Cry Havoc: How the Arms Race Drove the World to War 1931-1941

Cry Havoc: How the Arms Race Drove the World to War 1931-1941. By Joseph Maiolo. New York: Basic Books, 2010. Maps. Photographs. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. 458. $35.00.

This book is an admirable integration of military, politicai, diplomatic, and economic history. It tells the story of the arms race that preceded the Second World War; however, despite the intimation in the subtitle, it deftly avoids blaming the race for causing the war. This approach is refreshing as too many arms race theories take a deterministic slant. Maiolo confronts the conventional wisdom that Western democracies disarmed too rapidly (and thus irresponsibly) after the First World War and then made that error worse by not arming fast enough in the 1930s to deter the expansionist policies of Germany, Italy, and Japan. Instead, Cry Havoc makes the case that Hider opted for war sooner rather than later largely because he was losing the arms race, and knew it. In the cases of Japan and Italy as well, it becomes clear that the...