After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation

I enjoyed this book mainly because the controversial subject matter has seldom been examined in such detail or depth. Although it is very long book, it is a thoroughly absorbing read and is difficult to put down once you pick it up. It is important for the reader to know that this book does NOT explore the racism and brutality of the National Socialist Regime that controlled Germany from 1932-1945. It is the authors opinion, and my own, that enough has been written about the atrocities of Hitlers Third Reich. We see it in books, newspapers, and movies--all the time, and everywhere. German National Socialists were not exactly known for being kind hearted or tolerant of diversity. This book is essentially about the experiences of the German people in the aftermath of the Second World War.The author gives a very detailed and graphic account of the horrific suffering of the German people under the yoke of the victorious--and shockingly vindictive--Allied Powers. This book exposes the mistreatment of German prisoners of war while also chronicling the daily hardships and desperate struggle for survival of the civilian population. Many western historians argue that the German people got what they deserved for waging an aggressive war against the European community of nations at the behest of Hitler. The author makes many convincing arguments against this supposition throughout the book. It wasnt only the Nazis, their policy makers, and their enforcers who suffered retribution in the immediate aftermath of the war. We learn that the shocking abuse and enforced humiliation of the German public affected the entire spectrum of German society. As was the case in nearly every war in the twentieth century, the people who suffered the most were always the most vulnerable; the women, the children, and the elderly. The disturbing notion of 'collective guilt' is a subject explored and expounded upon by the author throughout the book. To this day, many people hold the entire German nation responsible for the sins of its leaders in World War II. Not just Adolf Hitler, the entire military, the Gestapo,and Nazi party cardholders, but also the entire civilian population. I feel the author argues effectively against the absurdity of this notion. Many of this books detractors fail to realize that German citizens really didn't have freedom of expression or speech in Hitlers Germany. As was the case in Soviet Russia, dissenters, critics, or anyone suspected of opposition or defeatsim in the Third Reich simply 'disappeared'--either murdered outright or relocated to a concentration camp after a brutal interrogation. The Gestapo made little distinction between guilt or innocence in ridding Nazi Germany of subversive individuals while breaking down doors in the middle of the night. Thus, a healthy majority of rank and file German citizens kept politically incorrect opinions to themselves for reasons that should be obvious. We now know there were many Germans who opposed the war, including many high ranking members of the German military apparatus. At the end of the conflict, only a very small percentage of Germans actually fit the Allied Powers' definition of 'war criminal'. Nevertheless, the entire German population was made to pay dearly for the sins of their leaders after the war. Sadly, over two million German women were raped(many of them repeatedly in the Soviet sector) leading to venereal disease, thousands of pregnancies, and an alarming number of suicides. Compounding their misery, the German population was mercilessly bombed until the very last days of the war, and millions of German men(soldiers and civilians) were imprisoned, marched off, and illegally enslaved by France, Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was predictably the worst offender, and it comes as little surprise that many of the hundreds of thousands of German men sent eastward didn't survive their journey to Siberia, and even fewer endured long enough to straggle back to Germany after being repatriated a decade later. While the German population was literally starving to death and feral, parentless children were darting through the rubble of their flattened cities, victorious powers were squabbling over their respective spoils of war. I was struck by the sickening hypocrisy of it all. It took the Allies far too many months to realize that it was in their best interest to get Germany rebuilt and quickly reintegrated back into the community of nations. After many months the dust finally settled on a chaotic postwar Europe, and it fell to The United States to save Western Europe and Germany from a horrific fate by feeding her population and getting her infrastructure up and running again. Looking back through time it is difficult to understand why it took the United States such a long time to figure out the dubious and self-serving policy of Soviet Russia. Promises and agreements made to the Allies were seldom kept by Stalin, and by 1946 the Cold War was an undeniable reality. I highly recommend this book as it repeatedly challenges conventional wisdom and brings alot of ignored and supressed historical information into the light of day. In so doing, the reader is provided with much food for thought. War is no picnic, but France, Britain, and The United States could have done much better in their governance of Germany after the war and been firmer in their dealings with their new adversary--Stalins USSR. Further, the Western Powers should have at least practiced what they had been preaching to their captive German audiences.

AFTER THE REICH is a good compilation documenting the total collapse of the German government and of a German people at the complete mercy of the victors. The book is complete with many first person narratives of the difficult lean years following the end of the European war. The account makes no judgement as to whether the Germans deserved what they got or whether the Allies were too harsh on a people that they, for better or worse, gained responsibility for once an area was overrun. It really becomes a question as to whether or not you view Germany as liberated or conquered.Much of this story has been told before and appeared in various books such as THE LAST DAY OF THE WAR, THE LAST 100 DAYS, THE BATTLE OF BERLIN, and so on. I also read a German book, loosely translated, THE OCCUPIERS AND THE OCCUPIED. As such you find many of the same themes: Bombed out cities, forced evacuations, winters with no heat, households with no food, and nasty deeds committed by the Red Army and its clients. What I did find new with this book was more detailed information about the fate of the German territories and population east of the Oder Neisse line, as well as the remaining German population in East Prussia. There was also quite a bit about how the vengeful Czechs were apt pupils of their former masters and took revenge to the extreme.The book also spends several chapters discussing Austria and how quickly the Austrians disassociated themselves from the Germans and Germany. It is not difficult to imagine the Austrians flying the swastika one day and digging through their closets to display Austrian flags the next.The book's narrative timeline begins during the last months of war. Only a year prior to the surrender the Third Reich occupied almost half of Europe. By May 1945,though the last vestiges of the German army continued to fight on, "liberated" Germans were already feeling the victors' wrath. As the Allies did not yet have a unified plan for post war Germany the people were generally treated as little more than serfs in their own bombed out country. The eleventh hour French wanted revenge, the British sought to restore some order by pushing for the restoration of limited self government, while the Americans pushed through Germany with little to no plan at all. Meanwhile the Soviets were busy annexing half of East Prussia and making a gift of the remaining German lands east of the Oder to the Poles. The Soviets moved into Germany with a no-holds-barred approach to private property and personal civil rights. Life was certainly cheap for Germans in the eastern territories.What becomes clear is that as the German forces were pushed back or rapidly withdrew they left a power vacuum in their wake. This was very evident in the east. For those "Germans" left behind in eastern Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia law and order disappeared overnight. The void was rapidly filled by competing armed mobs, bandits claiming to be resistance fighters, and other armed irregulars whose only purpose seemed to be to rob, pillage, torture, and kill. The Czechs in particular took over operation of former Nazi camps and herded in Germans by the thousand. "German" was a broad definition applied to legitimate German nationals, people who spoke German, professionals, and essentially anyone who had something the armed brigands wanted.In the midst of the crisis the Red Army turned a blind eye to the plight of soldiers and civilians alike. Remember that to the communist Russian way of thinking there was no distinction between German soldier and German civilian. Everyone was considered a potential war criminal. However, even though the Soviets were carting off whole factories and emptying out museums the Red Army did restore some order. In occupied Austria and Berlin they organized local governments, reopened theaters, and prompted the resumption of newspapers and radio. In this the Russians were leagues ahead of the western Allies.The British, French, and Americans all handled their zones with different political agendas. Over the course of several chapters it is clear that the western Allies moved away from their philosophy that Germany would never rise again once the Cold War kicked into high gear. In essence Germany benefited from the Cold War in that attention was turned toward the evil Communist east and West Germany was finally united as a political unit.The reason I gave AFTER THE REICH only three stars is that it suprsingly lacks balance when discussing the toils and tribulations of the Germans themselves. Surely there must have been German farmers, family households, and businessmen who did not suffer lost homes, ruined cities, unheated houses, or desperate hunger. Not every village was flattened by bombs or forfeited to Poland. For the most part the book focuses on the German soldiers and civilians who suffered in the worst possible situations. No doubt there were hundreds of thousands, if not millions, who did. As such there had to be an equal number who managed somewhat better and did not lose all of their possessions. I suppose those stories would not make much in the way of intersting reading.AFTER THE REICH is a book that should be read in conjunction with other references on the subject. In fact a great companion volume for AFTER THE REICH is ENDGAME.

Having read some of the other reviews I'm not sure I've read the same book. I didn't get any sense of back-pedalling on collective guilt, it's not as if the Gestapo and the SS acted invisibly, though common sense can only tell you that at the time the non-response to disappearing neighbours would have been rooted anywhere on the spectrum between fear motivated by self-preservation and being totally on-board with it. The same applies to the aftermath of the war and the Allied occupation of Germany. There can't be any black and white about it. We all know human nature and there's no way that the western Allies did not commit some atrocities. The scale of them isn't really the point. While Russian behaviour is well documented and the fact that their country was ravaged can never be an excuse for the rape of the defenceless and innocent. What did chime badly with me was the suggestion that the Russians were much more concerned than the other allies with the day to day welfare of DPs in their own sphere of influence. Again, it can't be black and white, and I'm sure there were decent men among the Russian conquerors but if Stalin treated his own liberated countrymen with murderous paranoid distrust why would he treat foreign DPs with kid gloves? All in all the book is a very engaging read and I was continually impressed by the research that must have gone into it. Whatever you end up getting out of this book it's worth not ignoring. Watch 'The Big Lift', starring Montgomery Clift, which was actually filmed in Berlin at the time of the Berlin Airlift. It's not a great film but you get to see Berlin as it was at the time.

This is a very detailed description of the treatment of the Germans after the surrender in May 1945. A lot of this will not be common knowledge to most British people, as it has been left out of the history books. It was certainly news to me, and I have read a lot of history. I had vaguely heard of the Oder-Neisse Line, but never realized that the areas east of here which were transferred to Poland had mostly never ever been Polish. The detailed descriptions of the manner of the expulsions of the German inhabitants of these and other eastern regions make for a gruelling read.Of course, the Nazis had treated the peoples of eastern Europe abominably, and their reaction is to some extent understandable. Still makes uncomfortable reading however.This book will be a eye opener to many readers in Britain, and is a very well written account of a little known subject. It's a long read, but well worth the effort.

Over the years I have ever read many many books on World War 2 but virtually nothing about the after mouth of War and how it effected the "conquered"/defeated peoples of Europe. This book fills that gap. It made sobering reading regarding how poorly some of the Allied troops and people with axes to grind behaved in victory. This book also helps you appreciate how the Cold War started. The book is well researched and well written. I could not put the book down.

A fascinating read which brings to life what is rarely told in history or film. What happened to the Germans whom had spread themselves around europe under the nazi occupation. As one can imagine, it did not go too well for them as the nations sought their revenge against anything german. Despite germany reaping what it had sowed it is still difficult to read and comprehend the brutality and anger unleashed on a retreating german army and their peoples but at the same time it is understandable. This book is an eye opener to such events.

It made me wonder who were the worst war criminals. Driving over 18 million ethnic Germans from their ancient homes and millions died on the forced trek to the West. Its an amazing piece of hidden history that no one talks about.