The Spectre Of War

A bold new history showing that the fear of Communism was a major factor in the outbreak of World War II The Spectre of War looks at a subject we thought we knew—the roots of the Second World War—and upends our assumptions with a masterful new interpretation. Looking beyond traditional explanations based on diplomatic failures or military might, Jonathan Haslam explores the neglected thread connecting them all: the fear of Communism prevalent across continents during the interwar period. Marshalling an array of archival sources, including records from the Communist International, Haslam transforms our understanding of the deep-seated origins of World War II, its conflicts, and its legacy. Haslam offers a panoramic view of Europe and northeast Asia during the 1920s and 1930s, connecting fascism’s emergence with the impact of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. World War I had economically destabilized many nations, and the threat of Communist revolt loomed large in the ensuing social unrest. As Moscow supported Communist efforts in France, Spain, China, and beyond, opponents such as the British feared for the stability of their global empire, and viewed fascism as the only force standing between them and the Communist overthrow of the existing order. The appeasement and political misreading of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy that followed held back the spectre of rebellion—only to usher in the later advent of war. Illuminating ideological differences in the decades before World War II, and the continuous role of pre- and postwar Communism, The Spectre of War provides unprecedented context for one of the most momentous calamities of the twentieth century.

The first history of postwar fears of a Nazi return to power in Western political, intellectual, and cultural life.

The Hill and Wang Critical Issues Series: concise, affordable works on pivotal topics in American history, society, and politics. The Specter of Communism is a concise history of the origins of the Cold War and the evolution of U.S.-Soviet relations, from the Bolshevik revolution to the death of Stalin. Using not only American documents but also those from newly opened archives in Russia, China, and Eastern Europe, Leffler shows how the ideological animosity that existed from Lenin's seizure of power onward turned into dangerous confrontation. By focusing on American political culture and American anxieties about the Soviet political and economic threat, Leffler suggests new ways of understanding the global struggle staged by the two great powers of the postwar era.

Lia, a genetically-engineered human bomb, is sent to the New Sol Space Station in order to destroy it, but when her internal clock malfunctions, she must find a way to diffuse the bomb within her and attempt to live a normal, human life.

Drawing on analyses of the socio-cultural context of East and Central Europe, focusing on the Czech cultural dynamics of the Cold War and its aftermath, this book examines the making and breaking of centrally-controlled book production and reception.

Archangel is the second installment of the explosive, pulse-pounding Spectre War science fiction series. An enemy you can't kill. A soldier who can't fight. An interstellar war that can't be won . . . until now. As a soldier of the Celestial Expanse, Guardian First Class Michael Sorenson knows better than anyone that when the Spectres invade, there are only two options. Run or die. However, his defensive war takes on a whole new spin when he's recruited into Division 7, a Research & Development facility with the ultimate mission: to create a large-scale weapon that can kill Spectres en masse. Here Michael joins a team of military elite who have the daring--and dangerous--task of taking new weapons prototypes out into the field for testing on enemy troops. Yet the closer they come to developing a working WMD, the more it becomes clear: There's a saboteur in R&D. With all signs pointing to a massive Spectre attack brewing on the horizon, the creation of a new weapons system yields an opportunity to end the threat once and for all. As the days count down toward its launch, Michael must hunt down the saboteur . . . before the saboteur hunts down him.

It is a commonplace belief that history is written by the victorious. However, less recognised but equally common is the idea that the defeated also write history, even if their particular account is rather different. This collection looks at these matters from a novel and distinct perspective. It essentially presents the idea that victors often perceive themselves as defeated, by examining the ways in which the idea of defeat comes to dominate the victors’ own sense of superiority and achievement, thereby undermining the certainties that victory is conventionally thought to create. The contributions here discuss fiction (mostly UK and US) published since the First World War. Through the frameworks of experience, memory and post-memory, they examine this subliminal defeat, basically as seen in conflict itself, in the societies that it affects, and in the individual lives of those who it destroys. The result is an innovative literary account of the victorious-yet-somehow-defeated.

A richly illustrated, comprehensive study of fashion under socialism, from state-sponsored prototypes to unofficial imitations of Paris fashion. The idea of fashion under socialism conjures up images of babushka headscarves and black market blue jeans. And yet, as Djurdja Bartlett shows in this groundbreaking book, the socialist East had an intimate relationship with fashion. Official antagonism—which cast fashion as frivolous and anti-revolutionary—eventually gave way to grudging acceptance and creeping consumerism. Bartlett outlines three phases in socialist fashion, and illustrates them with abundant images from magazines of the period: postrevolutionary utopian dress, official state-sanctioned socialist fashion, and samizdat-style everyday fashion. Utopian dress, ranging from the geometric abstraction of the constructivists under Bolshevism in the Soviet Union to the no-frills desexualized uniform of a factory worker in Czechoslovakia, reflected the revolutionary urge for a clean break with the past. The highly centralized socialist fashion system, part of Stalinist industrialization, offered official prototypes of high fashion that were never available in stores—mythical images of smart and luxurious dresses that symbolized the economic progress that socialist regimes dreamed of. Everyday fashion, starting in the 1950s, was an unofficial, do-it-yourself enterprise: Western fashions obtained through semiclandestine channels or sewn at home. The state tolerated the demand for Western fashion, promising the burgeoning middle class consumer goods in exchange for political loyalty. Bartlett traces the progress of socialist fashion in the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany, Poland, and Yugoslavia, drawing on state-sponsored socialist women's magazines, etiquette books, socialist manuals on dress, private archives, and her own interviews with designers, fashion editors, and other key figures. Fashion, she suggests, with all its ephemerality and dynamism, was in perpetual conflict with the socialist regimes' fear of change and need for control. It was, to echo the famous first sentence from the Communist Manifesto, the spectre that haunted socialism until the end.

What does the COVID 19 tell us about the climate breakdown, and what should we do about it? The economic and social impact of the coronavirus pandemic has been unprecedented. Governments have spoken of being at war and find themselves forced to seek new powers in order to maintain social order and prevent the spread of the virus. This is often exercised with the notion that we will return to normal as soon as we can. What if that is not possible? Secondly, if the state can mobilize itself in the face of an invisible foe like this pandemic, it should also be able to confront visible dangers such as climate destruction with equal force. In Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency, leading environmental thinker, Andreas Malm demands that this war-footing state should be applied on a permanent basis to the ongoing climate front line. He offers proposals on how the climate movement should use this present emergency to make that case. There can be no excuse for inaction any longer.

"After a combat incident in Iraq, Cal "Spectre" Martin was grounded and told he would never fly an F-16 again. Years later, he started a new civilian life with his F-16 pilot fiancee while being haunted by the nightmares of his last deployment. But when she goes missing on a routine training mission off the South Florida coast, Spectre unwillingly finds himself thrust back onto the frontlines of the war on terror - this time, not in the skies over Iraq, but on the streets of Miami. While searching for answers, Spectre uncovers a deadly international conspiracy that shakes his beliefs to the core and threatens national security. The stakes have never been higher as Spectre rises to overcome his inner demons, challenge his friendships, and take to the skies once again in a daring final mission"--Back cover.