After the Reich (Hardcover)

by Giles MacDonogh (Author)
Key Phrases: terror machine, Western Allies, Red Army, Soviet Union (more...)

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.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
Reviewed by Andrew Nagorski

There's a gruesome last chapter to World War II, the bloodiest war in history. During the forced expulsions of about 12 million Germans from the Reich's eastern provinces, mostly from territory that became part of the newly reconstituted states of Poland and Czechoslovakia, about 2 million died. Imprisonment in former Nazi concentration camps, death marches, starvation, beatings, rapes and outright murder were all commonplace. As the Red Army and many local inhabitants saw it, this was justifiable revenge for Germany's monstrous crimes. The Americans, Brits and French didn't engage in violence on anything close to that scale, but they, too, sometimes let their desire for revenge get the better of them.

For a long time, this record of retribution was a taboo topic outside of Germany. Even the Germans worried that emphasizing their suffering could open them to accusations of rewriting history to cast themselves as equal victims. But since the collapse of communist regimes in their countries in 1989, at least some Poles and Czechs have been confronting that history. (Don't expect anything of the sort from Putin's Russia, where Stalin is glorified once again.) And in the West, this is a painful subject that has been attracting more attention.

In After the Reich, Giles MacDonogh, a British author of several books about German history, chronicles the final weeks of the war and the occupation that followed. His ambitious mission: to offer a comprehensive, unsparing account of what happened to the German people when the tables were turned. MacDonogh works to assemble a massive indictment of the victors, and his array of detail and individual stories is both impressive and exhausting. But he's far less successful in navigating the tricky moral terrain that such a subject inevitably occupies. As a result, his is a deeply flawed book.

It's misleading to talk about German suffering without referring to the Nazi record, but MacDonogh offers only the most perfunctory nods in that direction. "I make no excuses for the crimes the Nazis committed," he writes. What's troubling is his willingness to leave unchallenged some of the most dubious if understandable assertions of those Germans who suffered, his eagerness to trumpet any acts of brutality by Allied forces as the rule rather than the exception, and his propensity for highly questionable, sweeping generalizations.

MacDonogh informs us that 1.8 million German civilians had perished by the end of the war. Here, at least, one would expect a couple of comparisons that are glaringly absent: the death toll for the Soviet Union (an estimated 26 million, more than half of them civilians) and Poland (nearly 6 million, half of them Polish Jews). True, that's not the subject of his book, but some context is needed.

When a German woman expelled from Czech lands compares her people's plight to that of the Jews under the Nazis, MacDonogh offers no comment. Of course the expulsions were anything but the "orderly and humane" action promised by the Potsdam Agreement. That doesn't make them anything like the Holocaust. The well-documented cases of mass rape by Red Army soldiers -- incidentally, not just of Germans but also of women of many nationalities in "liberated" territories -- make for chilling reading. But MacDonogh seems eager to treat the incomparably less frequent cases of rape and torture by U.S. troops as evidence that they were almost equally vengeful.

There's more than a passing whiff of contemporary anti-Americanism in the casual way that he throws around terms such as "the inhumane approach" of the American victors toward the Germans. MacDonogh sees no contradiction in mentioning that the United States honored its promise to quickly release German POWs, or in both chastising the Americans for initiating a too-sweeping de-Nazification effort and then for not persistently nailing more Nazis. He off-handedly mentions the remarkable reconstruction of Germany -- the result of the most generous occupation policy the world had ever seen -- yet seems determined to emphasize everything that went awry. The Americans were too harsh or too soft, according to MacDonogh, but almost never right. The problem with After the Reich is that it gets so much of the big picture so wrong.

Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 656 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (July 2, 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 (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #54,117 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

159 of 185 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A grizzly account of allied atrocities in World War II, August 18, 2007

By	Ryan Setliff "InternetPundit.com" (VA, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

~After the Reich: The Brutal History of The Allied Occupation~ is a sordid tale of allied atrocities committed against the Germans following the fall of Hitler's fanatical Third Reich regime on May 8, 1945. Conventional wisdom just presumes that American and British armies were merciful liberators ready to bestow chocolate and candy to the German children; but history isn't always so black and white. For the defeated Germans, the end of the war brought an uneasy peace, and for many a hellish aftermath. What resulted in the years 1945-1950 is little known to most Americans. Some three million Germans died in the aftermath of VE-Day, and many in the Soviet occupied zones were subjugated to a brutal ethnic cleansing.

The facts concerning occupation are alarming:
* 2.3 million German civilians died violent deaths following the official cessation of hostilities on VE-Day, and 1.4 million German POWs died in captivity.
* Some of the same concentration camps formerly utilized by the Germans to imprison the Jews and work them to death were co-opted into Allied concentration camps to hold millions of Germans. The same grizzly results ensued: emasculated bodies from those who nearly starved to death and were plagued by pestilence and disease. Nearly all of the famous concentration camps utilized by the Germans--Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, and Dachau--were utilized again by the Allies replicating the same hellish conditions perpetrated by the Nazis. German prisoners died in throngs.
* The Americans utilized torture to extract confessions in their prison at Schwabisch Hall. Men had their testicles emasculated in the interrogations.
* There were 600 POW camps in the UK, and over a million POWs died in the USSR.
* On April 17-18, 1945, French soldiers raped as many as 600 women in Freudenstadt, before making passage to Stuggart where they raped 3,000 more.
* The Russians may have raped over 20,000 women alone in Berlin.

The author is not trying to be apologist for the Nazi regime by any stretch of the imagination. He should not be faulted for sticking to his book's topic either. There are plenty of books documenting German atrocities against Poles, Jews, Russians, and Ukrainians. The author's purpose is not to dispute those candid facts. Researcher Giles MacDonogh offers an enthralling and accurate study which exemplifies how liberation was never entirely a happily-ever after story for the millions of Germans subjugated by a conquering Allied army--particularly the vengeful Red Army of the Soviet Union. By spring of 1945, Germany was a nation in tatters, with many urban population centers literally flattened by the bombings. Hundreds of thousands of women were brutally raped, and many civilians were murdered in cold blood by the occupying armies. Hundreds of thousands of Germans were conscripted as laborers, and many deported to Eastern Europe and the Soviet heartland to work as slave laborers. Over 2.25 million Germans died in captivity during the period between the Vienna liberation and Berlin airlift. In airing these historical facts, the author is not trying to be apologist for the Nazi regime by any stretch of the imagination.

Overall, after VE-Day, the American and British were the most munificent to the conquered Germans in their occupation zones, and most of their atrocities were visited against Nazi combatants. In their occupation zone, the French tolerated and sanctioned malevolent vengeance perpetuated against both civilians and combatants alike. The Soviets were by far the most brutal of conquerors, and tales of their torturous bloodbath literally shock the human conscience. The Red Army was apt to rewrite history as they committed their crimes before and after the war. For example, the Soviets purged nearly the entire officer corps of the Polish Army to soften resistance to Soviet occupation in 1940. They literally decapitated the Polish nation's leadership. When the mass graves were uncovered in Katyn Forest, the Soviets attributed their dastardly deed to the Nazis.

As German defeat seemed inevitable in late 1944, some German civilians believed that the occupation in the cities would not be so brutal as the countryside, because they presumed the Red Army would not be apt to commit crimes where onlookers could readily see them. They were wrong. The German propaganda machine reported Red Army atrocities to stiffen resistance to the Soviet advance, and its exposure of vengeance was not mere hyperbole. In winter of 1944-1945, when word came of advancing Red Armies in Prussia, thousands of Germans committed suicide in mass. Women took their children and drowned themselves in the frozen Spree River. They anticipated rape, wanton violence and torture, and the sordid history of occupation vindicates their trepidation. A respected historian Richard Overy collaborates the claims of MacDonogh, and notes that Red Army soldiers raped more than 2,000,000 German women, an estimated 200,000 of whom later died from the trauma, outright murder, or subsequent suicide. Many women found themselves forced to concede to one soldier in the hope that he would protect them from the brutality of others. Women went out of the way to protect their posterity, particularly their daughters, by hiding them in storage lofts for days on end. Young boys were summarily shot when they attempted to protect the women in their families. "The 13-year old Dieter Sahl," neighbors wrote in a letter, "threw himself with flailing fists at a Russian" attacking his mother, and succeeding only at "getting himself shot." In the bitter occupation, many found women themselves subjected to wartime prostitution against their will, in order to secure nourishment and sustenance for their families. Black markets developed in the occupation zones, and they bartered in human flesh.

In the 1940s, there were two demon-incarnates in the world, namely Hitler and Stalin. The Westerners placated the later to vanquish the former. But the later never conciliated his Allies' liberality by being the humanitarian. FDR who surprised Stalin by his overtures of generosity was himself culpable for the Soviet occupation. FDR was literally tracing out arbitrary lines with matchboxes in a National Geographic atlas to determine the postwar landscape. His handiwork decided the fate of millions. Yalta was the "green light" for the Red Army to ethnically cleanse the eastern German territories. Ironically, the better-trained, better-equipped Western Allies could have occupied more German and Austrian territory, but halted their advance in accord with that off-the-table agreement to divide Germany into four zones of occupation. General Patton himself would have much preferred to have kept the tanks going to Moscow. FDR's Treasury Secretary Morgenthau developed his own vengeful plan for turning Germany into a pasture-land ripe for Red Revolution, but fortunately as the Cold War ensued, cooler heads prevailed. Socialism and central planning were scrapped in the late 1940s in favor of the more liberalized market economy pioneered by Ludwig Erhard.

Over three million Germans died in the occupation aftermath of World War Two. This is not questionable revisionist history, just neglected history. Most historians do not dispute this, though some try to trivialize the matter or make shameless excuses for it. Most historians of World War II make a succinct epilogue of liberation which crescendos in the Berlin Airlift and the rise of the Iron Curtain. This is just a side of the war history that doesn't really get told. In the past, historians have downplayed the Allied atrocities, made excuses for it, or went so far as to justify it as justifiable retaliation for the crimes perpetrated by the Nazis. MacDonogh gives voice to the millions of Germans who were fortunate to survive the war, but many of which were subjected to a hellish existence thereafter. Hundreds of thousands of Germans remained slave laborers for thirty to fifty years behind the Iron Curtain.

I really don't know why I revisit World War II history so much. It is genuinely depressing. Reading Norman Davies' book about the Warsaw Rising literally made me nauseated. The Poles found no meaningful liberation under the Soviets who shamefully halted their advance until the Nazis finished off Warsaw. When the Soviets came, they started new torments for the Polish people. The history of the twentieth-century is truly sad. This mesmerizing book by MacDonogh does not make for a happy day after one gets finished reading it. It's painful reading--but a well-written account of the forgotten side of World War II which needs to be told. My religious convictions as a Christian compel me to appreciate the sanctity of life, and plead for mercy to be bestowed upon my nation's conquered enemies. To be sure there were countless recorded acts of mercy and kindness by the liberators toward their conquered foes, particularly the Americans and British. Some Germans in their occupation zones were surprised that they were treated as well as they were. However, we should not obfuscate the historical memory of the war in neglecting the cruel aftermath of the occupation. The revenge-minded French and Red Army were particularly cruel and inhumane 'liberators' of Germany and Austria.

A respected historian Michael Burleigh has endorsed MacDonogh's book.

Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.
-Psalm 85:10

24 of 25 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 (REAL NAME)

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.

28 of 31 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 (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.