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Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II Hardcover – July 3, 2012
| Keith Lowe (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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The Second World War might have officially ended in May 1945, but in reality it rumbled on for another ten years...
The end of the Second World War in Europe is one of the twentieth century's most iconic moments. It is fondly remembered as a time when cheering crowds filled the streets, danced, drank and made love until the small hours. These images of victory and celebration are so strong in our minds that the period of anarchy and civil war that followed has been forgotten. Across Europe, landscapes had been ravaged, entire cities razed and more than thirty million people had been killed in the war. The institutions that we now take for granted - such as the police, the media, transport, local and national government - were either entirely absent or hopelessly compromised. Crime rates were soaring, economies collapsing, and the European population was hovering on the brink of starvation. In Savage Continent, Keith Lowe describes a continent still racked by violence, where large sections of the population had yet to accept that the war was over. Individuals, communities and sometimes whole nations sought vengeance for the wrongs that had been done to them during the war. Germans and collaborators everywhere were rounded up, tormented and summarily executed. Concentration camps were reopened and filled with new victims who were tortured and starved. Violent anti-Semitism was reborn, sparking murders and new pogroms across Europe. Massacres were an integral part of the chaos and in some places – particularly Greece, Yugoslavia and Poland, as well as parts of Italy and France – they led to brutal civil wars. In some of the greatest acts of ethnic cleansing the world has ever seen, tens of millions were expelled from their ancestral homelands, often with the implicit blessing of the Allied authorities. Savage Continent is the story of post WWII Europe, in all its ugly detail, from the end of the war right up until the establishment of an uneasy stability across Europe towards the end of the 1940s. Based principally on primary sources from a dozen countries, Savage Continent is a frightening and thrilling chronicle of a world gone mad, the standard history of post WWII Europe for years to come.
- Print length480 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherSt. Martin's Press
- Publication dateJuly 3, 2012
- Dimensions6.44 x 1.6 x 9.61 inches
- ISBN-109781250000200
- ISBN-13978-1250000200
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“A superb and immensely important book.” ―The Washington Post
“Lowe's work, thoroughly researched and written with scrupulous objectivity, promises to be the year's best book on European history.” ―Financial Times (UK)
“Deeply harrowing. Moving, measured and provocative. A compelling picture of a continent physically and morally brutalized by slaughter.” ―Sunday Times (UK)
“Graphic and chilling. This excellent book paints a little-known and frightening picture of a continent in the embrace of lawlessness and chaos.” ―Ian Kershaw Bestselling author of The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1944-1945
About the Author
Keith Lowe is the author of two novels and the critically acclaimed history Inferno: The Fiery Devastation of Hamburg, 1943. He is widely recognized as an authority on the Second World War, and has often spoken on TV and radio, both in Britain and the United States. Most recently he was an historical consultant and one of the main speakers in the PBS documentary The Bombing of Germany which was also broadcast in Germany. His books have been translated into several languages, and he has also lectured in Britain, Canada and Germany. He lives in North London with his wife and two kids.
Product details
- ASIN : 1250000203
- Publisher : St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (July 3, 2012)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 480 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9781250000200
- ISBN-13 : 978-1250000200
- Item Weight : 1.6 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.44 x 1.6 x 9.61 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #776,749 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #6,589 in World War II History (Books)
- #9,603 in European History (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Keith Lowe was born in 1970 and studied English Literature at Manchester University. After twelve years as a history publisher, he embarked on a full-time career as a writer and historian, and is now recognized on both sides of the Atlantic as an authority on the Second World War and its aftermath. He is the author of the Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg 1943, and Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II, which won the 2013 PEN/Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History. In 2017 he published The Fear and the Freedom, to great acclaim. His books have been translated into twenty languages.
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The devastation wreaked upon cities where the conflict raged was extreme. In Germany, Berlin, Hanover, Duisburg, Dortmund, and Cologne lost more than half their habitable buildings, with the figure rising to 70% in the latter city. From Stalingrad to Warsaw to Caen in France, destruction was general with survivors living in the rubble. The transportation infrastructure was almost completely obliterated, along with services such as water, gas, electricity, and sanitation. The industrial plant was wiped out, and along with it the hope of employment. This was the state of affairs in May 1945, and the Marshall Plan did not begin to deliver assistance to Western Europe until three years later, in April 1948. Those three years were grim, and compounded by score-settling, revenge, political instability, and multitudes of displaced people returning to areas with no infrastructure to support them.
And this was in Western Europe. As is the case with just about everything regarding World War II in Europe, the further east you go, the worse things get. In the Soviet Union, 70,000 villages were destroyed, along with 32,000 factories. The redrawing of borders, particularly those of Poland and Germany, set the stage for a paroxysm of ethnic cleansing and mass migration as Poles were expelled from territory now incorporated into the Soviet Union and Germans from the western part of Poland. Reprisals against those accused of collaboration with the enemy were widespread, with murder not uncommon. Thirst for revenge extended to the innocent, including children fathered by soldiers of occupying armies.
The end of the War did not mean an end to the wars. As the author writes, “The Second World War was therefore not only a traditional conflict for territory: it was simultaneously a war of race, and a war of ideology, and was interlaced with half a dozen civil wars fought for purely local reasons.” Defeat of Germany did nothing to bring these other conflicts to an end. Guerrilla wars continued in the Baltic states annexed by the Soviet Union as partisans resisted the invader. An all-out civil war between communists and anti-communists erupted in Greece and was ended only through British and American aid to the anti-communists. Communist agitation escalated to violence in Italy and France. And country after country in Eastern Europe came under Soviet domination as puppet regimes were installed through coups, subversion, or rigged elections.
When reading a detailed history of a period most historians ignore, one finds oneself exclaiming over and over, “I didn't know that!”, and that is certainly the case here. This was a dark period, and no group seemed immune from regrettable acts, including Jews liberated from Nazi death camps and slave labourers freed as the Allies advanced: both sometimes took their revenge upon German civilians. As the author demonstrates, the aftermath of this period still simmers beneath the surface among the people involved—it has become part of the identity of ethnic groups which will outlive any person who actually remembers the events of the immediate postwar period.
In addition to providing an enlightening look at this neglected period, the events in the years following 1945 have much to teach us about those playing out today around the globe. We are seeing long-simmering ethnic and religious strife boil into open conflict as soon as the system is perturbed enough to knock the lid off the kettle. Borders drawn by politicians mean little when people's identity is defined by ancestry or faith, and memories are very long, measured sometimes in centuries. Even after a cataclysmic conflict which levels cities and reduces populations to near-medieval levels of subsistence, many people do not long for peace but instead seek revenge. Economic growth and prosperity can, indeed, change the attitude of societies and allow for alliances among former enemies (imagine how odd the phrase “Paris-Berlin axis”, heard today in discussions of the European Union, would have sounded in 1946), but the results of a protracted conflict can prevent the emergence of the very prosperity which might allow consigning it to the past.
But first, the destruction. Sure, there were no post-apocalyptic cannibals roaming around mainland Europe in the fall 1945, but at times this world doesn’t seem far off. A few facts bring this point to life; World War 2 killed nearly 40 million people, approximately 7% of Europe’s pre-war population (11); it left millions homeless, with nearly 20 million Germans alone without shelter and the Polish capital of Warsaw with only 2 working streetlights (8); it seemingly wiped out the demographic of men ages 17-40; it destroyed infrastructure, leaving walking as the only reliable method of travel on the continent (10); and perhaps worst of all, it unleashed a tide of vengeance carrying death, destruction, and political upheaval into the post-war years.
Lowe describes this post-war Europe as filled with “a cultural of casual sadism” where “Nazism [had] intoxicated a number of individuals to the point where they believe[d] that violence [was] always legitimate” (46). Some of this vengeance manifested itself in sad and bizarre ways; Lowe describes how “looting fever” (99) seized some cities where men would steal doorknobs from department stores despite the fact that nearly all doors had been blown off during the war. And some of the vengeance made m grimace; it’s thought that almost 2 million German women were raped in the aftermath of the war (55). With civil authorities weak, mob justice was a common tool used on collaborators and innocent political opponents alike.
However, as compelling as the numbers and stories that Lowe provides are, it’s viewing this horror in the context of its immediate past (the war itself) and distant future (Europe today) that give Keith Lowe’s book incredible power and meaning.
To me, three points stand out, and that I hope to remember.
First, Europe went from being one of the most ethnically diverse places on earth to a series of mono-cultural states. There are countless examples of this. Start with the fact that nearly the entire remaining Jewish population of Europe left the continent following the war. Pre-war Poland had the largest Jewish population of any nation on earth; post-war Poland, had very few. In addition to the well-documented Holocaust, post-war Europe saw huge land swaps and with each land swap, multi-cultural states were homogenized. Stalin took huge chunks of land from Poland (giving them Eastern Germany in return); Eastern Poland was given to Ukraine, Brest to Belarus, Vilnius to Lithuania. And with each land swap, diverse communities were forced to move to their “home” territory. Huge populations (an estimated 12 million people) of Volksdeutsche – German communities spread throughout Eastern Europe – were sent home in the wake of the war. There was a practical goal to this homogenization: to prevent future conflict. After all, post-war Europe saw brutal ethnic conflicts flare up between Ukraians and Poles, Serbs and Croats, Hungarians and Slovaks. A more homogenous Europe was thought to be a safer Europe. But Lowe is correct in pointing out the sad irony that post-war Europe accomplished some of the “racial purity” that Hitler hoped for: “Gone were the old imperial melting pots where Jews, Germans, Magyars, Slavs, and dozens of other races and nationalities intermarried, squabbled and rubbed along together as best they could” (248).
Second, the Second World War, like perhaps all wars, led to the creation of national myths of good versus evil, creation versus destruction, that belie the nuance and moral subjectivity of the war. While Lowe makes it clear that the atrocities that Allied forces committed during the war were “nothing like the scale of the Nazi war crimes”, he notes that “it is equally important to acknowledge that they did occur and that they were barbarous enough” (126). This is a note in history oft-forgotten. One I never really considered. The Poles were tough on German POWs and civilians alike, putting Germans in brutal labor camps built on the sites of former concentration camps. Brits and Americans alike agreed that Germans must pay for the war in labor. In Czechoslovakia, German civilians were told to wear armbands with “N” (Czech for “German”) on them and their rights were severely limited. Perhaps most bizarre of all is Lowe’s chapter on “horizontal collaborators”—women who slept with German soldiers. Lowe writes, “the number of sexual relationships that took place between European women and Germans during the war is quite staggering. In Norway, as many as 10% of women aged between 15 and 30 had German boyfriends during the war” (164). From the vantage point of nearly 70 years, it’s easy to view the war as a fight between good and evil. But Lowe brings to life a world of destruction where huge tracts of Europe collaborated, and perhaps even worse, civilians acquiesced and sought normalcy in a German-ruled Europe. Myths of national unity are nothing more than that: myths.
Just as brilliantly, Lowe succinctly jumps from one country to the next to illustrate separate points. He jumps to Romania to show how the threat of Soviet troops brought autocratic communists to power. He discusses Greece to show how British, and later, American, support galvanized anti-democratic forces to defeat communists in a bloody civil war. He looks at the depths of ethnic conflict by going to Yugoslavia and showing how the Ustasha Croats purged Serb minorities and then, in turn, were purged in Tito’s post-war regime.
Lastly, World War II was much more than just a war of Axis versus Allies. There were many wars and many separate struggles within World War II. Many of these conflicts dated back before the start of the war and many stretched on long after the war. Lowe provides one excellent example of how Italian communists fought 3 separate wars in parallel; a national war (against Nazi Germany), a civil war (against Italian fascists and collaborators), and a class war (against the bourgeoisie). More often than you might expect, made enemies of their friends and friends of their enemies.
Lowe presents a World War Two that was more than one conflict with moral ambiguities that fueled the chaos of and vengeance of post-war Europe. It’s this history that shaped the Europe we see today.
Top reviews from other countries
The "popular" perception of WW2 in Europe is a picture painted by the Allies after the war, to both justify their actions during the war and to further their political aims. The grossly simplistic picture of "the good Allies beating the nasty Germans, who committed the Holocaust" ignores the reality of a sea of small scale forgotten ethnic, political and civil wars, which, in my opinion, resulted in regional horrors that matched the Holocaust, but are now largely forgotten. This book is well researched, almost comprehensive and both an entertaining and thoroughly informative read. It also provides the student of WW2 with some understanding of the rationale for the Germans behaviour toward the various indigenous populations in the occupied countries.
My only major regret is that the author chose to "omit the horrors perpetrated against the German civil population by the Soviet forces, because this is well documented elsewhere" - this was a massive and unfortunate omission. To discover those events, and to gain a small understanding of why the German forces fought so desperately against the Soviets in 1945, you need to read Hellstorm: The Death of Nazi Germany by Thomas Goodrich.
I knew about the plight of millions of displaced people, the treatment of German prisoners of war, the suffering of women and children, the return of surviving Jews,etc...But what about more examples of lawlessness and chaos like the repulsive civil war in Greece, the insidious communist takeover of Eastern Europe, the shocking ethnic cleansing in Poland and Czechoslovakia , the rampant, persistent antisemitism, a little everywhere,...
Every chapter in this book is intensely disturbing and shocking . And now I think of 2015 : the constant threat posed by Putin's Russia, the offensive attitude of many East Europeans towards Syrian and Afghan refugees, the smouldering hatred between Croats, Muslims and Serbs , the Far Left in power in a Greece where the extreme Right is also all powerful and I ask myself : what have we learnt ? What is the purpose of knowing about past History ? Should this war that ended nearly 70 years ago be " regarded as little more than Ancient History " ? Should it be remembered ? It should not be allowed to poison the present, says Keith Lowe.
This is without any doubt one of the most powerful and impressive History books that I have ever read. Mr Lowe is a genius.
A good book will make you read more into the subject and I found myself buying more books about the aftermath of the war and finding out more horrific stories that today I am astounded that most people know nothing about.
I never knew of any film documentaries or books or even web pages that dealt with this subject until I read this book and I find it unbelievable that this subject is not spoke about in schools when learning about WW2. Deaths after the war are more than most other wars yet this subject is anonymous.
From other sources I have read or watched, most of what Keith Lowe writes is spot on. The fact I went on to find out and understand more is worth the 5 stars.
Some assertions clash with other sources: Lowe says that food was short in Germany all through the war, others that they were doing very well on plundered countries until the Russians pushed back; Lowe says that the Dutch hunger winter was circumstantial, others that the Nazis inflicted it in retaliation for the national rail strike; the destruction of Gestapo HQ in Copenhagen on 10.3.45 was not 'luck' but targeted with precision by the RAF.
For those of us who remember the Second World War ending in 1945, this book by Keith Lowe will shake you to the bones. It took me a month to finish this harrowing history, mostly because it was so depressing.
The truth is the war ended in the 1950's. Killing continued, ethnic cleansing erupted, Communism spread tyranny, mass migration of millions of people (especially 11 million Germans) - all were the rule in Europe in the supposed post- war environment till much later. Particularly harrowing is the history of the Jews in this post war period. It is impossible to understand why Israel exists without understanding how the Holocaust continued after German defeat, especially in light of the behaviour of the Poles and the pathetic reaction of the Allies to the Jewish plight.
Lowe is thorough and reaches into the history with skill. He unearths great examples, and puts the shape of the events in perspective. He writes well, but not exceptionally well, like Beevor, Montefiore or other top flight new historians of the war. So he loses a star for style but not content. Perhaps his lack of narrative skill also slowed my completion of this sizeable book.
I learned a great deal from this book - and that is something I don't usually say - and recommend it without reservation










