Anul Zero: 1945, o istorie

by Ian Buruma, Anca Bărbulescu (trad.)

A pleca de la zero înseamnă a lua totul de la capăt. Dar oare poţi să iei totul de la capăt după un război care a schimonosit planeta? Poţi să ceri doar dreptate, nu şi răzbunare? Poţi să ierţi? Poţi să ieşi teafăr din cel mai negru coşmar? Sunt câteva dintre întrebările pe care şi le pune Ian Buruma într-o carte fundamentală pentru înţelegerea a ceea ce s-a întâmplat cu adevărat după încheierea celui de-al Doilea Război Mondial.
Pornind de la experienţa prin care a trecut tatăl său, Ian Buruma scrie despre câteva dintre lucrurile care au marcat anul 1945: reinserţia supravieţuitorilor, violenţa anarhică sau sistematizată, răzbunarea sălbatică, fanatismul, concesiile, cedările şi complicităţile fără de care nu se putea pune problema revirimentului.
1945 a fost un an tulbure şi însângerat („Iar sângele cere sânge“, după cum spune Macbeth). A fost anul în care unii vinovaţi pentru oroarea războiului au plătit, iar alţii au scăpat. A fost anul în care s-au descoperit ororile din lagărele de exterminare naziste. A fost anul în care torţionarii au cumpărat de pe piaţa neagră certificate de supravieţuitori ai lagărelor. A fost anul în care, întorşi acasă mai mult morţi decât vii, unora dintre supravieţuitori li s-a spus: „Şi la noi a fost rău. Ne-au furat bicicleta“.
1945 sau Anul Zero a fost şi punctul de plecare al ideii şi construcţiei europene, animate de idealurile generoase, deşi utopice, ale păcii eterne şi unităţii creştine. Şi chiar dacă, aşa cum scrie undeva Monica Lovinescu, „în rău, specia umană ne va surprinde mereu“, 1945 a fost anul în care lumea s-a redeprins cu un adevăr esenţial: că temperatura naturală a existenţei noastre e temperatura libertăţii.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, World War II, War, World History, Politics, Japan

424 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Ian Buruma is a British-Dutch writer and academic, much of whose work focuses on the culture of Asia, particularly that of 20th-century Japan, where he lived and worked for many years.

Reviews

[William2 · Rating 4 out of 5]

An unsummarizable book. Scabrous accounts of mass slaughter and genocide that I have not come across elsewhere.

There’s a lot of subject matter covered here. Let me comment on just one thing.

I have read many accounts of Jews returning home from the Nazi concentration camps. Primi Levi and other writers have told of the silence of the survivors, their unwillingness to speak of trauma. Baruma writes here about how the few Jews who returned from the concentration camps to their homes in the Netherlands were told by the Dutch not to speak of their suffering. For their travails could not have been worse than that of those who had survived the war at home. And I wonder if the latter did not in someway inform the former. That is, if you were Jewish, especially in the Netherlands but elsewhere, too, was your silence in whole or in part a response to those who couldn’t handle the truth?

“The fact is, Jewish survivors were an embarrassment. They did not fit the heroic narrative that was being hastily constructed in the wreckage of the war, in the Netherlands, in France, or indeed in anywhere people sought to forget inconvenient, painful truths about the past. Men and women who had survived the humiliation of wartime occupation as best they could, by keeping their heads down and looking the other way when bad things happened to others, [now] pretended to have been heroes all along.” (p. 136)

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book had been on my TBR list for several years, and came to the top after I saw a review of another of the author’s books from my GR Friend Dmitri, who described Ian Buruma as a lively writer. After reading this I would agree with that assessment.

The early chapters of the book deal with immediate aftermath of WW2 and are headed into chapters entitled “Exultation”, “Hunger”, “Revenge”, etc before the book gradually moves on to examine the emergence of the new international order. I had previously read a couple of books by the historian Keith Lowe, that covered similar ground to this. The extent of devastation and suffering in Europe and Asia after WW2 is incomprehensible to someone like me, who has spent their life in a wealthy and peaceful part of the world.

There’s too much in this book for me write a comprehensive summary, so I’ll just pick out a few things that stood out for me. One was the deportation, by the British, of Soviet POWs back to the USSR, often to their deaths. The deportations also included émigré anti-Communist Cossacks (and their families) who had fought with the Germans during the war, and the descriptions in the book were quite distressing. Another chapter covered the inconsistent treatment of war criminals, some of whom escaped justice by persuading the Americans that they might be useful. One of the worst cases was that of Ishii Shirō, the Director of the Japanese Army’s notorious “Unit 731”, where horrific medical experiments were carried out on living human beings. I would say though, that the fact some war criminals escaped justice does not mean that none should have been prosecuted.

One of the most interesting of the author’s observations was that WW2 really brought to an end the philosophy of “laissez-faire” economics that had previously prevailed in many countries, not least the UK. In the US the New Deal had arrived before the war, but Ian Buruma argues that the EU is one of the most lasting legacies of post-war state planning, “rotting and battered, yet still standing”. His comments were written prior to Brexit, which has left the EU looking even more battered, but the edifice still stands. The book finishes with the creation of the United Nations, and the largely unrealised idealism behind that organisation.

“The main question, worked on all through the war by bureaucrats, planners, diplomats, and the Allied leaders, was how to transform the wartime alliance into a stable international order for peace. How to avoid another worldwide economic slump. How to stop future Hitlers from starting another world war.”

The modern world that was created in 1945 is far from a perfect place, but so far, it has proved to be a far better place than the hell of the 1930s and 1940s.

[Victor · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is trying to cover an enormous ground of post-WW2 chaos around the globe. It does a decent job overall, but the monumental nature of the task is certainly beyond the scope of a 400-page treatise. And there lie Year Zero's strength and shortcoming: the book is concise but superficial.
I liked the descriptions of Japan and the Eastern theater of WW2. Buruma draws some parallels comparing West to East in regards to the war atrocities and the aftermath, which I found illuminating. However, the materials used in the extensive research mostly came from the Western world and reflect the Western bias, which occasionally becomes an outright propaganda.
The historical narrative is interspersed with anecdotes and personal stories to illustrate the point, which is another strength of Year Zero in my opinion.
Overall, Buruma provided a good introduction to post-WW2 chapter in history. Although not overtly stated, one can see the beginning of the next chapter--the Cold War. I would recommend Year Zero to anyone interested in an overview book.

[Clif Hostetler · Rating 4 out of 5]

The year 1945 was year zero for me personally since I was born that year. I have generally assumed that it was a happy year since it included both the end of World War II and my birth. This book helped me learn that the year 1945 was filled with a complex mix of exultation, hunger, revenge and hope. One kind of killing may have ended when the war ended, but not all killing stopped. Unfortunately, misery of all sorts was widespread throughout the world.

Camps for displaced people were numerous and full due to the social upheaval of the war. The concentration and death camp survivors in most cases had no home to return to. Those who did attempt to return to their former homes often found that they were not welcome, and the house or apartment where they used to live (if not destroyed by the war) was filled with new residents. Those who were able to return to their home communities were not given much sympathy since the wide spread attitude seemed to be that everyone had suffered and most folks weren’t interested in hearing about the horrors experienced by others.

I was surprised to learn that in Poland some of the people who had hidden Jewish acquaintances during the war felt that they had to continue to keep it a secret after the war as well. If it became known that they had saved a Jew they were vulnerable to being robbed because it was widely assumed that they must have been paid off--the stereotypical belief was that all Jews were rich.

Likewise, soldiers returning home experienced social and economic adjustment issues. In many countries ex-soldiers also faced the shame or blame of being on the losing side.

This year also saw the start of a vast act of historical revenge with the expulsion of some 11 million Germans from the lands east of the Oder River and south of Austria as well as some from the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia. These were lands where German speaking people had lived for many generations. The overall paradox here is that as a consequence of the post war movements of people some of Hitler’s goal of achieving ethnic purity were achieved.

Political groups ranging from communists to traditionalist in almost all countries perceived the post war situation provided a chance for their interests to take hold and prevail. This led to numerous inevitable political fights, and in Greece to civil war. Furthermore, most of the former colonial powers assumed that they could reclaim their prewar status as colonial masters. Many of the natives of these colonies had their own democratic aspirations.

Then there’s the issue of the war crimes trials held by the Allies. The book is generally complimentary of the Nuremberg Trials. But the book describes the process as being far less coherent in Japan where Americans had little idea who was really to blame for militarism.

Some who should have been charged with war crimes got off scot-free. Others of doubtful guilt were convicted of trumped up charges in show trials. The book highlights as a particularly unjust the trial, conviction and execution of Tomoyuki Yamashita for war crimes committed in the Philippines. Yamashita had only recently been assigned to the Philippines, had ordered Japanese forces to retreat from Manila, his orders were not obeyed, and he was located over 150 miles away from Manila during the time when atrocities were committed by Japanese soldiers in Manila; he was still held responsible.

The case established the precedent that a commander can be held accountable before the law for the crimes committed by his troops even if he did not order them, did not stand by to allow them, or possibly even know about them or have the means to stop them. This precedent still stands. The only justification for such justice is that it’s not possible to punish tens of thousands of soldiers who committed atrocities. Thus the theoretical person in command needs to be the scapegoat and be held responsible even though that commander may not have actually had the power to prevent the atrocities.

The book notes those events that are usually associated with the history of 1945 including the founding of the United Nations and the beginning signs of the Cold War. In summary the book provides the following eulogy for 1945, the zero year of the post war era that we live in today.

Year Zero itself has been rather eclipsed in the world’s collective memory by the years of destruction that preceded it, and new dramas that still lay in store, in Korea, Vietnam, India-Pakistan, Israel, Cambodia, Rwanda, Iraq, Afghanistan, and on and on. But for those who came of age after Year Zero, when so much was created amidst the ruins of war, it was perhaps the most important year of all. Those of us who grew up in western Europe, or indeed in Japan, could easily take for granted what our parents had built: the welfare states, economies that just seemed to grow, international law, a “free world” protected by the seemingly unassailable American hegemon.

It wouldn’t last, of course. Nothing ever does. But that is no reason not to pay tribute to the men and women who were alive in 1945, to their hardships, and to their hopes and aspirations, even though many of these would turn to ash, as everything eventually does.

In the book’s epilog it is suggested that the real end of WWII occurred in 1989 when the last of the eastern European countries were freed from Soviet domination. It’s ironic to remember that WWII in Europe started when Briton entered the war because Poland had been invaded by Germany. In 1945 the Germans were driven out of Poland, but Poland wasn’t exactly free. So in a sense the reason for the start of the war wasn’t resolved until the 1980s when Soviet domination ceased.

The following short review of this book is from the PageADay Book Lover's Calendar for May 5, 2016:
For avid readers of history, this is an evocative and engaging account of the aftermath of the “Good War.” The world was changed irrevocably as its capitols lay devastated and Europe was being carved up into new countries. Revenge was exacted against the losers, and those who were liberated mourned their dead while celebrating their renewed freedom. The author traces the postwar years, which included the development of the European Union, the United Nations, and decolonization. He also includes the story of his father, who was a POW in Berlin and barely survived the bombings. With its moving portraits of individual lives, this story humanizes World War II in a way that few books do.
YEAR ZERO: A HISTORY OF 1945, by Ian Buruma (Penguin, 2013)

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Another excerpt:
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[Jill H. · Rating 5 out of 5]

General William Sherman said "War is hell" but he forgot to add that it only gets worse immediately after peace is declared. This book delves into the year of the end of WWII........Europe is in ruins, Japan is in ruins, and there are millions of people who have no home or country to which to return. And then, of course, there is the revenge, especially in Germany, that only adds to the horrible statistics of the dead. The victorious Allies now have the problem of deciding what to do with countries that have no government left and greatly reduced populations due to the Holocaust and the forced labor practiced by the Nazis. And that is only one of the seemingly insurmountable issues facing the "Big Three" (the USA, the UK, and Russia) who could not seem to agree on much. Germany was divided into zones, each governed by one of the Allied victors but was that the answer? The Berlin Wall (which was not an immediate result) and Slavic countries who became Communist puppets answers that question. How about re-education of the populace? This was badly bungled and demeaning because the culture of those being "re-educated" was never taken into consideration and those in charge had no understanding of those cultures.

The author leads the reader through the hellish environment in both Japan and Germany and the sometimes cruel and vengeful activities of the "liberators". He does not attempt to offer a solution to the rebuilding of the political and physical environment of the conquered countries but rather follows the events as they unfolded. It is a concise picture of the turmoil of 1945 that brought parades and celebrations to the Allies and misery to the conquered. Very well done and a real page turner. Recommended.

[Dmitri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Year Zero describes how a devastated people negotiated life amid post-WWII ruins and occupation by allied forces. In liberated Europe and Asia, as well as defeated Germany and Japan, similar issues were faced. These are explored by Ian Buruma as a 'liberation complex', which he sees as a mixture of 'exultation, hunger and revenge'. Although born shortly after the war ended, his childhood in Holland and contact with older family members helped give him personal insight into the period.

In the early stage of 'exultation' celebrations gave way to large-scale fraternization between allied troops and local women. Maybe this was inevitable as the local male population had been decimated, and the occupying forces brought material necessities for survival. Many sought a return to normal aspects of pre-war life or an escape from the post-war chaos. It was followed by prostitution, at times organized and sponsored by conquered nations to avert rape or control disease.

Soon after the initial joy for the ending of aggression passed, the 'hunger' began. Drastic shortages of food caused by the destruction of agriculture and commerce took hold. Black markets and shadow economies arose leading to organized crime development. Political factors came into play as factions among the Allies were reluctant to provide relief to former Axis nations. Strategic thinking prevailed within the leadership of the occupation, who foresaw dangers arising from social instability.

The desire for 'revenge' is as human as the need for sex or food, Buruma posits. Concentration camp inmates and prisoners of war had suffered from unimaginable disease, starvation, torture and squalor. Upon liberation many forms of rough justice were meted out by victims of Nazi and Japanese abuse. At times Allied troops would look the other way or assist in retribution to prison guards. Vengeance upon Germans was exacted by Russian soldiers, whose treatment of civilians was notorious.

Buruma leads onward through further stages of the worldwide turmoil: repatriating displaced persons, reconstituting political structures, reinstating rule of law, rehabilitating the defeated, and rethinking nationalism. The book is not so much a comprehensive history of 1945, as it is a description of what it was like, and an assessment of what it would mean for the next generation. It is a fresh approach to a time perhaps written about more extensively than any other in recent history.

[Karina Padureanu · Rating 5 out of 5]

O lectura destul de anevoioasa (pentru mine), insa m-a ajutat sa inteleg atmosfera ingrozitoare, deprimanta a "anului zero". As mai reciti cartea, pentru a-mi clarifica unele aspecte.
In 1945, an care a schimbat dramatic soarta omenirii, era o lume ingenuncheata, debusolata.
Cum sa redai speranta celor care pierdusera atat si nu mai aveau nimic ? Lumea vroia razbunare, consolare, cei vinovati trebuiau pedepsiti, dar multi au scapat, prin inselatorie sau pur si simplu pentru ca reconstruirea societatii avea nevoie de oameni ca ei. Iar altii au fost pusi sa plateasca, desi nu purtau o mare vina.
Aflam cum a fost pedepsit colaboraționismul peste tot, in Asia, Japonia, Europa, cum a reactionat lumea afland despre lagarele de concentrare. Se vorbeste despre aspecte ca exuberanta eliberarii, foametea, crimele, violurile de dupa razboi, refugiati si stramutari fortate.
O unda de speranta se simte totusi mai ales in ultima parte a cartii, intitulata "Ca sa nu se repete", prin dorinta Aliatilor de a constitui o uniune care sa vegheze la pastrarea pacii.
Prea putin insa despre consecintele comunismului in tarile Europei de est, desi cartea este strict despre anul 1945 ...ar fi trebuit totusi mentionat ca deciziile Aliantei au marcat jumatate de secol in viata a milioane de oameni in estul Europei.
Ian Buruma este un cunoscut istoric si eseist. Cartea sa mi s-a parut bine construita si documentata.

[Jan Rice · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book that looks at history through the lens of one year, 1945, the year the war was over and the portal to the future. I learned a lot, and yet now feel I need to read the whole thing over again, something I'm not going to do, given everything else that's going on. But let me give my impressions and say what I do remember and why it's a worthy book.

The book is divided into three sections; it builds in the 1st part, crescendos in the second, and tails off in the third, although I still learned a lot.

Actually, I am rereading, to some extent. Aspects so painful you don't keep them in mind without looking back.

In the first part I learned that jubilation at the end of the war wasn't as dominant an experience as we tend to think from the vantage point of the present...or what used to be the present. (I read it during "normal" times, but now is the time of COVID19.) There was too much loss and, in both the victorious and conquered nations, too much devastation. Mostly, it was the young who exulted.

In the chapter on hunger, you see what happens when cities, whether in the areas previously under the domination of Germany and Japan or whether in the conquered nations, are devastated, when "civilization as we know it" really is destroyed. These flattened areas came back to life via the black market and every man or woman for themselves -- with life reemerging described here as like the creeping and crawling in an anthill. Worsening the situation in Germany was the return of Germans expelled from neighboring countries, something I'd already been learning about. All of this is sobering to read, especially now, when what we're used to thinking of as ordinary life is threatened by the coronavirus.

Also in this section: how the British had to learn to feed the starving and nurse them back to life.

In both the conquered European countries and their Oriental counterparts, people perceived as outsiders were blamed all over again for the existing situation, Jews and displaced persons in Germany and, in Japan, "third-party nationals" who formerly had been brought in as slave labor.

With the chapter on "Revenge," this book's intensity increases. Revenge against former Nazis -- presumed former Nazis, i.e., Germans -- which only got out of hand when officially condoned. There are multiple reasons for revenge. For Russian soldiers, not only was revenge related to immediate wartime issues, but also decades of treatment by Germany as less than human slave material. The issue of colonization within Europe not made explicit here, or perhaps treated as commonly known. Then there's the treatment of perceived collaborators, and of the "horizontal" collaborators.

One of Buruma's revelations involves taking a new look at collaboration, generally speaking: how it often represented a chance for suppressed groups or individuals to get out from under their prior dominators. So, years before feminism became widespread, collaboration gave women a chance to break out, not mention, in some cases putting food in the mouths of their children -- no small potatoes in starving societies. Likewise, groups who previously had been under colonial control seized the chance for alliances against their masters. I thought here of Arabs allying with Germany against England and France as a way to escape their colonial overlords.

And that's only the first of this book's three parts! I don't have the will or energy for a continued detailed look given the changes that are going on under the threat of infection by COVID19.

Part Two, "Clearing the Rubble," continues the intensity of the chapter on revenge. Without further rereading, let me say that the chapter on "Going Home" was striking for the orphan populations that were sent "home" to their deaths, which was done by the allies. Russian soldiers who had been captured by the Germans and at gunpoint made to fight for them -- sent home to their certain death. The way anti-Communists were sent back to Russia. The Cossacks had to be gruesomely tricked so they could be herded up and sent back -- in the eyes of the British, a job that had to be done.

All wars displace people; the war in Iraq, beginning with the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, severed up to 5 million people from their homes. The scale of displacement because of World War II was especially horrendous because so much of it was deliberate, for ruthlessly practical as well as ideological reasons: slave labor programs, population exchanges, "ethnic cleansing," shifting national borders, emigration in search of Lebensraum for the German and Japanese master races, the civil wars ignited, entire populations deported to be killed or to languish in exile, and so on.

...

The Cossacks were just one of the orphaned peoples, battered and in the end decimated by history. In fact, "history" is too abstract. The were destroyed by men, who acted on ideas, of revolution, of purified ethnic states. There were others who fell victim to these ideas, some of whom may have been among the believers themselves.

Jews who survived and made it back were resented at best. They weren't expected to have survived. They were told not to expect too much. Others suffered too, they were told. Know your place and show gratitude. That was Holland. In Poland they had been replaced by those who took their homes and livelihoods. The more guilty the conscience of the populace, the more the Jews were hated.

There was the guilt of those who'd been conquered -- the French, for example. In America, too, it wasn't as we think. As after Vietnam, returning soldiers considered militarists.

After the war, there were high hopes for a better world. Yet though resistance during the war had often come from socialists or communists, they were not rewarded after war's end. The trend was compounded by the Cold War and fear of communism.

Note here that Ian Buruma is not a polemicist. I've been reading some reviews of Peter Hitchins' WWII book The Phoney Victory, from which it seems Hitchens wants to turn received wisdom upside down. Not so, Buruma, whose goal is to show history is more complicated and messy than you thought, not the opposite of what you thought.

The reason they didn't get rid of all the Nazis is that there would have been no one left to rebuild.

To rebuild society, heroic stories were absolutely needed, even though that's part of what confuses us today.

War crimes trials were not nothing but show trials. While not representative of perfect justice -- what trial is? -- they represented a path other than bloody revenge.

Sorry to trail off here at the end, to some extent. Take care and be well!

[Jim Coughenour · Rating 4 out of 5]

In his recent review of this book Charles Simic observed, "Perhaps the reason we never learn from history is that we are incapable of picturing the reality of war and its aftermath, for fear that if we did, we would stop believing both in God and in our fellow human beings." This is not hyperbole. It's something closer to a recognition of a cognitive limitation. We simply cannot process the horror of history, even when it's as well documented and as relatively recent as 1945 – in the living memory of writers like Simic or John Lukacs, who published a provocative book with almost the same title back in 1978.

In 2005 I read Gregor Dallas' 1945: The War That Never Ended, a magisterial overview of the forces at play at the end of World War II. Buruma's book has a different focus, constructed around a series of themes such as Hunger, Revenge, Going Home. Each chapter ranges around the world, revealing little known aspects of exactly what the end of the war meant for different people and different countries. Buruma's calm tone belies the unimaginable suffering across Europe and Asia it describes.

There's also the pervasive presence of "irony" – except the reversals and hypocrisies are so appalling that the word collapses. One example with many versions: across the world the most active resistance to tyranny came from the left – liberal Christians,* socialists and communists. In the aftermath of the war, in the pressure of the emergent Cold War, these resisters were shoved to the side, abandoned or persecuted, while the rich and powerful who had collaborated throughout with the Nazis or the Japanese were restored to their positions and even honored.

However, this is far from a grim book. Somehow it hums with resilience, even as it leads the reader to wonder how we could ever have imagined World War II as a "good war." Millions murdered, promises betrayed, enemies and victors confounded – and the world moved on, into the postwar period that is already taking on the aura of a lost golden age.

In the absolute aphorism of Kurt Vonnegut: so it goes.

_____________________
* Here I have to mention another, much shorter book I'm currently reading: No Ordinary Men by Fritz Stern and Elizabeth Sifton.

[Yigal Zur · Rating 5 out of 5]

amazing book. there is so much written on second world war but so few on what happened in the year or two which followed after. when million of people where moving around with no home to go back to, with no purpose in life with past destroyed. so much despair around. i found this as a great and amazing read.

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

An outstanding account of the horrors, the cruelties, the devastation and destruction of the last months of World War II, and the attempt to bring peace and stability back to the world.

One of the best history books I've read on post-war Germany and Japan.

[Olethros · Rating 3 out of 5]

-Repaso a lo que sucedió inmediatamente después de la guerra.-

Género. Historia.

Lo que nos cuenta. El libro Año cero (publicación original: Year Zero. A History of 1945, 2013) es un acercamiento a lo sucedido tras la Segunda Guerra Mundial cuando diferentes sociedades tuvieron que enfrentar retos como el hambre, el deseo (y la ejecución) de revancha, la reconstrucción física y mental de ciudades y personas, el cumplimiento de la ley, la búsqueda de consensos o la de no repetir los mismos comportamientos, entre otros desafíos.

¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...

[Mel Ostrov · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the way to Learn History

There are innumerable nonfiction books about World War II, but how many concentrate solely on the immediate consequences following the Nazi and Japanese surrender in 1945? Not only is this highly acclaimed authoritative history fascinating, it also flows as easily as a fictional storybook that is hard to put down. In the prologue, the author introduces his Dutch father’s involvement in the war, but that merely suffices as an introduction for what is to come. A lot of territory is covered in less than 400 pages of the paperback version where every description and discussion is chock-full of gems with no wasted words. The various aspects of the resulting defeat, anger, disruption, destruction, hunger, homeless desperation, revenge, punishment, changes in the world order, and attempts at finally civilizing peace among all nations throughout Europe and Asia along with their failure, are all covered in nine riveting chapters, along with a trenchant epilogue.
Every page clearly reveals something intriguingly notable, worthy of quotation. For instance, note the following description of Japanese torture reminiscent of the infamous Nazi doctor, Josef Mengele: “Not only Ishiid and his able staff of Unit 731, including a microbiologist named Kitano Masaji, experiment with Bubonic Plague, Cholera, and other diseases, but thousands of prisoners were used for anything that took the doctors’ fancy. The human guinea pigs, mostly Chinese, but also Russians and even a few American POWs, were known as ‘logs’ or ‘monkeys.’ Some were exposed to freezing experiments, some were hung upside down to see how long it would take before they choked, some were cut open without anesthesia and had organs removed, and some were injected with lethal germs. Another specialty of Unit 731 was to infect large numbers of rats with deadly bacteria and drop them over Chinese cities together with thousands of fleas in porcelain bombs suspended from little parachutes.”
The book concludes with a brief acknowledgements page followed by a very detailed and extensive section that documents the many official sources of all the information provided; an equally complete, extremely useful and thorough index follows. Poignant historical black and white photos are included as an extra bonus.
I wish I could have learned history with books like this in my high school history class.

[Caroline · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was disappointed. I feel that I learned much more about what the period was like in Europe from Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s article 'Europe in Ruins’ in Granta of Summer 1990. (mentioned by Javier Cercas in Anatomy of a Moment). It’s essential to understand that this is a personal view of the war’s end, greatly influenced by Baruma’s family background (his father was a university student in the Netherlands at the start of the WWII, and was sent to work in Berlin in terrible conditions).

Buruma has chapters covering: ‘exhultation’ (primarily sexual release), hunger, revenge, dealing with displaced persons, purging those who perpetrated the war from Germany and Japan, setting up new or revived legal systems, central planning during and after the war (with emphasis on actions in the far East regarding Manchuko), using education and cultural programs to alter the cultures in Germany and Japan that had led to war, and the early stages of setting up the United Nations. The chapter on hunger doesn’t really deal in depth with the food programs, and I wanted much more on the economics of the early recovery period. The topic is massive, and the treatment seemed, perhaps inevitably, uneven.

There is a fair amount of information here, but it is peppered with generalizations about ethncities or nations with little support given in the text. I was most distracted by the extremely simplistic anti-Soviet attitude throughout; comments are inserted with none of Baruma's nuance or recognition of complicated moral and political positions in which the western allies found themselves.

There is no doubt about the atrocities that took place under Stalin, but Buruma makes very little attempt to undertake research or describe the situation in the east in a way that might provide some balance to the often questionable decisions that the Americans and British made. For example, Buruma goes to great lengths to describe the anguish of British soldiers ordered to put displaced persons in camps in Carinthia on trains sending them to almost certain death when they reached ‘home’ in various Balkan states. But they did it. There is no attempt to explore the psychology of Russian soldiers ordered to do similar tasks.

The early stirrings of the Cold War hang over most chapters and explain many actions. Baruma notes western decisions to ignore the Nazi or militaristic backgrounds of industrialists and politicians in new governments with dismay, but decides it was better to limit revenge and avoid creating so much shame and resentment that communism or fascism would find a foothold.

One place where Baruma does a very good job is in highlighting the socialist and pan-European enthusiasm of the immediate postwar period, as a consequence of the deprivation during the war and exposure to more democratic and international military situations. He also shows how the anti-communist bent of the western powers put a quick end to the full implications of socialist aspect of this new attitude (although he acknowledges that some of the institutions such as social nets were installed and retained).

As a poplar book that emphasizes the disarray in the first few months after the war, I guess it is a start. I would be interested in some more in-depth examinations of how different aspects of the recovery took place during the subsequent decade as the physical and economic rebuilding of the devasted countries proceded (or didn’t).

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

A tremendous book, I probably should shelve it with books-without-which-I-cannot-live but setting up categories of favorites demands some selectivity, it's greatest strength is Mr. Buruma whose personal family background and lived experience gives what he has to say a special resonance. Of course it is a sweeping treatment particularly because he deals with the aftermath of WWII in the far east as well as Europe.

Buruma’s father was seized by the Nazis during the occupation of Holland and spent much of the war in Berlin as a laborer, and by the war’s end was hiding in the rubble of a flattened city, barely managing to survive on starvation rations, Allied bombing, and Soviet shock troops. His father's journey home and reentry into “normalcy” are more than just symbolic of a generation’s experience of both war and peace they are the poignant wake up call to all those of us from countries who didn't experience occupation as to what it meant to reconstruct a nation.

That reconstruction barely begun in 1945 is a subtext running through this book. Not just physical reconstruction, though that was mind boggling in its dimensions, but the reconstructions of nations, of people's beliefs, of neighborhoods, communities and families. That part of that process involved the construction of largely fictitious narratives of pulling together to resist the enemy was probably inevitable. It is undeniable that creating that narrative involved the silencing of those who had suffered in other ways. All too often this meant the Jews but it should not be forgotten that in France that meant those deported for labour in Germany were largely sidelined as 'resistance heroes' got all the limelight.

It wasn't right that it took a half-century for the Vélodrome d'Hiver deportations to be officially commemorated but maybe it served some good. At a time when half-a-century might have seemed a good time to forget it was the realisation that the process of remembering, of justice, hadn't even begun forced many to learn and remember what their parents and grandparents had buried.

The point is Buruma places all this within a context that makes you realise how complex all these issues are when after years of terribly suffering all you want to do is go home and live an ordinary life. That mistakes were made goes without saying, but even those who manufactured and promoted the 'myths' cannot easily be dismissed as cynics or opportunists. By opening our eyes to the enormity of what the world faced in 1945 Mr. Buruma has done a wonderful job of helping us to begin understand that 'winning' the peace was more of an accomplishment and more difficult then winning the war, though just as many mistakes were made.

[Mal Warwick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn’t old enough in 1945 to be aware of the momentous events of that year. However, the superficial history I learned at school starting two years later ignored most of them, and much of the history I’ve read later in life focused only on a few of the highlights, and in a largely piecemeal fashion at that: the surrender of Germany and Japan, the opening of Germany’s concentration camps, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the founding of the United Nations, the origins of the Cold War. Ian Buruma’s Year Zero is a global history of that fateful year, and it ably fills in a great many of the blanks.

One of the most noteworthy aspects of this excellent book is the skill the author displays in featuring little-cited comments that help bring the material to life, sometimes quoting from famous and powerful people, sometimes from more modest sources. Another outstanding aspect of this book is Buruma’s evenhandedness. On controversial topics such as the dropping of the atomic bombs or the legitimacy of the war crimes trials, he is scrupulously attentive to both sides of the debates that raged both in 1945 and in the years that followed.

Year Zero is probably best described as an informal work of history — a book intended for general readers. Much of it is social history, with extensive coverage of such topics as “fraternization” between occupation troops and local women, the conditions faced by millions of survivors trapped (sometimes for years) in “displaced person” camps, the bitter and often violent struggles between the partisans who had waged guerrilla war against Germany and the conservatives who had often collaborated with the enemy, and the hunger that swept through the nations hardest hit in the war, especially Japan and Germany. Each of these is a fascinating topic, worthy of a book in its own right (and no doubt the subject of many such books).

There are a great many surprises in Year Zero, some of them trivial, others of great consequence. For a history buff, the book may be worthwhile reading for that reason alone. Buruma did his homework.

Ian Buruma is an English-Dutch writer and academic specializing in Chinese literature and Japanese history. He has written numerous books, some of them academic, others for a general audience. He teaches at Bard College in upstate New York.

[Ana · Rating 5 out of 5]

History - that one passion/hoby I have had, besides literature. I couldn't be more happy with Buruma's portrayal of 1945, the research behind shows in every page, the ammount of names/places/details mentioned is astounding and the writing is superb. It takes grit to get through it (370 big pages in small print is torture), and even if you do, 80% of the information will eventually fall out of your memory, because if you don't refresh it enough, you lose it. However, what you're left with is the feel of the year 1945 and a small understanding of what the world was at that time.

[Dorin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probabil nu aș fi citit această carte dacă nu dădeam întâmplător de ea într-o promoție care mi-o oferea la 8 lei. Asta m-a făcut să cred că editura își dorea să scape de ea, din 2013 până acum neepuizând tirajul. Dovadă că fusese plimbată mult prin depozite a fost și starea în care a ajuns cartea (nouă) la mine. Din acest motiv, nu am început-o cu prea mult entuziasm.

Am citit multe cărți de istorie, despre Al Doilea Război Mondial și despre Holocaust. Mai toate erau despre evenimentele care s-au petrecut, nu despre urmările lor. Buruma în Anul zero încearcă să ne spună cum a fost imediat după război (întregul război, nu doar cel din Europa): entuziasmul, întoarcerea acasă a soldaților, a supraviețuitorilor, a evreilor, reconstrucția, foamea, criza, răzbunarea, administrația străină, sexul și fraternizarea etc. Cred că pentru o singură carte a fost un obiectiv prea mare. Buruma oferă doar frânturi. Fiind olandez, începe cu țara lui. Apoi se îndreaptă spre Franța, Germania, Polonia, Japonia, câte un pic spre China și episoade din Filipine sau Marea Britanie.

Nu este nici pe departe o carte despre experiențele tuturor țărilor beligerante și a tuturor populațiilor și categoriilor sociale care au avut de suferit sau au luptat, chiar dacă volumul e destul de bine structurat. Uneori am avut impresia că insistă pe anumite episoade prea mult, iar pe altele le tratează în mare grabă. Mi-a oferit o idee despre cum a fost primul an după război, dar doar atât – o idee. Aș fi preferat ceva mai clar, mai științific poate, ceva care să oferă niște concluzii mai bine formulate și aplicabile mai general.

3,4/5

[Ezgi · Rating 2 out of 5]

İkinci Dünya Savaşı’ndan sonra harabeye dönmüş şehirler ve ekonomilerle baş başa kalan insanların tarihini anlatan bir kitap. Devletler öyle zarar almıştı ki savaştan dönen askerlerin gidebilecekleri evi dahi kalmamıştı. İnsanları ezip geçen bir savaşın sonrası savaş kadar zor. Hayatlarını ne ile ve nasıl sürdüreceklerinin krizini yaşıyorlar. Hijyen problemi, evsizlik ve açlık hayatı zorlarken şiddet de devam ediyor. Bu koşullara ek olarak cinayetler, tacizler ve hırsızlıklar yaşanıyor. Savaş öncesinden kötü bir durumda ülkeler.

İlgimi çeken diğer bir konuysa savaş suçları. Savaş suçluları düşündüğümüzden çok çok az cezalar alıyorlar. Almanya’da Nazilere ses çıkarmayan Yahudileri katranla kaplayıp cezalandırmaya çalışan bir grup insan var. Halkın taşkınlığının yanında kolayca kurtulan savaş suçluları var.

Kitabın kötü yanı odağını kaybetmesi. Çok yüzeysel bir anlatımı var. Sürekli babasını anlatmak için araya girmesi de etkili. Tarihi yaşadığını göstermeye çalışıyor ama tarafsız bir çalışma olmasını daha çok isterdim. Bu kitap Tony Judt varken biraz zaman kaybı.

[AC · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ditching this after 70 pages. There is something glib and superficial about the writing which, given the topic, is somewhat disconcerting. The material is not unfamiliar, and so "I get the picture". Not to be compared with Tony Judt or even with John Dower.

[Kris · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good high-level perspective of the immediate aftermath of WWII. He weaves in and around Europe, Asia, and the Pacific, giving us names of major players and snapshots of what's going on in various countries. Some might say he generalized too much, but I was looking for only the basics and this suited that purpose.

I was struck by just how many people were never punished for their war crimes (or were supposedly punished but in reality served a reduced sentence). Much abuse and killing kept happening after the war ended, right under people's noses, while they believed the peace in the papers. The rationing in Britain was worse after the war, than before. The immediate threat of starvation and homelessness continued to be pervasive for so many people. The destruction of countries was so widespread, that literally thousands of people didn't have a home to go back to, after the war. Entire cities were razed. How are people supposed to pick up the pieces after that?

I wish he could have spent more time on redrawn boarders and the art and architecture that were destroyed in the war, but you can't have everything -- I suppose I'll have to find another book for that.

I read this as a kind of prequel to 1946: The Making of the Modern World, which I'm interested in reading next.

[Bruce · Rating 3 out of 5]

When World War II came to an end, much of the world lay in a shambles. Global population had been decimated by millions murdered, slaughtered, uprooted, and displaced throughout Europe, North Africa, and Asia; structure and infrastructure alike were destroyed; economies ruined, crops razed and the very farmland itself churned up beneath the poisonous treads of blood and gunpowder. Anarchy reigned throughout the territories previously controlled by Axis and colonial powers. Where to begin reestablishing a semblance of law as a foundation for a new order? And how?

Ian Buruma here convincingly depicts the world in 1945 as an uncertain crucible for a grand experiment in social stability. His work is roughly chronological and mostly thematic, starting off with the exultation of surviving (young) civilians celebrating liberation in libertine fashion, exploding in orgies of sex and vengeance before ultimately recoiling in revulsion and denial. Soon amorous clamor gave way to the great cleaning up, a vast extrospection that divided humanity into savage sweepers and those to be sadly swept aside. The implementation and coordination of complex services required a competent and experienced bureaucracy, so either the characters or outright identities of former rulers had to be accepted as reformed, be it in Vichy France, Germany, Manchukuo, the Philippines, or elsewhere. The most egregious example would probably be Douglas MacArthur's use of Emperor Hirohito as a figurehead to his American Shogunate.

Buruma frames his book personally, opening with a tribute to his father's life as a Nederlander and closing with his own recollection of the falling of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The whole is largely impersonal, however, a work that uses the eyewitness testimony of a few select individuals to paint a sociological picture. He describes personal histories which those left alive could neither embrace nor face redrawn as heroic narratives: victors become vanquishers; victims and collaborators transforming one another into active members of a resistance; and defeated peoples recast as the patriotic patsies of a criminal, militaristic lot. With few exceptions among the living, there were no losers, only winners and well-intentioned folk where the fires of war eventually burned themselves out.

Come 1945, the people picking up the chalk wanted their slate wiped clean, wherever possible erasing victimization for the psychic convenience of victims and victimizers alike. As individuals, a person's future was far from certain. Stateless people who could not be hidden or held aloft could be made to disappear. Assuming there was a home to which to return, would one find welcome, accusation, usurpation, or extinction?

So, an object lesson: British-occupied Carinthia, a no man's land somewhere in the crossroads of south-central Slavia (they go, we go, Yugo). The invasion of Carinthia in the spring of 1945 by forces loyal to Josip Broz Tito was just one more complication in [this]

"sump of Europe," filled with people, civilians, and soldiers who either did not wish to return to their countries, or had no home to go back to. [British intelligence officer] Nigel Nicolson observed: "There seemed to be no limit to the number of nationalities which appealed to us for our protection. The Germans wanted to be safeguarded against Tito, the Cossacks against the Bulgarians, the Chetniks against the Croats, the White Russians against the Red Russians, the Austrians against the Slovenes, the Hungarians against everybody else, and vice-versa throughout the list….

How was a British soldier, faced with former Chetniks and [Titoist] Partisans, both of whom had been allies against the Germans at one point or another, to know whom to treat as a friend or enemy? In the end this choice… was decided by force. Harold Macmillan, the British plenipotentiary in the Mediterranean, put it like this: 'By December, 1943, the most informed British opinion was that the Partisans would eventually rule Yugoslavia and that the monarchy had little future and had ceased to be a unifying element…. The Chetnik royalists had the misfortune of being on the losing side of the civil war. (quoting from pages p. 146 & 150)

The Brits played out this same scenario again and again: in Greece (albeit tipping the scales ever so slightly against the Greek communists), in Palestine/Israel (where the Balfour Declaration was set in opposition to the White Paper, inevitably leading to the UN's partitioning of the territory with militarily indefensible borders), in Malaysia (where Japanese forces were encouraged to remain in a failed attempt to supplant or suppress an independence movement), and in greater India-Pakistan (where their reluctant release of the crown jewel split the country into mutually antithetical Hindu and Mughal states). Ever the shortsighted pragmatists, the feckless British sought pacification, not peace, with little room for diplomacy where no direct national interest indicated a preferred outcome. In the postwar pressure cooker, expedience dictated a quarantine until the deck could be cleared of combatants, and if a given faction was willing to complete the job by brute violence, well, the less said about the outcome the better.

Yet, in no small part thanks to the efforts of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the grim realities of genocidal evil could not be ignored.

An American soldier wrote a letter home about his encounter with a Polish Jew "fresh out of Dachau." The man "was crying like a child," cowering in the corner of a public toilet in Munich. "I didn't have to ask him why he cried; the answers were all the same anyway, and go like this: parents tortured to death; wife gassed to death and children starved to death, or any combination of such three." (pp. 160-1)

Eisenhower, rightly horrified by first-hand encounters with Nazi concentration camps, was determined that the horrors be openly and widely published.

He wanted reporters to visit the camps so that no one could ever pretend that these horrendous crimes were figments of propaganda… the piles of rotting corpses, the crematoria and torture rooms… [were] something "beyond the American mind to comprehend." … [And so n]ot only were local German citizens forced to walk through the camps… but people in Allied cities too were meant to see what the Germans had done…. In London, moviegoers "unable to stomach atrocity newsreels" tried to walk out of the Leicester Square Theatre, only to be blocked at the door by British soldiers. The Daily Mirror reported that "people walked out of cinemas all over the country, and in many places there were soldiers to tell them to go back and face it." (p. 227)

In the immediate flush of victory, the temerity of Axis aggression coupled with evidence of savagery on a gross scale sparked both outrage and a quandary. How to exact justice yet ensure submission? Per Buruma at page 235, "You cannot try millions of people…. Too much zeal would have made the rebuilding of societies impossible. Too little effort to call the worst criminals to account would undermine any sense of decency." Long before the term "Holocaust" would be coined or the Rape of Nanking became a matter of public record, Nuremberg and similar proceedings in Japan helped to publish -- and establish -- such wartime atrocities as "crimes against humanity." According to the author, "The other thing to be said in Nuremberg's favor is that the trial was, for the most part, extraordinarily boring… This was not a quick trial driven by popular rage. Everything had to take its course, and so it went on, and on, and on, turning boredom into a sign of probity…. Tedium spiked the guns of vengeance. That was the whole point."

Satisfying and effective as the gristmill of justice was, it did little to assuage the plight of Jews in Europe. Ironically, where the Allies imposed ethnic segregation to reassemble the international jigsaw puzzle that racist ideology had helped break apart, there was no home to be had for Jews. As in all cases of displaced persons, lucky, well-connected, or wealthy individuals might find sanctuary but the great mass of refugees could not be relocated to Bavaria, Poland, or frankly anywhere. No one then, as much as now, really wanted them -- not even the United States. Thankfully, a Zionist-built Yishuv advocacy in Palestine became their salvation, no thanks to the British -- the old, imperial reflex of dividing and conquering transformed in their weakness to a failed, recalcitrant policy of playing of both sides against the middle, in the process utterly relinquishing instead of retaining control.

This was no page-turner for me. The book began with a bang, but had me whimpering before I even got about a third of the way through. Perhaps this was a natural consequence of experiencing the transition from ebullience and optimism toward something darker. Also, and for whatever reason, I found the most vivid scenes to have been set in Europe, making all forays into the Pacific theater feel like unwelcome digressions. I don't know why that would be. While I haven't done a page count, I do believe Buruma spent his ink equally on East and West, yet was left with the distinct impression the author made haphazard, erratic pivots about the rebuilding of the ravaged world, making whiplash work of the civil wars that flared up in the wake of every new power vacuum. Perhaps my mistake was in ever laying the Year Zero down, since the longer it sat on my nightstand, the less I felt inclined to return. Still, I found it sufficiently readable and worth reading that I did force myself to finish it, and so here we are. Three stars, and I welcome any fan of the book to play pop psychologist in analyzing its impact. Have my copy, if you like.

[G.G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A riveting account of the year World War II ended--or didn't, if you lived in Greece or China or several other parts of the world. I knew something about 1945 in Japan, from John W. Dower's wonderful Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. But I didn't know much about how that year was experienced elsewhere. Buruma's coverage is global and thematic, with chapters entitled "Exultation," "Hunger," "Revenge," and so on. And he has obviously thought long and hard about some of the topics he takes up. From the chapter "Going Home," for example, writing about the postwar expulsion of ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, and Romania:

Hitler's project, based on ideas...of ethnic purity and nationhood, was completed by people who hated Germany.... [But] we shouldn't forget that the real destroyers of German culture in the center of Europe were the Germans themselves. By annihilating the central European Jews, many of whom were fiercely loyal to German high culture, they started the process. (p. 159)

From the chapter "The Rule of Law," writing about summary trials in the former Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo:

Why should the Chinese Communists have insisted on trials at all? Why not simply shoot the rascals? Clearly they wanted the executions to appear lawful. Establishing a form of legality is a necessary condition of legitimacy, even in a dictatorship, or perhaps especially in a dictatorship. But the concept of the law in show trials is entirely political. (p. 204)

In the same chapter, Buruma also suggests that the reason Germany, Japan, and Italy were

plagued in the 1970s by revolutionary extremists whose acts of violence were inspired by a zealous conviction that their countries had never changed, that fascism was still alive in a different guise, carried on by some of the same people who had waged war in the 1940s (p. 236)

was precisely because justice had not been done: "too many criminals walked free, some to have flourishing careers, while others with far less guilt were punished as scapegoats." Even though, as he points out, "too much zeal would have made the rebuilding of societies impossible."

Buruma can see, and sympathize with, the moral knife edge those who attempted to ensure that the horrors of the past would never be repeated had to walk. From time to time he deplores the decisions they made and the way they behaved. His portrait of General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers in Japan, who "spent most of his evenings at home watching cowboy movies" (p. 297) is one memorable example.

Year Zero: A History of 1945 is movingly framed by Buruma's account of his father's experiences during and after World War II, and concludes with the story of the family's visit to Berlin in December 1989.

[Maine Colonial · Rating 4 out of 5]

The subject of the immediate post-World War II period has been popular in history books in recent years, including William I. Hitchcock's The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe, Tony Judt's Postwar and Tony Judt's The Politics of Retribution in Europe. These are all excellent, well-documented histories.

Even if you've read all those books, I would still recommend Ian Buruma's Year Zero. This is a particularly readable and compelling treatment of 1945, the year when history reset after World War II, what historian Max Hastings called the greatest and most terrible event in human history. Buruma's book is short by comparison to Judt's and Hitchcock's; not surprising, since it focuses in on that one year. It is also a less academic treatment, and it goes for the gut at least as much as the mind. Buruma organizes the subject as follows:

Part One: Liberation Complex
1.Exultation
2. Hunger
3. Revenge

Part Two: Clearing the Rubble
4. Going Home
5. Draining the Poison
6. The Rule of Law

Part Three: Never Again
7. Bright Confident Morning
8. Civilizing the Brutes
9. One World
Epilogue

The revenge chapter was particularly interesting, with Buruma beginning with the provocative statement that the desire for revenge is as human as the need for sex or food. His observations about the need "to overcome humiliation and restore masculine pride" after the war, and its place in some of the vengeful attacks are insightful. He recounts a number of hair-raising stories from all over the world, including Germany and Poland, of course, but also from France, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, The Netherlands, Greece and several locations in Southeast Asia. In fact, the amount of information in this book about the Pacific Theater and Southeast Asia distinguishes it from most other World War II histories.

The use of anecdotes in works of history can be misleading, or a lazy way of making a point. It doesn't feel that way with Buruma, who makes his points and uses anecdotes as illustration, not evidence. Some of the anecdotes are just stunning; for example, the story of Ernst Michel, a young Jewish man from Mannheim, who was taken from his home on September 2, 1939, just the second day of the war, and spent the entire war in forced-labor camps, ending up in the Auschwitz Buna/Monowitz camp and then the death march to Buchenwald. Soon after liberation, he was given a job with the U.S. Army and then became a correspondent for the German General News Agency and was assigned to report from the Nuremberg Trials, where his dispatches were bylined with both his name and his Auschwitz number.

Simple but never simplistic, this is popular history well worth reading, whatever your level of knowledge about World War II and its aftermath.

[Lark Benobi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two things are really exceptional about this book: 1) it covers a lot of ground in a highly readable way; and 2) it includes extensive end notes that point readers to where they can find more detailed information on any given event of 1945.

Some of the tone was jarring, however. I was disturbed by the first chapter, "Exultation," because it treated "fraternizing" in almost a light-hearted way, painting the sexual relationships between starving European women and Allied soldiers as a far more equal exchange than it surely must have been. The second chapter, "Hunger," belatedly examines how women traded sex for food and cigarettes and thus survived. Buruma only gets around to the reality of mass rapes in Chapter 3, "Revenge." It felt like an odd and cloddish way to set up the book, where in one chapter women are having happy sex with their beloved liberators, and two chapters later women are getting gang raped.

The author also pulls punches in predictable ways, straining too hard to not be controversial. It seemed as if any paragraph detailing mistreatment or privations or retaliations against Germans, for example, always included some kind of sentence like "of course this was nothing like what happened to the Jews!" which I'm hoping every reader of this book knows already without being reminded of constantly. For decades after the war and on into this century any mention of German suffering was verboten, lest it flame neo-Nazi feelings, or perhaps just because it seemed too horrible to talk about German suffering in light of Buchenwald...so historical accuracy has suffered. Sebald and to some extent Grass before him have made it possible to be braver and more accurate about what happened in Germany after the war. So I would have liked Buruma to be less apologetic in his examination of Germany in the immediate postwar period.

One of the problems of a broad survey like this is that Buruma has more to say than he has room to write it in. So he tends to be sweepingly reckless now and then with his conclusions, which sometimes hang there unsupported as he moves on to the next topic, for example, when he concludes: "British and Americans...could never quite rid themselves of nostalgia for their finest hours, leading to a fatal propensity to embark on ill-advised military adventures so they and their nations could live like heroes once more." Wow. that is a packed sentence. But the next sentence is on a completely different subject.

Still I'm very pleased to have read this book. It gave me a grounding in the subject, and a curiosity to know more.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have never really thought about what happened after World War II, but Ian Baruma did in this novel. Life was miserable for millions of people after the war ended. Millions had no food, shelter or clothing and millions were forcibly moved from their homelands to somewhere else. I never thought about the fact that property was looted and plundered by their neighbors after Jews were removed to concentration camps, or that Jews were not welcome after the war ended. Ian Baruma states that hatred for Jews was fomented by the plunder of property up for grabs. Surviving Jews were an embarrassment in many countries because people wanted to forget the part they played. Revenge played a part in the war, and many people were killed for revenge. The Russians were particularly revengeful towards Germans. What was life like for millions of defeated soldiers returning to their homes in humiliation? I liked this excerpt from the book about the end of the war: “There was one important difference, however, between the victorious nations and the defeated, the effect of which lasted much longer than the hardships that follow any devastating war. Germans and Japanese were disenchanted with the heroic ideal. They wanted nothing more to do with the war. British and Americans, on the other hand, could never quite rid themselves of nostalgia for their finest hours, leading to a fatal propensity to embark on ill-advised military adventures so they and their nations could live like heroes once more.” That’s a powerful statement among many other ones in this book.

It was ironic to read about Dwight Eisenhower’s efforts to document the German concentration camps liberated at the war’s end. “He wanted reporters to visit the camps so that no one could ever pretend that these horrendous crimes were figments of propaganda.” A little over 60 years later, that’s exactly what happened with the leader of Iran denying the Holocaust ever happened.

This was a good book, although hard to read at times.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you’ve a strong stomach, and are prepared to re-evaluate the behavior of the Allies and the actions of the victims of the Germans and the Japanese during the last days of the Second World War and through the Year Zero [1945] then you might find a great deal to recommend itself in Mr. Buruma’s book.

This is not the first of such books to focus on the reconsideration of the end of the war and the aftermath of this. Others would be The Savage Continent, After the Reich, Orderly and Humane, and Bitter Freedom to mention but a few examples. There is, it is also true, nothing new here—nothing that mightn’t be found in the books mentioned above. However, for those looking for a sweeping introduction to the problem of the end of the war, this would be an excellent place to begin.

Mr. Buruma does not attempt to vilify the Allies or the victims of the Axis Powers, nor does he look away. This may cause problems for those used to thinking of the Allies, Western Allies at least, as liberators and freedom fighters. However, it is an honest reading of the facts.

Occasionally, Mr. Buruma does slip into moral judgement. This isn’t really necessary because the actions of the Allies, victims, and the waning Axis Powers speak for themselves. Adding more to these actions seems superfluous—perhaps even arch.

The fundamental argument used to explain the behaviour of Allies and victims is that of revenge—personal, political, cultural, moral, psychological, and military. To an extent that is a functional thesis, but it does not comprehend the full range of actions. Having said that, is there any position/argument that will ever comprehend the madness of the war, the National Socialists, the Stalinists, the Japanese Militarists, and the victims of all of these? This seems unlikely.

In sum, this is an excellent introduction to the end of the war and its immediate and far reaching consequences.

Highly recommended for those interested in the Second World War and its results.

5 out of 5 stars.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting assessment of the world in 1945 but for me it suffered a little from two distinct problems. Firstly how do you tell the history of Europe, Asia and more in one book, even if you limit it to their experiences and actions in one year. Secondly, at times, perhaps understandably, I felt the influence of the author's history, his father's experience of the war and 1945. A good overview of the times, the world, the aftermath of war and the changes it wrought to the world and the world order. As impossible to summarize and review as it must have been to write given its scope.

[Jerome Otte · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-written, vivid and human history of 1945, with a focus on how ordinary people experienced it.

Buruma covers the postwar experience in both Europe and Asia in a thematic format, discussing such topics as famine, score-settling, the forcible dislocation of Germans, the depredations of Allied deserters, and war crimes trials. He also brings up the point that many of those so eager to punish collaborators did so in order to draw attention from their own wartime record. Buruma covers the sudden postwar explosion in antifascist groups weeks after Germany surrendered (in an effort to win over the occupiers), as well as the black market in certificates showing status as a concentration camp inmate (purchased by many ex-SS officers) Still, Buruma does not claim that the “heroic narrative” is false, pointing out that the western Allies did not impose any reparations, for example.

Buruma also covers the reimposition of colonialism, how no nation wanted to take in any Jewish refugees, the widespread rapes by Russian and Japanese troops, and postwar fraternization by former enemies. He also discusses the dilemma the Allies faced in occupying Germany: tough enough to repress Nazism but not so tough as to provoke more resistance. And, of course, the European war had left behind a Germany where females outnumbered Allied occupation troops by eight to five, with predictable results.

The book is a bit choppy in parts, and the sources are all secondary. And there is very little on the Balkans, Scandinavia, eastern Europe, or India. He also claims that “female collaboration with the enemy was mostly about sex,” even though there were many other forms. Still, an engaging and sensitive work.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

The cover photo of the statue overlooking the destroyed remains of Dresden is very powerful.

The photo of the starved POWs in Malaya is startling. That alone provides a powerful message about the deprivations of WWII.

I learned some interesting tidbits along the way.

Those are the only positive things I can say about Year Zero. I felt like I spent a winter in Cleveland reading this book. At roughly 340 pages it isn't all that big but it was a challenge to get through.

Buruma created a dreary, dense thicket of complaints and pessimism that made my eyes glaze over more than I care to admit. Looking back on the reading experience I'm not sure how I am able to say the book had its good moments when the prevailing memory is plowing through for the sole purpose of getting to the end. Up to about the midway point I gave up hoping the book would suddenly get interesting and it never did.

Buruma presents history as if the reader is already keenly aware of its finer details. That's okay enough with lots of WWII history but when he started delving into Greece, Malaysia, Syria and China circa 1945 I was desperately seeking a life preserver. The book is more social commentary than history which may explain why helpful background history and context are sorely lacking.

The author's ceaseless criticisms of absolutely all major parties involved in WWII and his overall negative tone made me wonder if he's ever had a happy moment in his life. Ultimately I don't care because I'll never read another one of his books again.