Overview

This book follows the choices that turned recoverable breaches into catastrophes. It explains how denial and appeasement crisis politics normalised stepwise aggression; why the Rhineland remilitarisation succeeded; how the lessons of the Munich agreement were learned backwards; and why the Anschluss analysis mattered beyond Vienna. You will see how intelligence failures in the 1930s grew from structure as much as skill, how public complacency during World War II shaped timetables, and how the U.S. isolationism debate narrowed options for everyone else. Along the way, it offers a simple framework for reading early Hitler warnings without panic or naivety and for sifting through interwar diplomacy failures for living guidance. For readers of history and policy who want clarity over drama, this book delivers a usable mental model: align words, budgets, deployments, and doctrine; measure credibility in actions, not adjectives; and apply lessons for deterrence before the window closes.

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9789347436765

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Clara Duval writes about power, prudence, and the costs of looking away. A former policy researcher turned independent historian, she focuses on how democracies read danger and why they so often persuade themselves to wait. She has spent years in European archives and interview rooms tracing the quiet paths from memo to meeting to moment of decision. Raised on family stories of border towns and train stations, she is drawn to the human scale of grand strategy: letters, newspapers, and the moods that sway cabinets. Clara's work champions civic responsibility over fatalism, arguing that the future is rarely opaque; it is usually uncomfortable. Her guiding thread is simple: the earlier we recognise intent, the gentler the remedies can be.

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