Auden called it the "low dishonest decade"; it was a "no man's land ... betweeen two fires," and in this book 1930s Europe comes to life in all its fear, corruption, violence, and trampled ideals. Vivid narrative portraits of events in France, Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union combine to show Europe on the path to war. These fateful events range from the "Sasha" Stavisky scandal, which fragmented French society, to Austria's bloody civil war, which paved the way for the German Anschluss, as well as the "night of the long knives," the vicious purge of rebellious SA brownshirts by Hitler's SS. David Clay Large also depicts Mussolini's brutal invasion of Ethiopia, the destruction of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, and Stalin's assault on truth through the show trials of his Great Purge. Finally, in Munich, the book's characters and themes come together on the threshold of World War II. - Back cover.