  We study the phase diagram of SU(2) Yang-Mills theory with one adjoint Weyl
fermion on R^3xS^1 as a function of the fermion mass m and the compactification
scale L. This theory reduces to thermal pure gauge theory as m->infinity and to
circle-compactified (non-thermal) supersymmetric gluodynamics in the limit
m->0. In the m-L plane, there is a line of center symmetry changing phase
transitions. In the limit m->infinity, this transition takes place at
L_c=1/T_c, where T_c is the critical temperature of the deconfinement
transition in pure Yang-Mills theory. We show that near m=0, the critical
compactification scale L_c can be computed using semi-classical methods and
that the transition is of second order. This suggests that the deconfining
phase transition in pure Yang-Mills theory is continuously connected to a
transition that can be studied at weak coupling. The center symmetry changing
phase transition arises from the competition of perturbative contributions and
monopole-instantons that destabilize the center, and topological molecules
(neutral bions) that stabilize the center. The contribution of molecules can be
computed using supersymmetry in the limit m=0, and via the
Bogomolnyi--Zinn-Justin (BZJ) prescription in the non-supersymmetric gauge
theory. Finally, we also give a detailed discussion of an issue that has not
received proper attention in the context of N=1 theories---the non-cancellation
of nonzero-mode determinants around supersymmetric BPS and KK
monopole-instanton backgrounds on R^3xS^1. We explain why the non-cancellation
is required for consistency with holomorphy and supersymmetry and perform an
explicit calculation of the one-loop determinant ratio.
