Description
Victor Gollancz Limited, Published 1942. Hardcover, 168 pp.; 19 cm; second impression (February 1942, the month of first publication); one facsimile plate.
Rare, out-of-print & unusual books · Since 1997
111
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Condition & notes
In Very Good condition with an Acceptable+ dust jacket. Pale blue cloth boards, dark blue lettering on spine, light bumping to edges and corners, mild edge and shelf wear. Binding tight. Pages toned throughout, foxing to endpapers, otherwise unmarked. Yellow dust jacket with magenta and black lettering, priced 2/6 net on spine panel; spine panel considerably more toned than covers, 3/4-inch chip with loss at foot of spine along the front joint, 2-inch tear running up that joint, several smaller nicks, chips and tears to edges, mild toning and soiling overall. Now in an archival quality (removable) Brodart cover. Gollancz's answer to Sir Robert Vansittart, whose 1940 BBC broadcasts and pamphlet Black Record sold nearly half a million copies arguing that the enemy was not Hitler but a militarist German national character running unbroken from Tacitus to the Third Reich. Writing as a Jewish publisher in February 1942, Gollancz answers that collective hereditary guilt is the enemy's own reasoning, and that it hands Goebbels a gift by telling anti-Nazi Germans they have nothing to gain from Hitler's defeat. Against a racial explanation of the war he sets an economic one, reproducing in evidence a Vickers-Armstrongs advertisement for a 105mm field howitzer placed in the German military journal Militaer-Wochenblatt in 1932. Part II reads the Atlantic Charter clause by clause as the basis of a just peace. Contents: Part I, Vansittart: Vansittart; Imperialism; Imperialism and War; The German Problem I; The German Problem II; The Possibility of a German Revolution and the German Character (Is a German Revolution Possible?; The German Character); Hatred and Revenge; Guilt and Punishment I: War Guilt; Guilt and Punishment II: Atrocity Guilt; What can be done; "What can I do about it now?" Part II, The Atlantic Charter: The Economic Clauses; The Social Clauses; The Political Clauses; The Disarmament Clause; The Private Manufacture of Armaments, a Model of Capitalism; Very short book list.