Utterly chastening reading: "Savage Continent" by Keith Lowe.

If there were ever a risk that I would become too frivolous in my holiday reading habits, this book most decidedly redressed the balance. A gruelling read, not because it was badly or turgidly written, but because of the stories it tells. Lowe's intention with this work is to fill a gap, especially for the general reader, in the usual accounts of European history which take us from the end of the Second World War into the postwar era.

As aficionados of this blog will be aware, there have been quite a few history books covering the final stages of the War, the great power politics of the immediate aftermath and the early stages of the Cold War. But for me at least there was indeed a gap, about which I had often wondered: what was happening "on the ground" in the year or two after the formal end of hostilities? As Lowe points out, the Brits and Americans in particular are prone to place a full stop at VE Day (one definitely relativises the term "victory" after reading this book), after which Europe gets into the business of rebuilding and recovering. Well, as Lowe demonstrates, it ain't quite that simple.

We knew that, of course, but I guess many people, like me, had no concept of the sheer scale of the horrors which filled the years between 1945 and 1949 (for many well beyond that). At the outset, Lowe sets the scene by giving some indication of the sheer scale of death and destruction unleashed by the War itself and the utter devastation visited on vast tracts of the continent, which, particularly in the East, we're beyond the imaginings of British and American observers. The physical infrastructure was in ruins, vital supplies were lacking (hundreds of thousands starved to death across Europe in 1944-5) and millions of people were homeless and displaced. In this situation, civilisation breaks down. As Lowe puts it in his introduction:

Imagine a world without institutions. It is a world where borders between countries seem to have dissolved, leaving a single, endless landscape over which people travel in search of communities that no longer exist. There are no governments any more, on either a national scale or even a local one. There are no schools or universities, no libraries or archives, no access to any information whatsoever. (...) There are no banks, but that is no great hardship because money no longer has any worth. There are no shops, because no one has anything to sell. Nothing is made here: the great factories and businesses that used to exist have all been destroyed or dismantled, as have most of the other buildings. There are no tools, save what can be dug out of the rubble. There is no food. Law and order are virtually non-existent because there is no police force and no judiciary. In some areas there no longer seems to be any sense of what is right and wrong. (...) Goods belong only to those who are strong enough to hold on to them, and those willing to guard them with their lives. Men with weapons roam the streets taking what they want and threatening anyone who gets in their way. Women of all classes and ages prostitute themselves for food and protection. There is no shame. There is no morality. There is only survival.

It sounds like a Hollywood script for some post-apocalyptic movie, but this was reality for millions of people across swathes of Europe.
Lowe is unsparing in his descriptions of what happened in those few benighted years. The degradation, the brutality, the loss of any moral compass are appalling. It is hard to imagine, but the scarcely believable horrors of today's Syria and Iraq, the depredations of the black flag waving fanatics, were the all-too-believable reality of Europe just seventy years ago, on a vastly greater scale. Millions died. The cruelty was inconceivable, the descent into barbarism utterly shocking. Though, as is repeatedly pointed out, the sheer scale of the chaos was far, far greater in Eastern Europe, no-one was immune, no-one can claim to be free of guilt for terrible abuses in that period, no, not even the "greatest generation" of the Western allies. 

The book examines the many reasons for the continuing hatred and violence in post war Europe: vengeance, racial and ethnic hatred, nationalism, political ideology, great power politics, straightforward competition for scarce resources, and, yes, the sadistic tendencies at large in a brutalised population. Since the War, many nations and political ideologies have sought to use the events of this period to build collective myths of glory or victimhood, and to bolster sense of identity, usually through the demonisation of others. But though Lowe is careful to avoid any notion of moral equivalence between, say, systematic policies of extermination and genocide and the many postwar anti-Semitic pogroms or between the brutal repression of opposition to communism in Eastern Europe by the Soviets and the propping up of right-wing regimes by the British and Americans in Greece, he also makes it clear that everyone have good reason to look to their conscience for what they did in that period.

I was for example disturbed and shocked to discover the spiral of horrific massacres perpetrated by Polish and Ukrainian nationalists against each others' civilian populations, and a great deal else which occurred in a period of brutal and systematic ethnic cleansing across the shifting territories of Ukraine, Poland and Eastern Germany. Closer to home, I am horrified to discover the callousness with which the British delivered surrendering combatants from Yugoslavia into the hands of those they knew would torture and kill them, as well as the ferocity with which postwar accounts were settled in central and northern Italy.

So is this a tale of despair? To an extent, yes, for it reveals how far humanity as such can descend, how civilisation is provisional and how long standing hatreds can lie dormant for decades or longer and resurface brutally when the circumstances are propitious (think Yugoslavia...). But that is not the whole story.

First, to understand Europe today, one has to understand this period. Lowe is attentive at all times to point out that, while one cannot justify what happened, one can generally explain it. Things happen for reasons, and many of those reasons continue to exist today. If we understand them and know where they can lead if we fail to address them, we can perhaps control them. In some parts of Europe, especially in its Eastern half, much of what happened is much closer to the surface than many westerners appreciate, and the intervening years, many of them locked down by the soviet system, have not allowed demons to be exorcised to the same extent as has occurred in the West.

This understanding is also a form of defence against the revival of extremist rhetoric we are currently witnessing in Europe. Lowe's book is recent enough to identify the trend towards a revival of nationalistic ideologies across Europe, with extremist politicians citing exactly the same grievances and myths which justified many of the crimes and atrocities committed in the immediate postwar period. Our knowledge and understanding of those events is at least a line of defence against the backsliding we are now witnessing. 

Those who wish to harness hatred and resentment for their own gain always try to distort the proper balance between one version of history and another. They take events out of context; they make blame a one-sided game; and they try to convince us that historical problems are the problems of today. If we are to bring an end to the cycle of hatred and violence we must do precisely the opposite of these things. We must show how competing views of history an exist alongside one another. We must show how past atrocities fit into their historical context,and how blame necessarily attaches itself not just to one party, but to a whole variety of parties. We must strive always to discover the truth, particularly when it comes to statistics, and then put that truth to bed. It is, after all, history, and should not be allowed to poison the present.

Finally, the fact remains, almost miraculous against this background, that Europe did revive, did achieve a new balance and develop a new model explicitly designed to prevent the reemergence of ethnic or nationalistic conflict. It is fashionable to say that the underlying and most fundamental goal of European integration, which for the last ten years, of course, has included much of the part of Europe where the experience of the conflict was most brutal and where nationalistic myth-making is still a powerful and prominent force, namely to prevent war in Europe, is one that no longer holds any purchase with Europeans, too long accustomed to prosperity and too distanced from World War Two. Well, this book, or at least a real understanding of the period it describes, rather than than the self-interested partial accounts of the nationalists and neo-ethnic cleansers, is one antidote. It is hard to read this without reflecting how fragile our peace is, how deep our conflicts run and how comprehensively, once the taboos are broken, it can all fall apart.

When François Mitterand, in one of his last public appearances, addressed the European Parliament in 1995, he spoke for a generation which had experienced this period first hand. As we now know, he himself knew all about the moral ambiguities that that time brought. In his speech, he implored the deputies to keep the flame, to defend a vision of Europe which would never allow nationalism to revive. "Le nationalisme, c'est la guerre!" he proclaimed. Now, having read this truly shocking book, I feel I more genuinely understand what he meant.

Recommendation? This is by no means an easy read, but it is an important one.