Short History of World War II - James L. Stokesbury [215]
As to the revisionist states, the most readable biographies of Mussolini are Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick’s Mussolini: A Study in Power (New York, 1968) and Christopher Hibbert’s Benito Mussolini (London, 1962). A general history is Dennis Mack-Smith’s Italy: A Modern History (Ann Arbor, 1959). Ciano’s various Diaries (London, 1947-52), gives general insight to the later Fascist period. The standard work on the Spanish affair is Hugh Thomas’ The Spanish Civil War (London, 1961), in which the author deals with the fact of German intervention on the Republican as well as the Nationalist side. Italy’s increasing ties with Germany are covered in F. W. Deakin’s The Brutal Friendship (London, 1962) and Elizabeth Wiskemann’s The Rome-Berlin Axis (London, rev. ed., 1966).
The reader can drown in works on Nazi Germany. For general background there is G. Mann’s The History of Germany since 1789 (New York, 1968). More specifically on the Hitler era is T. L. Jarman’s The Rise and Fall of Nazi Germany (London, 1955). On Hitler himself there is W. L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York, 1960), which is as much a biography of Hitler as it is a general history of his era, and Alan Bullock’s Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (London, rev. ed., 1974). Mein Kampf appeared in an unexpurgated English edition (Boston, 1943). There have been collections of Hitler’s speeches, his table talk, his war conferences. The army’s role in the New Order has been extensively examined. Probably best known are Walter Goerlitz’ History of the German General Staff (New York, 1954); J. W. Wheeler-Bennett’s The Nemesis of Power: The German Army in Politics, 1918-1945 (London, 1961); Gordon Craig’s The Politics of the Prussian Army, 1640-1945 (New York, 1964); and Telford Taylor’s Sword and Swastika: Generals and Nazis in the Third Reich (Chicago, 1969).
There has been less written on Japan. For a general survey there is P. H. Clyde and B. F. Beers’ The Far East: A History of the Western Impact and the Eastern Response (1830-1965) (Englewood Cliffs, 4th ed., 1966). For the thirties there is Richard Storry’s The Double Patriots: A Study in Japanese Nationalism (Boston, 1957). F. F. Liu’s A Military History of Modern China (Princeton, 1956) treats the period of undeclared war, as the name implies, largely from the Chinese side.
R. D. Charques’ A Short History of Russia (New York, 1956) and F. L. Schuman’s Russia since 1917 (New York, 1957) are general histories of Russia covering this period. On foreign policy there are the brilliant works of George F. Kennan: Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917-1941 (New York, 1960), and Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin (New York, 1961). The standard biography is I. Deutscher’s Stalin: A Political Biography (London, 1967). Albert Seaton’s Stalin as Military Commander (New York, 1976) in the first chapters contains material on the interwar years.
As might well be expected, there is a large amount of material on the United States, though the majority of it is domestic in orientation. A good general survey is G. H. Knoles’ The United States: A History since 1896 (New York, 1960); also A. S. Link’s The American Epoch (New York, 1959). The classic biography of Roosevelt is Arthur Schlesinger’s multi-volume The Age of Roosevelt (Boston, 1959). On diplomacy, isolationism, and neutrality there are F. R. Dulles’ America’s Rise to World Power, 1898-1954 (New York, 1955); Selig Adler’s The Isolationist Impulse (New York, 1957); George F. Kennan’s American Diplomacy, 1900-1950 (Chicago, 1951), which touched off the argument about the relativity of diplomacy; and B. Rausch’s Roosevelt: From Munich to