After the Reich [Hardcover]

Giles MacDonogh (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 3, 2007

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This absorbing study of the Allied occupation of Germany and Austria from 1945 to 1949 shows that the end of WWII by no means ended the suffering. A vengeful Red Army visited on German women an ordeal of mass rape, while looting the Soviet occupation zone of almost everything of value, from watches to factories. Millions of ethnic Germans were driven from Poland and Czechoslovakia, stripped of their possessions and subjected to atrocities on the way. The Western Allies behaved better, but sidestepped the Geneva Conventions, using German POWs as slave laborers and letting thousands of them die in captivity, while keeping their zones on starvation rations. Nor were the Germans, with their own death camps finally coming to the world's appalled attention, in a good position to complain. Journalist and historian MacDonogh (The Last Kaiser: A Life of Wilhelm II) gives a gripping, if choppy account of the occupation while portraying Truman, Churchill and Stalin at Potsdam as squabbling over the spoils as feral children scrabbled through the ruins. The result is a sobering view of how vengeance stained Allied victory. Photos. (Aug.)
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From Booklist

Mass deportations, murder, and brutalization of helpless noncombatants—these are the crimes one readily associates with Hitler's minions as they ravaged their way across Europe. But Macdonogh, a journalist with particular expertise in German history, convincingly illustrates that this was the fate of millions of German-speaking civilians in the period from the fall of Vienna to the Soviets to the Berlin airlift. The massive number of rapes conducted by Soviet soldiers in their zone of occupation has already been well documented. Less publicized but equally disturbing, as Macdonogh's use of eyewitness testimonies confirm, was the treatment of ethnic Germans in their enclaves in various Eastern and Central European nations. There, murder and the driving out of millions of people were routine, and the French, British, and Americans did nothing to stop them. Given the horrors visited upon Europe by the Nazis, one might be tempted to consider these atrocities as just retribution. However, Macdonogh's eloquent account of the suffering of these people is, hopefully, able to evoke strong feelings of both revulsion and compassion from most readers. Freeman, Jay

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 656 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; 1St Edition edition (July 3, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465003370
• ISBN-13: 978-0465003372
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #748,942 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Introduction to Allied revenge, terrorism, and the doctrine of collective guilt, June 18, 2008

By 

Dr. Lee D. Carlson (Baltimore, Maryland USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: After the Reich (Hardcover)

Minutes after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, a co-worker from Australia told me that the attacks were directed against "tax-paying citizens" who supported the "murderous" policies of the American government. Any individual who chooses to live and work in the United States is therefore, whether they are conscious of it or not, giving support to any action or policy of the government. They are thus implicitly guilty for any government actions and hence legitimate targets for those who have experienced repression or violence due to these actions.

This is the "collective guilt" hypothesis and has found many adherents throughout history, and as this book outlines in gruesome detail, was manifested in the aftermath of World War II. Confident of victory and bent on revenge, many commanders and soldiers in the Allied forces proceeded to take their frustrations out on whoever was left in Germany, with sex and age not being an impediment. It did not matter whether or not German citizens had consciously supported the Nazi government, or whether they did so out of fear for their lives and the lives of their families. As the author remarks, just the ability to speak German frequently was proof enough of this support. The carnage against Germans in post-war Europe was unrelenting, with rapes, crucifixions, hangings, forced starvation, and forced marches being widespread and taking place with great enthusiasm by Russian, British, and American troops of occupation. Having endured incredible hardships in battle they did not hesitate to take matters in their own hands and direct their anger towards those who "supported" the German government. Women were "responsible" for giving birth to German soldiers, so they must be punished accordingly. Male children could grow up to be German soldiers, so they must be prevented from doing so. Female children could grow up and produce more German soldiers, so they must be prevented from doing so. Nuns represented the Catholic "support" for the Nazi Reich, so they must be raped or beaten up without reservation. Even German Jews were subjected to mistreatment, as if they had not suffered enough: many were prevented from immigrating to Palestine due to British fears that they would join a movement to overthrow British control of Palestine.

This is a book that cannot be read during eating time. This reviewer attempted this and failed. There is too much horror inside its covers to allow any vestige of peace of mind during its perusal. But it is a book that should be read by anyone insisting upon a true picture of history, no matter how it perturbs their emotional or mental equilibrium. The reader will learn that the Soviet Red Army "raped wherever it went"; of fifty thousand citizens of Hamburg who in two days in 1943 were slaughtered by British and American weapons of mass destruction; of the rape of almost three thousand women by French soldiers in Stuttgart; of the Brno death march, wherein over twenty-five thousand Germans were forced by revengeful Czechs to march several miles, beaten, harassed, and starved along the way; of the estimated 240,000 German Bohemian and Moravian deaths by the Czechs; of the beheadings of over a thousand people in Konigsberg by the Russians; and of the famous `Operation Paperclip' that involved the seizure of scientific equipment and kidnapping of German scientists by American occupation forces.

The actions of the Allied soldiers who participated in this carnage were reprehensible, with no moral justification whatsoever, and one could go on forever in condemning these actions. Needless to say these events are not reported in American textbooks used in elementary, middle, and high schools. For the most part they are ignored in college history classes also. It would seem that there is an attempt to forget they happened, which is ironic considering the penalties that one can obtain in some European countries for denying the history of the Holocaust. But like the horror of the Holocaust the carnage of the Allied occupation must reside in historical memory for all time. The alternative is a distorted and therefore useless picture of what actually happened during that time, with the horrific possibility that these actions be emulated in the future.

32 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars it should be read, October 20, 2007

By 

Joseph M. Powers (South Bend, IN USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: After the Reich (Hardcover)

This grim book is one which should be read. One should not be surprised that it can arouse strong emotions, many of which are on display in some of the other, often lengthy, reviews on these web pages. This reader, a non-historian whose ethnicity and age place him far from the fray which can arouse such emotions, found the book answered his questions--those of a disinterested, but curious amateur. Macdonogh uses a direct journalistic style to lay out a fact-based case that the allied occupation of Germany was a harsh one. This should not come as a surprise, but one rarely hears of any of the details. They should be known, and they are highly unpleasant. They also have resonance in present-day Iraq. Moreover, the case he presents is consistent with a few conversations I have had with American enlisted men of my father's generation, as well as that of a close colleague who grew up hungry in a displaced persons' camp because he was a four-year-old who spoke German, but did not live in Germany.

I can quibble with a few elements of style: occasionally, the author displayed the uncomfortable whiff of aristocratic aloofness, for some unknown reason he informed us when American soldiers in his narrative happened to be black, and I occasionally would have preferred to learn how a broader range of historians have treated this era. These are minor points, and should not prevent the interested reader from buying this worthy book.

66 of 83 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One more book faulted for sticking to its designated topic, August 14, 2007

By 

Alex Bueno-Edwards "break out of the cage in ... (B-W, Germany) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: After the Reich (Hardcover)

No book can hope to cover every aspect of an issue, let alone an entire period of history. Faulting this book for lacking a discussion of the Holocaust or German terrorism against the Soviets is like faulting a history of the Holocaust for not having a discussion of the treatment of Soviet POWs. Yet many excellent works about the Holocaust do just that. The author obviously assumes a certain level of knowledge of the context of the historical period. This is perhaps not to the liking of some, but any discussion of the Holocaust, German abuses in the USSR, etc. would necessarily be exceedingly brief and cursory in nature. Would that be any better? I don't think so.
Many historical works digress from their designated theses, but these are examples of poor writing or at least of poor editing. The best works of history stick closely to the particular topic. The notion that McDonogh should write a second volume to "provide context" is absurd. If one wishes to read about the context of the period preceding the human rights abuses, then one can find hundreds of excellent works on nearly every aspect of World War 2, including the Jewish Holocaust, other German murder campaigns against Roma, Soviet POWs, the disabled, homosexuals, communists, etc., the occupation of the USSR, and other issues. There is no need for MacDonogh to write another volume just because you want something neatly packaged.
Finally, re: quotations from David Irving. David Irving WAS, at one time, a more serious (if controversial) scholar, before going off the deep end. Many of his earlier works are acknowledged to be authoritative by a great number of historians. Before faulting all of his work, perhaps one should examine his overall reputation before beginning his career of Holocaust denial. Look online using any search engine for his name for reviews of his work from authorities like the NY Times Review of Books, Hugh Trevor-Roper, The New Yorker, and many others.
This book, with A Terrible Revenge by Alfred-Maurice de Zayas seeks to bring attention to understudied aspects of the post-WW2 era. It's worth reading and I give it 5 stars.