The Change in the European Balance of Power, 1938-39: The Path to Ruin by WilliamsonMurrayReview by: Fritz SternForeign Affairs, Vol. 63, No. 1 (Fall, 1984), pp. 198-199Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20042139 .

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198 FOREIGN AFFAIRS

deputy leadership of the Labour Party over an issue concerning Europe, became

president of the EEC, and returned to England in 1980 to help found the Social Democratic Party, of which he became the leader. This is a highly readable,

chatty book, written with the hope that Mr. Jenkins may still end up at No. 10? a hope that an astounding number of his countrymen would have to learn to share before it could be realized.

WINSTON CHURCHILL: A BIOGRAPHY. By Piers Brendon. New York:

Harper, 1984, 233 pp. $16.95. A pleasant, well-written recital of a great and familiar story.

THE ART OF MEMORY: FRIENDS IN PERSPECTIVE. By Lord Butler. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1984, 175 pp. (North Pomfret, Vt.: David &

Charles, distributor, $18.95). "Rab" Butler, who entered the House of Commons in 1929 and became a

symbol of progressive Toryism, recalls some of his friends and colleagues, including Ernest Bevin, Lord Halifax, Nehru, and Aneurin Bevan, whom he considers "the greatest parliamentary orator since Charles James Fox." These rather rambling reminiscences contain some eloquent passages on individuals and on all manner of topics from education to poetry; they are supremely generous?to

a fault.

STRATEGY AND DIPLOMACY, 1870-1945: EIGHT STUDIES. By Paul Kennedy. Winchester (Mass.): Allen & Unwin, 1984, 254 pp. $24.95.

Essays on a wide range of 19th- and 20th-century subjects, always treated with a clear eye for the connections between strategy, politics and economics. In many of these essays (e.g., on the tradition of appeasement in British policy from 1865, or "Arms races and the causes of war, 1850-1945") Kennedy suggests the relevance of past experience to the present. A prodigiously prolific British

historian, now happily entrapped at Yale, he habitually picks audacious themes and handles them with great intelligence, insight, and mischievous, instructive wit. Is there perhaps a distant and unconscious link between the virtues of his

style (and that of his fellow historians, past and present) and the British success he depicts in his light-hearted but ever-so-serious essay: "Why Did The British

Empire Last So Long?"

THE RISE OF THE FRENCH COMMUNIST PARTY, 1920-1947. By Edward Mortimer. London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1984, 416 pp. $65.00.

A lucid and balanced retelling of the history of the PCF from its founding to its Bolshevization, to its "neutralism" during the German-Soviet Pact, to its role in the Resistance and its electoral victories after Liberation. An epilogue depicts the party's decline since 1947. Told in the context of French politics and Soviet

hegemony, by a British correspondent and writer.

THE CHANGE IN THE EUROPEAN BALANCE OF POWER, 1938-39: THE PATH TO RUIN. By Williamson Murray. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984, 494 pp. $50.00 (paper, $19.50).

A thoroughly documented study of the years of Hitler's triumph?which the author sees as anything but inevitable. He emphasizes Germany's economic difficulties?lack of raw materials and foreign exchange?and sees an objectively weak but strong-willed Germany challenge a strong but weak-willed West, with the British always relying on a worst case analysis of their military strength and a best case analysis of Hitler's intentions. An important study that in many ways

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RECENT BOOKS 199

returns to an earlier view that the West would have been in a better position to

fight a war in 1938 than in 1939, that appeasement promoted what its proponents most feared: German aggression leading to protracted war. The author bolsters a familiar thesis with new evidence and great zeal.

BERLIN ALERT: THE MEMOIRS AND REPORTS OF TRUMAN SMITH. Edited by Robert Hessen. Stanford: Hoover Press, 1984, 172 pp. $19.95.

Smith was the U.S. military attach? in Berlin from 1935 to 1939, having had earlier tours in Germany and an interview with Hitler in 1922. He took the initiative in arranging for Colonel Lindbergh's first visit to Germany in 1936;

on subsequent trips, Lindbergh helped Smith write favorable reports on the new

Luftwaffe: "this miraculous outburst of national energy," proof of "the technical and scientific skill of the race." Because of his links to Lindbergh, Smith became a controversial figure, though always backed by General Marshall. Smith's

observations are historically interesting, including Goering's remark to him in 1937: "Smith, there are only three truly great characters in all history: Buddha,

Jesus Christ, and Adolf Hitler." At the height of the Sudeten crisis in September 1938, Lindbergh wrote to Ambassador Joseph Kennedy that a European war

would "result in something akin to Communism running over Europe and,

judging by Russia, anything seems preferable." Better to "permit Germany's eastward expansion than to throw England and France, unprepared, into a war at this time."

D?NITZ: THE LAST F?HRER. By Peter Padfield. New York: Harper, 1984, 523 pp. $25.00.

A readable biography of a man whose life was the German navy since before World War I. He served as a U-boat commander in the Great War and remained a fanatical believer in that weapon ever after. He directed the Battle of the Atlantic in World War II, which was lost inter alia because of Ultra, i.e., the

decoding of German communications. The author, a man of the sea and lately a

writer on naval affairs, is persuasively harsh on this major figure of the Third

Reich, whom Hitler appointed his successor and who was given the lightest term of those convicted at Nuremburg; Padfield believes that had the court known all the facts about D?nitz he would have earned the harshest sentence.

FROM RED TO GREEN: INTERVIEWS WITH NEW LEFT REVIEW. By Rudolf Bahro. London: Verso/NLB, 1984, 208 pp. (New York: Schocken, distributor, $26.50; paper, $9.50).

Extensive interviews, held between 1980 and 1983, with an East German

dissident, imprisoned for his Dubcek-like ideas, finally released and in effect exiled to West Germany. A critic of capitalism, a self-proclaimed Utopian socialist, he believes in a protest movement against nuclear and ecological disaster that would cut across class lines, thus negating the elemental force of the class conflict. He argues for a defense policy that would not threaten the U.S.S.R. and hopes that German Social Democracy will wither away. A quick and intelligent summary

of some of the essential views of the Greens?views which probably have resonance even among those who do not vote for the Greens?or live in

Germany.

SICHERHEIT UND ENTSPANNUNG: ZUR AUSSENPOLITIK DER BUN DESREPUBLIK DEUTSCHLAND, 1953-1982. By Helga Haftendorn. Baden Baden: Nomos, 1983, 767 pp.

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