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Paul Jankowski explores the events of winter 1932–3, during which ‘the world finally changed, from postwar to prewar’.

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Paul Jankowski explores the events of winter 1932–3, during which ‘the world finally changed, from postwar to prewar’.

Image courtesy of interviewee. July 12, 2024

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This video discusses a historical analysis of the period between late 1932 and spring 1933, a time characterized by nations increasingly embracing isolationist, nationalist, and self-protective attitudes. The speaker reflects on the parallels between this historical moment and contemporary global challenges, emphasizing a rejection of global cooperation in favor of self-interest.

Key events from that period include Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany, Franklin Roosevelt's inauguration as U.S. President, Japan's invasion of Manchuria, and Italy's plans for war in Ethiopia. These events illustrate a broader trend towards viewing the international landscape as hostile and threatening, which ultimately contributed to the conditions leading to World War II.

The speaker notes the differences in available historical sources—while the press provides valuable insights into democratic countries, authoritarian regimes offer limited perspectives filtered through government propaganda. This video necessitates a diverse methodological approach to understanding public sentiment within these nations.

Additionally, the discourse explores contemporary international relations, suggesting that the current environment also reflects mistrust and nationalism, akin to patterns observed in the 1930s. The discussion concludes with a call for deeper examination of belief systems in international politics, advocating for a narrative style that moves beyond dry social science to better capture the complexities of historical events and their implications for the present.

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It seemed to me, that,

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in the period I was looking at the moment, I was looking at,

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countries were turning their backs on one another

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in this, this, moment between 1932

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and 1933, a kind of atmosphere of every man for himself,

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and a rejection of the notion

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that there might be global solutions to global problems,

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or at least multilateral solutions to global problems.

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'cause a lot of these had been experimented

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with in the First World War and in the 1920s,

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and they weren't as wildly as impractical as,

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realists might think.

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Um, and it seemed to me that that moment,

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that global moment deserves some attention

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because it did, in some ways remind me of

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what was going on, today,

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and perhaps we'll get back to that.

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I, I don't know. But,

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that was the original motivation.

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Um, and so I got lost in,

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I looked studying this particular period for,

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for that particular reason.

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Now, I'd, I'd always been interested in the 1930s,

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the interwar years, and so on,

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but that particular moment grabbed me.

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Conventional sources are abundant for this period.

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It's not the Middle Ages or, MTS of 10th century.

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Um, and, those are works of other historians, which are,

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which are very many, the press

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and the archives and so on.

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But there are problems.

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Um, I was particularly interested here in, parents

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of opinion and the climates of belief.

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And, that's not always easy to,

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that was always easy to get at.

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Now press is an obvious source,

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and that's abundant for Britain, France, the United States.

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Um, and it's particularly valuable now

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because so many are online

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and there are even digitized collections of the obscure,

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provincial newspapers which one might not otherwise see.

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And their editorial pages, which are much, in many ways,

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a much better indication of opinion, than some

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of the leaders in the major urban dailies.

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However, that's not much help for countries, like Italy

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or the Soviet Union, which had no free press.

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Um, what they tell us only is

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what the government wanted people to think.

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Uh, and so there one has to, one has to go

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to other sources, as it happens countries of that sort.

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Uh, in, so-called, authoritarian,

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or if you like, totalitarian countries are, in fact,

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governments in them are extremely

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interested in what people think.

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Uh, and they go to great lengths to find it out,

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including using their secret police.

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Uh, now we do have many of those reports.

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Some of them have to be used with extreme caution,

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but, it's a different sort of source.

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So one has to use all these different sources

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with different, one has, one has

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to use different kinds of woods for different kinds

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of different kinds of countries,

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and, including informal indications

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and, eyewitness accounts and sometimes election results.

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Um, so it, it meant a, it's a, a grab bag approach.

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Which one, one takes what one can find during the,

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long winter of 1933, as I'm calling it.

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And I'm, I'm really, it's actually a very long winter.

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I'm really looking at the period

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between about the late autumn of 1932

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and the late spring of 1933.

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Um, during the, those months, some major, major events,

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some major developments took place around the world.

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And at first site, they have, nothing.

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They seem to have nothing to do with each other,

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but I would suggest that they did have something in common,

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and that, in them, we can find some

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of the deeper origins of the Second World War.

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Uh, Hitler became the chancellor of Germany,

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that Roosevelt became,

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the Franklin Roosevelt became the

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president of the United States.

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Uh, Japan left the League of Nations

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after, invading Manchuria the year

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before, Italy began

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serious formal preparations for the invasion of Abyssinia

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Ethiopia, which would take place a few years later.

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And, in the, Soviet Union,

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forced industrialization

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and the collectivization of agriculture led to the deaths,

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deportations, famine

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and the deaths of millions, notably in the,

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in the Ukraine.

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Now, the, it seems to me

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that each of these events in many others, marked

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a kind of rejection of the world beyond their,

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beyond the borders of each country,

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and a, a recognition that it was a very hostile place,

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dangerous and, and hostile place.

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The most extreme version of this is, Nazism,

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which is a really a vision of perpetual race war.

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But, Soviet paranoia, is another form of it.

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Uh, not only in its,

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attitude towards the capitalist world, which surrounded it,

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which was fundamental to their, belief systems

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and Marxist Leninist, ideology,

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but also in their attitude, some

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of their national attitudes.

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Stalin, in 1931 made a speech in which he

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justified what he was doing.

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Uh, and he referred at length to the,

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hostile nations that had invaded Russia

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of a centuries poles, Swedes, Mongols,

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Germans, many others.

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And he was really saying that he's, they had to do all this

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because if they didn't, they would be invaded again,

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and they would not be able to defend themselves.

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We forget also that, Roosevelt's New Deal, which was a,

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a recovery program that was sort of made up

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as it went along, was, I mean, if it was anything,

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it was a form of economic nationalism.

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And that many of the new dealers around him,

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really viewed with, with deep suspicion, any kind

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of binding commitment abroad,

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especially in Europe, but also elsewhere.

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They feared, for example, that some of them did.

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Some of them feared that he was, very partial to China,

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and he would, entangle the United States in,

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in,

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commitments there, that he didn't want.

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So,

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and speaking of that, in Japan, we have a,

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a rising military, which foresaw a, a mission

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for the Japanese, in China,

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which defied not only the Soviet Union,

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but also the Western powers.

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In a sense, it defied the world in general.

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Um, so the, the Italian fascist slogan,

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one of them, which was a frago,

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which really means I don't give a damn, is really something

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that is thrown in the face of the world.

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And I think it's the same kind of sentiment, that,

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that's at work, in,

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many very different ways in all these countries.

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Um, so just to conclude that, I mean, I would say

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that it's a new kind of nationalism that most

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of the nationalism we have, that the world had seen

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until then, mass nationalism, that is, was,

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usually directed at hereditary oppression, heredi,

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hereditary oppressors, the polls against the Russians

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or the, the Irish against the English, for example.

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Um, but, this one is different.

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Uh, this was,

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directed in their individual ways against the whole world.

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Um, and, in some cases, it expressed itself as a,

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as a desire to withdraw from it, which is one

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of the American, the American case,

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in others to, to defy it,

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or, in others to invade it.

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That's a, that's a very good question.

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It's a very difficult question to answer

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because, obviously,

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obviously the world is extreme.

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It's a very different place. We're, we're dealing with a,

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a totally, really,

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totally transformed international environment.

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Um, there are, what now, some 200

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sovereign states in the world, something like that, that,

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represented at the un.

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Anyway, there were about 50 in the League of Nations,

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and the, the period that I, that I was,

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that I wrote about in this book, there is today a,

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a host of various kinds of world organizations

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or world groupings, most obviously the European Union,

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which there was nothing like it then.

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But there are also G seven, G 20, all kinds

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of organizations, which simply didn't

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exist, at the time.

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That is to say, arrangements for, countries

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to get together and talk to each other.

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Um, there are forms of arms control,

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particularly new nuclear arms control, if they hold up,

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which, didn't exist then,

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which they try actually tried very hard

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to develop it, which failed.

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Um, and, well, I won't go on,

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but, I mean, there are, well, one, very important,

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another one, another major difference is that, many

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of the actors we're dealing with today are non-state actors.

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Many of the wars are not between states,

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but between states and non-state.

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And that was not the case then yet.

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Um, this belief, I think that the,

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that the world is a hostile place

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and that the nation is a sanctuary, against the rest,

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against the rest of the world, does bear some, it, it,

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it bears some, some thinking about it,

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it bears some resemblance to today.

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Um, and the, the rejection of a world order

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or of an attempted world order,

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WW without any very clear alternative, it's, it,

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it's not, it's not farfetched to, to draw some parallels.

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Um, I think if, if you look at the past 10 years

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or so, it was,

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well, actually, let me back up.

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Uh, beyond that, post 1989,

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during the 1990s, there was an expectation

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that there would be some kind of a new post,

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post Cold War World order.

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It would be, it would be an American led world order,

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but it was to be based on globalization, free trade,

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international organizations, human rights.

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Uh, and in recent years, we've really been, well,

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quite some years now,

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we've really been wa we've been watching that fall apart,

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and, we've seen it prove about as elusive,

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and, short-lived as the new world order

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that was supposed to follow the first World War.

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And that, in my eyes, finally fell apart in, in, in this,

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this, this period that I,

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that I've been talking about.

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Um, the, now to what, to what you were,

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you were referring to?

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Yes. Um, I mean,

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and in, Brexit,

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WWW was in some ways an instance of this.

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And of course, this has been happening elsewhere,

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in Europe since, at, at, at that time in 2016.

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And since then, even though they've,

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they've met resistance, it was, it's perfectly obvious

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to me and to many others

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That the, chaotic

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and impulsive kind of approach to foreign policy that,

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that President Trump had during, during his tti,

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his, his, four years in office portrayed that, that kind

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of, that kind of thinking.

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And if today, the United States were to abandon Ukraine

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as it seemed to be doing for recent months, when,

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Congress paralyzed, the, shipment of, of arms

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and munitions to the country, if that were to happen,

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I think the, the credit of the United States

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and the credibility of the United States

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and the world would be so badly damaged, that,

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who knows what might happen?

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Japan and South Korea, for instance,

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might very well be tempted to go nuclear,

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but, NATO would be, severely damaged,

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and there would be nothing very obvious to replace all this.

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So, that, those are the kinds of things that,

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in other words, it is not pointless

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to draw parallels and think about them.

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Uh, I don't think, if I, if I can just,

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digress for a second, or not digress,

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but generalize for a second that the purpose

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of studying the past is necessarily he'll learn something

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that will, that will help us today.

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I, I don't, I've never thought that, the purpose,

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we study the past because it's there.

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Uh, apparently there are some astonishing creatures

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who are not interested in it,

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but, the, that is, that's, that's not my problem.

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Uh, but,

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if it can make us think about today, then why not?

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I'd like them to take away

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with them a sense of deep admiration.

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You know, I, I, yeah, I suppose,

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I suppose perhaps a,

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a, a slightly different way

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of thinking about the second World War,

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that there may be some deep, deeper

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and structural origins to it having to do with world order,

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which, I mean, the standard narrative is

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of good versus evil, and that's not, that's not all wrong,

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and, and of national heroism, the case

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of Britain, for example.

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Um, and that's not wrong either.

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Uh, but, some of these, some

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of these reflections about the,

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ways in which the world can fall apart,

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might be, I, I, I would welcome that kind of,

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message if it, if it got through.

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Um, and, I,

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think there's something else I

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might, I might, I might welcome.

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Uh, and that is to think of international relations in terms

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of belief systems rather than

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states dealing with each other,

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The deep beliefs, especially in the age of mass politics,

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which may well be driving what these,

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ministers and governments are doing.

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We, we see foreign ministers dealing

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with each other at Munich

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and, heads, heads of state at Munich, heads

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of government or heads of state,

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and we see, diplomatic, we see conferences

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and diplomatic parlays and so on.

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Um, but to think of the, of these encounters in terms

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of, homegrown climates of belief

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and belief systems, is I think a,

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a promising direction for the study

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of international relations to take.

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And in any event, for the,

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ways in which we might write their history, might,

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might write the history of them, those are some

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of the things I would, like read.

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I also, in this book, I, I did try to,

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stress the, some, some narrative

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and descriptive, ways of writing history

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to perhaps get it away from the arid, the,

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the arid abstractions of social science.

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And if readers enjoy that, I would be very,

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very pleased myself.

Quick Answers

"Global Isolationism: Reflections on the World Between the Wars (1932-1933)"

00:00:00 - It seemed to me, that, in the period I was looking at the moment, I was looking at, countries were turning their backs on one another in this, this, moment between 1932 and 1933, a kind of atmosphere of every man for himself, and a rejection of the notion that there might be global solutions to global problems, or at least multilateral solutions to global problems. 'cause a lot of these had been experimented with in the First World War and in the 1920s, and they weren't as wildly as impractical as, realists might think. and it seemed to me that that moment,
00:00:42 - because it did, in some ways remind me of what was going on, today, and perhaps we'll get back to that. I, I don't know. But, that was the original motivation. and so I got lost in, I looked studying this particular period for, for that particular reason. Now, I'd, I'd always been interested in the 1930s, the interwar years, and so on, but that particular moment grabbed me. Conventional sources are abundant for this period. It's not the Middle Ages or, MTS of 10th century. and, those are works of other historians, which are, which are very many, the press
00:01:24 - But there are problems. I was particularly interested here in, parents of opinion and the climates of belief. And, that's not always easy to, that was always easy to get at. Now press is an obvious source, and that's abundant for Britain, France, the United States. and it's particularly valuable now because so many are online and there are even digitized collections of the obscure, provincial newspapers which one might not otherwise see. And their editorial pages, which are much, in many ways,
00:02:06 - of the leaders in the major urban dailies. However, that's not much help for countries, like Italy or the Soviet Union, which had no free press. what they tell us only is what the government wanted people to think. and so there one has to, one has to go to other sources, as it happens countries of that sort. in, so-called, authoritarian, or if you like, totalitarian countries are, in fact, governments in them are extremely interested in what people think. and they go to great lengths to find it out, including using their secret police. now we do have many of those reports.
00:02:49 - but, it's a different sort of source. So one has to use all these different sources with different, one has, one has to use different kinds of woods for different kinds of different kinds of countries, and, including informal indications and, eyewitness accounts and sometimes election results. so it, it meant a, it's a, a grab bag approach. Which one, one takes what one can find during the, long winter of 1933, as I'm calling it. And I'm, I'm really, it's actually a very long winter.
00:03:30 - between about the late autumn of 1932 and the late spring of 1933. during the, those months, some major, major events, some major developments took place around the world. And at first site, they have, nothing. They seem to have nothing to do with each other, but I would suggest that they did have something in common, and that, in them, we can find some of the deeper origins of the Second World War. Hitler became the chancellor of Germany, that Roosevelt became, the Franklin Roosevelt became the president of the United States.

"Nationalism and Hostility: The Global Rejection in the Interwar Era"

00:04:09 - after, invading Manchuria the year before, Italy began serious formal preparations for the invasion of Abyssinia Ethiopia, which would take place a few years later. And, in the, Soviet Union, forced industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture led to the deaths, deportations, famine and the deaths of millions, notably in the, in the Ukraine. Now, the, it seems to me
00:04:54 - a kind of rejection of the world beyond their, beyond the borders of each country, and a, a recognition that it was a very hostile place, dangerous and, and hostile place. The most extreme version of this is, Nazism, which is a really a vision of perpetual race war. But, Soviet paranoia, is another form of it. not only in its, attitude towards the capitalist world, which surrounded it, which was fundamental to their, belief systems and Marxist Leninist, ideology,
00:05:32 - of their national attitudes. Stalin, in 1931 made a speech in which he justified what he was doing. and he referred at length to the, hostile nations that had invaded Russia of a centuries poles, Swedes, Mongols, Germans, many others. And he was really saying that he's, they had to do all this because if they didn't, they would be invaded again, and they would not be able to defend themselves. We forget also that, Roosevelt's New Deal, which was a, a recovery program that was sort of made up
00:06:12 - it was a form of economic nationalism. And that many of the new dealers around him, really viewed with, with deep suspicion, any kind of binding commitment abroad, especially in Europe, but also elsewhere. They feared, for example, that some of them did. Some of them feared that he was, very partial to China, and he would, entangle the United States in, in, commitments there, that he didn't want. So, and speaking of that, in Japan, we have a, a rising military, which foresaw a, a mission
00:06:57 - which defied not only the Soviet Union, but also the Western powers. In a sense, it defied the world in general. so the, the Italian fascist slogan, one of them, which was a frago, which really means I don't give a damn, is really something that is thrown in the face of the world. And I think it's the same kind of sentiment, that, that's at work, in, many very different ways in all these countries. so just to conclude that, I mean, I would say that it's a new kind of nationalism that most of the nationalism we have, that the world had seen
00:07:41 - usually directed at hereditary oppression, heredi, hereditary oppressors, the polls against the Russians or the, the Irish against the English, for example. but, this one is different. this was, directed in their individual ways against the whole world. and, in some cases, it expressed itself as a, as a desire to withdraw from it, which is one of the American, the American case, in others to, to defy it, or, in others to invade it.

"Reflections on a Transforming World Order: Parallels Between Past and Present"

00:08:21 - It's a very difficult question to answer because, obviously, obviously the world is extreme. It's a very different place. We're, we're dealing with a, a totally, really, totally transformed international environment. there are, what now, some 200 sovereign states in the world, something like that, that, represented at the un. Anyway, there were about 50 in the League of Nations, and the, the period that I, that I was, that I wrote about in this book, there is today a, a host of various kinds of world organizations or world groupings, most obviously the European Union,
00:09:04 - But there are also G seven, G 20, all kinds of organizations, which simply didn't exist, at the time. That is to say, arrangements for, countries to get together and talk to each other. there are forms of arms control, particularly new nuclear arms control, if they hold up, which, didn't exist then, which they try actually tried very hard to develop it, which failed. and, well, I won't go on, but, I mean, there are, well, one, very important, another one, another major difference is that, many of the actors we're dealing with today are non-state actors.
00:09:44 - but between states and non-state. And that was not the case then yet. this belief, I think that the, that the world is a hostile place and that the nation is a sanctuary, against the rest, against the rest of the world, does bear some, it, it, it bears some, some thinking about it, it bears some resemblance to today. and the, the rejection of a world order or of an attempted world order, WW without any very clear alternative, it's, it, it's not, it's not farfetched to, to draw some parallels.
00:10:26 - or so, it was, well, actually, let me back up. beyond that, post 1989, during the 1990s, there was an expectation that there would be some kind of a new post, post Cold War World order. It would be, it would be an American led world order, but it was to be based on globalization, free trade, international organizations, human rights. and in recent years, we've really been, well, quite some years now, we've really been wa we've been watching that fall apart,
00:11:09 - and, short-lived as the new world order that was supposed to follow the first World War. And that, in my eyes, finally fell apart in, in, in this, this, this period that I, that I've been talking about. the, now to what, to what you were, you were referring to? Yes. I mean, and in, Brexit, WWW was in some ways an instance of this. And of course, this has been happening elsewhere, in Europe since, at, at, at that time in 2016.
00:11:47 - they've met resistance, it was, it's perfectly obvious to me and to many others That the, chaotic and impulsive kind of approach to foreign policy that, that President Trump had during, during his tti, his, his, four years in office portrayed that, that kind of, that kind of thinking. And if today, the United States were to abandon Ukraine as it seemed to be doing for recent months, when, Congress paralyzed, the, shipment of, of arms and munitions to the country, if that were to happen,

"Reflections on Historical Lessons and Contemporary Global Dynamics"

00:12:31 - and the credibility of the United States and the world would be so badly damaged, that, who knows what might happen? Japan and South Korea, for instance, might very well be tempted to go nuclear, but, NATO would be, severely damaged, and there would be nothing very obvious to replace all this. So, that, those are the kinds of things that, in other words, it is not pointless to draw parallels and think about them. I don't think, if I, if I can just, digress for a second, or not digress, but generalize for a second that the purpose
00:13:10 - that will, that will help us today. I, I don't, I've never thought that, the purpose, we study the past because it's there. apparently there are some astonishing creatures who are not interested in it, but, the, that is, that's, that's not my problem. but, if it can make us think about today, then why not? I'd like them to take away with them a sense of deep admiration. You know, I, I, yeah, I suppose, I suppose perhaps a, a, a slightly different way
00:13:51 - that there may be some deep, deeper and structural origins to it having to do with world order, which, I mean, the standard narrative is of good versus evil, and that's not, that's not all wrong, and, and of national heroism, the case of Britain, for example. and that's not wrong either. but, some of these, some of these reflections about the, ways in which the world can fall apart, might be, I, I, I would welcome that kind of,
00:14:34 - and, I, think there's something else I might, I might, I might welcome. and that is to think of international relations in terms of belief systems rather than states dealing with each other, The deep beliefs, especially in the age of mass politics, which may well be driving what these, ministers and governments are doing. We, we see foreign ministers dealing with each other at Munich and, heads, heads of state at Munich, heads of government or heads of state, and we see, diplomatic, we see conferences
00:15:15 - but to think of the, of these encounters in terms of, homegrown climates of belief and belief systems, is I think a, a promising direction for the study of international relations to take. And in any event, for the, ways in which we might write their history, might, might write the history of them, those are some of the things I would, like read. I also, in this book, I, I did try to, stress the, some, some narrative and descriptive, ways of writing history to perhaps get it away from the arid, the,
00:15:59 - And if readers enjoy that, I would be very, very pleased myself.

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