Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II Author: Visit Amazon's Keith Lowe Page | Language: English | ISBN:
125003356X | Format: PDF
Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II Description
Review
"A superb and immensely important book."—The Washington Post
“A breathtaking, numbing account of the physical and moral desolation that plagued Europe in the late 1940s. Authoritative but never dry, stripping away soothing myths of national unity and victimhood, this is a painful but necessary historical task superbly done.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Lowe’s work, thoroughly researched and written with scrupulous objectivity, promises to be the year’s best book on European history.”—Financial Times (London)
“Deeply harrowing. Moving, measured, and provocative. A compelling picture of a continent physically and morally brutalized by slaughter.”—The Sunday Times (London)
“A graphic and chilling account of the murderous vengeance, terroristic reprisals, and ferocious ethnic cleansing that gripped Europe following—and often as a direct continuation of—the Second World War. Keith Lowe’s excellent book paints a little-known and frightening picture of a continent in the embrace of lawlessness, chaos, and unconstrained violence.”—Ian Kershaw, author of The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1944–1945
“Savage Continent is a powerful and disturbing book, painstakingly researched and written with both authority and an impressive historical sweep.”—James Holland, author of Italy’s Sorrow and The Battle of Britain
About the Author
Keith Lowe is the author of two novels and the critically acclaimed history Inferno: The Fiery Devastation of Hamburg, 1943. He is widely recognized as an authority on the Second World War, and has often spoken on TV and radio, both in Britain and the United States. Most recently he was an historical consultant and one of the main speakers in the PBS documentary The Bombing of Germany which was also broadcast in Germany. His books have been translated into several languages, and he has also lectured in Britain, Canada and Germany. He lives in North London with his wife and two kids.
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- Paperback: 496 pages
- Publisher: Picador; Reprint edition (July 2, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 125003356X
- ISBN-13: 978-1250033567
- Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
In the introduction to his book, Keith Lowe writes that the story of Europe in the immediate period following WW2 " is not primarily one of reconstruction and rehabilitation-it is firstly one of descent into anarchy". Such a history has never been written before.
This book,which comes to fill in this void, has four main parts and its main theme is that of vengeance. Its other themes are those of displacement, famines, moral destruction, rape and civil wars.
In other words, after WW2 there was an atmosphere of chaos and violence almost everywhere and people decided to take the law into their hands. It was also the time to settle old scores. Yogoslav partisans decided to cut off the noses of their opponents, while Sudeten Germans were butchered in Czechoslovakia. Dutch and Belgian collaborators were summarily executed and their houses were set on fire, while in Italy the bodies of Fascists were displayed in the streets where they could be spat at by passers-by. In Hungary, members of the far-right Arrow Cross were forced to exume mass Jewish graves in very hot weather while local people threw sticks and stones at them. In France, clandestine prisons were set up where suspected collaborators were subjected to multiple forms of sadism including mutilation, rape, enforced prostitution and every type of torture imaginable.
This book is also about the history of ethnic cleansing and inter-communal and political violence. Poland harnessed the wartime hatred for Ukrainians to launch a program of expulsion and forced assimilation. Slovaks, Hungarians and Romanians embarked on a series of population exchange.
Take, for example, Berlin. It was there where Hannelore Thiele was raped by seven in a row, "like animals".
This book opens a window on the "Old Europe" of virulent ethnic hatreds and murderous ethnic cleansings against minority groups. The book reveals that contrary to what we've been taught these atrocities did not end with the defeat of the Nazis in 1945. In fact the defeat of the Nazis inflamed them for several more years. It really wasn't until 1948 or 1949 that Europe gained some sense of political and economic stability. During this time murderous inter-ethnic wars added a toll of hundreds of thousands more to the tens of millions killed outright in the war.
Author Keith Lowe brings home the terror of these early post-war years:
* He describes the near-total destruction of European cities. Some cities like Warsaw had nearly 100% of their housing stock destroyed and most of their pre-war populations obliterated. They might as well have been vaporized with hydrogen bombs. The prewar economy in all of Central and Western Europe was defunct due to loss of life, worthless currencies, and obliteration of urban and industrial infrastructure. America did its part to restore economic order in Europe with billions of dollars of aid via the Marshall Plan, but this took several years to produce results.
* People resorted to desperate means to survive even in places where the war ended relatively early, such as Southern Italy. Lowe illustrates degrading scenes like those in Italian railway stations and public buildings where hundreds of Italian women lined up to prostitute themselves on the public benches for American soldiers who traded sex for a tin of rations. Later on this happened in Germany. This was a time of starvation rations when the lifeline of many families depended on having a young woman in the household to trade for sex.
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