Europe in chaos
Born and bred in the Big Apple, my first memory of war was of a photo of a near naked native standing with a spear on the front page of a newspaper. Upon enquiry I was told that he was a soldier of Ethiopia, of which I had never heard. It was at war with Italy, of which I had.
Shortly thereafter, there were newspaper photos of wars in Spain and China. With the invasion of Poland, Dunkirk and the London blitz I put a map of Europe on a wall of my room at home. With the attack on Russia and the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the world was at war. Magazines provided pictures of the Allied generals, which I hung up beside the map on which I followed the battles with pins. I turned teenager. Clearing my wall when the war ended, I turned to borrowing books about it from a local branch of the public library. I was a voracious reader, perusing histories and novels.
With the Korean War and Vietnam War, my fascination with World War II dwindled to interest. The deluge of books about it said pretty much the same. Seldom did one offer new insight, literally food for thought. This reviewer has just finished reading one of those few.
Brit Keith Lowe is regarded as an authority on World War II. His previous study, The Destruction Of Hamburg In 1943, has been critically and popularly acclaimed. Considering the research put into Savage Continent, it will win prestigious awards. Its illustrations, maps, notes, sources and index indicates the work of a dedicated scholar and extraordinary historian. He covers Europe from VE-Day until the end of the Cold War. He focuses on the attitudes of the former foes after liberation and the plight of the DPs (Displaced Persons).
Millions of slave labourers had to find their way home and millions of East Prussians, forced to leave by the Red Army, ended up in a bombed-out Germany. Europe was in chaos. Food was virtually non-existent. Everybody had collaborated with the Nazi conquerors, but revenge was mainly taken out on the women who had.
Centuries-old antagonisms among the different nationalities broke out. Murders and massacres led to ethnic cleansing, especially in Poland, Ukraine and the Balkans. Russian soldiers raped at will. The recovery of Europe was amazing.