Naval Policy Between the Wars. Volume II: The Period of Reluctant Rearmament, 1930-1939

Naval Policy Between the Wars #2

by Stephen Wentworth Roskill

'Captian Roskill's second volume, dealing as it will with the naval implications of Hitler's rise to power and the growing militancy of Japan will be awaited with great eagerness after its impressive forerunner.' So wrote the Times Literary Supplement, reviewing the first volume of the work here brought to its conclusion.

There can be little doubt that expectation has been fulfilled. From the London Naval Conference of 1929-30, through the period of cuts in defence expenditure imposed by the slump, through the last attempts to achieve disarmament by international agreement to the sinister rise of aggressive power in Japan, Germany and Italy, Captain Roskill traces the story of what the politicians and Chiefs of Staff did and what they tried to do.

Interspersed with the main history of this crucial period are chapters of intense interest on the Mutiny at Invergordon (perhaps the most balanced and penetrating account yet published) and on the Spanish Civil War. The crisis in the Middle East brought about by the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, the questions involved for Britain as a Mediterranean power, the over-extension of resources entailed by our commitments in the Far East are examined, criticised and evaluate carefully and sympathetically.

Captain Roskill does not seek to sit in judgment on the politicians and defence chiefs of that difficult and dangerous time. Indeed the Guilty Man thesis so recklessly formulated by propagandists understandably anxious to cover their own tracks, is here quietly but firmly demolished. The book's greatest strength is that the author is not only easily the foremost scholar in this field but also a professional naval officer who served with many of the men he is writing about and knew some of them extremely well. Few readers of the second volume will disagree with Michael Howard's verdict on the first: 'Distinguished by the impeccable scholarship, the elegant style and the firm, courageous judgments with which Captain Roskill has made us familiar."

560 pages, Hardcover

First published June 28, 1976

About the author

Captain Stephen Wentworth Roskill, CBE, DSC, FBA, DLitt, was a career officer in the Royal Navy, serving during the Second World War and, after his enforced medical retirement, served as the official historian of the Royal Navy from 1949 to 1960. He is now chiefly remembered as a prodigious author of books on British maritime history.