The Spectre of War. International Communism and the Origins of World War II

13 July - One does not immediately think of communism as in any way involved in the outbreak of war in 1939. But it was centrally involved.
In the 1920s not only did it play a critically destabilising role immediately after World War I, resulting in the emergence of fascism in Italy and an overriding fear of revolution within the Eastern Europe (the march on Warsaw and the occupation of the factories in 1920). It also directly threatened the destruction of British imperialism in China (1925-27).
The rise of fascism ultimately resulted in Hitler’s emergence, facilitated by Stalin’s German policy to keep Western Europe divided. The crisis the British had faced in China, reinforced by renewed alarm at the événements in France and the threat of revolution in Spain (1936) led Britain’s rulers to fear that the collapse of fascism would open the way to communism in Europe. Appeasement of Hitler was therefore deemed vital, as only communism would benefit from war, as it had in 1917.
Speaker: Jonathan Haslam is a Fellow of the British Academy, Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and Emeritus Professor in the History of International Relations at Cambridge. He has just retired as the George F. Kennan Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, located in Princeton, New Jersey, and is currently researching the Literary Left of Latin America and the Cuban Revolution. His blog on contemporary Russia is throughrussianeyes.com He will be speaking to his new book: The Spectre of War: International Communism and the Origins of World War II
Chair: Brendan Simms, Professor of the History of European International Relations, University of Cambridge, and Director of the Centre for Geopolitics

[@HariPrasad-uy9dj]

Jonathan Haslam is certainly an expert in his period. Not as sound when he begins pontificating on macroeconomic policy as practiced by the Federal Reserve. He should read Barry Eichengreen's "Golden Fetters" and "Global Capital: A History of the International Monetary System. That could help deepen his understanding of economics - of what happened in the Kaiser's war, after that before WW2, and since then.

[@brucevilla]

Thanks for Uploading.

[@HariPrasad-uy9dj]

Even better, Mr. Haslam should read "In Defense of Public Debt" by Eichengree, El-Ganainy, Esteves, and Mitchener. This recent (2021) book responds specifically and sharply to apocalyptic predictions of doom such as those with which Mr. Haslam concludes his talk. Prejudice is no substitute for economic understanding. And whatever Mr. Haslam's contempt for Jerome Powell's training as a lawyer, he does have good staff at the Fed who are trained in economics. Mr. Haslam should also be aware that Mr. Powell hardly sets Fed policy single-handed.

[@jm15xy]

Would it be such an exaggeration to say that the Second World War was simply an _intermezzo_ between two phases of a larger Cold War (a war against International Communism?).

[@OLIVCHEN77]

Thank you so very much