The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s

The 1930s was a "dark, dishonest decade," a time when the nations of the earth were "struggling with one crisis and hurtling towards another," one that turned out to be greatest in history. A grim and gloomy time over much of the world, author Peirs Brendon has chronicled in _The Dark Valley_ that decade with amazing detail and an epic sweep. He wrote that the Great Depression - which was worldwide and hardly limited to the United States - was perhaps the greatest peacetime crisis to afflict the world since the Black Death. The old liberal order - which had barely survived the First World War and the Communist revolution in Russia - was nearly annihilated in the 1930s; the Depression ended the Weimar Republic and brought Hitler to power in Germany; fatally eroded the fragile pro-international parliamentary democracy in Japan, replacing it with a racist, expansionistic, militarist regime; brought Mussolini to power, who once in control sought to reap domestic rewards by means of foreign aggression; and completed the isolation of the Soviet Union, wracked by purges and Stalin-created famines. The strength and confidence of the democratic major powers were severely tested as well; Britain experienced a naval mutiny, hunger marches, and even some fascist demonstrations; France was torn by the worst civil conflict since the Commune; and the United States embarked on the most comprehensive and far-reaching peacetime program ever in its history, a nation where the Crash had caused people to be disillusioned with Wall Street and for business to lose its prestige. The democratic countries were divided when they should have been cooperating, guilty of erecting tariff barriers, rival devaluations of their currency, flagging (or in the case of the U.S., non-) participation in the League of Nations, and not presenting a united front to the fascist powers but instead one of appeasement and begrudging military expenditures. Again and again Brendon focuses on a single thread amidst the tapestry of events he wove, that much of the world was enveloped during that time in something akin to the fog of war. The 1930s was a time of "systematic obfuscation," when governments fought for control of their own population and that of other nations by "manipulating minds and mobilizing opinion." Propaganda and mass media were used to a degree unparalleled in previous history to obscure the truth. Brendon provided many examples of this in his work. In the United Kingdom the BBC presented itself as being objective with regards to British labor disputes but was anything but; instead it presented the view of the authorities, the government approving many of the stories. Mussolini sought to grab the world's attention with daring aviation adventures (such as the crossing of the Atlantic several times by a squadron of Italian aircraft led by Italo Balbo), obscuring the truth that the Italian air force's development was neglected for the sake of these stunts, obsolete and ill-pre

This is a wonderfully executed study of the many ways in which the social, economic, and political events of the Depression era fostered the world's disastrous descent into the horrors of what became World War Two. Famed British historian Piers Brendon does great credit to this complex and widely varying terrain in his exhaustive and thoughtful coverage of the whole panorama of human suffering and social folly that was the 1930s. As he aptly points out early on in the book, the nations of the world shared much more in the way of common problems and perceived dangers than they recognized, and all too often their individual efforts to extricate themselves meant friction and conflict with their neighbors or/and competitors. Lacking any real appreciation for the ways in which their efforts to rearm themselves in order to demand more of the world's "largesse" for themselves would ultimately doom them all to a war far worse than the horrors so recently visited in World War One, they ambled recklessly toward the cliff of the abyss with no real appreciation for the crushing fall they are about to take.In this sense Brandon reemphasizes one of the oldest lessons of history; that we need to more fully comprehend the past and what it was like to properly understand the present. In this way, the events of the late 1920s and early 1930s doomed the various nations into a scenario from which all the most likely scenarios ended in international conflict. Of course, the fact that the conflict that eventuates from these internal machinations reached a level of intensity never before witnessed in the modern world hardly occurred to most of the protagonists. Indeed, all of this ground has been covered brilliantly before, and Brendon's considerable contribution in this book lay not in this description, but rather in the painstaking way he so carefully describes the social, economic, and political particulars in each individual nation, and then weaves these accumulated and collated observations into a masterful tale that often is so well-written it seems more like fiction than fact. The reader is quickly ensnared by his wonderful powers of exposition, and the endless collage of names, places, and events spin by in spell-binding fashion as he masterfully describes a virtual panorama of places, a wide cast of characters, and an era full of fateful events. This was a decade in so many ways spinning ineluctably out of control in terms of the social and economic forces unleashed that may seem hard from our own perspective to understand how it was that no one could either stop it or blunt its impact. Yet it was the very nature of the cultural despair and the dangerous search for political and cultural scapegoats, whether in Berlin, Tokyo, or Moscow, that lent an air of irresistible momentum to the process. Thus, whether referring to Hitler's early popularity based on a program to employ the masses of unemployed Germans, or Stalin's deliberate victimization of millions

Piers Brendon's massive work, The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930's, is an addictive historical treat. He concentrates on the countries of England, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Russia, Japan and American as they hurtle towards a war that seems all but inevitable, driven on by the Depression and the growth of militaristic and totalitarian states. The reader will also hurtle through this massive book along with the decade covered on the roller coaster ride the author provides. One of the great charms of the book is the author's ability to select just the right quote from an observer at the time to make the reader feel the events on a personal level. Both the right and left get skewered along the way. The author throws his own opinion in and it is often as keenly observant as his selected quotes. This book is in the marvelous tradition of Barbara Tuchman, particulary her Proud Tower covering the period before the First World War. It is a marvelous achievment and a wonderful read for history buffs. Highly recommended.

Ever since Frederick Lewis Allen initiated the form with "Only Yesterday" in the 1930's, there has been a continuing audience for panoramic histories of decades, centuries and even millennia. Some have been more successful than others--one recalls Eric Goldman's "The Crucial Decade" with special fondness--but anyone familiar with Piers Brendon's previous titles would correctly suspect that he has done the genre justice. (His out-of-print biography of Churchill remains the best one-volume treatment of the Great Man and his "Eminent Edwardians" is a suitable, if more balanced complement to Strachey's acidic put-down of the Victorians). And so he has: sweeping through narratives of events in Germany, the Soviet Union, the United States, Japan, France, Great Britain, Italy and Spain, Brendon displays the same writing flair, skewering wit and learning worn lightly that informs his other books. This is a wonderful book of superbly condensed research and entertaining style for a popular audience interested in the "low, dishonest decade."

Amongst historians there is often much debate about how to evaluate history. Some argue that all history should be examined by extant records, others that history is best reviewed through trends, accomplishments, or timelines. Unfortunately, very few historians these days ascribe to the time-tested method of history as a story - the story of the time and of the people involved as recorded by themselves. Fortunately for the reader, Piers Brendon is one of those historians. Brendon, a Fellow of Cambridge and keeper of the Churchill Archives, is an "old-fashioned" social historian; he still believes that history is best related as a story which encompasses all aspects of the human experience; social forces, economics, politics, science, all play their bit parts in shaping the inexorable advance of time. To a reader such as myself who believes that history is a rich tapestry comprising various forces at work, Brendon's The Dark Valley- A Panorama of the Thirties is a treasure; a well researched, well written and objective overview of some of the great events and persons which cast their indelible mark on the 20th century. As noted in the title, The Dark Valley concerns itself with the decade of the 1930's, encompassing social, political, scientific and social themes in an examination of a decade which was to prove pivotal in the development of the world as we know it today. The real triumph of this book is the way in which Brendon is able to tie all of these themes together into an interesting and informative narrative. While the subject of the book itself is full of promise intellectually, it is the measured and talented authorial hand of Brendon which makes this book such an outstanding read: Brendon is masterful at subtly guiding the reader's focus from the great forces at work in history to the experience or observance of the individual. It is perhaps a very English quality that Brendon's book contains a bounty of dry asides, piquant one-liners and telling anecdotes, but these things bring flavour and life to what otherwise would simply be a story oft-told. Brendon brings detail to sketches where needed to impart flavour and avoids it where it would only bog down the narrative. Many less adept authors would (and have) become bogged down in the minutiae of events of such great and widespread import but Brendon seemingly effortlessly avoids all of the pitfalls while climbing all of the peaks of interest. Perhaps even more important, in this age of "history for a purpose" Brendon remains nobly objective, limiting his authorial voice to the odd interjection of dry wit. This quality by itself makes the book stand out among its contemporaries. Wether you are an avid amateur historian or tenured practitioner of the art, Piers Brendon's The Dark Valley - A Panorama of the 1930's is a must read. At almost 700 pages it makes for a lengthy read, but like an old friend you'll enjoy going back to it again and again. If more historians wrote this well,