Abstract

Rood’s intention is two-fold: to expose the strategic intention and design of the Soviet Union, and to show how "the dangerous inclination democratic peoples have of discounting the likelihood of war" has rendered the West blind to the danger posed by Soviet strategy. The first part of the book chronicles the at first clandestine and then, under Hitler, public rearmament of Germany in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. In support of Churchill’s claim that the Second World War was an unnecessary war, Rood shows, through contemporaneous documentation, the surprising extent to which German political and military activities between the wars were known to the British government. The great failure of British leadership in that period was therefore not one of intelligence; the facts were available. Rather, it was one of interpretation, a failure to see German activity for what it was—preparation for war.