The Second World War might have officially ended in May 1945, but in reality it rumbled on for another ten years…The end of the Second World War in Europe is one of the twentieth century’s most iconic moments. It is fondly remembered as a time when cheering crowds filled the streets, danced, drank and made love until the small hours. These images of victory and celebration are so strong in our … celebration are so strong in our minds that the period of anarchy and civil war that followed has been forgotten. Across Europe, landscapes had been ravaged, entire cities razed and more than thirty million people had been killed in the war. The institutions that we now take for granted – such as the police, the media, transport, local and national government – were either entirely absent or hopelessly compromised. Crime rates were soaring, economies collapsing, and the European population was hovering on the brink of starvation. In Savage Continent, Keith Lowe describes a continent still racked by violence, where large sections of the population had yet to accept that the war was over. Individuals, communities and sometimes whole nations sought vengeance for the wrongs that had been done to them during the war. Germans and collaborators everywhere were rounded up, tormented and summarily executed. Concentration camps were reopened and filled with new victims who were tortured and starved. Violent anti-Semitism was reborn, sparking murders and new pogroms across Europe. Massacres were an integral part of the chaos and in some places particularly Greece, Yugoslavia and Poland, as well as parts of Italy and France they led to brutal civil wars. In some of the greatest acts of ethnic cleansing the world has ever seen, tens of millions were expelled from their ancestral homelands, often with the implicit blessing of the Allied authorities. Savage Continent is the story of post WWII Europe, in all its ugly detail, from the end of the war right up until the establishment of an uneasy stability across Europe towards the end of the 1940s. Based principally on primary sources from a dozen countries, Savage Continent is a frightening and thrilling chronicle of a world gone mad, the standard history of post WWII Europe for years to come.
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Few people alive today experienced Europe’s years of post-war anarchy during 1945-1947. The view that we have today of modern Europe, with its open borders, free trade and homogenized culture, is 180 degrees opposed to what existed in the immediate aftermath of WWII. While this book has its faults (wordy, dense, redundant, tendentious, biased …
After the darkest war in spring 1945, peace came to Europe and its ravaged peoples. Yet, it was a treacherous peace, full of genocides and acts of revenge. In Slovenia, the winning communist authorities murdered about 15.000 collaborators, who were returned by the allies from Austria. Our society as many others in Europe still suffers the …
Brings to light the utter devastation of eastern European society during and after WWII. Very potent read.
Should be required reading.
I have often wondered what Europe was like after the formal end of WW2. This book explains conditions in great detail. For many Europeans, the suffering and killing did not end until 1950. When I was very young, I heard
What we weren’t taught in history class.
Politics is as deadly as a bullet.
This was a well written book about post war Europe. It thoroughly dissected the actions of various groups that led to the Cold War and the ever present ethnic tensions that still exist across Europe today.
This book is a masterful rendition of historical facts. Most of the books I have read about the great war was all about the military performance of the armies involved. This is about the personal experiences of the inhabitants of the warring nations in the aftermath of the war. It paints a vivid picture of the human suffering that the war …
PEOPLE USE THE WORD ANARCHY IN THEIR DAILY VOCABULARY. TO SEE IT ON A HUGE MASSIVE SCALE OR UNCONTROLLED HUMANITY IS BREATHTAKING. NO AUTHOR OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR EVER GETS TO THE UNHAPPY ENDING. WE HEAR DEMOCRACY IS SAVED AND EVIL HAS BEEN VANQUISHED. NOT SO FAST. YOU NEED TO READ THIS TO GET THE STAGGERING SCALE OF THE HORRORS AFTER THE WAR. …
A view of the impact of WWII that is completely unknown to Americans but all too real for European survivors of the war. All civil institutions destroyed, lawlessness everywhere, no or few resources, all or nearly everything that they had known was gone or destroyed. All students of history are aware of American efforts to provide aid to these …
This book tells the story of Europe after World War II. It is not an easy read. The ongoing brutality and unrest throughout especially Eastern Europe was not anything learned in History classes in the years I was in high school or college which was in the fifties and early sixties. It is especially enlightening on the role Russia played in many …