The Spectre of War: International Communism and the Origins of World War II

by Jonathan Haslam

A bold new history showing that the fear of Communism was a major factor in the outbreak of World War II

The Spectre of War looks at a subject we thought we knew―the roots of the Second World War―and upends our assumptions with a masterful new interpretation. Looking beyond traditional explanations based on diplomatic failures or military might, Jonathan Haslam explores the neglected thread connecting them all: the fear of Communism prevalent across continents during the interwar period. Marshalling an array of archival sources, including records from the Communist International, Haslam transforms our understanding of the deep-seated origins of World War II, its conflicts, and its legacy.

Haslam offers a panoramic view of Europe and northeast Asia during the 1920s and 1930s, connecting fascism’s emergence with the impact of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. World War I had economically destabilized many nations, and the threat of Communist revolt loomed large in the ensuing social unrest. As Moscow supported Communist efforts in France, Spain, China, and beyond, opponents such as the British feared for the stability of their global empire, and viewed fascism as the only force standing between them and the Communist overthrow of the existing order. The appeasement and political misreading of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy that followed held back the spectre of rebellion―only to usher in the later advent of war.

Illuminating ideological differences in the decades before World War II, and the continuous role of pre- and postwar Communism, The Spectre of War provides unprecedented context for one of the most momentous calamities of the twentieth century

Genres: History, World War II, Politics, Nonfiction, War, Russia, Soviet History

481 pages, Hardcover

First published May 11, 2021

About the author

Jonathan Haslam is George F. Kennan Professor in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and Professor of the History of International Relations at the University of Cambridge.

Reviews

[Dimitar Angelov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Анализ на междувоенния период, който напуска традиционните рамки на дипломатическата история, фиксирана върху геополитиката и разбирането за баланса на силите. Според Хаслам архивните материали на външните министерства и разузнавателните агенции, доколкото са ни достъпни, представляват "скелета", но не и "месото" (същината) на историята на международните отношения.

Твърде много решения и факти в историята на Европа между двете войни не могат да бъдат обяснени, ако изхождаме само и единствено от реалистката концепция за националния интерес. Страхът от "болшевизацията" на континента след революцията в Русия е фактор, който често бива подценяван при анализа на европейската дипломация през 20-те и 30-те години. Ако този "страх" не съществуваше и не играеше толкова значителна роля, както успява според мен успява да докаже Хаслам, то историята би поела по други пътища. Основателен или не (на моменти със сигурност, а понякога по-скоро пресилен), страхът от прехвърлянето на комунистическата революция отвъд границите на СССР води до решения и политики на елитите в цяла Европа, противоречащи на класическите геополитически доктрини отпреди Първата световна война.

Хаслам все пак не е от нароилите се популярни историци, които търсят сензационни и генерални обяснения на сложни исторически въпроси. В книгата си той не твърди, че страхът от разпространяването на комунизма е единствен или задължително водещ фактор в международната политика през 20-те и 30-те години на ХХ в. Неговата теза е по-скоро в полза на многофакторния анализ. И идеите, и личностите, и традиционните геополитически структури имат влияние върху развитието на международните отношения. От геополитическа гледна точка ( и от позицията на съвременния изследовател) британската политика на "умиротворяване" на Хитлер може да изглежда налудничава, но не така стоят нещата, ако анализираме обществените настроения на Острова след ПСВ, особеностите на външнополитическия апарат в Лондон (до който имат достъп ограничени консервативно-ориентирани кръгове) и личностите, които го ръководят. Идеологическият фактор обаче не пречи след началото на войната Великобритания да потърси съюз със СССР, който само година-две по-рано е отхвърлял с лека ръка. Германо-съветският пакт от август 1939 г. е друг пример за колизия между идеологията и традиционната геополитика, която ясно илюстрира как в определени моменти и при определени условия биват вземани трудно предвидими решения. Те са трудно предвидими, защото не могат да се обяснят монофакторно - само с идеите на даден лидер или само от геополитическата обстановка. В книгата Хаслам дава още ред примери в тази насока.

Ако търсите обаче история на междувоенния период, която да има обзорен, а не аналитичен характер, по-скоро препоръчвам J-B. Duroselle - Histoire des relations internationales - De 1919 à 1945 или книгата на E. H. Carr - International Relations Between the Two World Wars 1919-1939. Най-детайлни и до днес обаче си остават двата тома на Zara Steiner.

[Cav · Rating 2 out of 5]

Despite being excited to start The Spectre of War, it ultimately did not meet my expectations...

Author Jonathan Haslam is George F. Kennan Professor in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and Professor of the History of International Relations at the University of Cambridge, with a special interest in the former Soviet Union.

Jonathan Haslam:


The writing in the book gets off to a bit of a bad start, with a Preface that was pretty dry and lackluster. This set the tone for the writing that was to follow in the rest of the book, which I found to be overly flat and unengaging.

The Spectre of War aims to provide the reader a background to the war that shaped the modern world. An important story - as the war, the current landscape, fascism, and Hitler and Mussolini cannot be fully understood outside the context of the events covered in the book. In the wake of WW1, momentum for the ideology of socialism/communism had accelerated in Europe, after the successful October Revolution in Russia saw the overthrow of the Romanov Dynasty, and socialism take its place.

Unfortunately, this important story not told well here, IMO. A cohesive overview took a backseat to a long torrent of minutia. Haslam rattles off places, events, and historical figures in a rapid-fire manner, without giving the reader the necessary background or context. Sadly, I have found this to be a fairly common problem with many of the history books I've read.
The writing here proceeds in a blow-by-blow manner in a way that loses the bigger picture, and leaves the reader lost at times... Fortunately, I have read a fair bit on this topic, but I would wager that many unfamiliar with what is covered here might find themselves lost in the woods at times here...

There was a decent short bit of writing about Hitler's beloved Lebensraum:

"Thomas Malthus had already argued that “the constant tendency in all animated life to increase beyond the nourishment prepared for it” meant that “living space” was vital and in short supply. The Swedish political scientist Rudolf Kjellén then invented the now familiar term Geopolitik—geopolitics as distinct from the vague term “political geography”. He defined Geopolitik as “the study of the state as a geographical organism”. He believed that the state was not the product of a contract between rulers and ruled, but something intrinsically organic, self generating. It could not move, because territory was the “body” of the state, by its nature perishable. “It has a life … It is, like a private individual, placed in a struggle for existence which absorbs a greater part of its power and creates an incessant, stronger or weaker, friction with its surroundings.” Kjellén’s Staten som lifsform (The state as a form of life) appeared in 1916 amid the horrors of the First World War. The German Karl Haushofer, a colonel at the front, read the book in translation and immediately identified with it. From Haushofer these ideas reached Rudolf Hess and from Hess they came to Hitler.
Soon after the hostilities ended, Haushofer rapidly turned himself into a successful publicist for these ideas at the University of Munich. He began a journal, the Zeitschrift für Geopolitik, for the purpose of educating fellow citizens in Raumsinn (or Raumauffassung): consciousness of the importance of space. “A great nation”, he wrote, “has to break out from a singularly narrow space, crowded with people, without fresh air, a vital space narrowed and mutilated for the past thousand years … unless either the whole east is opened up for free immigration of the best and most capable people or else the vital spaces still unoccupied are redistributed according to former accomplishments and the ability to create.” It was in Munich that Haushofer encountered Rudolf Hess. As Rudiger Hess recalled, “For my father these conversations were the first step leading from an instinctive thought to a conscious political thought.” And it was, of course, with his devoted friend and admirer Hess that, in the Landsberg prison, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf. “No one else has ever explained and written down what he intends to do more often than I have,” Hitler boasted on 30 January 1941.
The view of the nation state as an organism carried with it the requirement of living space (Lebensraum) and easily linked to the idea of racial purity, with the Soviet Union as both the main source of contamination and the land for colonisation. Thus not only was it vital for Germany to fight the “Jewish bolshevisation of the world”, but “the future goal of our foreign policy does not have a Western or Eastern orientation, but an Ostpolitik in the sense of the acquisition of the land needed for our German people.” This obsession with living space was thus not a by-product of the perceived need to offset the lack of colonies possessed by Britain and France but a direct extension of Hitler’s organicist image of the state. What counted was not territory as such—Hitler was utterly uninterested in recovering Germany’s former colonies in Africa, even when the British later tried to thrust them on him—but contiguous territory. Indeed; but the plain truth remains that hardly anyone took him sufficiently seriously..."

******************

Despite fielding an extremely interesting topic Haslam's telling of this story was just not up to the task, IMO. His fragmented, rapid-fire delivery did not resonate well with me at all.
The book is also way too long; the versions I have clocked in at 577 pages (PDF), and ~18 hours (audio). A decent chunk of this writing could have been edited down, for the sake of both brevity and clarity.
I would not recommend this one, as I almost put it down multiple times...
1.5 stars.

[Richard Chester · Rating 5 out of 5]

That's a lot of words to find out Neville Chamberlain was an idiot and everyone was trying to tell him for 10 years. Great book. I listened to the audiobook, the way it was written almost feels like a narrative, very easy to listen to and stay engaged with.

[Fernando Pestana da Costa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book gives a large panoramic view of international politics in the 1920’s and 1930’s, from the Bolshevik Revolution to the German invasion of Soviet Union in 1941. It clearly shows the centrality of the Russian Revolution and the role of ideologies in shaping the relation between states in this period. On the Soviet side, after the failures of revolution in Germany and Hungary and the defeat of the Left in the Finnish Civil War, the prospect of successful autochthonous revolutions in the West in the wake of October was substituted by a centralised political action directed from Moscow, via the Comintern, aimed at subverting the inner politics of "bourgeois regimes", the stability of their empires, and overall supporting the USSR. On the Western side, the pervading fear of Revolution, and specifically of the radical Bolshevik variety, was a central factor that was always in the background (and many times in the foreground) of political decisions and actions, be they in China, viz-à-viz the Chinese civil conflicts or Japanese invasion, or in European countries and their colonies. This extraordinarily illuminating book help us better understand some momentous decisions taken in those decades that are otherwise somewhat obfuscating to a reader one century later, among them the reaction of France and England to the rise of fascism first in Italy and then in Germany, the Spanish civil war, and, perhaps the most egregiously infamous of all the Western actions in those years, the appeasement of the Nazis by (mainly) the British conservative political and diplomatic establishments, the direct and catastrophic result of the overriding fear of Bolshevism by the Western ruling class. Although very detailed and using a stunning amount of sources (books, memoirs, newspapers, and political and diplomatic archival sources in all the main countries involved, as well as the odd interview ---as with the daughter of the Commissar of Foreign Affairs Maxim Litvinov, cited in a delightful footnote, in page 445, about his father low opinion of the intellectual abilities of his successor Molotov) this book makes for a tremendously exciting reading and I do recommend it to anyone with some interest in the History, Politics, and the role of ideology in the reading and interpretation of the world we live in.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very impressively researched but almost too detailed to the point that the main narrative got lost. Lots of evidence but not much explanation.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has some interesting details—the chapter on British interwar foreign policy is particularly effective.

However, for a 'revisionist' history it contains a lot of old hat: For example, is it a particularly novel observation that the Comintern was a puppet of the USSR? Or that large sections of the British political establishment saw Nazi Germany as a bulwark against the greater peril of Bolshevism? As a refinement to an existing historical debate, the book is fine; as anything else... well, I can understand why it has left other reviewers here a little bored.

I can't help feeling that this book is another victim of mass-market history's constant drive to make every new release into a book of revelations, whose contents dramatically recast how we understand the subject under consideration.

Revisionist history is, as it is everywhere else, a marketing device first, and a scholarly approach second.

[Ju-Won Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jonathan Haslam’s The Spectre of War: International Communism and the Origins of World War II (translated by Donghyun Woo in Korean, Arte, 2024) traces the origins of World War II to the Comintern (Communist International), the base of the international communist movement, or, more precisely, to the response of imperialist countries (especially Britain) to the Comintern.

As a specialist in Soviet diplomatic history and international relations, the author takes a sobering look at the 1920s and 1930s, the so-called “interwar period” between World War I (1914-1918) and World War II (1939-1945). In his view, the ruling classes of imperialist countries such as Britain, France, and the United States―though he doesn’t use the term “the ruling classes of imperialist countries”―felt that the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the subsequent emergence of the Soviet Union posed a great threat to them, and the hostility, dislike, and fear it generated was widespread enough to determine everything from the foreign policies of states to the preferences of their diplomats―although the realpolitik constraints of “interests” did not disappear. This can be traced back to the Russian Revolution and Civil war, where the surviving revolutionaries (Bolsheviks) founded the Comintern (Communist International) in 1919 and supported revolutionary/anti-colonial movements in Europe and Asia. In the eyes of the victors of World War I, Britain and France, the Soviet Union was a disruptor of diplomatic practice up until the early 20th century, in that it upheld the status quo on a nation-to-nation basis, but sought to overthrow states by supporting revolutionary forces within them―a phenomenon familiar to us today through accusations of North Korea’s “stick-and-carrot tactic.”

In his book, Haslam criticizes the way in which scholars of Soviet diplomacy and international relations have tended to respond to the existence of ideology, either by bracketing it and focusing solely on interests, or by diminishing the role of the international communist movement in countering the anti-communist historiography of the time. An interesting point in the book is how ideology, particularly the conservatism of the British ruling class, manifested itself in the anti-communism of the interwar period, and how the anti-communism that ran deep in the bones of the ruling class tolerated Fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany, and even supported Mussolini and Hitler, and even favored the fascists and Nazis as a barrier against the East (Russia)―Of course, the author is not at all friendly to the former Soviet Union and communism, and he expresses apocalyptic pessimism about the reemergence of communist-like ideologies in the current turmoil in “democracies” that will lead to catastrophe.

The Spectre of War is unique in that it delves into the archives of Britain, France, the United States, Sweden, Spain, and Russia to explore the consciousness and ideas of diplomats during the interwar period, as well as their misunderstandings and assumptions. The film also reveals the impact of the Cambridge Five (members of the British elite who were spies for the Soviet Union) on Soviet diplomacy, made famous by the movie Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. If John Maynard Keynes’s The Economic Consequences of the Peace (translated by Manseop Park in Korean, Humanist, 2024) poignantly pointed out that the Paris Peace Conference and the resulting the Treaty of Versailles, which negotiated the end of World War I, would prepare the way for another war―although Keynes did not say so outright, the key to the Treaty of Versailles was the de facto colonization of Germany―The Spectre of War provides a deeper understanding of the interwar years by showing that the anti-communism of the British elite and their appeasement of Germany, which Keynes also shared, was a major factor in the eventual outbreak of World War II.

Why was this book, which emphasizes that behind the “specter of war” is the “specter of revolution” or―in the first sentence of the famous Communist Manifesto―“the specter of communism,” written and translated here and now? Perhaps because of the fear that the current era will not be another interwar period. After 37 years of democratization on June 1987, the idea that there would be no more coups has been shattered, 2024 South Korean martial law crisis on December 3, 2024 has shown that much is still possible, that South Korea could return to military dictatorship at any time, and that common sense can be so easily shattered. For now, the post-World War II system seems to be alive and well, but nothing is certain. The climate crisis, inequality, far-right populism, and fake news threaten our everyday lives. This one book cannot tell us everything, but it can give us some clues to explore what we need to do to exorcise “the specter of war.”

* Review translated from the original Korean at DeepL.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

My eons-ago undergraduate years marked high-water Cold War revisionism. The Rutgers Department of History duly taught us that capitalist America launched the Cold War to secure the valuable Romanian tractor market, or maybe it was to sell wheat to Ukrainians already drowning in it. Definitely it was something, and we had to sell it to someone, and if we didn’t… Great Depression Redux!

I always thought this reasoning was a bit simplistic. Surely anti-Communism played a role and that in turn was grounded, at least a teeny bit, in Communist efforts to, you know, spark revolution in other nations.

So I turned to Professor Haslam’s book subtitled “International Communism and the Origins of World War II” in hopes of finding there the goods, the juicy details of nefarious subversion and the reactions thereto. Sadly, I chose the wrong book.

Haslam’s thesis—that we underrate at our peril the role of ideology in international relations—to some extent flays a dead horse. I don’t think many contemporary diplomatic historians would disagree. And I don’t think many contemporary accounts downplay how many Brits and others preferred to “buy off Hitler… [rather] than risk ushering Communist power into the heart of the continent.”

What follows is a fairly standard diplomatic history that layers on example after example of that preference. But Haslam doesn’t give us much about the ‘Why?’ He tells us briefly that at Comintern behest western communist parties frequently opposed defense spending, even when it was directed against the supposed Fascist foe. But that’s pretty much it. English toffs think Commies are really bad.

Admittedly I am complaining that the professor didn’t write the book I wanted him to write. But conceding the soundness of his overall thesis, I don’t see that this book advances beyond what we already know. The preface suggests that what follows responds to historians who downplayed or ignored the role of anti-Bolshevism in the path to war. This, Haslam argues, opened the historiographical door to unsavory types like Ernst Nolte, who tried to sanitize fascism as an inevitable response to Communism. But even circa 1980s Rutgers lefties gave us plenty about how the Brits just didn’t want to make a deal with Russia. Again, what’s missing is the ‘Why?’

There are other threads to pick at. Ideology helps drive events, but Stalin and Hitler, ideologues par excellence, cut a deal for reasons of state. The British, on the other hand, underrate the role of ideas, then overreact in the opposite direction—again, why?!—and “allow for nothing more important than ideology in the minds of others,” and thus underrate the possibility of a Nazi-Soviet Pact.

This is a well-researched book but not one that’s easy on the reader. The narrative chases its tail at times. Subchapters take a long and circuitous route to the point raised in their titles. And attention Princeton University Press: your index is broken! Too many times I would encounter a name I’d forgotten, turn to the back to find the first reference, and there learn it supposedly was a hundred pages later!

Sound thesis, executed imperfectly but with erudition. Three stars.

[Rhuff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prominent British historian of the war era, Jonathan Haslam, has written another engaging analysis of the politics and passions leading to WW II. Though he warns against projections of the past into the present, and the reverse, he does offer take-away lessons that no one engaged in today's maelstroms should ignore.

Chief theme in his thesis is how the Bolshevik Revolution shattered Western power systems in ways the first "Great War" did not, even though Communist violence did not sweep Europe or Asia and its drifting fires were (except in Spain) extinguished well before the second one "broke out." Of course the lesson is that this war, like the others, did not just emerge from nothing. Strategic calculations of self-interest were at work even as the guns spoke. But Haslam points to the "irrational" - that is, the emotional and ideological assumptions and prejudices at work, often so taken for granted by those who consider themselves rational actors they are unaware of them.

I do highly recommend the book, but will focus this review on a couple points of disagreement. When Haslam upbraids British foreign experts as not seeing the "Hitler-Stalin Pact" as a mutual contempt for liberal democracy, his own insight rather fails him. While both Bolshevism and Fascism despised it, yet the Comintern could devise a tactical alliance with liberal democrats, whereas fascists never tried and could not. Fascism emerged from the collapse of democracy, but Bolshevism arose in a country where democracy was a tender shoot crushed underfoot before it took proper root. To Bolsheviks, liberal democracy was not an enemy within as it was to fascists, but an irrelevance. Hence the idea of a Popular Front with democrats, exactly as the Bolsheviks advocated against the Tzarist state in 1905.

There is an important element outside his thesis Haslam doesn't address: the ethics of seeking war. WW I pacifism still lingered, and it was a potent if weakening force even in 1940. Though likely not as important as anti-Communism in high-level calculations, politicians were aware of the "spectre" of anti-war feeling and, in the US, the isolationism it spawned, and used it for their own ends. Likewise, overcoming it was a major challenge for the pro-war parties, especially in a country like France where the scars of Verdun were still visible on thousands of survivors.

In his conclusion, Haslam points to the disturbing trends that could lead us into a rerun: galloping inflation and monetary collapse, the rise of dictators ("authoritarians" in modern-speak), and transnational Islamic fundamentalism, with Iran taking the lead in search of "regional hegemony." Yet he seems hoist on his own caveat, as it is an "established, rational state" like the US, not a side-player like Russia, that is becoming unhinged by revolutionary extremism. And it is Israel, not Iran, that seeks regional hegemony aided and abetted by a US-Western establishment in full ideological blindness. His warnings may strike closer to home than even he dared to imagine: history may not exactly repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

[Reid · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent, detailed political history of European relations between World War I and World War II. Essentially western political leaders saw fascism as preferable to communism, resulting in a conciliatory stance towards Hitler. Britain comes in for particularly harsh treatment.

[Dorothy Moller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding. Provides a completely different perspective on British appeasement during the pre-WWII period. Should be a must-read for every Wall Street executive currently choosing their own economic interests over the future of American democracy.

[Raime · Rating 2 out of 5]

2,5

[karim Jebari · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thrilling, revisionists and well argued account of the ideological dimensions of the appeasement policies of the British elite.

[Ollie McEnteggart · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book but quite hard to follow the number of characters and organisations that are referred to

[Sherzod Muminov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard-going at times, but overall a great empirical history of the events that shaped not only the past century but also our current times.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really interesting take on the origins of World War Two.

[Wright Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finished a bit ago and meant to write a longer take, but got overtaken by other things. I think the first two thirds or so are excellent, laying bare how fear of communism motivated European and East Asian diplomacy overpowered any concerns about fascism and expansionism in Germany, Italy, or Japan. The final section, from Munich on, becomes much less interesting, and feels like it’s not quite as well developed as the earlier segments. Still, overall a fascinating book, a great entry into the history of the interwar period, and an important reminder how fear of revolutionary leftism has historically led to tolerance for the far right.