Krishna
The book is scholarly and authoritative. After Nazi defeat, Austria was ‘adopted’ to the western camp and designated ‘The First Victim of Germany’, its Nazi allegiance conveniently forgotten. It invoked its older glories as the capital of an empire while remaining stubbornly mute about its recent past, most certainly about the violence with which the Jews in Vienna were forcibly ejected to the eastern part of the country.
He argues that Germany did not pay its war dues after WW I and so the cost to it of the war was less than the war devastated Europe, especially Central Europe. The Great Depression increased the agony and ‘the chance to replace this with something better’ both from the extreme Left and Right.
And he exposes the fallacy in the ‘peace and prosperity’ argument advanced by so many historians after the second world war. The Eastern Europe saw peace but no prosperity; and the peace was, as he says, ‘the peace of the prison yard, ruthlessly imposed by the uninvited Soviet army, imposed through tanks’. Eloquently put.
He also argues that the liberal societies of Western Europe and Communism of Eastern Europe were built out of – not far sightedness – but fear of chaos returning and the necessity to avoid returning to the status quo ante in the near future!
The much lauded past of Europe where Catholics, Orthodox, Muslims, Jews and others lived in juxtaposition is also overstated as often there were riots and pogroms punctuating the peace periodically.
Germany conducted war with the involuntary help of the resources of conquered European countries to conquer other European countries! Surely we know that the World War II brought unimaginable devastation to people and infrastructure but still the numbers surprise. Just as a sample ‘80% of the city of Minsk was destroyed’ or ‘Yugoslavia lost 25% of its vineyards, 50% of all livestock, 60% of its roads and 70% of its bridges’!
The rape of women by the Red Army is heartwrenching to read, especially when Stalin gave a tacit ‘these things happen’ kind of support to it.
After their liberation, Europe suffered terrible malnutrition and high infant mortality in most countries.
We learn that ‘4 out of every 10’ jews died within few weeks of the arrival of the Allied armies and thus their liberation. Remember, these were the same people who survived the concentration camps and the holocaust but ‘their condition was beyond the experience of western medicine’ as the author puts it. The author also argues that in the Soviet Union after the war, the Germans who resided there were treated badly. Germans in Czechoslovakia lost initially all their property and then their citizenship.
The allied forces, after WW II, agreed that Germans living in Poland need to be evacuated back to Germany and they were. Poland’s borders were extended too. The expelled Germans were resettled in West Germany and thrived there. More heartrending are the tales of Eastern Europeans, Ukrainians and Latvians for instance, who did not want to go “back” to their countries now under Communist rule but forced nevertheless by Western countries. Most of them ended up in Gulags or Siberia under very harsh conditions.
The Jews had a resettlement problems. Soviet Europe had no interest in them and nor was the West interested in taking them. (England wanted manual labourers like coal miners but not educated refugees). It was only solved when the state of Israel was carved out of the Middle East and the Jews en masse moved there.
It is shocking to read today that the collaborators with the Nazis outnumbered the resistance forces until near the very end of WW II (in, for instance, France, Belgium and Norway). The surprises do not stop there! You thought Stalin was the person who split Europe into Western and Communist blocks and thus drove a wedge in the middle of it? Not so, says the author. German’s treatment of Western Europe and Eastern Europe (apart from the Jews) were markedly different and the split was originally engendered by Hitler!
Moreover, the resistance movements who fought the Nazis were not welcomed after liberation for various reasons – in Eastern Europe, for example, because they were against communism as well. Ironically Jews drew the brunt of killings in Poland after liberation by the Soviets as they were suspected of sympathy to their Socialist overlords.
Pietro Badoglio, one of Mussolini’s marshals was instrumental in ridding Italy of the dictator. But Italy let off the Fascists easy since the judges were also former Fascists and the Mussolini government was Fascist too. The Pope Pius XII’s ‘warm relations with the Fascists’ did not cause retribution after Italy ‘smoothly and suspiciously easily’ converted from Fascism to a ‘democratic ally’. He turned a blind eye to the crimes of Nazis in Italy and elsewhere.
In Greece, the postwar retribution was mainly targeted towards the Left, especially the Greek Communists. The previously colluding businessmen and officials of the conservative movement faced no retributive justice. In Stalin’s empire, the retribution also was mainly aimed at removing the opposition to the communist rule to follow.
More shocking is how the ex Nazi sympathizers in academia and business suffered nearly no long time consequences or restored to their former position just in a few years. The author provides example after chilling example. The main reason seems to be the ‘New Enemy’ with the start of the Cold War. Even Klaus Barbie – what an ironical name! – ‘The Butcher of Lyons’ who was in Gestapo, was kept on after liberation.
37% of the Germans in 1946 were of the opinion (in a poll) that the extermination of Jews and Poles and other non-Aryans was necessary for the security of the Germans!
After the war, and after two years of heady reconstruction, disillusion set in. Western Europe was short on food, industry and everything else. It was the food and foreign currency shortage and fear of the attraction of Communism that prompted the US into helping with the recovery efforts of Western Europe in 1947.
The Marshal plan for recovery was offered to all Europeans, but Stalin, suspicious of US motives, declined it and forced all vassal states (and Czechoslovakia, which was not communist yet) to withdraw. Later historians state that it was one of the blunders of Stalin.
We also learn that the Russian (and, later, Soviet) distrust of the West has deep roots before 1917. We learn that during the Russian civil war of 1917-1921, the Western forces intervened militarily. Later, due to communism perhaps, Russia was not included in any international groups. Since Germany was in all, the impression in Russia was that most Westerners preferred Fascists to Communists.
The German Russian alliance (that crumbled when Hitler turned his forces against Russia) could also be traced to the antipathy of Russians to the West and the feeling that the democratic west would be only too thrilled to see the Fascists and Communists destroy each other in enmity that benefits the rest. US emerged as the single biggest power after WW II. For instance, its fleet was bigger than all the other fleets of the world combined.
US helped enormously for reconstruction but its goal was to – reach a settlement with the Soviets, force Britain to give up its empire and disengage from Europe as fast as it can. Roosevelt was keen on all three goals.
The author makes the interesting point that the French were finished as a great power by the speed of their collapse to the Nazi attack and the demeaning subservience of the Vichy government. Even if other powers saw it for the reality it was, it was convenient to pretend that the French were a real power. The English wanted France as a check against German revanchism; Soviets needed an ally who was equally suspicious of the Anglo American axis. So they propped up France and pretended that it was a senior power in Europe. The French knew of these ‘concessions’ and the prickly country tried to thwart Allied decisions since ‘they were not consulted’.
De Gaulle especially felt that his ‘guest’ status in England was demeaning and he knew that in FDR’s estimation, his status was low. So the French did not trust either the English or the Americans, certainly not both together!
The French wanted to crush Germany by proposing to ban any arms production in that country – and hoped that the raw materials like coal would help its own reconstruction after the war. This plan was nixed by the Allies whose objectives and interests were different. France also was more sympathetic to Soviet Union than other western European countries. De Gaulle hoped to forge a strong relationship with the Soviets based on the shared suspicion of Anglo Saxon intentions and shared feared of a German revival. It was Stalin who put paid to the French illusions. There were negotiations (with Czechoslovakia and Poland) for France to secure coal from them to be independent of the Anglo Saxon dependence, which too did not succeed.
France even proposed a stance of international neutrality, as late as in 1947, not allied with either USA or USSR. They were forced to give up their antipathy and reluctantly turn to West towards the end of 1947. The communist party was reviled in France and France desperately needed German goods for their own revival. And there were fresh fears of a Soviet invasion.
(West) Germany was reconstructed after the War in order for the people not to fall under the sway of Nazism or – more probably – to Communism without any help.
The British were spending far more than the pittance received as reparations, forcing the then Chancellor of the Exchequer to comment “the British are paying reparations to the Germans!”.
The Americans were also footing the bill to feed the hungry millions in Germany!
The initial ‘hopes’ of keeping Germany together even after the war were dashed only in 1947.
In Eastern Europe, Stalin maintained the fiction that the goal was elections and at best socialism by land transfers to the landless. When it was known that Communists will never win in an open election, the Soviets adopted repression and terror tactics with their opponents, trying them as ‘Fascists’ and cultivating a climate of fear. Others in power went along, naively believing that they will never be targets of such repression. From Bulgaria to other East European countries, this charade played out.
In Yugoslavia, it was Marshall Tito’s eagerness to implement Communist ideas ahead of Moscow that raised Stalin’s ire!
NATO was a paper tiger : believed fervently by Europe but disregarded by US and Stalin’s support of the Korean war – an attack by Kim Il Sung’s North Korean regime on the South solidified allied unity! The West feared that it was a diversion to the real Soviet intent – to attack West Germany next.
Britain was (financially) broken by the War (even though victorious) and could not afford to keep such large expenses. And I think it was one of the drivers for her giving up her dominions.
The show trials of Stalin in various captured countries and also the confessions obtained by torture – too numerous to list here – are heartrending. Stalin’s antisemitism and whitewashing the Nazi massacre of East European Jews as ‘murder of Soviet citizens’ are both shocking if you were unaware of it.
The sympathy and sweeping endorsement of intellectuals in France for Communism (including Simone de Bouvier) while the worst purges and show trials were happening in the Soviet Union and Satellite countries is astonishing!
It is fascinating to hear about how Germans lost their affection for the American liberators after a few short years and how the exhausted empires – not just Britain but France and Portugal as well – lost their empires. The geopolitical realities are spellbinding.
Also, reading this, you clearly understand why, after the Suez Canal fiasco, England and France drew completely different “lessons” about America. In addition, the book explains why England had misgivings about joining the newly formed European Economic Community and why when they finally realized that it was a missed opportunity, France vetoed its entry. Excellent narration of history.
Stalin’s death in 1955 was followed by the assassination of the most likely successor, Beria, the chief of the armed forces, and then the ascent of Nikita Khurushchev. The revolt in Hungary and despite Khurushchev’s initial backing, the escalation and the brutal suppression are well told, as are the impact of this suppression on Western communists.
The narration of how the West German economy – the defeated country in the War – overtook the ‘victorious’ Great Britain economy as early as 1950 is fascinating! The one problem I faced (as a layman) is the detailed description of European arts for pages and pages.
In Eastern Europe, the description of changes are equally fascinating. The invasion of the Soviet army to Czechoslovakia after the Soviet republics including Brezhnev after Czechoslavakian communist leader defended the openness he created is brilliantly described.
The scope of this book is breathtaking! It even covers the history of IRA and ‘the Troubles’ of Northern Ireland in a very blunt and straightforward way. A delight to read.
While he acknowledges that only Margaret Thatcher could have wrought the wrenching changes to UK that she did, and how it benefited UK economically he is trenchant in pointing out the issues she created. Interesting. Almost in contrast, he describes how wily Mitterand was in France in capturing power against all odds, often aligning with different parties when it suited him, changing his beliefs and policies when it suited him but always rising higher and higher in politics.
The Afghan disaster and the seeds of the collapse of the Soviets are well told. You realize that this book broadens your perspective of history in a really stunning fashion.
The author’s explanation of why the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989 are told and in the process, he explodes the myth that Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars program was the sole cause.
The collapse of the Soviet Union, from Poland to other constituent republics, and the causes for it – including what Gorbachev expected and what he did not – have been told in the best description I have read so far. Fascinating.
Equally fascinating is the result of the vote on whether to declare Ukraine an independent republic. And that of Belarus. Fascinating to find two views on Eastern and Western Ukraine and it incidentally sheds light on the behaviour of Ukrainians in the light of the later war with Russia.
The shocking fall from grace of Gorbachev and the rise of Boris Yeltsin are described in great and fascinating detail. The blunders Gorbachev did trying to protect communism in core Russia and why it failed and how he was the slowest to appreciate it, until he was forced to resign, are all clearly laid out for a lay reader to appreciate. Fascinating details here!
Even more factoids await. For instance, we learn that the splitting up of Czechoslovakia (into Czech republic and Slovakia initially) was not unexpected after the Soviet collapse. The author draws attention to different pasts. Czechs were part at the core of the Holy Roman empire and a flourishing industrialization in the parts (Bohemia and Moravia) it comprised of, and also a part in the industrialization. Slovakia, in contrast was seen disparagingly as ‘a slav-speaking rural peasant community’ even by Slavic Hungary. The urban centres of Slovakia was populated by overwhelmingly, ethnic Germans, Hungarians or Jews. It collaborated and was very dependent on its Nazi patron.
The circumstances in which Yugoslavia broke up are also very fascinating. It could have gone the other way, had circumstances been a wee bit different or the leaders of the two parts been different!
Macedonians speak Macedonian language, which is essentially Bulgarian with minor variations! (Did not know that). Serbs and Croats speak the same language ‘Serb-Croatian’ but with minor variations. Even though similar, the Serbs use the Cryllic alphabet and Croats use Latin alphabet (rather similar to Hindi and Urdu, which are remarkably similar but use completely different alphabets).
He provides equally deep explanation on the issues that Western Europe faced – He explains the Catalan and Basque issues of Spain, the issues of Italy’s Lombardi region and the Welsh and Scottish secession issues in the UK. Fascinating overview.
The fascinating fact that many of the Unionists in Northern Ireland are of Scottish origin is illuminated by the author. It is ironic that while Scotland is fighting to secede from UK, the Unionists are fighting to stay within the Union. You understand the drivers for both, but also relish the irony!
Belgium is another test case described well – it’s internal contradictions of Wallonia and Flemish regions are brought out well. The author explains why Belgium did not split apart like Yugoslavia in the East.
He also points out that the old anti capitalist ideas morphed into anti Globalization sentiment, even though the two were slightly different. It plays better with the aggrieved populace!
What is chilling is the silence about the suffering of Jews in the Holocaust even after the war had ended. Among myth-making to make themselves look better and the sufferings of the people post war (after the Nazi defeat) no one wanted to hear about the Jews. The polls taken just after the war in Germany opined that ‘the post war allied occupation was the worst memory of the people’.
Equally interesting are France’s efforts to whitewash its Petain past – right up to Mitterand. Most of the Vichy collaborators with Nazi Germany continued to hold positions of power in the new regime.
The author does not shy away from calling out the post war hypocrisy of both Western and Eastern Europe to whitewash inconvenient truths.
An amazing book that comprehensively covers the overall history from 1945 to 2005 of all parts of Europe (which includes Russia too). A great read.
9/10
— Krishna