Europe between Democracy and Dictatorship: 1900 – 1945

In Europe between Democracy and Dictatorship, Conan Fischer offers a captivating analysis of Europe s turbulent history during the first half of the twentieth century. After many largely peaceful years in which Europe enjoyed unprecedented prosperity, the continent was plunged into two world wars in quick succession and a traumatic series of national revolutionary upheavals. It was a time of repeated economic crisis and even fundamental famine; an era seemingly defined by Bolshevism, Fascism and Nazism, and stained by the mass murder of continental Europe s Jews.

Fischer traces and evaluates the history of these great events in concise and accessible chapters. He reviews key debates and theories and provides readers with a systematic introduction to the wider literature. He also argues that parallel to Europe s desolate record of upheaval and war, more benign developments were creating the unmistakable and essentially positive foundations of contemporary European life, whether in terms of everyday experience or in the first steps along the road to today s European Union.

List of Illustrations.

Foreword.

Chapter 1. The European Paradox.

Chapter 2. The Coming of War.

Chapter 3. Fighting the War.

Chapter 4. Ending the War: Revolutions and Peacemaking.

Chapter 5. Revision and Recovery, 1919–1929.

Chapter 6. The High Noon of the Dictators.

Chapter 7. The Return to War.

Chapter 8. Europe Eclipsed.

Chapter 9. Europe: An Honourable Legacy?

Conan Fischer is Professorial Fellow in the School of History, University of St Andrews, Scotland. He is the author of Stormtroopers: a Social, Economic and Ideological Analysis 1929–35 (1983), The German Communists and the Rise of Nazism (1991), The Rise of the Nazis (1995 & 2002) and The Ruhr Crisis 1923–1924 (2003) He is editor of The Rise of National Socialism and the Working Classes in Weimar Germany (1996) and co–editor of After the Versailles Treaty: Enforcement, Compliance, Contested Identities (with Alan Sharp, 2008). He is currently researching the history of Franco–German relations during the Great Depression (1929–32).

"The book also contains a sufficient number of maps and illustrations, an important consideration from the point of view of students. In short, this is certain to become a standard text for the teaching of 20th–century European history. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All undergraduate collections." (Choice, 1 September 2011)