About book After The Reich: The Brutal History Of The Allied Occupation (2007)
Even as I'm just starting this book it grips me rightaway. I was raised just after WW2, in Holland, as it was still smarting from the occupation, in a city (Rotterdam) where I could still see the charred buildings from when the center city was bombed away by aerial bombardment in the Blitzkrieg, May 5th of 1940. In the midst of this circle of charred buildings a new city center was going up during my schoolyears. There was plenty of knee-jerk hatred of the Germans around, however in my parents' home I was raised with a profound appreciation of German culture, and influences that ranged from psychology and psychotherapy to antroposophy (Rudolf Steiner) and the Christengemeinshaft. So I ended up with German as my first second language, long before I knew that I would end up with English as my second first language.And I heard many of the stories first hand of what the end of the occupation was like in Holland, and the end of the war in Germany as well. I knew first hand many people who were displaced by the Russians, etc. So I grew up with the full realization of how wars run over the backs of the normal citizens of a country. It does not matter which side you're on. The destructive forces that are being unleashed leave little standing in their way. And as this book reminds us, Hitler seized power with only 33% of the vote.One of the endorsements on the cover calls this book "courageous." That would be because, where history is always written by the winners, the "other half" of the story is never told. Except we do know it. We're just in denial, for it's easier to paint one side white and the other black. In the course of this book I'm getting the whole historical picture, but at the same time, as I'm reading these pages, many personal encounters come to life again, but against a richer historical background.My acquaintance with Germany and German culture goes back to at least 1955 in my conscious recollection--when we vacationed in the Schwarzwald, with my "aunt" Erika Springer. And this book helps me relive a lot of that background, with a new and richer understanding of the historical stage on which it all played out. And it's more relevant than ever, for not only was the 20th century the most destructive one in history, we're not making a very good start in the 21st century either, and we're once again witnessing up close how wars are fought without any idea what to do in the case you "win," making it very, very easy, to win the war and lose the "peace," or at least whatever it is that comes after the fighting stops.The book offers a rich painting, curiously relevant again, as the world, with US and England in the lead, is having to face the disastrous consequences of Pyrrhic victories in Afghanistan, and Iraq. It is however shy on insight and interpretation, though it reports some curious glances. In the context of the seemingly unending raping and pillaging that went on, fueled by progressive discovery of the guts of the Nazi destruction machine, and the seeming justification for revenge that it provided, he footnotes a comment from a diary of "the straitlaced Helmuth James Graf von Moltke," who at one point reports his amazement that in the Paris of 1940, the women were "positively queueing up to get a German soldier into bed."The rage of revenge comes dripping off the pages, interlaced with curious interludes of humanity, which definitely seems to be the exception, not the rule. All in all this is a sobering read in case one maintained any illusions about the gentler sides of human nature. The book ends with the unfolding of the two Germanies, and the start of the cold war, as yet another footnote to history showing that winning wars is not as easy as it seems. More and more one comes to think of wars as just the acting out of a bunch of lunatics who convince themselves about what they're fighting for, and when it's over one side declares themselves to be the winner, without regard to any great clarity of what it was that was won. The war! Which war? Oh the old war? But we're still at war? Oh this is just a cold war, you say? Likewise the supposed " winning" of the cold war by America as the Soviet Union disintegrated is evident as yet another delusion, just as much as the end of world war two brought no peace, just a shift in the lay of the land.
After the Second World War in Europe ended, Germany and Austria were occupied by the victorious allies. There was a great deal of looting and rape. The vast majority of the rapes was committed by Red Army soldiers; MacDonogh also mentions rapes by French colonial troops and rumors of rape by African American soldiers. Now, I trust blogger Igor Petrov's investigations that the commonly given estimate of the number of German women raped by Red Army soldiers is incorrect, and that the massacre at Nemmersdorf wasn't. However, I refuse to believe that all the stories told in this book are a Russophobic falsification of history. There also chapters on the expulsion of ethnic Germans from East Prussia, Czechoslovakia, which treated its Germans like the prewar Third Reich treated Jews, with torture and all, and the German provinces annexed by Poland. I didn't feel like reading the remaining 2/3 of the book.
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History is not just written by the winners, it is also written about the winners.A very thoroughly researched book, with a wealth of information in it that most people do not have. The sources used are extraordinary, mostly diaries and reminiscences of German and Austrian civilians, as well as letters and diaries of Allied generals, political operatives, and agents. I was warned that certain parts of the book border on being apologist, but personally I did not find that to be true. It is simply a chronicle of what the German people experienced between 1945 and 1949. If MacDonogh has any ideological bias at all, it is simply his condemnation of the collective guilt imposed on Germany - something most people can agree with, since the millions of women who were raped or children who were starved were seen as 'guilty' in the crimes committed by the Third Reich, when obviously they had nothing to do with them.Only reason I didn't give the book the full five stars is because inexplicably, it suffers from quite a few typos and editorial errors, and sometimes the writing can be convoluted, with sentences bordering on being run-ons, but after all, it's not a novel.I think everybody should read this book in college-level history classes, just to understand the quote that I opened the review with. Often we forget millions of victims because they fell on the losing side of history.
—Simon
eh .. this one gets bogged down in 'day in the life of' detail. that and the author's own obvious bias. for one thing, he repeatedly slips up and lumps all the Allies in together, notwithstanding the fact that Soviet atrocities (particularly rape) against German civilians were systematic and widespread, whereas those by the Western Allies were sporadic and not a matter of policy.And yes the ethnic Germans were 'cleansed' from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and so on. But it is tough to blame those countries, who suffered so viciously at the hands of the Nazis, for not wanting to give Germany another excuse to attack them. In a nutshell, while the subject matter is interesting, the writing was tedious and the slant of the book became so obvious that I began to mistrust the account. So I dropped off about 2/3 of the way through. Life is too short to read bad books.
—Douglas
I would have given this book five stars, but there were a few issues that bothered me. One was the use of British colloqialisms (boffin, for example). I spent some time googling these unfamiliar expressions....well, I guess that improved my vocabulary! The author sometimes lost me when I couldn't figure out the antecedent for his pronouns (once an English teacher...). The main problem was the author's use of literary works as comparison to events. I felt that was unnecessary and detracted from the events themselves. Other than these things, which were distracting to me, this was a very, very good book. When the author says "brutal" conditions, he means it. I did not realize how many atrocities were committed after the war was over...and by every country involved. Every country had blood-stained hands. This book explains how the Western Allies were tricked by Stalin in setting up post-war conditions, but also indicts those Allies for ignoring problems. I learned a lot from this book and would recommend it to anyone interested in this time period.
—Tomi
