Sally Marks is talking about,
unless it is an alleged statement made by Georges Bonnet, the French
foreign minister, to the Czech minister in Paris during a conversation on
20 July.  Igor Lukes thinks this statement is distorted or apocryphal.
In any event, there is no available evidence confirming the account.  The
British foreign secretary, Edward Lord Halifax, saw Bonnet and the French
premier, Edouard Daladier, in Paris on 20 July to discuss the eventual
Runciman mission to Prague to "mediate" a settlement with the Sudeten
Germans.  The French minister in Prague, Victor de Lacroix, had a meeting
on 19 July with Edvard Benes, the Czech president, where he applied heavy
pressure for a settlement with the Sudeten Germans.  He (Lacroix) did not,
however, renounce French treaty obligations to Czechoslovakia.  I am not
sure what Sally Marks is suggesting here, that French betrayal on 19 July
was better than betrayal in September?  In view of the unabrogated
Franco-Czech treaty of mutual assistance, France had obligations to
Czechoslovakia whatever de Lacroix or even Bonnet may have said.  The
French council of ministers or the French Parliament could have abrogated
French treaty obligations, but not Bonnet, who many considered to be a
dishonest intriguer, to say the least.

        On I. M. Maiskii, he and other Soviet _polpredy_, or ambassadors
in Europe--and not many survived Stalin's purges--were well informed, well
connected, and served their government effectively.  Maiskii may not have
known the "inner thoughts" of British Cabinet Ministers--because they
would not have shared them with him--but he met them frequently in their
offices or at the Soviet embassy, across the dining table, or at
diplomatic receptions.  Ministers talked relatively freely, considering
their interlocutor, and he diligently recorded their comments and sent
them back to Moscow.  Contrary to what British historian D. Cameron Watt
has said, Maiskii was good at his job.  No mere anonymous scribe, Maiskii
played close to the brink at times, but he served his country well.
There are many examples of Maiskii's reports and his activities in _1939_.

        On "fatuous" appeasement, my use of this adjective refers to
Neville Chamberlain's thinking as he revealed it in his letters to his
sisters in the summer of 1939 concerning policy toward Nazi Germany.
Readers may judge for themselves from the excerpts published in _1939_
whether or not the adjective is appropriate.  British policy was not only
"wrongheaded", it came close to leading to British defeat in World War II,
and to bringing a new Dark Age to Europe.

        Vansittart was not an appeaser; I dare say not even early on.
One need only read his minutes and memoranda between 1934-1938 in the
Foreign Office files.  He recognized the Nazi danger early, he said
Britain had to rearm with all haste.  Like Litvinov, but unlike his prime
ministers, he thought war was inevitable with Nazi Germany.  Unlike many
Tories, he did not admire Nazi masculinity, virility, and power, or the
way in which the Nazi government "handled" its communists.  There was no
tremulous envy of Nazism.  Vansittart feared that Britain would become a
second rate power.  But the permanent under-secretary worked for Tories.
He advocated a policy of "cunctation": delay a confrontation with Nazi
Germany, buy time for rearmament, and keep Germany guessing about British
policy while being ready to negotiate.  Vansittart said that Britain
risked falling "perilously behind the galloping times", and that there was
not a week to lose in rearming.  The country is "overfed and under-armed,"
he warned, and needs to get fit fast.  He advocated recreating the
alliances of World War I with fascist Italy and Soviet Russia.
Vansittart was a civil servant, not a minister of the Crown; his bosses
were the foreign secretary, the PM, and Cabinet.  When the foreign
secretary called him down for pushing too hard for his policies,
Vansittart had to back off or lose his job.  To his credit, he backed off,
only to circle round to press forward again.  Chamberlain sacked him or
rather promoted him out of the way, and supposed that Berlin would be
pleased.  The prime minister was rather pleased himself.

        Edouard Herriot, the Radical leader and briefly premier in the
1920s and 1930s, began to advocate a policy of rapprochement with Soviet
Russia in 1921-1922.  In 1922 during a private visit to Moscow he told the
Soviet foreign commissar, G. V. Chicherin, that he expected Germany to
fall upon France again in fifteen years, and he was off only by a little.
France needed good relations with Russia to fend off catastrophe.  Later,
he said France needed the Soviet Union, purges or not.  Sally Marks might
more cogently have referred to the opposition of the Paris political and
economic elite rather than that of conservative French peasants who had
far less to say about foreign policy.  The French centre-right was
ferociously anti-communist, the more so as the 1930s unfolded.  "Better
Hitler than [Socialist Leon] Blum," they said.  As I note in _1939_, there
were exceptions: French cabinet ministers Georges Mandel and Paul Reynaud,
for example, but they were shouted down by the ideologues.

        In regard to Nazi Germany, I do not think there can be a doubt
that it was the "core problem".  Policy makers recognized _at the time_
that the only way to deal with Nazi Germany safely and certainly was to
form a grand alliance including the Soviet Union.  As for "repeated" early
Soviet overtures to Nazi Germany, this statement is misleading.  Here I
refer readers to the important article by Geoffrey Roberts, University
College Cork, Ireland, in the _International History Review_ (August
1994).  It is based on then freshly published Soviet documents; Roberts
shows that Soviet overtures in Berlin were tactical probes or trade
initiatives;  collective security was the main Soviet policy.  This is
more than can be said for the British and French governments where the
interest in composition with Nazi Germany was greater than in Moscow.
Indeed, this Anglo-French interest made it necessary for the Soviet
government to keep the door ajar to Berlin, so it would not be left alone
to face Nazi Germany.  As U.S. historian T. J. Uldricks put it, 98 percent
of Soviet diplomatic activity to advance collective security was not "a
brittle cover" for the remaining two percent directed at Nazi Germany (p.
263, n. 23).

        On Stalin, Sally Marks is spot-on when she says we know what
policies Stalin supported, but not why he supported them, although we have
some idea.  This is a problem of the available papers.  When working in
Moscow, I saw correspondence _to_ Stalin, but none _from_ Stalin.  Hugh
Ragsdale, who is working on the Munich crisis and has kindly showed me
some of his before-publication work, points out that Stalin did most of
his communicating by phone.  Or in meetings, I would say, schedules of
which have now been published.  But we cannot know for certain how Stalin
revealed his mind until we have access to inventories and to files, for
what researchers get now is samplings of papers (without access to the
inventories, at least from the foreign ministry archives).  If researchers
get access at all.  One thing is certain, even from early days, Soviet
foreign policy was approved by the Politburo and carried out by the
Narkomindel.  Even the texts of the commissar's interviews with the press
were approved and sometimes revised by the Politburo.

        Sally Marks is also right when she observes that the negotiations
in 1939 became largely an Anglo-Soviet discussion for the French let the
British "do the running".  The Soviet government recognized Britain as its
main interlocutor and paid scant attention to France.  This might have
been a mistake, but Soviet contempt for and mistrust of the French foreign
minister Bonnet was absolute.  Soviet diplomats were not the only ones to
scorn Bonnet, Mandel considered him a traitor.  Some historians contend,
Robert Young among them, that France resumed the diplomatic initiative in
1939.  Toward the Soviet Union, this was true for about three weeks in
April.

        And who said Stalin had long hoped the capitalist powers would
destroy themselves before the Soviet Union entered a European war?
Certainly the French and British power elites feared it, but was this
Soviet policy?  The weight of evidence thus far available indicates that
Soviet foreign policy before 1941, and that of Stalin in particular, was
cautious and pragmatic, not driven by ambitions for world communist
domination.  This is a main theme of Gabriel Gorodetsky's new book _Grand
Delusion_, which appeared a few months before _1939_.  Readers will see
that the conclusions of the two books are complementary; _Grand Delusion_
picks up where _1939_ leaves off.

        As for the sacking of Litvinov, I have reported what evidence was
available at the time of writing (pp. 133-34).  Soviet policy _did_
change; it got tougher.  V. M. Molotov took over and stopped Litvinov's
more conciliatory approach to France and Britain.  Five years of
Anglo-French double-dealing led to this result.  But the record shows that
negotiations for an Anglo-Franco-Soviet war-fighting alliance continued as
before.  "Loyal" to collective security is not the correct description of
Soviet policy, any more than the word "friends" to describe relations
between nation states.  Interests guide these relationships.  "Adherence"
in this case might be the better word, and it continued for a time, but
not until 19 August.  The key dates, based on the available evidence,
appear to have been the end of July or the beginning of August.  I also
indicate that 10 August was another important date for this is when German
pressure on Moscow increased.  But there is debate about this issue too,
Geoffrey Roberts and Russian historian V. Ia. Sipols, for example, point
to different key dates, but the month is still August 1939.

        Instructions to the Soviet delegation which would meet in August
with its Anglo-French counterparts were cynical and contemptuous of the
resolve of their interlocutors.  Even Mandel and French ambassador P.-E.
Naggiar doubted, could the Soviet side have doubted less?  The Soviet
government may have wanted to embarrass the Anglo-French delegations, but
might also have wanted to force them out of their evasive policy
positions.  The tactic worked to some degree.  Even the British deputy
chiefs of staff came around to the Soviet position (pp. 198-99).  They
could hardly be accused of being soft on communism.

        As for Poland, well, yes, it was in a dilemma.  All of Europe was
in a dilemma for it was hard to face the fact that Nazi Germany made war
inevitable.  Poland had to choose between a grand alliance with the west
and the Soviet Union and cooperation with Nazi Germany.  It chose the
latter, sabotaged collective security in so far as it could, and paid the
price, or rather the Polish people paid.  Anglo-French policy was weak
toward Poland until August 1939.  There was no pressure on the Polish
government to cooperate until then, and such pressure as there was, was
half-hearted and too late, as Naggiar pointed out at the time.  Poland was
an aggressor in 1938.  It had one foot in the Nazi camp; the French and
British were afraid it would put the other foot in too.  Because Poland
was a victim in 1939, we tend to overlook its previous destructive
policies.  I do not think these should be overlooked.  Poland was not an
ally of France and Britain until the last moment when Nazi Germany left it
no choice.  For years (and well into 1939) French officials and
politicians expected Polish betrayal, a stab in the back, as much as did
Litvinov.

        It was jolly good about the Enigma machines, but these were small
recompense for previous Polish policy.  And Czechoslovakia had its arm and
leg amputated, but septicemia and death was not far behind.  At least,
Churchill, Vansittart, and other critics of appeasement knew it was not
far behind.  Those who feared, envied, and admired Nazism only fooled
themselves if they thought it was peace in their time, so Churchill said
in Parliament, and very eloquently too.  Who can say now, he was wrong?

        I am not a great believer in counter-factual history, but what I
said in _1939_ (p. 257), and Sally Marks alludes to it, was that if there
had been a grand alliance in 1939, and Poland had joined it rather than
attempting to compose with Nazi Germany, this alliance would have been
victorious.  Rumania would have joined as well, so that Polish, Rumanian,
and French armies would have been part of the victorious coalition.
These allies would have blocked the Soviet expansion which actually
occurred in the power vacuum created by the destruction of Poland and
France.  In that hypothetical victory there would have been no power
vacuum in eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union would not have challenged
the strong position of its allies.  As Gorodetsky points out, Stalin was
an opportunist who pursued limited, traditional Russian foreign policy
objectives in eastern Europe, not world communist domination.

        In regard to the comments of Igor Lukes, let me say a little about
what I actually wrote to correct his misinterpretation of my words and
ideas.  While I do not think that a history of international relations in
the 1930s must include an obligatory condemnation of the Stalinist purges,
I did not attack the "critics of the Stalinist Soviet Union" as Igor Lukes
alleges.  What I said is that the anti-communism of the French and British
centre-right political elites deflected their attention from the national
interests of their countries, fatally in France and nearly so in Britain.

        A key question in Europe during the interwar years, from 1917 to
1940, was: who was the paramount enemy, Germany or Soviet Russia?  "Who is
Enemy no. 1?"  The anti-communists, most of them, got the answer wrong.
The issue is not that there were anti-communists in France and
Britain--Churchill, Vansittart, Mandel can scarcely be said to have been
soft on communism--but that many Tories and much of the centre-right in
France were openly or covertly sympathetic, envious, and at the same time
afraid of Nazism, and that their anti-communism put the security of their
countries in peril.  These tendencies strengthened as the 1930s unfolded,
but the anti-communism had flourished since 1917.  Sympathy for Nazism
went hand in hand with the ideologue's anti-communism.  And let us
remember that these were not country club politicians sitting behind their
whiskeys and discussing facile ways of downing the Bolshies.  These
ideologues were running the French and British governments or influencing
their policies.

        As I have pointed out in many publications, and as Gorodetsky has
also been writing, Stalin was not a purblind ideologue, but pragmatic and
careful in foreign policy.  He could and did prove to be an effective ally
in the eventual grand alliance.  The Red Army held down the bulk of Nazi
forces for three years, and had beaten them to a pulp by the time the
western allies set foot on the Normandy beaches.

        From the historiographical essay in the preface of _1939_, I would
have thought it evident that scholars have a difficult time saying
anything that has not already been said about the sad events leading up to
World War II.  What I have tried to do is re-legitimize old views, with
the necessary changes, largely rejected by a newer generation of scholars
focusing on inadequate armaments and financial resources and imperial
overstretch.  I describe the development of the various interpretations
dealing with appeasement, French "decadence", the Anglo-Franco-Soviet
negotiations in 1939, and related themes.  I referred to the recent work
of R. A. C. Parker who pointed out, _inter alia_, that there were other
viable options than appeasement available to politicians of the 1930s:
"Other choices," I wrote, "would have led elsewhere than to appeasement
and the failure to form a broad European coalition against Nazi Germany.
But these other options [as was recognized by these same politicians] must
have led perforce to an alliance with the Soviet Union and quite possibly
to war..." (p.  xvii).  Then Igor Lukes picks up the rest of the
quotation.  I would prefer that he not take my words out of context.

        He does this frequently, when he does not misrepresent me
altogether.  The most charitable thing I can say is that Igor Lukes
appears to have stopped reading _1939_ before reaching the final chapters.
Carley "makes no mention," Igor Lukes says, "of [the Soviet] fiasco
against Finland."  "Makes no mention"!?  Most of pp.  234-48 are devoted
to the Russo-Finnish war.  Here is what I concluded about the Soviet war
against Finland: "At the end of December 1939 the Soviet Union found
itself almost completely isolated...  It had been expelled from the League
of Nations (p.  239)... The position of the Soviet Union had changed
dramatically.  From being the proponent of collective security and the
defender of small countries threatened by aggression, Moscow had moved to
a pact with Hitler and its own aggression against a small country.  War in
Finland, which was supposed to provide added security to the Soviet Union,
had had the opposite effect.  The Soviet high command had underestimated
its adversaries: the Finns fought effectively and blocked the Soviet
offensive with heavy losses.  The Soviet government was diplomatically
isolated and risked war with France and Britain... [it] found itself
dangerously overextended.  Soviet prestige and perceptions of its power
were damaged.  Now it rode the tiger and hung on for dear life" (pp.
240-41).

        Igor Lukes describes in detail how many Red Army officers were
executed or jailed on Stalin's orders and explains that this is why
Chamberlain and Daladier viewed the abilities of the Red Army with
skepticism.  But Chamberlain and Daladier did not fear defeat side by side
with an unreliable Soviet ally, they feared victory.  I would refer
readers to Keith Neilson's article in the _Canadian Journal of History_
(1993) which examines British estimates of Soviet military power.
Nielson notes that in the mid-1930s British assessments were positive;
only after 1937 did they diminish, to improve again in 1939.  And these
were not just the views of the military attaches in Moscow.  Even Benes,
according to Lukes' own account, was "optimistic" about Soviet support in
the spring of 1938, a year after the military purges.  Essentially, it
worked this way: if one wanted to resist Nazi Germany, one needed the Red
Army, purges or no; if one wanted to shirk the fight, one dismissed the
Red Army as a force of no account.

        I have noted in other publications that the French and British
governments contemplated and moved toward a rapprochement with the Soviet
Union in 1932-1934 and then rejected this option in 1935-1936 _before_ the
main political purges began and well before the purges of the high command
in 1937.  The reasons for rejection were ideological.  The purges had _no_
bearing on the decisions of the French and British governments.  I would
refer readers to my articles on these issues in _Cahiers du monde russe et
sovietique_ (1992), _Europe-Asia Studies_ (1993), _Canadian Journal of
History_ (1994 & 1995), _Historical Reflections_ (1996) and _Contemporary
European History_ (1996).  I would add that other scholars before me, for
example, Martin Alexander, have argued that "technical"  arguments about
Red Army inadequacies were a cloak for anti-communism (p. 33).  I endorse
this position.

                By the time negotiations resumed in 1939, the evidence
available to the French and British governments was that the Soviet Union
was an ally worth having, capable of effectively defending its territory.
Any port in a storm in a long war.  Opposition politicians were more
enthusiastic; and more than 80% of British opinion, if early Gallup polls
are to be believed, agreed.  Read, for example, the speeches of Churchill
and Lloyd George in the House of Commons which are excerpted in _1939_.
French opinion was equally strong in favour of an alliance.  So strong in
fact that Bonnet wanted to make sure the blame for failure fell upon the
Soviet Union for otherwise he feared his own public lynching.  May I
reiterate that the French and British appeasers feared victory at the side
of the Soviet Union, not defeat.

        I have dealt with the issues of Litvinov and Nazi-Soviet relations
in the mid-1930s in my comments on Sally Marks' review.  But I cannot
forbear to observe again that Igor Lukes misrepresents my views.  I did
not say or imply that Litvinov and the others he mentions were "the sole
architects of Soviet behaviour".  In _1939_ one can see Litvinov going to
Stalin for authorization to pursue this or that line of policy with the
French and British, and one can see also that he worried about keeping his
job, and perhaps even his life.

        According to Igor Lukes, I said the "absolute minimum" in _1939_
about the Russo-Polish war in 1919-1920 (though it has only passing
relevance to 1939) and have not "learned" from Piotr Wandycz who has
written on this subject.  This is simply incorrect.  Readers may consult
my early chapter-length articles in the _Historical Journal_ (1976) and
_International History Review_ (1980) on the Russo-Polish war.  I not only
"learned" from the distinguished Professor Wandycz, I had a graduate
student's temerity to challenge his ideas!

        And then, Igor Lukes has no desire to review my account of
Nazi-Soviet negotiations in 1939.  "Obsolete," he merely says.  This will
not do.  My views are based on the earlier work of Roberts, Sipols, and
Ingeborg Fleischhauer (well cited in the endnotes) who had access to then
newly released Soviet documents.  Fleischhauer made use of the unpublished
papers of the German ambassador in Moscow, Friedrich Werner von der
Schulenburg.  I have offered my own reading of the Soviet documents
released in the 1990s and the German documents translated into English.
I would say the account in _1939_ is as up-to-date as possible.  Whose
ideas here are obsolete?  Incidently, Gorodetsky's views are similar to
mine, or if you like, mine are similar to his.  Here is what he had to
say: "The rigid British position [in the Anglo-Franco-Soviet negotiations]
led Stalin, out of sheer calculation, to seek an alternative through
dialogue with the Germans.  But the final decision was practically forced
on him on 19 August 1939, when he received remarkable intelligence on
Hitler's long- and short-term aims... Soviet policy remained essentially
one of level-headed _Realpolitik_.  Stalin had wavered for a long time, as
was his practice in formulating foreign policy... Throughout most of the
1930s he adhered to collective security, in an attempt to protect Russia
from a disastrous war, until he despaired of its success at the end of the
decade" (_Grand Delusion_, p. 7).  Stalin saw war as a generator of
counter-revolution in the Soviet Union, that is, capable of destroying
Soviet socialism (well, Stalin's perversion of it), as much as the
Anglo-French saw war as a generator of revolution.  Readers may appreciate
the irony here.

        There is also this assertion that "the reader will search in vain
for signs that he [Carley] has critically dealt with works that do not
share his perspective."  I refer readers to the historiographical essay in
the preface or the comments in the endnotes.  I even challenge some of
Igor Lukes' own ideas (pp. 271, n. 73 & 272, n. 88).  In one of the few
things he gets right about _1939_, the reviewer says I do not mention the
work of R. C. Tucker.  I am sure Professor Tucker will not take umbrage,
but I do mention the work of others who share his positions (e.g., Gerhard
Weinberg, Adam Ulam, A. M. Nekrich), and I disagree on various occasions
with views posited by D. Cameron Watt, Robert Young (who readily admits
it) and even Geoffrey Roberts, with whom I agree far more than I disagree.
I have engaged my opposition, so to speak, in a great many review articles
and reviews (e.g., in the _Canadian Journal of History_ and _International
History Review_, dating back to the mid-1980s).  In _1939_, I have dealt
with opposing interpretations as much as I wish to do.

        In regard to the "annoying small errors", I would point out the
following: I do not have the wrong date of the partial Czech mobilization,
I do not give it.  I write: "On May 19, 1938, a brief war scare developed,
and Czechosolovakia called up a class of reservists...."  The accent in
Benes is indeed misplaced, but not always; these errors creep into
published text.  Before throwing this pebble, Igor Lukes ought to have
minded the spelling of Russian names in own his book on Benes.  I did not
say Stefan Osusky was a Czech; I said he was the "Czech minister in Paris"
which is what he was.  Krofta was the Czech minister for foreign affairs
and he could and did write to his "ambassadors", in the figurative sense,
or his ministers in the literal sense.

        I laughed heartily when I read Robert Young's opening lines
because what he said is true.  We do repeatedly disagree, but we remain
friendly colleagues.  So let us continue to disagree cordially.  We have
both observed in our exchanges over the years that it is just such debates
which carry knowledge and understanding forward.

        It is true, as Robert Young says, that I think the revisionist
historians focusing on armaments and treasury have become too tolerant of
Chamberlain, Daladier, and their supporters.  He says I am hard on them
(the appeasers), and this is true also, though I might have chosen less
provocative words than he has in his review.  But he hews close enough to
my view.  And one of my objectives is indeed to "ensure that never again
will [the anti-Soviet influence] be ignored or tossed off as a factor of
no account."

        Then Robert Young says, and eloquently too, that I have gone too
far, not paying sufficient attention to armaments and treasury and too
many imperial commitments.  But I find, and others agree (so does Robert
Young), that the French and British governments underrated their strength
and overrated Hitler's, impressed or overawed by jackbooted, goosestepping
Nazi soldiers, fire light rallies, and all the other devices of Nazi
_Macht_.  For the spoken and unspoken assumption of the British and French
elites was that war had led to revolution in Russia and another war would
bring revolution into the centre of Europe.

        Robert Young dislikes my attention to heroes and villains.  In
other areas of study, I might agree with him.  But not here in the 1930s,
that "low, dishonest decade", where Nazism and Hitler's fascist legions
threatened Europe and the entire world with a new Dark Age.  In that
decade there were heros and villains, and in my narrative, I want to put
that bright light on the courage and perseverance of those men and women
who, _at the time_, saw the immense danger and fought Cassandra-like, but
fought nevertheless to warn their governments and their people of the Nazi
peril.

        After more than twenty years of revisionist history, nuancing,
qualifying, explaining, excusing, even praising Chamberlain, Daladier,
Bonnet, and their like, a bright light on them is my attempt to rebalance
the judgement of their woeful conduct of affairs.  I did not invent the
evidence of their malfeasance, it is pervasive in the archives and in the
published and unpublished memoirs of the participants.  And do not think
that I am toiling in the wilderness here; others like Gorodetsky, Parker,
Ragsdale, Roberts, Uldricks, have also been at work.

        Let me make a few other points of detail concerning Robert Young's
comments.  "Two cheers for appeasement" is the epigram of Stephen Schuker,
another friendly colleague, who often disagrees with me.  He used these
words to explain French and British appeasement as a _pis-aller_, making
the best of a bad situation.  In _1939_ I asked rhetorically why many
historians justify Anglo-French conduct in this way, but at the same time
condemn the Soviet side for pursuing the same policy, for the same
reasons, much as A. J. P. Taylor, pointed out in his _Origins of the
Second World War_.  I was suggesting, as was Taylor, that there is a
double standard in assessing the conduct of France, Britain, and the
Soviet Union.  I do not understand Robert Young's discomfort with my
"distribut[ing] blame" to the Soviet Union in August 1939; for when two
cheers are raised for appeasement, either Anglo-French or Soviet, I remain
silent.

        What surprised me about August 1939 is how quickly, how suddenly
the Soviet Union sought to save itself by pursuing its own Munich policy,
though now that Robert Young has raised the issue, the Munich negotiations
in 1938 took place in about the same period of time as the Nazi-Soviet
negotiations in 1939.  The difference is that the Soviet adherence to
collective security was longer standing and stronger than that of the
French and British, who adhered to it scarcely at all.

        In the aftermath of the Nazi-Soviet pact Vansittart was bitter for
he had tried for many years to bring about an Anglo-Soviet rapprochement
to face the Nazi menace.  One can easily understand his spite.  French
ambassador Robert Coulondre warned not that the Soviet Union would
gratuitously crush Poland, but that it would do so if Poland allied with
Nazi Germany, as many feared it would.  Then communism would advance into
the centre of Europe.  Poland exploited these Anglo-French fears to
prevent pressure on it to cooperate in a grand alliance.

        In 1939 Stalin had difficult choices to make, just as Gorodetsky
says he had difficult choices to make in 1941.  In both cases he chose
wrong, and the results were calamitous.

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