Tag Archives: World War II

A different history — Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, Tony Judt

Posted on by

Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945
by Tony Judt
Edition: Paperback
Price: $16.29

Reading PostWar was a project, an immersion experience during which I first unlearned, then relearned everything I knew of modern European history. It was worth the effort. This is a long book — 960 pages — crammed with so much information I had to read it twice before I felt I had a grip on the material.

Tony Judt was an historian with controversial opinions. He made no pretence of being a neutral observer. Not that any historian is really neutral. Every historian has an agenda. Whether or not he or she puts it out there for all to see is a matter of style, but there is no such thing as historical neutrality. If an historian is writing about an era, he or she has an opinion about it. All history is slanted, changed by the historians who write it.

Mussolini (left) and Hitler sent their armies ...

Dr. Tony Judt believed the role of an historian is to set the record straight. He undertakes the debunking and de-mythologizing of post World War II European history. He lays bare lies that comprise the myth of French resistance, the “neutral” Swiss, the open-minded anti-Nazi Dutch — exposing an ugly legacy of entrenched anti-Semitism, xenophobia and ethnocentricity.

Although Judt follows a more or less chronological path from World War II to the present, he doesn’t do it as a strict “timeline.” Instead of a linear progression, he follows threads of ideas and philosophy. Tracing cultural and social development, he takes you from news events through their political ramifications. You follow parallel developments in cinema, literature, theater, television and arts, not just the typical political and economic occurrences on which most history focuses.

After two consecutive readings, I finally felt I’d gotten it. Postwar changed my view of  the world, not just what happened, but what is happening.

Tony Judt and I were born in 1947. We grew up during same years, but his Old World roots gave him an entirely different perspective. He forced me to question fundamental beliefs. What really happened? Was any of the stuff I believed true? Maybe not. It was hard to swallow, but he convinced me. I believe it.

If you are Jewish (I am and so was Judt), and lost family during the Holocaust, this will stir up painful issues. The depth and breadth of European anti-Semitism and collusion in the destruction of European Jewry is stomach churning. Pretty lies are easier to deal with than ugly reality. It’s easy to understand why so much of what we know is wrong.

Even though I knew history, I didn’t grasp the impact of these years until Postwar made it real. I assumed, having lived these decades and followed the news, I knew what happened. I was wrong. What is reported by American media barely scratches the surface. The transformation of Europe from the wreckage of war to a modern European union is more extensive, complex and far-reaching than I knew. These changes affect all of us directly and personally. My understanding of current events is far better because of this book.

I read Postwar on paper, then listened to the audio version. Available from Audible.com, I recommend it to anyone with easily tired eyes. It has excellent narration and is a fine showcase for the author’s conversational writing style.

Postwar is analysis and criticism, not just “what happened.” The book is an eye-opener, totally worth your time and effort, an investment in understanding and historical perspective. It’s never dull. After reading it, you will never see Europe the same way.

- – -

Related articles

The True Glory: From D-Day to V-E Day (1945) — A Documentary of World War II

Posted on by

From the Imperial War Museum Official Collection

The True Glory: From D-Day to V-E Day (1945)

- – -

Cover of "The True Glory - From D-Day to ... A co-production of the US Office of War Information and the British Ministry of Information, The True Glory documents the victory on the Western Front, from the invasion at Normandy to the collapse of the Third Reich.

The officially credited director was Garson Kanin. British director Carol Reed was not officially credited, but is listed as director on IMDB and other sources. Paddy Chayefsky is the officially listed writer. Other writers not officially credited are Harry Brown, Frank Harvey, Gerald Kersh, Saul Levitt, Arthur Macrae, Eric Maschwitz, Jenny Nicholson, Guy Trosper and Peter Ustinov. There were so many people involved in this rather remarkable documentary — which received the Oscar for best documentary in 1945 — that it’s impossible to list them all.

The film was (brilliantly) edited down from more than 10 million feet of film taken by hundreds of war photographers, none of whom are credited. The editing involved is extraordinary. During one long segment of film, there must have been thousands cuts, each less than 2 seconds in length, most no more than one second long. That is a lot of splicing. It’s beautifully done, professional all the way.

You may have seen other propaganda films from World War II, but this isn’t one of those.

I’ve watched a lot of war movies and this is no less professional than any movie I’ve ever seen. The difference for me was the realization that I was looking at the real war, not a Hollywood version. The effects were not done with a computer. The bodies of the dead are the bodies of soldiers. They aren’t actors. The guns are firing ammunition, no special effects. The ships are on the seas. The aircraft, pilots, bombardiers are the real deal. The battles are life and death in real-time. It gave me the shivers.

General Eisenhower speaks with members of the ...

General Eisenhower speaks with members of the 101st Airborne Division on the evening of 5 June 1944.

As the movie progresses, there are maps that let you follow the progress of the various armies. It is the first time I actually understood where the Battle of the Bulge took place and why it was called “the bulge.”

It was like time travel for me, listening to Dwight D. Eisenhower. I grew up when Eisenhower was President. I remember his voice as the voice of the president of my childhood. So perhaps this is a good time to mention the not only was Dwight D. Eisenhower President of the United States and Supreme Allied Commander, but he was a winner of the Oscar Award as producer of The True Glory. Did he display the statuette in the White House?

English: Gen. of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower...

Gen. of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower

If you have not seen this movie, which is now available on a two disc set that includes not only the European war, but the Italian campaign and the battles in the Pacific … and if you have any interest in World War II … you owe it to yourself to see it. There are many good movies about the war, but this documentary — set of documentaries really — has the most remarkable footage. You’ve probably seen it before, or at least much of it in pieces in various war movies. Seeing it like this, without any Hollywood manufactured footage is like seeing it for the first time.

English: Senior American military officials of...

Senior American military officials of World War II. Seated are (from left to right) Gens. , George S. Patton, , Dwight D. Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, , and ; standing are (from left to right) Gens. Ralph F. Stearley.

In honor of Memorial Day and all our troops who fought and died in so many wars in so many lands, this is dedicated to all of them. And it’s dedicated to us, the people they died to protect.

- – -

Related articles

Strange Little Town

Posted on by

I live in a small town in the center of the Blackstone Valley, a place that is also part of the National Park system and is considered a “National Historic Corridor.” Which means our quaint little town and beautiful river has historical importance.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

This is where America began to build working mills, using the Blackstone River to power them. Eventually a river and canal system was built and eventually a railroad to bring American goods to the markets of the world. The mills and factories caused lot of pollution, but that’s what industrialization does.

Room for everyone

Our little town hasn’t quite entered the new millennium. For that matter, it never accepted the previous century, either. It crawled unwillingly along until the mid 1950s, and then dug its heels in and said “Hell no, we won’t go.”

Church on the Common with Artillery

There we have stayed. World War I artillery pieces sits next to our Civil War memorial and just a few feet from the World War II bronze and stone grouping. Vietnam never met it, nor any war since. The Common isn’t very large and it’s filling up with all memorials. They make an interesting juxtaposition with churches surrounding the common on all sides.

Guns and churches. At various times of the year, there are miscellaneous events on the common, also known as “the green.” The grass doesn’t care. It just sits there being lawn-like.

First Snow - Deck 1

We have book sales, rummage sales, cake sales and fair-like occasions that usually coincide with some national holiday or other. We have a Christmas Parade and our local version of first night, but we hold it so early in December that it always feels a bit odd and out-of-place.

Other events include porkettas and pancake breakfasts, all to raise money for something and probably, they do. We used to have great local fireworks on the high school’s athletic field, but one year, we ran out of money and that was the end of fireworks. Other towns have them and I can see bits of them over the tops of our trees plus  private events staged by neighbors who’ve gone up to New Hampshire to buy fireworks that are legal in that state, but not in Massachusetts.

July 2012 - Farm Stand

Most of the private events are more noise than show and scare the dogs out of their fur coats. Other towns complain that Main Street has been destroyed by big chains like Walmart. We do not complain. We don’t have a Walmart or any other chain. If you want to buy anything other than hardware and lumber (Koopman’s sells that), groceries, or fast food, you’ll need to go elsewhere. If you want a decent meal, you will have to go to another town. If you want to see a movie, go bowling, see a play, hear a concert … well, you know,

Boston’s not so far and Worcester is just up the road a piece. You can get to Providence in about 45 minutes. Depending on traffic. Whatever you want, you probably won’t find it in our town. We have a beautiful albeit underfunded public library.

75-paintedladyhp-2.jpg

It’s in an old, elegant building that has somehow managed to remain alive despite having its budget cut and cut again until it can barely keep the doors open enough to maintain membership in the public library system. And progress is encroaching, despite all resistance.

After 20 years of arguing about it — after allocating millions of dollars to upgrade the old high school and having funds vanish with nary a trace — our little town was told by the Commonwealth that we must build a proper High School or lose accreditation (which would make it tricky for our graduates to get into college). So we are building a high school.

cropped-75-rockers-hp-1.jpg

Our taxes have gone way up. The town has been so mismanaged for so long no one can remember it being any other way.

There is a mythos surrounding small towns. It stars James Stewart or someone like him, and a cast of caring local citizens (cue up “The Andy Griffith theme). In these Television Town, people may disagree, but everyone has the best interests of the town at heart. The families that run our town are a different.

Using nepotism, threats, bullying, and a willingness to make life unbearable for anyone who gets in their way, they have successfully maintained a stranglehold on the town.They aren’t especially concerned with the best interests of the town except insofar as it advances their own business and financial interests. They take what they want from the public till, refuse to answer to anyone for it, give out contracts based on the best kickbacks and live a good life.

Town meetings end in fistfights and verbal brawls that create enough bad feeling to last into the next decade. I opposed the new High School, not because we don’t need a new one. We did and do need a new high school. The problem is the same incompetent, dishonest bozos who have been stealing the town blind for the past 50 years or more will run the project. Anything to which they set their hand is tainted.

75-dammill-hp-1.jpg

They asked Garry to run for town council when we’d only been here a year or two. He was still an easily recognized  figure from all his years on television, so despite his not being white, his color was less important than his celebrity. He could be useful. Garry declined the honor, explaining that it would destroy our lives. We’d have mobs in the driveway throwing rocks at our windows.

I didn’t understand until a few years later when I covered debates preceding town council elections for a local paper. Good grief! The level of personal vindictiveness and venom was a wonder to behold! Where were the good guys? Each  candidate was worse than the other, ranging from merely venal, through clueless, to possibly psychotic.

It was closer to Shirley Jackson‘s “The Lottery” than Andy Griffith. And yet, I do love the valley. Although I try not to think about why they do what they do and how they do it. The less I know, the happier I am. All the towns around here are pretty bad. This town may take top prize for worst-mannered and blatantly dishonest government, but the other towns are close behind, just have slightly better manners.

Shadows on a path

There are so many genuinely wonderful people here: caring, intelligent, well-meaning people who would gladly help improve our town and this valley. Pity that most of them, like Garry, are unwilling to face down the powers that be.

And life goes on. White picket fences and green lawns. Big shade trees, lots of room for children to play and safe streets. Only two traffic lights in town, one of which is probably redundant. It’s a pretty place to live. Just don’t get too involved. Things aren’t always what they seem. Think Chevy Chase in “Funny Farm.” Yeah, that works.

Related articles

War today, yesterday and forever?

Posted on by

I am 65 years old. For my entire life, there has been a war going on somewhere and usually, the US has been involved or is about to become involved.

I keep hoping, if I live long enough, there will come a day when there is no war in the news, when the U.S. has no fighting men dying somewhere for reasons no one will remember a decade later.

War doesn’t seem to be working out very well.

Before I die, I would like to see a world without war. What do you figure my odds are? Not very good I wager.

 

The Soldier, Rupert Brooke

Posted on by

-

1914 V: The Soldier

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Rupert Brooke

Rupert Brooke never came back from the war. An entire generation of the young men of Europe and England died in that war and the population had barely begun to return to normal when War II came calling.

As we celebrate Veteran’s Day, it is good to remember that Americans did not fight alone. Millions upon millions of English and European soldiers died in the two world wars “over there.” The number of military and civilian casualties in World War I totaled more than 37 million of which American military deaths are 53,402.

World War II fatalities (total dead) estimates are from 50 to more than 70 million, making it the deadliest war in world history. American military deaths came to 291,557.

In both world wars, civilian casualties out-numbered military casualties.

I want to believe that the era of endless war is coming to a close. During every year of my life, from my first memories of the Korean War, through Vietnam, the myriad wars in Africa, Europe, and Asia … there has been a war going on somewhere. As often as not, American fighting men are involved. I hope one of these days war will be notations in history books and not an everyday reality. I can, at least, hope.

The Cost of War – Direct and Collateral Damage

Posted on by

As Veteran’s day approaches, it’s time to talk about the casualties of war who did not wear uniforms and for the most part, didn’t carry guns. We don’t have a holiday for them. They’re just dead. 

Most of these were people caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were the wrong race, the wrong religion, believed the wrong things. The elderly, mothers, and children whose lives were lost in the battles or backwash of wars are just as dead as the soldiers who fought. Is it not painfully ironic that the men who start these wars are the ones most likely to escape its ravages unscathed?

It is the job of important men to make grand speeches about the justness of whatever cause for which we are currently killing one another. They always point out that God is on their side, and apparently God is on everybody’s side because every leader who takes his people to war says so. I don’t know that the dead would agree. I think if a deity sanctions war, it is far more likely to be Satan than God. It is the job of we the living to remember that death by war is not picky. It will take anyone into its bloody maw.

I honor our soldiers. It’s an ugly, dangerous, and often thankless job. But I would also like to honor all the others, the people swept up in events beyond their control, caught in the midst of a battlefield that was once their home.

Statistics to chill your soul

Here are statistics to chill your soul. They ought to, because they always freeze mine.

The number of military and civilian casualties in World War I totaled more than 37 million. There were over 16 million deaths and 20 million wounded ranking it among the deadliest conflicts in human history. The total number of deaths includes about 10 million military personnel and about 7 million civilians. The Entente Powers (also known as the Allies) lost about 6 million soldiers while the Central Powers lost about 4 million. At least 2 million died from diseases and 6 million went missing, presumed dead. American military deaths total 53,402.

World War II fatality statistics vary depending on who and how they are being counted. The estimates of  total dead range from 50 million to more than 70 million, making it the deadliest war in world history in absolute terms of total dead but not in terms of deaths relative to the world population. Civilians killed totaled from 40 to 52 million, including 13 to 20 million from war-related disease and famine. Total military dead range in estimate from 22 to 25 million. These numbers include the deaths in military prison camps of about 5 million prisoners of war.  American military deaths came to 291,557.

Civilian Murder Counts

In addition to soldiers and collaterally killed civilians, between 3 and 4 million Jews were murdered in Nazi death camps. In the USSR, the Einsatzgruppen mobile killing groups slaughtered another 1.4 million Jews. Jewish deaths in the ghettos of Nazi-occupied Europe total around 700,000. Yad Vashem has identified the names of four million Jewish Holocaust dead.
-
I don’t know about official counts, but not one single member of my extended family survived the war. None was ever heard from again. Not merely was European Jewry wiped out, but their culture and centers of learning were destroyed completely. A culture, a history was lost. The Nazis were very thorough and highly effective killers.
-
Although the Holocaust specifically targeted Jews, it did not only target Jews. Roma (Gypsies), handicapped person, political prisoners, intellectuals, ethnic Poles, and Slavs were also slaughtered to the betterment of the Aryan races. This brings the total number of Holocaust victims to between 11 million and 17 million souls. 

  • Prisoners of War: POW deaths in Nazi captivity totaled 3.1 million including 2.6 to 3 million Soviet prisoners of war.
  • Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians: According to Nazi ideology, Slavs were useless and sub-human. As such, their leaders, the Soviet élite, were to be killed and the remainder of the population enslaved or expelled further eastward. As a result of these racist fantasies, millions of civilians in the Soviet Union were deliberately killed, starved, or worked to death. Civilian deaths in the Nazi occupied USSR are believed to be about 13.7 million persons including 2 million Jews. There were an additional 2.6 million deaths in the interior regions of the Soviet Union. The scope for error in this number is wide.

At least 1 million perished in the wartime GULAG camps or in deportations. Other deaths occurred in the wartime evacuations and due to war related malnutrition and disease in the interior. Most scholars believe that both Stalin and Hitler were responsible for these deaths. You don’t have to hold the gun and pull the trigger to kill someone.

The biggest mass murderers in human history probably never personally killed anyone.

They did not have to sully their hands with blood; they left that to others. That by itself is a blood curdling thought.

When I see people slinging the word “Nazi” around on Facebook and other social media, I remember that my entire family except those lucky few of us that are the descendents of immigrants who came to the United States around the turn of the century, before this country turned its welcome mat face down were all murdered. Of the family members remaining in Europe, every single one died. There were about 75 members of extended family in touch with their American relatives before the war. Not one was ever seen or heard from at war’s end. They were annihilated.

The slingers of hate, the advocates of violence are the harbingers of death and destruction. Those who foment killing and incite rage and urge others on are every bit as guilty of the deaths that follow as those who pulled the triggers. If you are one of them, if you are urging violence, slinging veiled or not-so-veiled death threats because you have political disagreements with members of another party … you are murderers. Refraining from pulling the trigger does not exculpate you.

And to all those militant Christians so eager to force their beliefs on everyone else, be careful what you wish for. Recommending violence to people who love to hate is as likely to make you a victim as it is to get rid of those you’d like gone.

It is long overdue in this nation for everyone to stop the verbal violence before it becomes civil war. Have we not had enough deaths? Have we not killed enough? Tortured enough? Destroyed enough? Is there such a thing as enough death and violence? Will no amount of death and blood satiate us?

Anyone who promotes hate or encourages violence is corrupt and immoral,regardless of religious affiliation or lack thereof, and without regard to any supposed political affiliation. The harm they do to the country they claim to love is beyond calculation.

It appears that our nation’s honor is becoming another piece of collateral damage.

Related articles

Weird Little Town

Posted on by

I live in a small town in the center of the Blackstone Valley, a place that is also part of the National Park system and is considered a “National Historic Corridor.” What that means is that our quaint little towns and beautiful, if polluted, river has historical importance.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

It was, in fact, the birthplace of the American Industrial revolution … which means that right around the corner, they started to build working mills, using the river and eventually a river and canal system, and finally, a railroad to bring American goods to the markets of the world. In the process, they did a lot of poisoning, but that’s the way industrialization has always gone as long as there have been ambitious humans. It seems that has been essentially forever, at least as far as human history goes. My town has not really accepted the new century. It never entirely accepted the last century, either. It crawled unwillingly along until the mid 1950s, and then dug its virtual heels in and said “Hell no, we won’t go.” And there we have stayed. A World War I artillery pieces sits next to our Civil War memorial and just a few feet from the World War II bronze and stone grouping. Vietnam never met it, nor any war since. Honestly, the Common isn’t that big and it’s getting filled up with all the memorials. They make a most interesting visual juxtaposition with the churches that surround the common on all sides. Guns and churches. At various times of the year, there are miscellaneous events on the common, also known as “the green.” The grass doesn’t care. It answers to everything and anything the same way. It just sits there being lawn-like.

We have book sales, rummage sales, cake sales and fair-like occasions that usually coincide with some national holiday or other. We have a Christmas Parade and our local version of first night, but we hold it so early in December that it always feels a bit odd and out-of-place. No, I don’t know why … Maybe all the good days had already been taken by other towns, villages and cities. There are other events: porkettas and pancake breakfasts, all intended to raise money for something and probably, they do. We used to have great local fireworks on the high school’s athletic field, but one year, we ran out of money and that was the end of fireworks. Other towns have them and I can see bits of them over the tops of our trees, and of course the private events staged by neighbors who’ve gone up to New Hampshire to buy fireworks that are legal in that state, but not in Massachusetts.

Most of the private events are more noise than show and scare the dogs out of their fur coats, but I guess someone thinks they are pretty cool. Other towns complain that Main Street has been destroyed by big chains like Walmart. We do not complain. We don’t have a Walmart or any other chain. If you want to buy anything other than hardware and lumber (Koopman’s sells that), groceries, or fast food, you’ll need to go elsewhere. If you want a decent meal, you will have to go to another town. If you want to see a movie, go bowling, see a play, hear a concert … well, you know, Boston’s not too far and Worcester is just up the road a piece. You can get to Providence in about 45 minutes. Depending on traffic. Whatever you want, you probably won’t find it in our town. We have a beautiful albeit underfunded public library.

It’s in an old, elegant building that has somehow managed to remain alive despite having its budget cut and cut again until it can barely keep the doors open enough to maintain membership in the public library system. And progress is encroaching, despite all resistance.

After 20 years of arguing about it — after allocating millions of dollars to upgrade the old high school and having funds vanish with nary a trace — our little town was told by the Commonwealth that we must build a proper High School or lose accreditation (which would make it tricky for our graduates to get into college). So we are building a high school.

Our taxes have gone way up, too. The town has been so fiscally mismanaged (swindled, might be more accurate) for so long that no one can actually remember it being any other way.

There is a mythos surrounding small towns. It stars James Stewart or someone like him, and a cast of caring local citizens (cue up “The Andy Griffith theme) who argue but really have the best interests of the town at heart. It turns out that the families that run this town are a little different. Using nepotism, threats, bullying, and a general willingness to make life unbearable for anyone who gets in their way, they have successfully maintained a stranglehold on the town.

They are not particularly concerned with the best interests of the town except insofar as it advances their own business and financial interests. They take what they want from the public till, refuse to answer to anyone for it, hire relatives and personal friends, give out contracts based on the best kickbacks and live a good life.

Town meetings often end in fistfights and horrific verbal brawls that create enough bad feeling to last into the next decade. I opposed the new High School. Not because we don’t need a new one. We definitely need a new high school. The problem is that to get it built, the same incompetent, dishonest bozos who have been stealing the town blind for the past 50 years or more will run the project. I figured that anything on which they set their hand is doomed.

Blackstone River watershed

Blackstone River watershed (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

They asked Garry to run for town council when we’d only been here a year or two. He was still an easily recognized  figure from all his years on television, so despite his not being white in a town where he was still the only non-white resident, his color was less important than his celebrity. He could be useful. Garry declined the honor, explaining that it would destroy our lives. We’d have mobs in the driveway throwing rocks at our windows. I didn’t understand until years later when I worked for a local paper covering debates preceding town council elections. Good grief! The level of personal vindictiveness and venom was a wonder to behold! Where were the good guys? Each  candidate was worse than the other, ranging from merely venal, through clueless, to possibly psychotic.

It was closer to Shirley Jackson‘s “The Lottery” than Andy Griffith. And yet, I do love the valley. True, I try very hard to not even think about why they do what they do and how they do it. The less I know, the happier I am. If my town were unique, it would be encouraging on some level, but all the towns around here are pretty bad. This place may take top prize for worst-mannered and blatantly dishonest government, but the other towns are close behind. They merely have slightly better manners.

There are so many genuinely wonderful people here: caring, intelligent, well-meaning people who would gladly help improve our town and this valley. Pity that most of them, like Garry, are unwilling to face down the reigning thugs.

-

And life goes on. White picket fences and green lawns. Big shade trees, lots room for children to play and safe streets. Only two traffic lights in town, one of which is probably redundant. It’s a pretty place to live. Just don’t get too involved. Things aren’t always what they seem. Think Chevy Chase in “Funny Farm.” Yeah, that works.

Related articles

Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, Tony Judt

Posted on by
Published: September 5, 2006; 960 pages
Available as an audiobook from Audible.com
-

Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945Tony Judt passed away in 2010 year from cancer. He was born and raised in Great Britain, but was a professor at New York University for more than 20 years. This is not his only book, but in many ways, it is the book he spent his life preparing to write.

He believed the role of an historian is not to merely offer “facts” and let the reader decide what it means. He strongly believed that historians are obligated to set the record straight, to strip away the pleasant stories by which we cloak the ugly truths we’d rather not face.

Thus he undertakes the debunking and de-mythologizing of modern European history. He tears the clothes off the historical emperor, showing the blatant lies that comprise the myth of French resistance, the “neutral” Swiss, the open-minded anti-Nazi Dutch. Laid bare is an ugly legacy of Antisemitism and hatred. I found it painful and personal.

The problems of the book and it’s strengths are the same. Although Dr. Judt follows a more or less chronological path from World War II to the present, he does not do it the typical “timeline” way but rather follows threads of thought, traveling from events to political development, thence to parallel cultural developments in cinema, theater, television and the arts.

If the book has a serious flaw, it is that there is so MUCH of it. I felt at times that I was back at school and should be taking notes.

If you are Jewish and lost family during the Holocaust, this will stir up a lot of stuff that hurts. The depth and breadth of European anti-Semitism and indifference to the shockingly successful destruction of European Jewry is stomach-churning stuff. I knew the facts, but I didn’t grasp the full extent, the breadth and depth. It was a raw and deeply disturbing reminder that with all our flaws, the USA is inherently a better place than the old countries of Europe. They wouldn’t agree I’m sure, but I don’t care.

Español: Mapa de las expulsiones de los judíos...

Expulsion of Jews throughout Europe 1100 through 1600 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There is plenty of hatred here, especially recently, but we don’t have hundreds — thousands — of years of institutionalized discrimination and bigotry. Hatred stands outside our approved norms and though there are plenty who embrace it, our constitution, customs and laws consider it wrong.

This is analysis and criticism, not straight history. Tony Judt had a lot of strong opinions. You may not like them and may find them hard to swallow, but this book offers a valid, if ugly, perspective on World War II and the world that emerged in its aftermath.

It is serious reading, but never dull. If you make the commitment to read it, after you are done, you will have learned much and may wonder how much of what you thought was absolute truth is nothing more than modern mythology.
Related Articles