The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End

by Robert Gerwarth Narrated by Michael Page

Overview

In The Vanquished, a highly original and gripping work of history, Robert Gerwarth asks us to think again about the true legacy of the First World War. In large part it was not the fighting on the Western Front that proved so ruinous to Europe's future, but the devastating aftermath, as countries on both sides of the original conflict were savaged by revolutions, pogroms, mass expulsions, and further major military clashes. If the war itself had in most places been a struggle mainly between state-backed soldiers, these new conflicts were predominantly perpetrated by civilians and paramilitaries, and driven by a murderous sense of injustice projected onto enemies real and imaginary. In the years immediately after the armistice, millions would die across central, eastern, and southeastern Europe before the Soviet Union and a series of rickety and exhausted small new states would come into being. It was here, in the ruins of Europe, that extreme ideologies such as fascism would take shape.



As absorbing in its drama as it is unsettling in its analysis, The Vanquished is destined to transform our understanding of not just the First World War but of the twentieth century as a whole.

Editorial Reviews

The New York Times Book Review - Margaret MacMillan

[Gerwarth's] account is both important and timely, and obliges us to reconsider a period and a battle front that has too often been neglected by historians…The standard view of the 1920s has been that they were merely the brief pause before the 1930s and the inevitable slide into a second world war. The peace settlements made in Paris in 1919, in this telling, were so vindictive and so flawed that they drove Germans toward the Nazis and left even victorious nations like Italy and Japan deeply dissatisfied. Historians have recently been suggesting a more nuanced version, with economic production reaching prewar levels and a sort of normality returning. That hopeful moment came to an abrupt end with the Great Depression, which destroyed the faith of millions in capitalism and democracy and made the alternatives of Communism and fascism seem attractive. And, as Gerwarth's well-researched and engrossing book makes clear, there was already plenty of flammable material lying about…The dispiriting conclusion to draw from The Vanquished is how easily what we think of as the restraints of civilization can break down.

Publishers Weekly

09/26/2016
In this controversial, persuasive, and impressively documented book, Gerwarth (Hitler’s Hangman), professor of modern history at University College Dublin, analyzes a war that was supposed to end war, yet was followed by “no peace, only continuous violence.” The war’s nature changed in its final years: Russia underwent a revolution, and the Western Allies committed themselves to breaking up the continental empires. The postwar violence was “more ungovernable” than the state-legitimated version of the preceding century. Gerwarth establishes his case in three contexts. The Central Powers, Germany and Austria-Hungary, enjoyed a taste of victory in the winter of 1917–18, only to suffer the shock of seeing their military, political, and diplomatic positions quickly collapse. Russia’s revolution immersed Eastern Europe in what seemed a “forever war” of only fleeting democratic triumphs. Fear of Bolshevism in turn stimulated the rise of fascism. And the Versailles negotiations proved unable to control the collapse of prewar empires, much less guide their reconstruction along proto-Wilsonian lines. The period of relative stability after 1923 was a function of exhaustion rather than reconstruction, Gerwarth ruefully notes, and by 1929 Europe was “plunging back once again into crisis and violent disorder” that set the stage for the Great War’s second round. Maps & illus. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency. (Nov.)

From the Publisher

[Gerwarth's] account is both important and timely, and obliges us to reconsider a period and a battle front that has too often been neglected by historians . . . Well-researched and engrossing.” —Margaret MacMillan, The New York Times Book Review

“For many of the Great War's defeated nations and peoples, as Robert Gerwarth shows brilliantly in The Vanquished, the full course of strife and bloodshed ended only in late 1923 . . . Based on a staggering range of primary materials and secondary literature, The Vanquished fills a vast canvas . . . [A] path-breaking study.” —Brendan Simms, The Wall Street Journal

"Utterly fascinating . . . [The Vanquished] probes deeply into an area of this intensely-studied war that comparatively few studies take on at such length and detail . . . The long after-effects of the Great War are painted with comprehensive skill in these pages; it’s an account unlike any other in the crowded field of WWI studies . . . Vital reading, essential for any student of the First World War." —Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Monthly

“This narrative of continent-wide chaos makes it easier to understand why order came to seem a supremely desirable objective in 1930s Europe, trumping freedom . . . it helps us understand why few wars reach tidy conclusions: once a society has suspended its instinctive, social and legal prejudice against killing, it often proves hard to restore.” —Max Hastings, The Sunday Times

“Gerwarth fills The Vanquished with illuminating quotations and stories that pull together a complex narrative about the uneasy peace of the late Twenties and shine a piercing light into darkened corners of history . . . The Vanquished is an unnerving reminder of how stubbornly some geopolitical fault-lines endure.” —Sinclair McKay, The Telegraph

“A mixture of fast-paced narrative and fluent analysis of the turmoil that unfolded in the lands of the four shattered empires, as well as Greece and Italy, either side of the November 1918 armistice on the western front. Gerwarth demonstrates with an impressive concentration of detail that in central, eastern and south-eastern Europe the carnage of the first world war by no means came to an end, as it did for the British and French, in late 1918.” —Tony Barber, Financial Times

“Gerwarth has synthesized an enormous range of primary and secondary sources in half a dozen languages. Combining a big-picture overview with close-up detail - we hear the voices of soldiers, politicians, civilians - Gerwarth has written a vivid if disturbing account of a crucial period in 20th century history.” —Matthew Price, The National

“Searing and vivid . . . a timely reminder that the roots of century-long violence can be traced back to the cataclysmic end of the Great War.” —Richard Overy, Literary Review

“Gerwarth's fascinating and finely crafted book is a rich combination of military, political, cultural and social history. He makes good use of literary sources and witness testimony to bring the events he narrates to life . . . an impressive work of highly accessible scholarship.” —Geoffrey Roberts, Irish Times

“This is an important and compelling book with a fascinating and chilling narrative ... Gerwarth reveals how the forgotten postwar violence comprised a key step on Europe's descent into darkness.” —Alexander Watson, BBC History Magazine

“While Gerwarth's warfare theories are cogent and convincing, he never loses sight of the human dimension. He skillfully avoids the danger of getting bogged down in a mass of detail, livening up his narrative by using contemporary quotes from politicians, soldiers and writers. One mark of a good history book is that it allows the reader to see familiar events from a new perspective . . . [i]n this respect, The Vanquished is an exceptional history book.” —Andrew Lynch, Sunday Post Business Magazine

“[Gerwarth] shines a light on what is, from a western European point of view, a somewhat obscure and relatively short period of time . . . from the layman's vantage point, it is so well written that it reads like a novel. Tragically, for the people killed, wounded and forced to flee from their homes, it is not. This book is well worth the read. —Frank MacGabhann, Irish Independent

“This fine and timely study makes a compelling case for the argument that the bloody aftermath of the war did more to destroy European civilisation than the declarations of war in 1914 . . . at a time when Vladimir Putin seems intent on regaining Tsarist Russia's frontiers, and the map of the Middle East drawn by the victorious powers becomes ever more blurred, we might well ask whether the First World War has ended yet.” —A.W. Purdue, Times Higher Education Supplement

“A clear and excellent account of the abrupt break-up of the Habsburg, Hohenzollern, Ottoman and Romanov empires and the difficult birth of their successor states during 1917-23.” —History of War Reviews

“Gerwarth provides an essential contribution to our understanding of the interwar years.” —Jay Freeman, Booklist

“Controversial, persuasive, and impressively documented.” —Publishers Weekly

“The first study of the disorders that shook all the defeated states of Europe following World War . . . In this extensively researched and crisply written account, Gerwarth explores the political and military upheavals throughout central Europe . . . A thorough explanation for the rise of the nationalist and fascist groups who set the stage for World War II.” —Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher - AUDIO COMMENTARY

"Gerwarth's fascinating and finely crafted book is a rich combination of military, political, cultural and social history. . . . an impressive work of highly accessible scholarship." —The Irish Times

Library Journal

10/01/2016
Historian Gerwarth (modern history, Univ. Coll. Dublin; Hitler's Hangman) writes an accessible and astute account of the interwar period, specifically the post-World War I years between 1918 and 1923. The author effectively details changes in violence after the end of World War I as postwar Europe devolved into interstate wars between Poland and the Soviet Union, Greece and Turkey, and Romania and Hungary along with several civil wars (e.g., Finland, Ireland, and Germany). The result of this bloodshed emerged in the 1920s as two radically different ideologies, Bolshevism and Facism, both of which led to violence in several countries such as the Red Terror in Russia and the rise of Benito Mussolini in Italy. Gerwarth succeeds in describing the sectarian violence, economic insecurity, and blame of "the other" (more often than not, Jewish communities) that was born out of the Great War and led to an even bloodier battle. Readers of European history will find much to contemplate. VERDICT This work does not have the glamour of World War theater, but it adequately provides an important bridge between two massive conflicts that still resonate with us today.—Keith Klang, Port Washington P.L., NY

Kirkus Review

Sept. 6, 2016
The first study of the disorders that shook all the defeated states of Europe following World War I.For the nations that lost the war, the fighting did not end with the armistice in November 1918. On the contrary, Gerwarth (Modern History/Univ. College, Dublin; Hitler's Hangman: The Life of Heydrich, 2011, etc.) asserts that between 1918 and 1923, postwar Europe was "the most violent place on the planet." Russia, of course, was swept up in its own revolution and civil war. While the victors connived in Paris to reorganize a continent previously dominated by land empires into one composed of nation-states, from the Baltic to the Caucasus, the territories of the collapsed Austro-Hungarian, German, and Ottoman empires were torn by civil wars and revolutions of their own and by interstate wars like the ill-advised Greek invasion of Turkey in 1919. As a result, writes Gerwarth, "none of the defeated states of the Great War managed to return to anything like pre-war levels of domestic stability and internal peace." Although the 1923 Conference of Lausanne ended the Greco-Turkish conflict and marked the exhaustion of this spasm of violence, the author contends that it laid the foundation for later ethnic cleansing because it "established the legal right of state governments to expel large parts of their citizens on the grounds of 'otherness.' It fatally undermined cultural, ethnic and religious plurality as an ideal.” In this extensively researched and crisply written account, Gerwarth explores the political and military upheavals throughout central Europe, including those in unfamiliar nations like Bulgaria and radically dismembered Hungary. The author’s consistent focus on national governments, paramilitary groups like the various German Freikorps, and statistical counts of victims of violence and famine at the expense of personal experiences of ordinary people caught up in the chaos sometimes renders the narrative a little dry, but it is certainly authoritative. A thorough explanation for the rise of the nationalist and fascist groups who set the stage for World War II.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170634989
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	11/15/2016
Edition description:	Unabridged

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