wrote the political theorist Harold Laski in 1932.13 The last peace had created the conditions for the next war. Out of want came fear, out of fear came fury. By 1930, more than three million Germans were unemployed and Nazi Party membership had doubled. Adolf Hitler, as addled as he was ruthless, came to power in 1933, invaded the Rhineland in 1936, Poland in 1939. The bells of history tolled a tragedy of ages. Japan, whose expansion had been prohibited by the League of Nations, invaded Manchuria in 1931 and Shanghai in 1937. Italy’s dictator Benito Mussolini, Il Duce, thirsting for glory and
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