Origins of the Second World War, The

While most historians have concentrated on the rise, the fall. And the atrocities of Hitler and the Nazi Party, Processor Tayler feels that the myth of Hitler's war guild is too convenient. Tracing international diplomatic events from the time of the Versailles Treaty through the beginnings of the war, he focuses on question: What should we have learned from the failures of the thirties? His answers have aroused furious debate, and his book has been both hailed as a "masterpiece" and denounced as "perverse and dangerous." The impact of the volume cannot be denied: it marks the beginning of a rewriting of the history of the prewar period.