The Opening of the Second World War

This remarkable book is the product of a conference held in Paris in September 1989 in which, for the very first time, Western, Soviet and Japanese historians joined in a scientific debate on all the most controversial aspects of how the Second World War came into being. Every one of the contributors is a star in his field. Soviet scholars are confronted by Russians who fled into exile. The book reveals the circumstances and the repercussions of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, examines the fate of Poland, and then shows how a number of relatively local struggles in Europe and the Far East coalesce in the course of two years to produce a global conflict.