European history between the two world wars contains two traps for the unaware. The first is the instinct to read history backwards. Because we know that the period ended in the most destructive war in history, it is tempting to conclude that this outcome was foreordained in events 10 or 20 years earlier. Such determinism often comes with an assumption that there was something inevitable about the collapse of Germany’s democratic Weimar Republic, whose fall in 1933 and replacement by the Nazi dictatorship were major factors in the drift to war.
研究兩次世界大戰之間的歐洲歷史有兩個不易覺察的陷阱。第一個是從後視鏡裏看歷史的本能。由於我們知道那段時期以史上最具破壞性的戰爭告終,因此誘惑在於得出結論認爲:10年或20年之前的事件已經註定了這一結局。這種決定論往往伴隨著如下假設:實行民主制度的德國威瑪共和國(Weimar Republic)崩潰是不可避免的事情。威瑪共和國在1933年垮臺,被納粹黨獨裁政權取而代之,是一步步滑向戰爭的主要因素。