London 1945: Life in the Debris of War [Paperback]

Maureen Waller (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 031233804X | ISBN-13: 978-0312338046 | Publication Date: June 13, 2006

When Hitler unleashed a fierce barrage of weapons on the defiant capital of England, London’s resilient citizens were undaunted. With colorful detail and rich insight, historian Maureen Waller takes readers through London in the last year of war. She reveals the magnificence of human spirit that carried a besieged people through agonizing travails and the long, giddy transformation the metropolis made as it passed through battle, to celebration, and back to life as usual.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In late 1944, London women were gathering at Woolworth's to purchase rarely available saucepans when yet another one of Hitler's Vengeance weapons left "no doubt as to the full, horrific reality" of the final German attacks: "The blow fell at lunchtime. Everyone from four-week-old babies to adults in their seventies were hurled in the air along with the debris... In shock, a woman pushing a pram, her clothes torn and askew, continued towards the store, intent on buying that saucepan." When not queuing or under attack, Londoners endured the bureaucracy put in place to handle day-to-day destruction and scarcity. Dissatisfaction was inevitable as people tired of hunger, cold, shabby clothes, crime, displacement and fear. By choosing such a momentous year as her touchstone, Waller illuminates Londoners' long-term suffering while offering insights into future obstacles to the country's rebuilding. In chapters addressing the themes of the home front-the basic struggle for food, shelter and clothing set against rationing, propaganda and social welfare-with London as the protagonist, Waller teases out of a debris-littered landscape the physical manifestations of deeper change among the city's working women, disrupted children and displaced families. 1945 may have seen the end of World War II, but not the end of bombing; the return of husbands and children to the urban center, but not the reconstruction of family or home; the end of many British war programs, but not the end of the government's involvement in the lives of the individual. In the end, the inevitable call to ensure a more personal security would result in the unseating of Winston Churchill's government. Waller, who tackled London in the late Stuart era for her last book, Ungrateful Daughters, balances an enormous amount of data with a journalistic attention to anecdote and oral history in this stunning book.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Waller has written a compelling account of the final year of a valiant city's stand against the Fuhrer. Hitler's fury came in the form of supersonic V-2s, fiendish weapons impervious to all the defensive countermeasures England deployed. Waller memorializes the thousands who perished--while checking out a book at the library or riding a bus to work. She also chronicles the valor of the rescue crews who snatched hundreds from beneath the rubble. Beyond the constant threat from the skies, Londoners also coped with ubiquitous shortages by carefully husbanding rationed milk and coal and growing small victory gardens. Londoners even coped with periodic shortages of truth in censored and occasionally jingoistic media. Waller herself provides unvarnished veracity in recounting wartime prostitution in Hyde Park, London's black market, and the looting of bombing victims' goods. Even in the joy of victory, Waller discerns a dark undercurrent, as the iconic Churchill faces restive voters. Despite the postwar disillusionment, Waller marvels at how the city astride the Thames set about replacing blackened ruins with thriving new enterprises. History alive with real human faces. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 528 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin (June 13, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031233804X
• ISBN-13: 978-0312338046
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #434,456 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life among the ruins, June 17, 2005

By 

M. A Newman (Alexandria, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: London 1945: Life in the Debris of War (Hardcover)

London at many times during its history has been the most desirable place to be. 1945 was not one of those times as a war weary population began the year by V2 attacks and then at the end faced 9 more years of rationing, queing and essentially living life down at heels. The author contends that it took 50 years to realize some of the dreams of the post war planners, I would add that it probably took the same amount of time to overcome some of the after effects of the war.

Maureen Waller is very able to the task of setting the scene, providing what amounts to a comprehensive depiction of the British capital in the last days of the war. She does not indulge in the sort of glory mongering, but shows just how miserable life could be for some and how they chose to go on despite these difficulties.

Waller's approach is thorough. If you wanted to know how one was reimbursed following V2 bombing, how one bough sugar, or the practices of wartime criminals, this is the book for youThe Britain of the period amounts to a vastly different world in which all activity is governed by the state and to a degree that seems somewhat claustophobic by today's standards.

This is a remarkable book, both readable and comprehensive. Waller is to be commended for her scholarship and attention to detail.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb coverage of wartime London, July 26, 2005

By 

saskatoonguy (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: London 1945: Life in the Debris of War (Hardcover)

This well-written book covers life in London at the end of the war in immense detail. The ten chapters deal with (1) V-1/V-2 bombings, (2) censorship and propaganda, (3) housing, (4) rationing, (5) clothing, (6) crime, (7) V-E Day, (8) Churchill's defeat in the 1945 election, (9) heart-rending stories of the evacuation of children, and (10) demobilization and the transition to a peacetime society (my labels, not the book's).

First person narratives are intertwined with historical fact to create a book that conveys the full flavor of living in that era. The author especially emphasizes the bureaucratic side of wartime London. For example, when a house was bombed, a complex set of procedures came into play to assess whether the house could be repaired, to account for the inhabitants and rescue them, to guard property against looting, to determine whether payments were warranted under insurance policies, to find replacement housing, to replace lost ration tickets, and lastly to serve snacks to the homeless victims. Everything was thought out, and everything was done in a systematic manner. Of course, crime and abuses of the system were commonplace as well.

Even for those who are fairly knowledgeable about WWII history, it is amazing what Londoners suffered through. Homemakers had to be masters of bureaucracy to be on top of weekly changes to the ration system, as well as queuing for groceries and scrounging for clothes and household goods. The fear of being in the next bomb blast didn't disappear until the war ended. London housing was nothing to brag about even before the war, and during the war people crowded together in incredibly cramped conditions, often living in bombed-out ruins. Children were evacuated to the countryside for their own safety, but at the end of the war some children did not want to return to their real parents, and in many instances the parents didn't want their kids back. And when the war ended, wartime conditions continued. For instance, rationing continued after the war so that food could be provided to Germany. It took more than a decade after the war for London to truly recover. All in all, Waller has written a superb book that brings these events alive for the reader.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Courage as Man's Primary Virtue, July 19, 2005

By 

Peter H. Gleason - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: London 1945: Life in the Debris of War (Hardcover)

The publication of this book is timely. It gives an insight into what enormous civilian sacrifices war can require and what sparks the inspiration to persevere and to continue persevering through a long unremitting siege. It fosters a fesh awareness
of what duty, service, and charity can accomplish. Not all the players in this drama are saints, but abundant misdeeds are always upstaged by a fundamental decency as the citizens of London, somehow "out of the nettle danger" manage to "pluck the flower of safety." The reader wonders what will be the venue of the next ordeal of similar size.