ABSTRACT
When did the Versailles system break down? A. J. P. Taylor never quite makes up his mind in The Origins of the Second World War. He devotes almost one-third of his book to charting the successive stages in the disintegration of the peace settlement over the course of fifteen years. But he attaches at most secondary importance to these epiphenomena. He approaches the subject on the assumption that the Versailles treaty “lacked moral validity from the start.” 1
