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International Relations in the Two World Wars, 1914-1945

Course convener:
Adam Fabry
adam.fabry@brunel.ac.uk
Course lecturers:
Dr. Alexander Anievas and Nivedita Manchanda
alexander.anievas@st-annes.ox.ac.uk and nm448@cam.ac.uk
Course Description
The era of the two World Wars persists in fundamentally informing the contemporary imagination,
providing powerful tropes and guideposts for thought. In Western Europe and North America, the
Second World War (WWII) is portrayed as the good war, fought to defend civilization from
barbarism and catastrophe. Its events, symbols and personalities are invoked repeatedly in public
and governmental discourses. If this Thirty Years Crisis (1914-45) has become a defining
experience in the evolution of 20th century world politics, its influence in the social sciences is
nowhere greater than on the fields of International Relations (IR). The Crisis represents the
paradigmatic moment in the formation and subsequent trajectory of disciplinary. This course offer
students an introduction to tumult of the 1914-1945 years through the prism of debates (and
conspicuously absent debates) within the field of IR.
Aims and objectives
The aim of the course is to introduce students to specific issues and events in the history of the
1914-1945 years, while also engaging with key historiographical debates and theoretical approaches,
particularly as viewed from the perspective of International Relations (IR). Focusing on core themes
and debates addressed in the conventional historiographical and IR literatures, an objective of the
course will be to simultaneously problematizes these issues in pushing analyzes toward the often
hidden sources of inter-state rivalries of the age. This traces the historically unique economic,
political, and cultural roots of putatively discrete geopolitical phenomenon. The aim then is to go
beyond conventional understandings of the Crisis years as yet another saga in the timeless inter-state
struggle over the European balance of power in uncover the deeper sociological sources of the
geopolitics in era of the two World Wars.
The course is intended for the non-specialist audience unfamiliar with the either history of the
period or a background in political science. Students should, however, come prepared to read
heavily in both history and theory.
Seminar Objectives
The seminars will be a venue for more in-depth discussion of the lecture materials and seminar
readings. Seminars will focus on exploring a specific event or theme of the period as covered in
particular readings assigned for each seminar. Students will be asked to participate in discussion
employing the theoretical and conceptual frameworks covered in the lectures. All students will be
encouraged by the seminar coordinator to engage in an informed and constructive multilateral
discussion and debate of the issues.

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Evaluation of students seminar performance will be made on the following criteria:
- General level and quality of student engagement
- Ability to critically absorb seminar and lecture readings as evidenced by:
(a) summary of main arguments of the reading;
(b) contextualization of the article within the wider extant historiographical and theoretical
debates;
(c) creative use of the theoretical and conceptual content of the readings.
The course will be formed of 12 Lectures and 8 Seminars.
Lectures
Lecture 1: The Thirty Years Crisis in World Historical Context
Lecture 2: Origins of the First World War: German Sonderweg or Slide into War?
Lecture 3: US Entry into War and Its Aftermath: The Thought and Practice of Wilsonian Diplomacy
Lecture 4: The Making of the Versailles Treaty: Carthaginian or Wilsonian Peace?
Lecture 5: The Failure of World Communist Revolution: Rapid Industrialization and the Dilemmas
of Socialism in One Country'
Lecture 6: The German Problem and the Reconstruction of European Capitalism
Lecture 7: The Weimar Republic and its Destruction
Lecture 8: British Appeasement Policy of the 1930s: Class, Security and War
Lecture 9: Under the External Whips: Social Change, Conflict and War in the Asia-Pacific
Lecture 10: Fascism and the Coming of the Second World War
Lecture 11: The Nazi War Economy and the Immediate Causes of the Second World War
Lecture 12: Review Lecture
Seminars
Seminar 1: Causes of the First World War: Debates and Controversies
Seminar 2: Wilson versus Lenin: European Civil War?
Seminar 3: Isolationist Retreat or Imperial Expansionism? US Foreign Policy during the 1920s
Seminar 4: The Significance of October 1917 and Its Consequences
Seminar 5: The Meaning and Lessons of the Great Depression
Seminar 6: An Interwar Cold War?
Seminar 7: What causes Fascism?
Seminar 8: What was the Second World War?
General Readings
David Calleo (1978) The German Problem Reconsidered: Germany and the World Order, 1870 to the Present
E.H Carr (1939) The Twenty Years' Crisis 1919-1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations
Dale Copeland (2003) The Origins of Major War
John Ikenberry (2001) After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major
Wars
Sandra Halperin (2004) War and Social Change in Modern Europe: The Great Transformation Revisited
Eric Hobsbawm (1994) The Age of Extremes, 1914-1991
James Joll and Gordon Martel (2007) The Origins of the First World War

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Charles Kindleberger (1987) The World in Depression
Erez Manela (2007) The Wilsonian Moment: Self-determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism
Mark Mazower (1997) Dark Continent: Europes Twentieth Century
Frank McDonough (1997) The Origins of the First and Second World Wars
A. J. P. Taylor (1961) The Origins of the Second World War

Lecture 1: The Thirty Years Crisis in World Historical Context

Essential Readings
Frank McDonough (1997) The Origins of the First and Second World Wars, Ch 1
Eric Hobsbawm (1987) The Age of Empire, 1875-1914, Chs. 12-13.
Recommended Readings
Eric Wolf (1982) Europe and the People without History, Chs 9-10.
William McNeill (1982) The Pursuit of Power, Chs 7-8.
Sandra Halperin (2004) War and Social Change in Europe, Chs 3-4.
Further Readings
Kenneth. Pomeranz (1999) Two Worlds of Trade, Two Worlds of Empire. European State-Making
and Industrialization in a Chinese Mirror in D Smith, D. Solinger and S. Topik (eds) States and
Sovereignty in the Global Economy.
Benno Teschke (2004) The Origins and Evolution of the European States System in William
Brown, Simon Bromley, Suma Athreye (eds) Ordering the International: History, Change and
Transformation.
Gareth Stedman Jones (1977) Society and Politics at the Beginning of the World Economy,
Cambridge Journal of Economics 1:1, pp. 77-92.
Lecture 2: Origins of the First World War: German Sonderweg or Slide into War?
Primary Readings
Michael R Gordon (1974) Domestic Conflict and the Origins of the First World War: The British
and the German Cases. The Journal of Modern History 46(2):191-226.
Frank McDonough (1997) The Origins of the First and Second World Wars, Ch 2
Recommended Readings

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Eric Hobsbawm (1987) The Age of Empire 1875-1914, Chs 12-13.
Martell and Joll (2007) The Origins of the First World War, Chs 3, 5 & 6.
Annika Mombauer (2002) The Origins of the First World War: Controversies and Consensus, Introduction.
Further Readings
Hartmut Pogge von Strandmann (1988) Germany and the Coming of the First World War In The
Coming of the First World edited by R. Evans and H. Pogge von Strandmann. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
David P. Calleo (1978) The German Problem Reconsidered: Germany and The World Order, 1870 to The
Present, Chs 2-3.
Fritz Fischer (1990) The Foreign Policy of Imperial Germany and the Outbreak of the First World
War, in G. Schollgen (ed) Escape Into War? - The Foreign Policy of Imperial Germany.
Annika Mombauer (2007) The First World War: Inevitable, Avoidable, Improbable Or Desirable?
Recent Interpretations on War Guilt and the War's Origins. German History 25:1, pp. 78-95.
Lecture 3: US Entry into War and its Aftermath: The Thought and Practice of Wilsonian
Diplomacy
Essential Readings
Norman Gordon Levin (1968) Woodrow Wilson and World Politics: America's Response to War and
Revolution, Chs 1-3.
George Kennan (1951) American Diplomacy, Ch 4
Recommended Readings
Ido Oren (1995) The Subjectivity of the "Democratic" Peace: Changing U.S. Perceptions of
Imperial Germany, International Security. 20 (2):147-184.
Hans Morgenthau (1952) American Foreign Policy: A Critical Examination.
David. Steigerwald (1999) The Reclamation of Woodrow Wilson, Diplomatic History 23:1, pp.79-99.
Lloyd C. Gardner (1967) American Foreign Policy 1900-1921: A Second Look at the Realist.
Critique of American Diplomacy in Towards a New Past: Dissenting Essays in American History edited by
W. A. Williams.
Further Readings

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Ross Gregory (1971) The Origins of American Intervention in the First World War: New York: W. W.
Norton.
John W. Coogan (1994) Wilsonian Diplomacy in War and Peace In American Foreign Relations
Reconsidered, 1890-1993.
Sidney Bell (1972) Righteous Conquest: Woodrow Wilson and the Evolution of the New Diplomacy, Chs 1-3.
Lloyd C. Gardner (1993) The US, the German Peril and a Revolutionary World: The
Inconsistencies of World Order and National Self-Determination n Confrontation and Cooperation:
Germany and the United States in the Era of World War I, 1900-1924 edited by H.-J. Schroder. Oxford:
Berg.
Lecture 4: The Making of the Versailles Treaty: Carthaginian or Wilsonian Peace?
Frank Costigliola (1984) Awkward Dominion: American Political, Economic, and Cultural Relations With
Europe, 1919-1933. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, Ch 1.
Lloyd E. Ambrosius (1977) The Orthodoxy of Revisionism: Woodrow Wilson and the New Left.
Diplomatic History 1 (3), pp. 199-214.
Recommended Readings
G. John Ikenberry (2001) After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and The Rebuilding Of Order After
Major Wars, Princeton: Princeton University Press, Ch 3.
Arno J. Mayer, (1967) Politics and Diplomacy of Peacemaking: Containment and Counterrevolution at Versailles,
1918-1919, pp. 753-852.
Norman Gordon Levin (1968) Woodrow Wilson and World Politics; America's Response to War and
Revolution, Chs 5.
Further Readings
Marc Trachtenberg (1979) Reparations at the Paris Peace Conference, Journal of Modern History, 51:1,
pp. 24-55.
Charles Maier (1979) Truth about the Treaties?, Journal of Modern History, 51:1, pp. 56-67.
Lecture 5: The Failure of World Communist Revolution: The Dilemmas of Soviet
Industrialization and Socialism in One Country'
Essential Readings
Isaac Deutscher (1951) Stalin: A Political Biography

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Recommended Readings
E.H. Carr (1979) The Russian Revolution From Lenin to Stalin, 1917-1929
Isaac Deutscher (1954) The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky, 1921-1929, Ch 6.
Jon Jacobson (1994) When the Soviet Union Entered World Politics, Chs 1 and 2.
Leon. Trotsky (1936) The Third International after Lenin New York: Pioneer publishers, Part I.
Further Readings
Robert Service (1997) A History of Twentieth-Century Russia
Peter J. Boettke (1990) The Political Economy of Soviet Socialism: The Formative Years, 1918-1928, Ch 5.
Mosh Lewin (1985) The Making of The Soviet System: Essays In The Social History of Interwar Russia,
Introduction.
Lecture 6: The German Problem and the Reconstruction of European Capitalism
Essential
Frank. Costigliola (1984) Awkward Dominion: American Political, Economic, and Cultural Relations With
Europe, 1919-1933. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, Chs 1-2.
David P. Calleo (1978) The German Problem Reconsidered: Germany and The World Order, 1870 To The
Present. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, introduction.
Recommended Readings
Marshall M. Lee and Wolfgang Michalka (1987) German foreign policy, 1917-1933: Continuity or Break?,
Chs 2-4.
John Lowe (1994) The Great Powers, Imperialism, and The German Problem, 1865-1925. London; New
York: Routledge, epilogue.
Lloyd C. Gardner (1984) Safe for Democracy: The Anglo-American Response To Revolution, 1913-1923. New
York: Oxford University Press.
Melvyn P Leffler (1979) The Elusive Quest: America's Pursuit Of European Stability And French Security,
1919-1933. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, Ch 1
Further Readings
AJP Taylor (1945) The Course of German History (London: Hamilton), Preface & Ch 1.

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Bruce Kent (1989) The Spoils of War: The Politics, Economics, And Diplomacy Of Reparations, 1918-1932.
Carl P. Parrini (1969) Heir to empire: United States economic diplomacy, 1916-1923. Pittsburgh: University
of Pittsburg Press, Introduction and conclusion.
Lecture 7: The Weimar Republic and its Destruction
Essential Readings
Ian Kershaw (1993) The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation Ch 2.
Dick Geary (1983) The Industrial Elite and the Nazis in the Weimar Republic in Peter Stachura,
ed., The Nazi Machtergreifung, pp. 85-99.
Recommended Readings
Frank McDonough (1997) The Origins of the First and Second World Wars, Ch 3.
David Abraham (1989) State and Classes in Michael N. Dobkowski & Isidor Wallimann (eds)
Radical Perspectives on The Rise Of Fascism In Germany, 1919-1945.
Michael Geyer (1983) 'Etudes in Political History: Reichswehr, NSDAP and the Seizure of Power' in
Peter Stachura, ed., The Nazi Machtergreifung, pp. 101-123.
Marshall M. Lee and Wolfgang Michalka (1987) German foreign policy, 1917-1933: Continuity or Break?,
Ch 4.
Tooze, J. Adam. 2007. The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi economy. 1st
American ed. New York: Viking, Ch 5.
Further Readings
Hans Mommsen (1995)The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy.
Henry Ashby Turner, Jr. (1969) Big Business and the Rise of Hitler, The American Historical Review,
75:1 (Oct., 1969), pp. 56-70.
Bernd Weisbrod (1979) Economic Power and Political Stability Reconsidered: Heavy Industry in
Weimer Germany, Social History, 4.
Lecture 8: British Appeasement Policy of the 1930s: Class, Security and War
Essential Readings
Alexander Anievas (2010) The International Political Economy of Appeasement: The Social
Sources of British Foreign Policy During the 1930s, Review of International Studies, 33:2: pp. 60129.

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Jack S. Levy and Norrin M. Ripsman (2008) Wishful Thinking or Buying Time: The Logic of British
Appeasement in the 1930s, International Security, 33:2 pp. 14881.
Recommended Readings
Sidney Aster, Appeasement: Before and After Revisionism, Diplomacy & Statecraft, 19:3 (2008), pp.
44380.
Michael Jabara Carley (1993) End of the 'Low, Dishonest Decade': Failure of the Anglo-FrancoSoviet Alliance in 1939. Europe-Asia Studies 45 (2): pp. 303-341.
Paul Kennedy The Realities Behind Diplomacy, Chapter 5.
Barry Posen (1984) The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and German between the Wars (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press).
Sandra Halperin (2004) War and Social Change in Modern Europe, Chs 67.
Further Readings
Robert P. Shay (1977) British Rearmament in the Thirties: Politics and Profits (Princeton: Princeton
University Press).
Thomas J. Christensen and Jack Snyder, Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks: Predicting Alliance
Patterns in Multipolarity, International Organization, 44:2 (1990), pp. 13768.
Michael Jabara Carley (1999) 1939: The Alliance That Never Was and The Coming Of World War II.
Chicago: I.R. Dee.
Lecture 9: Under the External Whips: Social Change, Conflict and War in the Asia-Pacific
Essential Readings
Jamie C. Allinson and Alexander Anievas (2010) The Uneven and Combined Development of the
Meiji Restoration: A Passive Revolutionary Route to Capitalist Modernity, Capital & Class, 34(3): pp.
46990.
Michael Barnhart (1988) Japan Prepares for Total War, Ch 1
Recommended Readings
Akira Iriye (1998) The origins of the Second World War in Asia and the Pacific, Chs 1 & 2.
Michael Barnhart (1988) Japan Prepares for Total War, Chs 6 & 14.

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Barrington Moore Jr. (1966) Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, CH 5
Francis Moulder (1977) Japan, China, and the Modern World Economy, Chs 67.
Further Readings
Walter Lafeber (1997) The Clash
Akira Iriye (1965) After Imperialism: The Search for a New Order in East Asia, 1921-1931
Y-L Sun (1993) China and the Origins of the Pacific War, 1931-1941
Lecture 10 Fascism and the Coming of the Second World War
Essential Readings
Eric Hobsbawm (1994) The Age of Extremes, 1914-1991, Chs 45.
Ian Kershaw (1993) The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, Chs 3 & 6.
Recommended Readings
Frank McDonough (1997) The Origins of the First and Second World Wars, Ch 4.
Geoffrey Eley (1982) What Produces Fascism: Preindustrial Traditions or a Crisis of a Capitalist
State?, Politics & Society 12(2): pp. 5382.
Michael Mann (2004) Fascists, Ch 1.
Dale Copeland (2001) The Origins of Major War, Ch 5.
Further Readings
Tim Mason (1995) Nazism, Fascism and the Working Class (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1995), Ch 10.
Moore, Barrington. 1966. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy; Lord and Peasant in The Making of
the Modern World.
F. H. Hinsley (1963) Power and the Pursuit of Peace; Theory and Practice in the History of Relations Between
States, Ch 15.
Walter Laqueur (1991) Fascism: A Reader's Guide.
Lecture 11: The Nazi War Economy and the Immediate Causes of the Second World War

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Essential Readings
Timothy Mason, Richard Overy and David Kaiser (1989) "Debate: Germany, 'Domestic Crisis' and
War in 1939" Past and Present, 122: pp. 200-240.
Recommended Readings
Frank McDonough (1997) The Origins of the First and Second World Wars, Ch 5.
Adam Tooze (2008) The Economic History of the Nazi Regime in Jane Caplan Nazi Germany, pp.
168-195.
Ian Kershaw (1993) The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, Chs 3 & 6.
Adam Tooze (2006) The Wages of Destruction: The Making And Breaking Of The Nazi Economy,
Introduction & Conclusion.
Wilhelm Deist et al (1985) Causes and Preconditions of German Aggression in Wilhelm Diest (ed)
The German Military in the Age of Total War.
Further Readings
Richard Overy (1995) War and Economy in the Third Reich, Part I.
Michael Geyer (1985) The Dynamics of German Military Revisionism in Wilhelm Diest (ed) The
German Military in the Age of Total War.
Wilhelm Diest (1990) The Rearmament of the Reich in Wilhelm Diest (ed) The Germany and the
Second World War.
Hans-Erich Volkmann (1990) The National Socialist Economy in Preparation for War in Wilhelm
Diest (ed) Germany and the Second World War.
Lecture 12: Review Lecture
[review readings - tba]

Seminar 1: Causes of the First World War: Debates and Controversies

Fritz Fischer (1990) The Foreign Policy of Imperial Germany and the Outbreak of the First World
War, in G. Schollgen (ed) Escape Into War? - The Foreign Policy of Imperial Germany.
Richard Ned Lebow (2000) Contingency, Catalysts, and International System Change. Political Science
Quarterly 115:4, pp. 591-616.

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Seminar 2: Wilson versus Lenin: European Civil War?

Arno Mayer chapter in N. Gordon Levin (ed) (1972) Woodrow Wilson and the Paris Peace Conference.
Lloyd E. Ambrosius (1977) The Orthodoxy of Revisionism: Woodrow Wilson and the New Left.
Diplomatic History 1 (3), pp. 199-214.
Seminar 3: Isolationist Retreat or Imperial Expansionism? US Foreign Policy during the
1920s
William Appleman Williams (1972) The Tragedy Of American Diplomacy, The Legend of Isolationism.
Seminar 4: The Significance of October 1917 and Its Consequences
E.H.Carr (1979) The Russian Revolution from Lenin to Stalin, 1917-1929
Seminar 5: The Meaning and Lessons of the Great Depression
Eric Hobsbawm (1994) The Age of Extremes, 1914-1991, Chs 3-4.
Charles Kindleberger (1988) Dominance and Leadership in the International Political Economy:
Exploitation, Public Goods, and Free Rides, International Political Economy, 25:2, pp. 242-54.
Seminar 6: An Interwar Cold War?
Alexander Anievas (2010) The International Political Economy of Appeasement: The Social
Sources of British Foreign Policy During the 1930s, Review of International Studies, 33:2: pp. 60129.
Seminar 7: What causes Fascism?
Geoffrey Eley (1982) What Produces Fascism: Preindustrial Traditions or a Crisis of a Capitalist
State?, Politics & Society 12(2): pp. 5382
Seminar 8: What was the Second World War?
Eric Hobsbawm (1994) The Age of Extremes, 1914-1991, Chs 4-5.