East Central Europe between the Two World Wars

This book is a comprehensive treatment of the East Central European region between the First and Second World Wars. The narrative is glib, fluid and thoroughly readable. The author provides copious tables and maps for easy reference, but this is not a "statistical" work. His inclusion of abbreviated studies of the Baltic states simultaneously widens the comparative cases (as these countries are a transitional zone between Central and Eastern Europe) and provides an elucidating contrast (as they did not regain nominal independence during the Cold War). His introduction isolates the key historical foci of the time and place, including class relations, peasantism, the Great Depression and Great Power penetration. The concluding cultural survey is brief but well-researched and offers a happy humanistic conclusion to the unavoidably tragic political and economic cases.Overall, Rothschild's effort is hugely successful and a pleasure to read, though it is not without idiosyncrasies. Some cases receive far more space (e.g., Poland, Yugoslavia) than others (e.g., Bulgaria, Albania). Some pivotal states within the East Central and Baltic region (Austria, Greece and Finland) aren't given their own cases at all. Perhaps this is because of a conceptual conflation of "East Central Europe" with "Soviet satellites", a common simplification among historians during the Cold War. It is more forgivable than Rothschild's sparse mention of East Germany in his follow-up to this book, Return to Diversity. Another noteworthy feature of the book is its hybrid method. When choosing between true country-specific cases and thematic cases (the latter used in Return to Diversity), Rothschild selects features of both. Yugoslavia is a case study of the politics of ethnic diversity, Romania of radical right movements, etc., and these features are given great weight in each respective narrative. This method allows the author to give comprehensive treatment to the major themes of the region within a relatively short amount of space, but at the cost of sacrificing truly equivalent comparisons across countries. To put it another way, the Hungarian Arrow Cross was just as much an example of rightist radicalism as the Romanian Iron Guard, but only the latter receives a full analysis.In sum, I heartily recommend this book to anyone interested in the region, though please don't stop here.

This is an interesting text, rich in details, dates and stastical tables of each country, by chapter, in East-Central Europe. Focusing on the interwar period, it covers the events from an historical perspective with insight into the political and economic and social situations. The only main problem is that the writing style makes for rather difficult reading. However, if you need to understand the sequence of events, the underlying historical facts, or for research, this is an excellent text, volume IX in the series "A History of East Central Europe." The Introductory Survey is excellent as a stand-alone text for college or even advance high school courses. The countries covered by chapters are Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania and one chapter on the Baltic States (Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia).