Synopses & Reviews
This is a comparative history of the Spanish, Yugoslav, and Greek Civil Wars of 1936-1949 from the standpoints of politics, socioeconomic structures, national questions, international conjunctures, and foreign interventions. Minehan builds a historical typology of the overriding problem in each country: class conflict in Spain, a national problem in Yugoslavia, and a problem of political incorporation in Greece. Internationally, the book explores the significance of how each war occurred in one of three successive phases of the power struggle between fascism, liberal capitalism, and Soviet communism. From that shifting nexus of relations between domestic and international conditions, Minehan derives a description and explanation of the conflicts' similarities and differences.
Review
“Of real use to specialists and graduate students. Recommended.”—CHOICE
“This work by Philip B. Minehan is one of the most ambitious reconstructions extant of European history between the 1930s and the 1940s. Minehans book certainly provides a very stimulating, comprehensive interpretation of the connection between events and the developments in the international context of twentieth-century European history.”—The American Historical Review “Philip Minehan's masterful and lucid comparative analysis is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the bloody mid-20th century civil wars in Spain, Yugoslavia and Greece, which influenced the Mediterranean region until the end of the century. This first book by Minehan is a highly recommended tour de force."--Ivan Berend, Distinguished Professor, History Department, University of California at Los Angeles “Minehan accomplishes an extraordinary hat trick. He provides a sophisticated social and political comparative study of the Spanish, Greek, and Yugoslav civil wars that sheds new light on each of them. He sets them firmly within the narrative of the three-way global battle between capitalism, fascism, and communism as it continued to change shape through depression, world war, and postwar. He shows why the closely interrelated domestic and international aspects of these conflicts are inexplicable apart from the over-arching struggle among classes, agrarian, industrial, and financial. Civil War and World War in Europe is an indispensable contribution to understanding the emergence of the post-war world.”--Robert Brenner, author of The Boom and the Bubble and Economics of Global Turbulence "Recommended." —CHOICE
Synopsis
This is a comparative history of the Spanish, Yugoslav, and Greek Civil Wars of 1936-1949 from the standpoints of politics, socioeconomic structures, national questions, international conjunctures, and foreign interventions.
About the Author
Philip B. Minehan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.
Table of Contents
Introduction and Historical Background *
Part One: Pre-War Societies and States * Social and Economic Contours of the Pre-War Years * Politics, Parties, National Questions and Militaries *
Part Two, States and Societies at War:Spain, Yugoslavia, Greece and the International Power Struggles of
1936-1949 * Becoming Domestic and International Battlegrounds * The Rise of the Communist Parties * Soviet and British Positions and Policies, 1936-1944 * The Decisive Phases * Roads to Victory and Defeat * Conclusion * Epilogue