"Based largely on documents from Polish archives never before seen in the English-speaking world, Sean Lester, Poland and the Nazi Takeover of Danzig attempts to explain more fully how and why the League of Nations, Poland and Great Britain allowed a golden opportunity to stop Hitler in his tracks slip by."--BOOK JACKET.

It was an incredible destiny for a man who repeatedly announced that he was “without ambition.” Although he had left school aged fourteen, had no experience of foreign affairs and spoke no languages other than English, in 1929 Sean Lester became the Irish representative to the League of Nations in Geneva. He was soon recognized by his peers as an outspoken and able politician of integrity ready to defend the rules governing civilized society. As the League’s High Commissioner in the Free City of Danzig from 1934 to 1936, he tried to resist the Nazi juggernaut. In the early part of the Second World War, Lester took over as Secretary-General of the League of Nations from his disgraced predecessor and for four years fought to keep the institution alive. In his dairies he witnessed many dark chapters of European history in the 1930s and 1940s.

Many major world events have occurred since the last key anniversary of the beginning of the Second World War, and these events have had a dramatic impact on the international stage: 9/11, the Iraq War, climate change and the world economic crisis. This is an opportune moment to bring together a group of major international experts who will offer a series of new interpretations of the key aspects of the origins of the Second World War. Each chapter is based on original archival research and written by scholars who are all leading experts in their fields. This is a truly international collection of articles, with wide breadth and scope, which includes contributions from historians, and also political scientists, gender theorists, and international relations experts. This is an important contribution to scholarly debate on one of the most important events of the 20th century and a subject of major interest to the general reader, historians, students and researchers, policy makers and conflict prevention experts.

Within the vast network of Nazi camps, Stutthof may be the least known beyond Poland. This book is the first scholarly publication in English to break the silence of Stutthof, where 120,000 people were interned and at least 65,000 perished. A Nazi Camp Near Danzig offers an overview of Stutthof's history. It also explores Danzig's significance in promoting the cult of German nationalism which led to Stutthof's establishment and which shaped its subsequent development in 1942 into a Concentration Camp, with the full resources of the Nazi Reich. The book shows how Danzig/Gdansk, generally identified as the city where the Second World War started, became under Albert Forster, Hitler's hand-picked Gauleiter, 'the vanguard of Germandom in the east' and with its disputed history, the poster city for the Third Reich. It reflects on the fact that Danzig was close enough to supply Stutthof with both prisoners – initially local Poles and Jews – as well as local men for its SS workforce. Throughout the study, Ruth Schwertfeger draws on the stories of Danziger and Nobel Prize winner, Günter Grass to consider the darker realities of German nationalism that even Grass's vibrant depictions and wit cannot mask. Schwertfeger demonstrates how German nationalism became more lethal for all prisoners, especially after the summer of 1944 when thousands of Jewish woman died in the Stutthof camp system or perished in the 'death marches' after January 1945. Schwertfeger uses archival and literary sources, as well as memoirs, to allow the voices of the victims to speak. Their testimonies are juxtaposed with the justifications of perpetrators. The book successfully argues that, in the end, Stutthof was no less lethal than other camps of the Third Reich, even if it was, and remains, less well-known.

This book explores the assertions made by Irish nationalists of a parallel between Ireland under British rule and Poland under Russian, Prussian and Austrian rule in the long nineteenth century. Poland loomed large in the Irish nationalist imagination, despite the low level of direct contact between Ireland and Poland up to the twenty-first century. Irish men and women took a keen interest in Poland and many believed that its experience mirrored that of Ireland. This view rested primarily on a historical coincidence—the loss of sovereignty suffered by Poland in the final partition of 1795 and by Ireland in the Act of Union of 1801, following unsuccessful rebellions. It also drew on a common commitment to Catholicism and a shared experience of religious persecution. This study shows how this parallel proved politically significant, allowing Irish nationalists to challenge the legitimacy of British rule in Ireland by arguing that British governments were hypocritical to condemn in Poland what they themselves practised in Ireland.

This book analyses the relationship between Fascist Italy and the League of Nations in the interwar years. By uncovering the traces of those Italians working in the organization, this volume investigates Fascist Italy’s membership of the League, and explores the dynamics between nationalism and internationalism in Geneva. The relationship between Fascist Italy and the League of Nations was contradictory, shifting from active collaboration to open disagreement. Previous literature has not reflected this oscillation in policy, focusing disproportionally on the problems Italy caused for the League, such as the Ethiopian crisis. Yet Fascist Italy remained in the League for more than fifteen years, and was the third largest power within the institution. How did a Fascist dictatorship fit into an organization espousing principles of liberal internationalism? By using archival sources from four countries, Elisabetta Tollardo shows that Fascist Italy was much more concerned with, and involved in, the League than currently believed.

The compelling story of Arthur Greiser, territorial leader of the Warthegau and the man who initiated the Final Solution in Nazi-occupied Poland.

Through a range of case studies from eastern and western Europe, this book breaks new ground in investigating the extent to which European peoples living within Europe were also subjected to the ideologies and practices of colonialism.

This interdisciplinary book brings together eleven original contributions by scholars in the United Kingdom, continental Europe, America and Japan which represent innovative and important research on the relationship between cities and their hinterlands. They discuss the factors which determined the changing nature of port-hinterland relations in particular, and highlight the ways in which port-cities have interacted and intersected with their different hinterlands as a result of both in- and out-migration, cultural exchange and the wider flow of goods, services and information. Historically, maritime commerce was a powerful driving force behind urbanisation and by 1850 seaports accounted for a significant proportion of the world’s great cities. Ports acted as nodal points for the flow of population and the dissemination of goods and services, but their role as growth poles also affected the economic transformation of both their hinterlands and forelands. In fact, most ports, irrespective of their size, had a series of overlapping hinterlands whose shifting importance reflected changes in trading relations (political frameworks), migration patterns, family networks and cultural exchange. Urban historians have been criticised for being concerned primarily with self-contained processes which operate within the boundaries of individual towns and cities and as a result, the key relationships between cities and their hinterlands have often been neglected. The chapters in this work focus primarily on the determinants of port-hinterland linkages and analyse these as distinct, but interrelated, fields of interaction. Marking a significant contribution to the literature in this field, Port-Cities and their Hinterlands provides essential reading for students and scholars of the history of economics.