It was a decade during which a diffuse economic and social crisis condensed into a massive political and military storm.įocusing individually on each of the primary staging grounds for history during the 1930s-the United States, Germany, Italy, France, Britain, Japan, Russia and Spain-Piers Brendon traces the particular and diverse experiences of the decade. It was a decade during which darkness often masqueraded as light-Hitler's abolition of unemployment in Germany Stalin's plans for progress and social equality in Russia Mussolini's "revival" of Italy-while governments established and maintained control through brutal physical repression and the more nsidious, lasting repressions of truth: sanctioned deception and relentless propaganda. It was a decade dominated worldwide by the Great Depression, by unemployment and hardship a time when human achievement was matched by pervasive fear when the great neon metaphors of hope that rose up after World War I-Broadway, Piccadilly Circus, the Kurfürstendamm, the Ginza-grew dim both literally and figuratively. A magisterial, unprecedented overview of the clouded and turbulent years before World War II.
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