HistoryThere have been so many books in the last few years about events or objects that "changed the world" - drinks, fish, maps, battles, colours, machines, voyages, gigs, and so on - that it would be almost a relief to read a book about something moderately important that altered things a little bit.
This new book is about "ten decisions that changed the world". On this occasion there can be no sense of ennui at an overblown subtitle, for the choices here were those made in 1940-1941 by Hitler, Roosevelt, Churchill and their contemporaries. When Ian Kershaw writes that "these were indeed fateful decisions - decisions that changed the world", it is hard not to see his point.
Kershaw argues that the second World War was the "most awful in history" and the seminal experience of the 20th century. More than 50 million lives were lost and humanity was given "a new, horrible word which also relates to what has increasingly come to be seen as a defining characteristic of the century: genocide". These "fateful decisions" that shaped the global conflict were all made during the 19 months from May 1940 to December 1941. They comprise those by Britain to keep fighting, by Hitler to attack the Soviet Union, declare war on the United States and to kill the Jews, by Mussolini to fight alongside Germany, by Japan to seize "the golden opportunity" and to attack Pearl Harbor, by Roosevelt to extend lend-lease to Britain and to fight an "undeclared war" with Germany, and by Stalin to take Hitler at his word.
IT IS DIFFICULT to think of a better historian to tackle this story. Kershaw is the acclaimed, best-selling biographer of Hitler, and a master of the period. Unsurprisingly he writes brilliantly on the Führer, but seems equally sure-footed in the more unfamiliar territory of, for example, Japanese and American politics. It is no exaggeration to say that Fateful Choices is a tour de force and that Kershaw is a historian at the top of his game.
Two decisions stand out as particularly compelling. Hitler's declaration of war on the US has always appeared an act of either megalomania or lunacy. Kershaw makes it seem only too rational. "From Hitler's perspective it was only anticipating the inevitable," he writes. "Far from appearing inexplicable or baffling, Hitler's decision was consistent with . . . his fear that time was not on Germany's side, that America had to be defeated, or at least held in check, before her economic might could sway the conflict."
The second is perhaps the most obviously dramatic of Kershaw's decisions: that of Britain to fight on. In May 1940, the nation was staring into the abyss. The question was whether or not to make overtures towards peace. The foreign secretary, Lord Halifax, believed the government should explore the option; Churchill thought not. That both men had been rivals for the premiership that same month only adds to a sense of the dramatic. And these were real choices. "Never surrender" was an option, not an inevitability. It is a story that has been told before, but one that Kershaw retells brilliantly. In particular, by showing that "Halifax was no less a patriot" than Churchill and that his argument was "underpinned by reason and logic", Kershaw brings us inside the room as the war cabinet wrestles with profound and genuine complexities about how to safeguard national freedom. Halifax's policy would have taken Britain down a different and damaging road, so it was the country's good fortune to have as its prime minister Churchill, not Halifax. "Personality mattered," writes Kershaw, but adds crucially that "so too did reasoned argument. It had to. Churchill was not yet the national hero he subsequently became, when his personality certainly became a factor of the first importance to the British war effort."
Fateful Choices ends in 1941, with the entry of the United States into the war after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th. Churchill later wrote that on that night he enjoyed "the sleep of the saved and thankful", confident that with the US now in the war, victory was inevitable. For the 19 months beforehand, however, events had seemed to hang in the balance. "The fateful choices made by the leaders of Germany, the Soviet Union, Italy, Japan, Great Britain and the United States in those months changed the world," concludes Kershaw. For once, it seems no exaggeration to say so.
Richard Aldous is head of history at UCD. The paperback edition of his The Lion and the Unicorn: Gladstone vs. Disraeli and his new book, Great Irish Speeches, are both due out in the autumn
Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941 By Ian Kershaw Penguin/Allen Lane, 624pp. £30