The military coup of July 1936 against the Republican government of Spain, which rapidly developed into civil war, required an urgent response from the authorities of the United Kingdom. This was as much on account of its effects on British interests in Spain as due to its repercussions on the unstable situation in Europe. During the nearly three years of war, the Conservative-dominated Cabinet adhered to the Non-Intervention pact signed by all European governments in August 1936, which prescribed an arms embargo towards the combatants without a parallel recognition of their rights as belligerents. This peculiar neutrality, which combined respect for the legal status of the recognized government with de facto equal status for the rebels, was defended by British officialdom on the grounds of the over-riding need to restrict the war and avoid its escalation into a general European conflict. The argument served to deflect accusations of hidden antagonism towards the Republic and to justify the continuation of this policy of neutrality despite the support of Italy and Germany for the insurgent forces, so tolerating in practice the sabotage of the policy of non-intervention by the fascist powers. In the face of these official explanations, which have been accepted at face value by many historians, this article will attempt to show that British non-intervention had its origins in antirevolutionary pre-occupations rather than in strictly diplomatic considerations. Furthermore, it will be argued that during the first six months of the war it adhered consistently to a political strategy based on the expectation that the war would be short lived.

The Hitler/Franco encounter at Hendaye in October 1940 was a central myth of Francoist propaganda. Allegedly, faced with threats and blandishments to force Spain into war on the Axis side, Franco coolly stood his ground and thereby secured Spanish neutrality. However, there is little evidence that Hitler did threaten Franco. His purpose in travelling to Hendaye, and to Montoire where he met Laval and Pétain, was to compare the relative cost of closer relationships with Spain and Vichy France. Far from cleverly holding off Hitler, Franco was disappointed that the meeting foundered. Germany's need to maintain good relations with Vichy ensured that Hitler could not meet Franco's price for belligerence, the dismemberment of the French North African empire.

In the history of interwar international monetary and financial affairs one could hardly find any other single figure than Montagu Norman whose ideas and ambitions proved so influential in the process of Europe's monetary stabilisation.

The First World War had engendered in 1917 the first communist state and, following this, in 1919, an international communist movement. With the exception of the People's Republic of Mongolia no new communist states emerged between the wars. The Second World War provided European communism with a second chance to establish itself as a significant political force. In its aftermath the Soviet model was extended to much of the eastern part of Europe while, in the West, communism reached, in 1945–6, the zenith of its influence and power. When the dust had settled, Europe, and with it socialism, had become effectively divided. In Eastern, and in parts of Central Europe a form of socialist society was created, only to be bitterly denounced by the (social-democratic) majority of the Western labour movement. It lasted until 1989–90, when, as each of these socialist states collapsed under the weight of internal dissent following the revocation of Soviet control, it became apparent that no novel socialist phoenix would arise from the ashes of over forty years of authoritarian left-wing rule – at least for the foreseeable future.

Central bankers failed in their efforts to reconstruct the international gold standard on a durable basis after World War I. The gold-exchange standard did not unite them in a managed international system in the 1920s, and it perished with little regret in 1931. Stephen V. O. Clarke's monograph on central bank co-operation sees ‘considerable merit’ in the stabilisation efforts from 1924 to 1928, followed by failure to maintain the system from 1928 to 1931.1 Critics have pointed out with justice that co-operation was irregular before 1928, and that central banks continued to co-operate after 1931.2 Clarke recognizes that no conceivable improvements in central bank co-operation could have coped with the combination of political and economic convulsions in 1931; national goals necessarily took priority in central bank policies, and international objectives were determined by national experience and interest.3

This article reviews interpretations of the history of British society during the Second World War. Traditionally the Second World War has been viewed as a period of outstanding national unity and social solidarity, and the social arrangements of wartime have been seen as a unique catalyst of administrative ‘collectivism’ and the growth of the ‘welfare state’. More recent historiography has presented a more diffuse picture, emphasising the elements of continuing diversity and conflict in British society during the war period, and the importance of more long-term social trends that were shared by all western European countries.

The Institute for Human Sciences (Institut fur die Wissenschaften vom Menschen) was founded in Vienna in 1982 by a group of scholars from Eastern Europe and the West. The purpose of the Institute was to overcome the cultural and intellectual division of Europe by promoting conferences, seminars and research programmes. The latest report of the Institute stresses that the disappearance of the Iron Curtain has made the work of the Institute all the more important. As the authors of the report explain, ‘…the civil society which is reemerging in Eastern Europe will hardly be viable without living connections to the West and, equally, the Western world will be much poorer without the historical experiences of the East. The Institut fur die Wissenschaften vom Menschen views itself as a place where the experiences and perspectives of Eastern Europeans can be (re-) introduced into the Western discussion as a means of rousing, changing and broadening Western culture. Europe should be seen as a challenge: as a manifold, but also contradictory, intellectual and cultural unity.’

With his sharp denunciation of the ‘old fetishes of so-called international bankers’ for fixed exchange rates on the gold-exchange standard, President Franklin D. Roosevelt allegedly consigned the World Economic and Monetary Conference to failure.1 The conference had been convened in June 1933 to tackle the crippling levels of ‘beggar-thy-neighbour’ economic policies which were strangling the international economy during the Great Depression; its brief was so appealing and its concerns so broad, that sixty-five nations came to London that summer. But from the outset of conference preparations, which began in the autumn of 1932, the issue of central banking co-operation was to highlight many of the difficulties which plagued not only co-operative central bank efforts to revive the international economy but also dilemmas which faced central banks in their relations with their domestic governments.

Though the GDR's Ministry for State Security (Stasi) had enormous powers in 1989, it failed adequately to predict or to suppress the Revolution. It encouraged the Communist Party's opposition to reform by providing a distorted picture of society. The Stasi was restricted in its reporting by the ideological blinkers which it shared with the Party. Even during the Revolution, the Stasi believed that popular discontent could be remedied by a vigorous presentation of Party policies. In order to understand fully the events of 1989, it is necessary to view them also through the eyes of the Stasi.

This is the transcript of an oral history seminar in which those involved in the early years of the market during the late 1960s described and analysed their experiences. The session began with a short historical overview.

Over the past decade there has been a great flowering of writings concerned with financial and monetary history, and the present four volumes are each excellent examples of the particular sub-species that now flourish in this bed of historical specialism. That edited by Eichengreen and Lindert is a conference volume, that of Wheelock is a revised doctoral thesis and Williamson's is in the classic mould of the historical monograph, whereas Fforde's is a commissioned history.