Margaret MacMillan is the third Engelsberg Chair at LSE IDEAS. Below, you can access recordings from her past lectures on the topic 'Alliances and War'.
The Grand Alliance and Victory in the Second World War
Thursday 26 May 2022
The Grand Alliance between the Big Three – the British Empire, the Soviet Union and the United States – emerged through total war, and each power had its own specific aims and concerns. This final lecture examines the tensions in forging Allied strategy and the planning of the post-war world, asking whether the Grand Alliance could have survived the end of the war or whether the Cold War was indeed inevitable.
Listen to the audio recording here.
Alliances and the Outbreak of the Second World War
Monday 21 March 2022
The growth of the Axis and the failures of the democracies to counter it are often blamed for the outbreak of war in 1939. Is this fair? And could the Western democracies have done more to make common cause with the Soviet Union against the Axis? This lecture focusses on the two years from 1939-1941 and key turning points such as the Nazi-Soviet pact, the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact, the German invasion of the Soviet Union and the Japanese attack on the United States and other powers.
Watch the video recording here.
Victory and the Making of Peace: the Allies in the First World War
Monday 24 January 2022
This is the second Engelsberg Chair lecture of 2021/22 on alliances and war, delivered by historian Margaret MacMillan. The year 1917 marked a significant change with the revolutions in Russia and its withdrawal from the war and the entry of the United States. The lecture will look at the shifting balance of power and the changes in the alliances of the opposing sides and it will assess the part played by each in the ending of the war and the Allied victory. Finally it will examine the role of alliance relationships in the making of the peace.
There is a video recording and an audio recording of the lecture available.
Click here to download the PDF of Margaret's slides from the lecture.
Alliances and War: from the Delian League to the First World War
Monday 29 November 2021
This is the first Engelsberg Chair lecture of 2021/22 on alliances and war, delivered by historian Margaret MacMillan. Do alliances prevent war or lead to it? Can alliances outlast a war or are they doomed to break apart? Such questions are as old as recorded history and continue to engage international historians and political scientists. This lecture will examine the types and fates of alliances using examples from the past with particular attention to the alliance ‘system’ before 1914 and its part in the outbreak of the First World War. It will then look at the strategies, war aims, and tensions among the Allies and the Central Powers up to the crucial year of 1917.
Click here to download the PDF of Margaret's slides from the lecture.
About Margaret MacMillan
Margaret MacMillan is Emeritus Professor of International History at the University of Oxford and former Warden of St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. She specializes in the history of the British Empire and the international history of the 19th and 20th centuries. Her book Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War won the Samuel Johnson Prize. In 2021, Margaret won the Pritzker Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing. Her most recent book is War: How Conflict Shaped Us, looking at the ways in which war has influenced human society and how, in turn, changes in political organization, technology, or ideologies have affected how and why we fight.