Ambassador Frederic Sackett and the Collapse of the Weimar Republic, 1930-1933: The UnitedStates and Hitler's Rise to Power by Bernard V. BurkeReview by: Fritz SternForeign Affairs, Vol. 74, No. 3 (May - Jun., 1995), p. 177Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20047160 .

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Recent Books

Western Europe FRITZ STERN

The Hollow Years: France in the 1930s, by

eugen weber. New York: W. W.

Norton, 1994,352 pp. $25.00. An authority on French history has writ

ten a brilliant survey of the key aspects of

French life in the decade before the deba cle. A pointillist approach?full of indi vidual anecdotes?that gives a portrait of

confusion and conflict, of cultural cre

ativity and political dithering. The author's admirable erudition?and the

stunning command of sources, published and unpublished, ingeniously assem

bled?is rendered in lighthearted, witty, but unfailingly perceptive commentary. Incisive judgments abound: "Catholicism

was the Right at prayer," especially at the

time of the Popular Front. A pithy summary of French ambivalence about

America's growing presence: "Americans

were young, rich, generous, physically

seductive, mentally deficient, culturally detrimental." Weber writes with affection

and stringent regret, and he does much to

explain France's decline and defeat. He

makes one ponder how in the postwar

decades France regained resilience and in

essential ways transformed itself.

Ambassador Frederic Sackett and the

Collapse of the Weimar Republic, 1930

1933: The United States and Hitler s Rise tO Power. BY BERNARD V. BURKE.

New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995,330 pp. $44-95

In 1930, President Hoover dispatched

Sackett, a Kentucky senator with strong

mining interests and fervent anticommu

nism, to Berlin. Sackett established the

closest relations with Chancellor Briining at the beginning of the end of Weimar.

He went native?came to represent German interests?and regretted that he

had no leverage with American bankers

who conducted their own important

financial policies. Sackett s reports record

his boundless admiration of Briining and his hopes of helping him achieve far

reaching revisions of the Versailles Treaty

by negotiations. Washington was passive,

and Burke criticizes Sackett for appealing to American anticommunism rather than

focusing on the Nazi danger. After Brii

ning's dismissal in May 1932, Sackett lost all hope; he saw the enfeebled Social

Democrats as virtually the only demo

cratic hope and rightly called them "a most effective bulwark against Commu

nism." The book is based on the author's

doctoral dissertation of 1966, with an

impressive array of archival sources; it

incorporates some of the subsequent

scholarship but is undistinguished in

style and analysis. At an exorbitant price!

Rich Relations: The American Occupation

of Britain, 1942-1945. by david

Reynolds. New York: Random

House, 1995,555 pp. $30.00. A brilliant study of what the massive pres ence of G.I.s in wartime Britain meant to

the English and to American troops?of which there were 1.5 million just before D

Day and a total of 3 million over the entire

war years. An account of official policies, of Allied cooperation and wrangling, of

To order any book reviewed or advertised in Foreign Affairs, fax 1-203-966-4329.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS-May/June 199s l177]

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