Philip B. Minehan - Anti-Leftist Politics in Modern World History

Anti-Leftist Politics in Modern World History

Anti-Leftist Politics in
Modern World History

Avoiding Socialism at All Costs

Philip B. Minehan

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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First published in Great Britain 2022

Copyright Philip B. Minehan, 2022

Philip B. Minehan has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.

For legal purposes the constitute an extension of this copyright page.

Cover design: Terry Woodley

Cover image Ruins (Detail) by Fernando Velazquez. Oil on canvas, 100 x 160cm, 2020

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Minehan, Philip B., author.

Title: Anti-leftist politics in modern world history : avoiding socialism

at all costs / Philip B. Minehan.

Description: London ; New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021025431 (print) | LCCN 2021025432 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781350170643 (hardback) | ISBN 9781350170650 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781350170667 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: History, Modern20th century. | History, Modern19th

century. | Right and left (Political science)History. |

SocialismHistory. | LiberalismHistory. | ImperialismHistory. |

CommunismHistory. | FascismHistory. | NeoliberalismHistory.

Classification: LCC D445 .M56 201 (print) |
LCC D445 (ebook) | DDC 909.82dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021025431

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021025432

ISBN: HB: 978-1-3501-7064-3

ePDF: 978-1-3501-7065-0

eBook: 978-1-3501-7066-7

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For ngeles and Miranda

Contents

A troubling insight emerged for me out of a close comparative study of the civil wars in Southern Europe of the 193040s, namely, that Adolf Hitler and Nazism were and are a distraction from the even more fundamental problem of politics against the left that actually combined in a complex of ways to finally make the Second World War unavoidable. This ran counter to the view across much of the political spectrum of historians that the Second World War was Hitlers War, that Hitler led the way to war in the mid-to-late 1930s, while the leading figures of the Soviet Union and the liberal capitalist states did not want it, until it was too late to avoid it. That view is only partly true. Though Hitler and Nazi Germany led the way, the march to war could have been stopped had it not been for Britains policy of appeasement. Though this is not necessarily anything new, it becomes another proposition altogether when appeasement is seen in the context of the fundamental anti-Communism and anti-leftist tendencies that Hitler and Nazi Germany sharednot completely, but to a crucial extentwith Britain, as well as with many of their French and US counterparts at the time.