The Lights that Failed

The peace treaties represented an almost impossible attempt to solve the problems caused by a murderous world war. In The Lights that Failed: European International History 1919-1933, part of the Oxford History of Modern Europe series, Steiner challenges the common assumption that the Treaty of Versailles led to the opening of a second European war. In a radically original way, this book characterizes the 1920s not as a frustrated prelude to a second global conflict but as a fascinating decade in its own right, when politicians and diplomats strove to re-assemble a viable European order. Steiner examines the efforts that failed but also those which gave hope for future promise, many of which are usually underestimated, if not ignored. She shows that an equilibrium was achieved, attained between a partial American withdrawal from Europe and the self-imposed constraints which the Soviet system imposed on exporting revolution. The stabilization painfully achieved in Europe reached it fragile limits after 1925, even prior to the financial crises that engulfed the continent. The hinge years between the great crash of 1929 and Hitler's achievement of power in 1933 devastatingly altered the balance between nationalism and internationalism. This wide-ranging study helps us grasp the decisive stages in this process.

In a second volume, The Triumph of the Night Steiner will examine the immediate lead up to the Second World War and its early years.

Challenging the common assumption that the Treaty of Versailles led to the opening of a second European war, this book provides an analysis of the attempts to reconstruct Europe during the 1920s. It examines the efforts that failed but also those which gave hope for future promise that are usually underestimated, if not ignored.

Challenging the common assumption that the Treaty of Versailles led to the opening of a second European war, Zara Steiner provides an analysis of the attempts to reconstruct Europe during the 1920s. She examines the efforts that failed but also those which gave hope for future promise that are usually underestimated, if not ignored. She also shows that a degree of stabilization was achieved even though it was fragile, incomplete, and did not last through the 1929-1933 period when nationalist remedies replaced international strategies on both the economic and political levels of European relations. A second volume,The Triumph of the Night, will examine the period from 1934 to 1941.