1st Edition
Hitler’s Allies The Ramifications of Nazi Alliance Politics in World War II
This book examines the significance of alliances in the international system, focusing on the dynamics between great and regional powers, and on the alliances Nazi Germany made during World War II, and their implications for Germany.
It examines a variety of case studies and looks at how each of the respective states contributed to or weakened Nazi Germany’s warfighting capabilities. The cases cover the principal Axis members Italy and Japan, secondary Axis allies Hungary and Romania, as well as neutral states that had economic and military significance for Germany, namely Bulgaria, Iran, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, and Vichy France. Additional case studies include topics such as the German attempts to cultivate Arab nationalism, focusing on German involvement in the coup in Iraq against the pro-British government, and the wartime state of Croatia, whose creation was made possible by Germany, with the rivalry between Germany and Italy for control being a major focus. The book also includes a case study exploring the unique position of Finland among German allies as a democracy and how the country was essentially fighting a very different war from Nazi Germany.
This will be of interest to students and academics with an interest in power dynamics in World War II, economic, political, strategic, and alliance theory, and scholarly debate on Nazism and Europe.
Chapter 1: The significance of great/small power alliances
Chapter 2: Italy and Germany
Chapter 3: Germany and Japan during World War II: allies at a distance
Chapter 4: Hungary
Chapter 5: Romania
Chapter 6: Finland: the co-belligerent of Nazi Germany
Chapter 7: Vichy France: the occupied ally
Chapter 8: Spain: the friendly neutral
Chapter 9: Bulgaria: an ally at a distance
Chapter 10: Croatia: the vassal state
Chapter 11: Switzerland and Sweden: the armed neutrals
Chapter 12: The Islamic world and Nazi Germany
Chapter 13: Conclusion: the pitfalls of great and small power alliances
Biography
John P. Miglietta has a PhD in Political Science from New York University. He is a Professor of Political Science at Tennessee State University in Nashville, TN. His research and teaching interests are international relations, American foreign policy, Middle East politics, and Central Asian politics. He is the author of American Alliance Policy in the Middle East, 1945–1992 (2002) and editor of Introduction to Political Science: An Anthology (2021).
"Given the vast number of books already written about World War II, do we really need another? In this case, yes. Many works already deal with Nazi Germany’s policy toward its allies, yet Hitler’s Allies is one of the few that considers the full range of such states, from the major Axis powers to smaller allies, and even nominally neutral countries (both occupied and unoccupied) that were helpful to the German war effort" - Randall Newnham, Penn State University, German Politics and Society
