Savage continent / 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.