This book is the first to highlight the importance of the Baltic region in the approach to war in 1939. Amid the welter of publications on the origins of the Second World War none has sought hitherto to focus on the Baltic region, where peace finally and irrevocably broke down. Central strategic and international issues of the interwar years are thus illuminated from a fresh perspective by a distinguished team of specialists that includes a number of native Baltic historians. The themes discussed by the contributors acquired renewed relevance, as the Baltic republics asserted their rejection of incorporation within the Soviet Union following the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939. The Baltic and the outbreak of the Second World War makes an important contribution to the perennial debate on the immediate causes of the conflict, and should interest specialists in a variety of fields within international relations, modern European and diplomatic history.