Public Libraries of Suffolk County, New York

The dark valley, a panorama of the 1930s, Piers Brendon

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

illustrations

index present

non fiction

The dark valley

electronic resource eBook

bibliographydictionaries

Piers Brendon

"Piers Brendon's overview of the 1930s is the story of the dark, dishonest decade, child of one world war and parent of the next, that determined the course of the twentieth century. Dealing individually with each of the period's great powers - the USA, Germany, Italy, France, Britain, Japan, Russia and Spain - Brendon takes us through the ten years dominated by the Great Depression and political turmoil, when Broadway, Piccadilly Circus, the Kurfurstendamm and the Ginza - neon metaphors of hope after four years of carnage - grew dim as the giants of unemployment, hardship, strife and fear took their hold." "The 1930s were a time of systematic obfuscation. Governments fought to maintain control by manipulating minds. Propaganda became part of the air people breathed. The Dark Valley investigates how, and how far, contemporaries knew what they knew, and the extent to which our own view of the time is fogged by their uncertainty."--BOOK JACKET

a panorama of the 1930s

The harvest of Armageddon -- The roots of fascism -- The bane of capitalism -- Depression in America -- The triumph of Hitler -- The Duce and the Pope -- The decadence of France -- The slump of Britain -- Japan's imperial destiny -- Stalin's revolution -- The New Deal -- The Nazis in power -- Mussolini's Abyssinian adventure -- Léon Blum and the Popular Front -- The coming of the Spanish Civil War -- Franco's victory -- Britain's royal state -- The rise of Japanese militarism -- The Soviet purges -- America in isolation -- The Führer's path to war -- The fascist axis -- France's lean years -- Churchill, Chamberlain and appeasement -- Nippon in China -- The making of the Nazi-Soviet pact -- Conclusion