Michael Jabara Carley is author of 1939: The Alliance That Never Was and the Coming of World War II.
By the mid-1930s, the aggressive intentions of Nazi Germany were quite clear. What was uncertain was the design of a western European response to Hitler's territorial ambitions. Conditioned by a strong class bias and by a profound distaste for Bolshevism, the policy-makers of Britain and France rejected the idea of a defense pact with Soviet Russia. In author Michael Carley's view, this freed the Nazis from immediate fear of a second front. Thus "the alliance that never was" placed the West in extreme jeopardy as World War II began.