Crucible: Twelve Months that Changed the World Forever

by Jonathan Fenby

Of all the key years after the end of the Second World War that shaped the world we know today, 1948 is absolutely the one to analyse. Two-and-a-half years after the end of the second conflict to engulf the civilised world in twenty years, and the defeat of the Axis forces of Germany, Italy and Japan, this pivotal time would plunge the world into a state of Cold War between the two superpowers that had filled the vacuum of Adolf Hitler: the brooding menace of Joseph Stalin's Soviet Russia and the Western powers now under new leadership of Harry Truman of America, De Gaulle of France and Britain's Clement Atlee.

The year would also mark the pivotal moment of the Middle East with the foundation (through warfare) of the State of Israel, the legacy for which still plagues the region today. The British Empire would begin it's quick demise beginning with the separation of the Sub Continent and the birth of the Indian and Pakistan republics, which would ultimately result in the repatriation of millions of peoples, wholesale slaughter of ethnic minorities, and the demise of Britain as a global superpower as South Africa, and other colonies around the globe vied for freedom. Finally, 1948 would mark the end of a long and vicious civil war in China as the communists finally prevailed. The world order would never be the same again.

This will be a dynamic page-turning narrative, enabling the reader to leap across the globe from one epic tale to the next - encountering historical figures such as Winston Churchill, Harry S. Truman, Ghandi, Mao Tse Tung, and, David Ben Gurian and providing a clear road map of how the world today was forged in this pivotal year.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, World History, Politics

544 pages, Hardcover

First published June 28, 2018

About the author

Jonathan Fenby, CBE, has been the editor of The Observer and the South China Morning Post. He is currently China Director at the research service Trusted Sources.

Reviews

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinating global look at the pivotal 13 months from 1947 - 1948 that set the stage for the subsequent cold war between the U.S. and U.S.S.R.. Fenby shows how the U.S., which was on the verge of withdrawing from Europe, reversed course and became committed to European recovery through the Marshall Plan, support of anticommunist forces in Greece, its commitment to defending western Europe, the merging of the western zones in Germany, and the birth of the biparisan consensus in U.S. foreign policy through Harry Truman, George Marshall and Arthur Vandenberg. Soviet reaction to U.S. action is also explored, including the clampdown in Czechoslovakia and the split between Tito and Stalin.

Fenby doesn't just look at Europe, but examines how the seeds were sown for subsequent conflicts during the 20th and 21st centuries between India and Pakistan, China, Korea, the revival of Japan, the beginning of decolonization movements in Madacascar, Ghana, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia, the birth of apartheid rule in South Africa, and the conflict surrounding the declaration of Israeli statehood including Truman's reversal of state department policy of not recognizing Israel over the objections of Marshall thanks to lobbying by Chaim Weizmann through his old friend, Eddie Jacobson. The lead up to the Arab invasion and internal politics in Israel are also explored.

With the world once again threatening to enter another crucible with the post-war order unraveling due to the rise of illiberal populist movements, brexit, the U.S. calling into question its defense commitments, China's rise and creation of its own international order such as the Belt and Road initiative to rivial the U.S. led and dominated IMF and World Bank, the lessons gleamed from this period are still poignant today.

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read quite a few books centred around the second world war, both military and more focused on the immediate political aftermath.

I haven't read one however, that deals with the aftermath in as much detail or focusing on June 1947 to the end of June 1948 and it becomes evident from this superbly written and researched book, that it was both a turbulent and fundamentally important year that shaped the world to come. indeed, Fenby does very well in the afterword, of linking in how the modern landscape now looks and what the influence of 1947/48 was and how it has shaped things.

It can be a slog, Ben MacIntyre this is not but I that is the nature of the book, more than anything else. I would happily read something else by Fenby based on this

[Alex Helling · Rating 3 out of 5]

The start of June 1947 to the end of June the next year, is this the most important period for the making of the modern world? Possibly. The idea behind Jonathan Fenby’s Crucible is that these months are key and the story of this long year should be told. So what makes this period so crucial; Indian partition and the start of independence from colonialism, the birth of Israel and so the beginning of the tragic history of wars that continue to this day over Palestine, and particularly the frost forming hard over what becomes the cold war. Epoch making events and certainly worth a good book.

I learnt a lot from this book. By its nature going around the world to most of the significant events of the thirteen months it brings out events that are perhaps less well known as well as the big ones. Thus I found the handling of Czechoslovakia’s takeover by its communist party, one of the relatively detailed elements of the book, new and riveting. Other bits I had little previous exposure to were often events that are only covered for a couple of pages but were interesting nonetheless; the French in Madagascar; Gold Coast heading towards independence; Italian elections. Short, but interesting nonetheless.

This is history on a grand scale. Perhaps too grand. The scope is geographically the whole world, though a bit more limited in time as it is focused (though obviously not exclusively) on the period from the start of June 1947 to end of June the next year. The main thread is the development of the Cold War, but there are also sub-threads around the post war economy and pressure for decolonisation. Below each of these main threads are the events in numerous countries. The most notable are; the descent of the Iron Curtain in Western and Central Europe, particularly France, Czechoslovakia, and Germany; the Middle East, mostly focused on the Israel/Palestine question; Independence in South Asia; East Asia with civil war in China, division in Korea, and democratisation in Japan; and in the United States itself as a prime driver of the Cold war theme. That last leaves the lack of attention to the USSR a bit of a gap, though the USSR comes up a lot in its meddling around the world there is nothing internally on the USSR itself. Another gap would be Latin America, and to a lesser extent Africa. But this is still a lot to stuff into the book.

In order to whizz around the world the narrative is perhaps a bit bare bones, often not taking the time to explain. To take one example paragraph “Ten thousand students march on the [Prague] castle in support of democracy that evening, eight abreast, waving the Czechoslovak flag and singing the national anthem with its refrain of ‘Where is my home?’ They are met by platoons of armed men who open fire.” (p337) Very little context is given around this. Who set the students marching - could be the democratic elements of the government, a party, or no one. Who are the platoons of armed men - the security services are mentioned in a different context in the previous paragraph so could be police or army, or it was previously noted the communists were distributing weapons so could be paramilitary. When thinking about it we can't even be 100% sure which side the students are marching for as ‘democracy’ has been mentioned several times as what the communists claim they are working for.

And it can be without analytical depth as another contradiction can illustrate. It is claimed that for a state of Israel both that “the legal case of the Jews… was far stronger than that of the Arabs”(p.162) and that “Zionist claims had no legal or moral basis.” (p.192) There is nothing wrong with having both as these are subjective opinions from the time. However Fenby gives no information about the legalities, or the basis of the claims on either side on which the reader can judge. This is probably on the basis that a look at the claims for Israel, and then where Indian partition should be, and each other instance we are looking around would take too much space. Fair enough. But it does end up making the book a very helicopter narrative - slightly odd that this feels the case with a book of 500 pages!

Given the above paragraph it is perhaps a bit hypocritical for me to turn around and suggest the choice of thirteen months may be too narrow. But I think there are some oddities to it that flow into the book. The aim of the book is to illustrate the “thirteen months that forged our world” and Fenby points to these thirteen months as being a unique series of events in a short space of time that still have immense consequences in how we live. But if this is the case then there are some odd calls such as if you want to illustrate the start of the cold war then why not start a bit earlier with the Truman Doctrine (March ‘47)? Setting June ‘48 as the cut off means there are several events in mid-motion - as if the beginning were all that matters; the Arab-Israeli war and Chinese Civil War could both have easily gone the other way after this point. On a totally different kind of world defining event extending to the end of ‘48 would have captured the Genocide convention and UN Declaration of Human Rights. And within Fenby’s period the creation of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, still a cornerstone of the world trade system, is almost completely ignored (it is mentioned but no time spent on it).

I’m not usually bothered by the odd small mistake but there are some howlers in here. For example Fenby’s claim that the nationalist Chinese “sit it [the war] out from 1938 in their capital Chongqing behind the Yangtze Gorges until the United States won the struggle in Asia.” (p.111) is downright insulting. Considering that Wikipedia lists 22 major battles/campaigns between the Nationalists and Japan with three quarters after 1938, and China tied down more Japanese troops than the US island hopping campaign, Fenby’s throwaway sentence vastly underplays their role. And some are just too obvious: India is either 1.5mil sq miles and 330mil population (p.172) or 1.27mil sq miles and 390mil population (p.177). Not too concerned by which of those figures are correct, don't sweat the small stuff, a figure for population and size is going to be illustrative anyway, but having two very different numbers in the space of five pages makes it very obvious one of them must be wrong!

I therefore have somewhat mixed feelings about Crucible. It is a good overview of what there can be no doubt of is a very important period of history for the world but it is at times too shallow. This makes it difficult to see who it is best for; too detailed and long for an introduction to the period but likely to frustrate someone wanting to study one of the events!

[Gabriel Stein · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating read of an interesting period

The immediate post-war years are frequently glossed over by historians eager to reach the 1950s. This is a mistake. Much of our world is still shaped by the events of the late 1940s. Fenby, an always readable and enjoyable writer, does an excellent job of moving month by month through the year from mid-1947 to mid-1948, concentrating on different hotspots in each chapter. An fascinating read and strongly recommended.

[Gordon Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Flawed but immensely valuable. There are at least half a dozen histories jammed into one, which makes it hard going at times. But that's the whole point, because that's how you realised the sheer scope and scale of what happened in those tumultuous couple of years and how fundamentally they formed our world.

[Zachary Barker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have finished reading “Crucible: Thirteen Months That Forget Our World” by Jonathan Fenby.

This is a historical account of 13 months between 1947 and 1948 which were crucially transformational for the world then and in many ways define it today.

Two years after the end of the Second World War Europe was fragile and in many places on the verge of chaos. The cost of fighting came back to haunt Europe as bad harvests, worse infrastructure and amid high expectations for a new world beyond the world war. In the Far East a Civil War raged in China and independence fighters looked to bury Western colonialism elsewhere in the region.

For a little time the two remaining superpowers of the world took some time to assess each other. US President Harry S Truman took a good look at Europe and agreed with his famous Secretary of State George Marshall, Europe needed urgent help or it faced ruin and exploitation by the rising Communists. Out of this came the Marshall Plan, the wider Truman Doctrine and a renewed US effort to hold the line where the British Empire’s lines started to fall away.

In the meantime, long realised dreams of independence dawned on many nations long under the yoke of colonialism. In one of history’s great sliding doors, India faced partition and independence as the Palestinian Mandate faced the prospect of the same. In both cases the miscalculations of independence leaders and the former colonial authorities, as well as complacency on both of their parts, led to killings on a sobering scale. In both cases the killings have not stopped.

The book structure over months recounts the shameless seizure of power by the Communists in Eastern Europe one after the other. This intensifies as the US and Western commitment to standing firm in Germany and elsewhere intensifies with actions from one sides provoking a reaction on the other.

Yet amidst all this, the important players were very much human. Many of them were strikingly vulnerable in terms of health, given the responsibilities they held. Jinnah, the father of Pakistan withered away under the hammer blows of Tuberculosis and Cancer. British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin could barely manage a flight of stairs given multiple ailments. Others were underestimated. Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov, was taken aback after first the meeting the unassuming former haberdasher US President Harry S Truman. He told him outright that he had never been talked to like had by Truman. Truman replied that he wouldn’t have to again IF the Soviet Union stood by it’s agreements.

This is probably one of the best books I have read this year so far. It presents this historical period and the characters in it with a suitable level of drama, but in such a way that is both believable and compelling. The brilliances, the absurdities and their sometimes deadly miscalculations are very much connected with their vividly described characters. There is much scene setting at the start of the book with the political, social and military context of the time, as well as a long discussion into the personalities and challenges of some of the main figures in the book. To be honest, I am still not sure if the book could have benefitted from some of this background being disseminated further into the book. Given the book’s size sometimes I struggled to recall relevant bits of information which may have provided more context in later chapters. As it was, it didn’t take away from my enjoyment of this book.

The book ends on a thoughtful and powerful note. Many of the structures and international norms which came from this period are now under threat from the spread (I would say “malignant spread”) of Populism over the world, most notably in the US. The author poses the reader with the questions about whether this means a new architecture will be made, or will it be destroyed or just atrophy through ignorance? Time will tell.

[Kristinn Valdimarsson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bókin greinir frá atburðum sem eru lítið þekktir og er því fróðleg. Hún er hins vegar allt of sundurlaus. Stundum fær maður á tilfinninguna að innihaldið sé bara netsíður (wikiepdia) sem hefur verið skellt saman. Sakna þess líka að engin greinin á atburðum á sér stað.