After the Reich | Giles MacDonogh | The chutzpah of this author

After the Reich | Giles MacDonogh | This book is definitive about Germany under allied control

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After the Reich

	After the Reich Giles MacDonogh Basic Books, 2007 - 656 pages average customer review:based on 25 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

When the Third Reich collapsed in 1945, the Allied powers converged on Germany and divided it into four zones of occupation. A nation in tatters, in many places literally flattened by bombs, was suddenly subjected to brutal occupation by vengeful victors. Rape was rampant. Hundreds of thousands of Germans and German-speakers died in the course of brutal deportations from Eastern Europe. By the end of the year, Germany was literally starving to death. Over a million German prisoners of war died in captivity, where they were subjected to inadequate rations and often tortured. All told, an astounding 2.25 million German civilians died violent deaths in the period between the liberation of Vienna and the Berlin airlift. A shocking account of a massive and vicious military occupation, After the Reich offers a bold reframing of the history of World War II and its aftermath. Historian Giles MacDonogh has unearthed a record of brutality which has been largely ignored by historians or, worse, justified as legitimate retaliation for the horror of the Holocaust. Drawing on a vast array of contemporary firstperson accounts, MacDonogh has finally given a voice to tens of millions of civilians who, lucky to survive the war, found themselves struggling to survive a hellish peace.

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The chutzpah of this author

The author would have been spared any negative reviewer criticism if he had included prominently the required acknowledgement that nothing is, was, or ever could be worse than whatever the Jews suffered in WWII. If he had gone further and stated that the Germans deserved to be starved, raped, abused, and millions killed off by neglect and design of their captors, he would have turned the criticism into praise, whatever else he wrote after that.

In this book, you'll find no hypocrisy or ignoring of known atrocities directed at the Germans after the war. The Germans were subjected to planned and obvious attempts to punish them, for the sole purpose of extracting retribution/vengenance. It could be argued that the abysmal sinking of humanity, displayed by those efforts, were even lower than the actions the Germans were accused of as having committed during the war. But that won't be found in this book because this book is about truth, not about convincing the reader that the Jews were the principal and only significant victim of WWII, the only acceptable thesis when discussing war atrocities.

If you like to read truth with no spin, this book is for you. If you're looking for a another book waxing poetic about Jewish suffering, you'll be sadly disappointed. Here, you'll find the true actions of people who claimed to be better than the Germans, then set about to prove that they could set new standards in brutality, eclipsing the worst the Germans ever dished out.

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This book is definitive about Germany under allied control

I read this excellent book, here in Brazil.This book is definitive about german's suffering, under the allied control between 1945 and 1948.Please, I'm not a nazist.The author of this excellent book, also isn't a nazist or a racist.

For me, this book is excellent but I must tell that this book really, isn't for everyone.To example on page 167-the numbers are from the citations- the author writes:

"There were plenty of books in the ruined houses, and literature was consolation for some, but there was next to no food.Cases of cannibalism were reported, with people eating the flesh of their dead children.Of the Köningsberger alive in june 1945, only 25,000 survived the experience.20 Hermann Matzkowski, a communist sawmill worker the Russians installed as mayor of the Köningsberg suburb of Ponarth, reported that 15,000 Königsberger had disappeared or died in the main prison during May.On 20 june 1,000 people were beheaded before his eyes.21"

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Collective "revenge" based on ethnic heritage cannot be right (something hard to accept for some apologists)

I am very aware of the horrendous crimes the Nazi army division SS had committed on Jews in particular. I am also aware of the many terrible deaths due to the Nazi military invasions in Poland, Belarus, and Russia. Furthermore, I know of the persecution of Roma, mentally and physically disabled people, homosexuals, and the imprisonment of people in the German opposition. Also the insidious employment of propaganda is an aspect I am familiar with. These facts are widely known, Mr. MacDonogh is a historian so he also knows that. And still, the terrible crimes committed by Nazi war criminals cannot mean that one is not allowed to mention the terrible crimes committed on German civilians in the aftermath of the war, and for a few German minorities during and at the beginning of the war. Overall, we are talking about 70 million Germans who lived back then. Yes, amongst them there were millions of Germans who had not been war criminals and who were not responsible for the horrendous crimes committed during the Nazi dictatorship. And yes, millions of these people had to endure a collectivist "revenge", which in many cases meant awful rape, torture and murder of men, women and children alike. At first sight, if one remembers the horrific and unique Holocaust this "reaction" seems justifiable (for the war criminals it would certainly be, but not for the millions of others), but at the same time it's collectivist nature clearly remains wrong and sharply violates basic human rights. And very importantly, most Jews who survived the Holocaust did never engage in such revenge (sometimes even the German Jews who had survived the Holocaust were expelled). In some cases it was even Nazi collaborators who engaged in "revenge". I also want to remind the public, that many people in Eastern Europe did not engage in "revenge". It was some people and politicians who are responsible for the way things worked out for these civilians, and some people who profited from it. Thus, also this collectivist "revenge" was not committed by just everybody. I do recommend Giles MacDonogh's After the Reich: The Brutal History of The Allied Occupation, I also recommend A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, Second Edition, Fully Revised and Updated by Alfred-Maurice de Zayas. In addition, I recommend the memoirs by Lev Kopelev (The Education of a True Believer and To be preserved forever), a Russian-Jewish humanist who had protested the violence against German civilians by the Soviet army in East Prussia and who was consequently sentenced with 10 years in Soviet labor camps, and Victor Gollancz's work Our Threatened Values. On the contrary, as opposed to the topic Dresden (which has some important moral implications due to its late occurence), I do not necessarily recommend the releases "The End: Hamburg 1943" or "Inferno: The fiery destruction of Hamburg 1943", because they merely have documentary value and treat events which are good to know, yet not challenging to the same degree. To say MacDonogh's release were anti-American is firstly baseless, and secondly means to completely miss the point. On the contrary, the book applies American values such as human rights of the individual regardless of ethnic heritage. Apart from that, "comprehensibility" (in the context of revengeful feelings and propaganda at the time) and "justifiability" (ok'ing crimes in the legal and moral sense, even today) of collective, ethnically-based "revenge" are two distinct issues which shouldn't be mixed up. Mentioning a different topic: Honestly, would we have ok'd it if Tutsis had indiscriminately killed Hutu civilians in "revenge"? Would we have ok'd it if the Tutsi government had issued a law that it is actually legal to kill and brutalize any Hutu he or she can encounter and to strip him of his possessions? Was every Hutu a war criminal? Would it even have been ok to the Hutus who actively fought against the war to strip them of their right to vote and to prohibit them to speak their language or admit their identity? Would it have been ok to send other Hutus who lived far away from Rwanda into labor camps? Now coming back to the book: One ought to remember that it wasn't all the population in Eastern Europe, who brutalized these civilians in "revenge", it especially also wasn't most of the surviving Jews.

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not for the faint hearted

This is a brave and challenging book. Other reviews have done admirable service relating the contents of the book as well as the editing shortcomings. In my review I would like to address my reactions as I read the book and how reading this book has benefitted me.

This book is not for the faint hearted for two reasons: it is full of grusome details, and, more importantly, it may challenge all you have been led to believe.

I read the book in four nights so as not to lose the momentum of the story. At first I was put off by the endless pages of atrocities and wondered why MacDonogh has started out with them. I knew most of it anyway although a few of the stories moved me, such as the man who returned home at last, only to find the skeletons of his family hanging from the trees. But I realize in retrospect that MacDonogh was trying to create the feeling of Chaos, indeed the first part of the book is called such.

As MacDonogh moves on to describe life for the Germans in the individual national zones, a more concrete picture of the degree of insanity he is portraying begins to emerge. Every nation was in confusion and turmoil as reflected by the impossible situations in the camps. There seemed to be no way forward.

MacDonogh moves on to the the years of 1945-46 and the black markets and horrific winters that all, conqueror and conquered, had to endure. His inclusion of the attempt to reestablish arts is a welcome addition to knowledge of this time period, something I did not know.

The covering of the trials was a bit patchy and hard to follow, perhaps written by a different researcher. I enjoyed the ending and thought it brought a lot together. Concluding with the air lift and the establishment of the Cold War was the obvious place to end.

I am glad I bought and read this book along with other books on the subject. It is a story that has needs to be heard more often, lest we forget. It is not about anti-Americanism. And for those looking for context, did you not read the introduction? Indeed, you probably did not even read the book.

Patton was right, America fought the wrong enemy. There is so much more to the story that may never be made public. But this is as good a starting place as any.

The book benefitted me in several ways. To know someone is seeking the true story is always positive. I was interested to know more about Truman's and Churchill's participation and the information on Morganthau was new. This book does not try to avoid anyone's guilt, rather in seeking greater understanding of a fiendish, little understood, catastrophe in human history, it lets us all see a little more of ourselves. Most importantly, it enables us to analyze current events with a clearer knowledge of historical precedents. Thank you, Mr MacDonogh, for your efforts.

And thank you Amazon for allowing us, the average reader, an opportunity to share our thoughts publicly.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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