Savage continent : Europe in the aftermath of World War II / Keith Lowe.

Author
Lowe, Keith, 1970- [Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Εdition
1st U.S. ed.
Published/​Created
New York : St. Martin's Press, 2012.
Description
xx, 460 p., [16] p. of plates : ill., maps. ; 25 cm.

Availability

Copies in the Library

Location Call Number Status Location Service Notes
Firestone Library - Stacks D829.E8 L69 2012b Browse related items Request
    Forrestal Annex - ReserveD829.E8 L69 2012b Browse related items Request
      Forrestal Annex - ReserveD829.E8 L69 2012b Browse related items Request
        Forrestal Annex - ReserveD829.E8 L69 2012b Browse related items Request

          Details

          Subject(s)
          Summary note
          This work recounts the disorder in Europe after World War II, describing the brutal acts against Germans and collaborators, the anti-Semitic beliefs that reemerged, and the Allied-tolerated expulsions of citizens from their ancestral homelands. 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 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 this book the author 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. This is the story of post WWII Europe 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, it is a chronicle of a world gone mad, the standard history of post WWII Europe for years to come.
          Notes
          • "First published in Great Britain by the Penguin Group"--T.p. verso.
          • Originally published: London : Viking, 2012.
          Bibliographic references
          Includes bibliographical references (p. 381-441) and index.
          Contents
          • The legacy of war: Physical destruction ; Absence ; Displacement ; Famine ; Moral destruction ; Hope ; Landscape of chaos
          • Vengeance: The thirst for blood ; The camps liberated ; Vengeance restrained : slave labourers ; German prisoners of war ; Vengeance unrestrained : Eastern Europe ; The enemy within ; Revenge on women and children ; The purpose of vengeance
          • Ethnic cleansing: Wartime choices ; The Jewish flight ; The ethnic cleansing of Ukraine and Poland ; The expulsion of the Germans ; Europe in microcosm : Yugoslavia ; Western tolerance, Eastern intolerance
          • Civil war: Wars within wars ; Political violence in France and Italy ; The Greek Civil War ; Cuckoo in the nest : Communism in Romania ; The subjugation of Eastern Europe ; The resistance of the 'Forest Brothers' ; The Cold War mirror.
          Other title(s)
          Europe in the aftermath of World War II
          ISBN
          • 9781250000200
          • 1250000203
          LCCN
          2011279703
          OCLC
          796983759
          Other standard number
          • 40021133570
          Statement on language in description
          Princeton University Library aims to describe library materials in a manner that is respectful to the individuals and communities who create, use, and are represented in the collections we manage. Read more...
          Other views
          Staff view

          Supplementary Information