Changes

Received wisdom and simplified narrative often lead to misconceptions about history. One such is the scrubbing from the popular imagination of the early days of World War II from 1939-40, known as the ''Phoney War''. We remember Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler, war breaking out, and Churchill coming in to save the day. Very little time is spent on this period in cultural reflections and yet, as Frederic Seager argues in this book, it was of vital significance in how the war played out.

Seager's principal contention is that what this period shows us is that war is generally to be avoided and only declared if a country is prepared - both politically and in terms of capacity - to do whatever it takes to win it. Chamberlain had made every attempt to appease Hitler, failed, and declared war without really wanting to fully defeat either Hitler as regime leader or Germany as a country. His intention was for Britain and France to fight a limited war as allies - Britain by an economic blockade and France by holding the Maginot Line militarily. This, Seagar argues, was a catastrophic error and led to the Nazi occupation of Western Europe for more than four years, countless loss of life and the use of Western European resources - industrial production, forced labour - against the Allies.

As Seager notes:

The book is very well presented for both history buffs and lay readers alike. Footnotes on every page give context and further information to Seager's narrative of events but don't intrude on readability. There is an exhaustive bibliography of sources and further reading. And I was pleased to see an index, which is invaluable for a book of this kind.

You can read more about Frederic Seager [[:Category:Frederic Seager|here]].

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