出版社: St. Martin's Press
副标题: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II
出版年: 2012-7-3
页数: 480
定价: USD 30.00
装帧: Hardcover
ISBN: 9781250000200
内容简介 · · · · · ·
Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War Two, By Keith Lowe
Brendan Simms
In his memoir If This is a Man, the Italian writer Primo Levi recalls that the most terrifying time for him at Auschwitz was not the years of incarceration by the Nazis, when beatings, hunger, back-breaking work and the threat of murder were omnipresent. He came closest to despair during the...
Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War Two, By Keith Lowe
Brendan Simms
In his memoir If This is a Man, the Italian writer Primo Levi recalls that the most terrifying time for him at Auschwitz was not the years of incarceration by the Nazis, when beatings, hunger, back-breaking work and the threat of murder were omnipresent. He came closest to despair during the vacuum between the flight of the guards and the arrival of the Red Army. This period, in which the prisoners were effectively left to their own devices, was characterised by a complete breakdown of all authority, however unjust, as well as the system of supply. I was reminded of these passages when reading Keith Lowe's Savage Continent: an excellent account of the two years or so between the end of hostilities in Europe with the defeat of Hitler, and the establishment of the Cold War order.
As the author points out, the Second World War did not end in 1945. In large parts of the continent, the contest lasted a lot longer as Polish, Ukrainian, Baltic and Greek partisans battled on in the mountains and forests of Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean. Some of these stories, such as the post-war travails of the Greeks, are well known to Western audiences, but the activities of the Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian anti-Soviet "Forest Brothers" are not. Perhaps the most arresting fact in this compelling book is that the last Estonian guerrilla fighter, August Sabbe, was killed as late as 1978, trying to escape capture.
Even where there was no fighting, Lowe demonstrates, Europe was in flux. A contemporary observer described Germany, the crossroads of the continent, as "one huge ants' nest", in which everyone was on the move. There were refugees everywhere, some trying to escape the victors, others returning to their homes. Millions of German prisoners of war were crammed into insanitary Anglo-American camps in the West; and they were the lucky ones, unlike those captured by the Russians and taken to camps in Siberia, or murdered en route. Almost everywhere, the Nazi collapse was followed by a bloody settling of scores against real or alleged collaborators. Lowe shows that the numbers affected in places like France to have been much exaggerated by subsequent myth-makers; in Yugoslavia, on the other hand, the reckoning was truly horrific, the more so as British troops were actively involved in sending men and women back to face certain death at Tito's hands.
All this was accompanied by the greatest population shifts in Europe since the Dark Ages. These had, of course, begun during the war. Lowe notes the huge void left by the Nazi murder of the Jews, but he points out that it was not so much the Holocaust itself as the persistence of anti-Semitism in places like Poland and Hungary which persuaded so many survivors to make for Israel or the US. In eastern Poland and western Ukraine, new borders led to a massive exchange of populations attended by great hardship and brutality.
The principal post-war victims, however, were the Germans, systematically expelled by the Czechs and Poles from lands which they had settled for hundreds of years. Lowe describes these events too with admirable sensitivity, placing them squarely in the context of prior Nazi policies, without in any way justifying them.
Europe was also in political flux. The war had destroyed the standing of the old elites, and brought the Red Army into the heart of the continent. It was Soviet power, rather than the failure of the ancien regime as such, which underpinned the wave of Communist takeovers in Eastern Europe. Lowe describes the Romanian case in fascinating detail. Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Bulgaria all met broadly similar fates: red terror, arrests, expropriation of land and property, and executions. In Greece, the boot was on the other foot, as the right-wing government parlayed first British then American help into brutal victory over the communists. Lowe notes the "unpleasant symmetry" caused by Cold War imperatives without in any way denying that "the capitalist model of politics was self-evidently more inclusive, more democratic and ultimately more successful than Stalinist communism".
Savage Continent is thus a fitting title for this book, and surely also an allusion to Dark Continent, Mark Mazower's brilliant history of the 20th century. Lowe's vivid descriptions of Europeans scrambling for scraps of food, rampant theft and "destruction of morals" are a timely reminder that a certain humility is in order when we look at less fortunate continents today. The author is also right to remind us, with respect to current travails in Iraq and Afghanistan, just how long it took to rebuild Europe and for democracy to take root – or to return.
That said, Lowe could perhaps have said more about the Europeans who emerged from the war with a new and uplifting vision: that the only way for the continent to prevent this from happening again, and to realise its full potential, was to chart a course towards greater unity. It was in the midst of the ruins described by this book that men such as Robert Schuman, Jean Monnet, Alcide de Gasperi and Altero Spinelli were taking the first steps towards what was to become the European Union. In this sense, Europe is a continent which contains not only the seeds of its self-destruction but also of its renewal.
Savage Continent的创作者
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基思·罗威 作者
作者简介 · · · · · ·
基思·罗威(Keith Lowe),全职作家和历史学家,曾做过十余年的历史类图书出版商。他被公认为二战史权威,经常在英国和美国的电视广播上发表意见。饱受赞誉的历史著作《火焰地狱:1943年汉堡灭顶之灾》(Inferno: The Devastation of Hambu rg, 1943)即出自他之手。
黎英亮,历史学博士,华南师范大学讲师,著有《现代国际生活的规则:国际法的诞生》《何谓民族?:普法战争与厄内斯特·勒南的民族主义思想》,译有《浩劫之地》(即将出版)。
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Savage Continent的书评 · · · · · · ( 全部 105 条 )
战争是释放人性恶的魔鬼
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这本书属于断代史,只是记述了从1945年----50年代发生在欧洲的事件(并不包括苏联)。有时候断代史比长期稳定的王朝史更重要,因为发生在数年内的历史实际上导致了以后各国制度、疆域、指导思想的构成,直接解释了为什么建立这样的制度以及保持相对稳定的原因。这本书就是... (展开)和平的到來是許多的苦難換來的
往事不堪回首|《野蛮大陆——第二次世界大战后的欧洲》
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在化学反应中,反应物和生成物各自对应一种稳态。而两者之间的过渡期,即反应过程本身,是物质最不稳定的失态。宏观层面,反应物吸收或释放能量;如果我们深入原子的世界,就会发现,哪怕是很缓慢的反应,都无法避免混乱局面的出现——旧有的分子结构分崩离析,无数重获自由的... (展开)论坛 · · · · · ·
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订阅关于Savage Continent的评论:
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0 有用 Fred001 2015-08-08 20:25:29
战后反犹的回潮……唉
1 有用 Hildy at beach 2022-12-14 23:06:21 上海
If we do not remember the past, we will repeat the disaster, no, that is not accurate, if we do not remember the past right, we will be doomed to repeat the disaster. The distorted history is much mor... If we do not remember the past, we will repeat the disaster, no, that is not accurate, if we do not remember the past right, we will be doomed to repeat the disaster. The distorted history is much more dangerous and poisonous. Not hard to read, it is just sad to read. (展开)
0 有用 yz 2021-12-27 14:04:05
疫情时间每天蜗在房间里读完的。轻舟已过万重山
0 有用 拉玛诞🌈 2023-10-14 19:46:52 江西
丑陋的人类......!
0 有用 momo 2022-12-26 19:27:58 瑞典
前40%看得还算认真,深切地让人体会到,人性不分地区,战争让人性最丑陋的一面暴露得淋漓尽致,只希望世界和平吧。可惜这本书越看越觉得dry,各种数据堆积,穿插一些anecdotes,读起来很像textbook。真正有意义分析的部分不多,后半节基本上是跳着看完的,可能实在耐心有限。
0 有用 拉玛诞🌈 2023-10-14 19:46:52 江西
丑陋的人类......!
0 有用 薏米 2023-10-11 23:58:37 四川
好难过,为各民族之间的互相屠杀。。。
0 有用 莉塔小姐 2022-12-31 17:25:24 广东
对我来说就是mind blowing的一本书,非常的informative ,对想了解欧洲二战后历史的人来说非常推荐,英文版虽然有点长但是很好读。
0 有用 momo 2022-12-26 19:27:58 瑞典
前40%看得还算认真,深切地让人体会到,人性不分地区,战争让人性最丑陋的一面暴露得淋漓尽致,只希望世界和平吧。可惜这本书越看越觉得dry,各种数据堆积,穿插一些anecdotes,读起来很像textbook。真正有意义分析的部分不多,后半节基本上是跳着看完的,可能实在耐心有限。
1 有用 Hildy at beach 2022-12-14 23:06:21 上海
If we do not remember the past, we will repeat the disaster, no, that is not accurate, if we do not remember the past right, we will be doomed to repeat the disaster. The distorted history is much mor... If we do not remember the past, we will repeat the disaster, no, that is not accurate, if we do not remember the past right, we will be doomed to repeat the disaster. The distorted history is much more dangerous and poisonous. Not hard to read, it is just sad to read. (展开)