BOOK: Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War

[Oscar]

How We Lost the Second World War

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On Europe's 'Savage Continent,' Putin's persecutions are just one sign lessons weren't learned.

By Crawford Kilian, January 15, 2014 TheTyee.ca
Crawford Kilian is a contributing editor of The Tyee.


Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II by Keith Lowe, St. Martin's Press (2012)

This is a hard book to read. But the fact that Russia is fevered with persecution of gays and lesbians under the leadership of a 21st century dictator is one of many facts that make it necessary to read.

Keith Lowe writes clearly and persuasively, and his documentation is strong. But he presents an aspect of the Second World War in Europe and its aftermath that neither the winners nor the losers like to think about.

It does explain much of what's happened since, especially since the fall of the Soviet Union: the wars in ex-Yugoslavia, Hungary's return to fascism, and the rise of Greece's neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party. Without understanding the postwar years, we can't understand such seemingly aberrant events.

Given what Lowe documents, it's understandable why we've preferred to forget those years and think instead of the Greatest Generation who sacrificed for our freedom. It's far more comforting, especially for those of us on the winning side, to see the war's outcome as a triumph of democratic values and justice. We were the good guys, and the bad guys lost.

It wasn't that simple. The war literally demoralized not only Europe but the outsiders who took part in it. And the demoralization started early, even in the neutral and unconquered nations. Switzerland and Sweden saw their crime rates soar during the war. Rape increased by 50 per cent in Britain and Northern Ireland. In southern Italy, the Allies released mafiosi from Mussolini's prisons, and the gangsters soon began to plunder the war supplies their liberators were shipping into Naples. You could argue they haven't stopped since.

"In 1944 and 1945," Lowe writes, "large parts of Europe were left in chaos for months at a time.... The political system had broken down to such a degree that American observers were warning of the possibility of a Europe-wide civil war."


In fact, local civil wars had been going on from the start of the international war, and some of them raged on for years after the German surrender: "Greeks against Bulgarians," Lowe writes, "Serbs against Croats, Romanians against Magyars, Poles against Ukrainians."

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