1939 did not come out of a clear sky.
The documentaries start in Poland. The serious books start in Fiume, Rome, Madrid, Tokyo, and Dublin. Fifteen ebooks of the speeches, programs, and collected works from the years Europe talked itself into another war. $105.99. About seven dollars a volume. On your iPad tonight.
Europe Between the Wars · 15 ebooks · $105.99
No club. No binder. Pay on this page. We email the EPUBs to the address you give at checkout.
If 1933 still looks like a thunderstorm with no forecast, you have the wrong shelf.
American WWII reading is trained to start on 1 September 1939, or on 7 December 1941. That is a landing. It is not a cause.
The men who marched in 1939 had already been listening for twenty years: to a poet in Fiume, a newspaper in Milan, a youth movement in Madrid, a British baronet at Olympia, a Japanese officer’s dog-eared political book, an Irish rising that Britain never finished digesting.
This collection is that earlier room. Not because those voices were right. Because they were loud, and the war listened.
What you actually get
Fifteen complete ebooks. Italy, Spain, Britain, Japan, Ireland, Finland, Canada, the Russian far east. Speeches, programs, collected works. The forecast, not the thunderstorm.
- Mussolini, 1901–1911 — before the balcony, before the later costume. The early writings.
- Ikki Kita — the book Japanese officers actually passed around.
- José Antonio — Spain’s interwar program in his own sentences, plus a life of the founder.
- D’Annunzio in Fiume — 1919 as costume drama and dress rehearsal.
- Mosley’s Britain — the BUF in the round, not a cartoon.
- Pearse — 1916, without which the British interwar story is missing a chapter.
EPUB. iPad, Kindle, laptop. Same day in most cases.
The math
One interwar hardcover from a specialist press is often $30 to $45, if you can find it at all.
Fifteen ebooks here: $105.99 — $7.07 a volume. One checkout. Files to your email. Type size is yours.
This is for you if:
- You already know Overlord and still cannot explain 1922, 1926, or 1936 without waving your hand.
- You want Italy, Spain, Britain, and Japan in the same twenty-year frame, not as separate hobbies.
- You read programs and speeches as evidence, not as a team to join.
- You are done with “the war just happened.”
What’s on the shelf
Fifteen volumes. Each one is here for a reason. Read the list before you pay.
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Italy · before the balcony
Il Duce Massimo, vol. I (1901–1911)
Selected speeches and writings of Benito Mussolini from the decade before most Americans ever heard the name. If you only know the later newsreels, this is the earlier voice.
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Japan · the book officers passed around
The Theory of Japan’s National Polity and Pure Socialism
Ikki Kita. The political book that sat in Japanese officers’ kits. If you have read the Pacific War as a string of island names, this is one of the texts behind the politics.
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Spain · a life of the founder
José Antonio, Fascist
José Luis Jerez Riesco. A life of José Antonio Primo de Rivera. Spain’s interwar story without skipping the man the Falange kept quoting.
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Spain · in his own sentences
José Antonio Primo de Rivera — collected writings
The program in the original voice. If you have only read other people summarizing him, this is the file.
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Italy · street and state
Rise and Fight
Risorgere e Combattere. Italian political writing from the years when the street and the state were still arguing over the same cities.
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1919 · the poet’s city
With D’Annunzio in Fiume
The Fiume enterprise. A poet takes a city. Costume, aircraft, and a dress rehearsal for the decade that followed. If you know 1919 only as Versailles, this is the other 1919.
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Spain · a speech to the young
Speech to the Youth of Spain
Ramiro Ledesma Ramos. National syndicalism in a single address. Short, sharp, and part of the Spanish mix that Loveday’s campaign history (in the other collection) then has to live with.
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Italy · the press of the period
Voce del Popolo
Period writing from the Italian political press. The noise on the page, not a later summary of “what fascism was.”
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Britain · Olympia and after
B.U.F. — Oswald Mosley and British Fascism
Britain’s interwar experiment in the round. If you have only the Pathé clip and a punchline, this is the book that puts Mosley back on a map of the 1930s, not a cartoon.
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Harbin · a voice the war then erased
Testament of a Russian Fascist
Konstantin Rodzaevsky. Written from a world in the Russian far east that the coming war wiped off the board. A document from a lost city, not a footnote.
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Italy · the house philosopher reads Marx
The Philosophy of Marx
Giovanni Gentile. The official philosopher of Fascist Italy, reading the enemy. If you want to know what they thought they were answering, this is the assignment.
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Canada · a northern echo
Serviam
Adrien Arcand. Canadian interwar politics, rarely reprinted. Proof the argument was not only Rome and Madrid.
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The desert · a Futurist on campaign
The Charm of Egypt
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. The Futurist in Egypt. Speed, sand, and the literary wing of the Italian story. A different register from the speeches — still the same decade.
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Finland · sermons before two wars
The Burning Bush
Elias Simojoki. Finnish sermons from a country that would fight the Soviet Union twice. If Winter War is already on your shelf, this is the pulpit before the snow.
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Ireland · 1916, still unfinished
Pádraic Pearse: The Collected Works
Ireland’s rising, in Pearse’s own pages. Without 1916 the British interwar story is missing a chapter. This is that chapter, not a tourist plaque.
Period political writing, sold as historical source material. A listing is not an endorsement of the author’s views.
Send Europe Between the Wars
15 ebooks · $105.99 · EPUB to the email you enter at checkout.
Also in the library: Campaigns & Memoirs and The German Papers, 1919–1945. Same price. Same delivery.