Lowe, Keith

Recounts the disorder in Europe after World War II, describing the brutal acts against Germans and collaborators, the anti-Semitic beliefs that reemerged and the Allied-tolerated expulsions of citizens from their ancestral homelands.

The end of World War II was met with cheering crowds and many celebrations. The period of anarchy and civil war that also followed the end of World War II has been forgotten. Across Europe more than thirty million people had been killed in the war and the infastructure, and institutions we take for granted, such as police, transport and governments, were either absent or seriously compromised. With collapsing economies everywhere, the entire European population was on the brink of starvation. Although the actual war was over the fight to rebuild Europe was only beginning.

In the summer of 1943, British and American bombers launched an attack on the German city of Hamburg. For ten days they pounded the city with over 9,000 tons of bombs. The firestorm they created was visible for 200 miles, and pockets burned for a month. After the bombing, as the people of Hamburg emerged from their cellars and shelters, they were confronted with a vision of hell: a sea of flame, the burned-out husks of fire engines, roads that had become flaming rivers of melted tarmac, and hurricane-force winds.