Book Examines Post-WWII Occupation of Germany
Tuesday, August 21st, 2007The Hollywoodization of World War II has left many Americans with what I used to tell my students was the “John Wayne” version of the war. Handsome American G.I.s fight [insert German or Japanese racial epithet of your choice] and are welcomed ecstatically by liberated civilians. Alas, the story didn’t really play out that way as Giles MacDonogh apparently demonstrates in After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation. (Available on Amazon.)
Although I’ve not yet read the book, the review Bruce Ramsey wrote for The Seattle Times made me place the title on my “to read” list. As Ramsey writes, “. . . war is brutal, and brotherhood did not come overnight. Nor were all occupiers the same.”
The book covers the occupation of the Red Army in eastern Germany as well as the questionable behavior of the French in Stuttgart. Americans, restrained by Eisenhower’s strict policies, did a better job but were still conditioned by wartime propaganda to award collective guilt to all Germans regardless of their station in life. Ramsey’s conclusion reads, “This is a sometimes violent and often disturbing history that prods the reader to think about the choices of the conquerors.”
What about you? Any WWII books you’ve read lately we need to know about or old favorites you consider “standards” on the subject?
