1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Review of Homecomings, May 18, 2011
The very large bibliography indicates a sincere effort at exhaustive research by the author. These were however, only minimally supported with views, conclusions, and authoritative observations regarding this material. I missed that in such a comprehensive work. I would have enjoyed reading these.
Very tedious reading at times due to a stilted english phraseology (authors native language was apparently not english) and use of uncommon english words. For example, I never came across the word "elided" until this publication. The use of the common words "omitted" or "ignored" would have sufficed and been easier to understand.
The book was more like a factual-only doctoral thesis. I recommend it to anyone doing serious research, but expecting to draw their own observations and conclusions.
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9 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
not bad, December 11, 2006
This review is from: Homecomings: Returning POWs and the Legacies of Defeat in Postwar Germany (Hardcover)
I disagree with the Saudi. This isn't some Zionist conspiracy book looking to (god forbid) blame Germans for supporting Nazism when it suited them. It's a well researched monograph that touches on the major aspects of the homeward return of German soldiers. He DOES talk about their deaths in the Soviet camps, as he attributes the poor condition of Soviet captives as being just as much due to the Soviets as it was due to the documented lack of supplies getting out to the eastern front to the Nazi soldiers before they were captured. After having lived in Germany a number of years, and spoken with many Germans, I can say that the portrayal of postwar Germany that Biess provides, while not entirely accurate in my opinion, is quite accurate in general.
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22 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Yet another endless accusation of German guilt, November 30, 2006
This review is from: Homecomings: Returning POWs and the Legacies of Defeat in Postwar Germany (Hardcover)
I found this book to be very disappointing, expecting as I did a balanced and sympathetic rendition of the sufferings of Germans in the post-war period.
The author's reference in the acknowledgements section to his visits to Israel and to his consequent "moral responsibilities" in writing this book should have set alarm bells ringing from the start. This was always going to be a book emphasising the Holocaust over every other tragedy of the war. A distinctly Jewish-orientated point of view.
The basic tenet of the book boils down to one reiterated position; the Germans who were as a nation guilty of war crimes did not sufficiently atone for their sins. The churches and political parties colluded with the people to transfer the legitimate victimhood of the Jews to that of the undeserving post-war Germans. Returning POWs were surprisingly more anti-communist than when they embarked on Operation Barbarossa. An extremely ungrateful and dangerous position to hold after the generosity of Soviet internment.
The use of German POWs as slave labour is callously summed up by Biess as a decision "to employ former German soldiers for the purpose of reconstruction(p45)". Nearly a million German civilians were also forcibly put to work after their abduction of whom nearly 45% perished ("A Terrible Revenge" AM de Zayas). Biess is silent on this.
Although Biess does admit that 33% of Germans died in Soviet captivity (compared to 4% of Allied prisoners in German captivity)
apparently this was "not the result of a deliberate Soviet policy of mass killing or even of passive negiligence." Tell that to the 105,000 German POWS who survived Stalingrad only to die in Soviet captivity. A mere 5,000 survived from the doomed Fifth Army. I would term that a mass killing by any standards.
The expulsion of 11 million ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe, of whom 2 million died in the process, is described as a "necessary" population transfer (p44).
Apparently evidence of the mass rape of German women by the Soviet army remains "sparse" (p60). Perhaps he has not read Anthony Beevor's book "Berlin: The Downfall 1945" which chronciles the mass rape of Eastern German women by the drunken Soviet troops.
The indiscriminate carpet bombing of cities with the loss of nearly a million innocent lives counts as nothing next to the murder of the Jews. This is the mantra which this mendacious and agenda-ridden book seeks to promote. The sad thing is that many propagandised Europeans, including the new generation of self-loathing and obeisant Germans, would concur with this politically-motivated viewpoint.
To quote de Zayas "Seldom is there any compassion for the vanquished. Seldom any justice in retribution." This book wallows in this ignoble tradition.
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