The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World

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Hathaway, Oona A. & Harold Hongju Koh (2005). Foundations of international law and politics. New York: Foundation Press. The passage of Lend-Lease in March 1941 by no means ended the debate over U.S. foreign policy, since over the course of the year the country became drawn more deeply into world events. In this activity, students will use an interactive timeline to study the major developments of 1941 and write an essay on whether American aid to Great Britain made actual involvement in the war more or less likely. Arthur Goldstein was born in 1887 in Lipny (Lipine) in Silesia. He joined the SPD (German Social Democrats) in 1914, then the USPD (Independent SPD, a split to the left) and finally the Spartacus League (the major component group of the German Communist Party, KPD) and/or the KPD. Together with Herman Gorter he composed the draft programme of the KAPD (Kommunistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands — Communist Workers' Party of Germany) and was part of its leadership. Later, he was active in the council-communist group " Rote Kämpfer" (Red Fighters), which was brought into being in 1931/32 by former members of the so-called " Essen Direction" of the KAPD. After the Nazis' seizure of power, he organised the overseas leadership of the " Roten Kämpfer" from his Paris exile. He was arrested by the SS during the German occupation, and deported to Auschwitz in 1943, where he was murdered. Like The Clash of Civilizations and The End of History, this brilliant book lays out a vision that makes sense of the world today in the context of centuries of history. Hathaway and Shapiro tell their story with literary flair, analytical depth, and historical meticulousness. It will change the way you remember the 20th century and read the news in the 21st.”

The cast is appropriately international. Many of the characters are barely known outside scholarly circles, and they are all sketched in as personalities, beginning with the seventeenth-century Dutch polymath Hugo Grotius, who is said to have been the most insufferable pedant of his day. They include the nineteenth-century Japanese philosopher and government official Nishi Amane; the brilliant academic rivals Hans Kelsen, an Austrian Jew, and Carl Schmitt, a book-burning Nazi; the American lawyer Salmon Levinson, who began the outlawry movement in the nineteen-twenties and then got written out of its history by men with bigger egos; and the Czech émigré Bohuslav Ečer and the Galician émigré Hersch Lauterpacht, who helped formulate the arguments that made possible the prosecution of Nazi leaders at Nuremberg and laid the groundwork for the United Nations. To make matters more complicated, these “reservationists” came in two flavors: mild and strong. The former included more than a few Democrats; the latter were dominated by leading Republicans like Senate Majority Leader Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts or former President William Howard Taft. The organization created to end war, the League of Nations, began its functional existence with an empty chair crisis.

As The Best and The Brightest chronicled the smoke-filled rooms of the Kennedy Administration, and The Rise of The Vulcans detailed the inner workings of George Bush’s war machine, The Internationalists takes readers behind the scenes as Joe Biden and his cabinet embark on some of the most ambitious foreign policy initiatives of any president since Richard M. Nixon. Isolationism, however, is not why the Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles and the Covenant. Moreover, it is a deeply misleading label for the way the U.S. engaged with the world in the interwar period. Recognizing this has consequences for the way we see America’s place in the world after 1945, even today.

For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. A fascinating and important book ... given the state of the world, The Internationalists has come along at the right moment' Margaret MacMillan, Financial Times Genuine originality is unusual in political history. The Internationalists is an original book. Louis Menand, New YorkerThough evidently effective, Roosevelt’s move has had a problematic legacy. We still tend to think in terms of “isolationists” versus “internationalists” today. But, then as now, there are very few real isolationists out there.