Although France, Poland, and Czechoslovakia were in jeopardy from a recovery of German power after World War I and from a potential German hegemony in Europe, France failed in her efforts to maintain a system of alliances with her two imperiled neighbors. Focusing on the period from 1926 to 1936, Piotr Wandycz seeks to explain how and why these three nations, with so much at risk, neglected to act in concert. Wandycz is the author of a well-known study on the series of alliances constructed by France, Poland, and Czechoslovakia in the years following the Treaty of Versailles. In this current volume he picks up the story after the Locarno Pact (1925) and follows the progressive disintegration of the alliance system until the time of Hitler's remilitarization of the Rhineland. Through an examination of the political, military, and economic relations among France, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, the author provides valuable insights into an era that contained the seeds of the future war and the collapse of the historic European system. By relying on French, Polish, and more selectively Czechoslovak and Western archives, and thanks to his intimate knowledge of Central and East European published sources, he has filled a large gap in the history of prewar diplomacy. He shows how the divergent aims of Czechoslovakia and Poland combined with a decline of French willpower to prevent a real cohesion among the partners. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

In Twilight of the Titans, Paul K. MacDonald and Joseph M. Parent examine great power transitions since 1870 to determine how declining powers choose to behave, identifying the strong incentives to moderate their behavior when the hierarchy of great powers is shifting. Challenging the conventional wisdom that such transitions push declining great powers to extreme measures, this book argues that intimidation, provocation, and preventive war are not the only alternatives to the loss of relative power and prestige. Using numerous case studies, MacDonald and Parent show how declining states tend to behave, the policy options they have, how rising states respond to those in decline, and what conditions reward particular strategic choices.

France and the Nazi Menace examines the French response to the challenge posed by National Socialist Germany in the years 1933-1939. It focuses on the relationship between the intelligence on German intentions and capabilities and the evolution of French national policy from the rise of Hitler in 1933 to the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. Based on extensive archival research, it considers the nature of the intelligence process and the place of intelligence within the French policy making establishment during the inter-war period. The central argument in the book is that the German threat was far from the only challenge facing French national leaders in an era of economic depression and profound ideological discord. Only after the national humiliation at the Munich Conference did the threat from Nazi Germany take precedence over France's internal problems in the making of policy.

France was interwar Poland’s main ally, and the biggest source of the country’s foreign investment. The two roles were closely connected: Paris used its position in Warsaw to win preferential treatment for its firms, while Polish authorities depended on France to finance their modernization policies and military spending. The relationship’s asymmetric character bred conflict, and in the 1930s dissenting voices compared French actions in Poland to imperialism and colonial expansion. This book untangles the complex mix of economics, policy, and politics in Franco-Polish relations. Based on government and company-level sources, it evaluates the part played by French capital in Poland and discovers the mechanisms ruling French FDI and public loans. Exploring case studies of specific sectors and themes, it asks questions about the modernizing potential of FDI, interwar economic imperialism, the workings of asymmetric investment, and the interactions between investments and politics. Understanding the unequal footing of Warsaw and Paris, it goes beyond imperialistic interpretations, and examines the leeway available to the weaker partner of the relationship. The book contributes to economic history of Central and Eastern Europe, and, more generally, to our understanding of the position of peripheral countries in the interwar global system.

Poland, 1918-1945 is a challenging, revisionist analysis and interpretation, supported by documentary evidence, of a crucial and controversial period in Poland's recent history.