The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe

by William I. Hitchcock

Americans are justly proud of the role their country played in liberating Europe from Nazi tyranny. For many years, we have celebrated the courage of Allied soldiers, sailors, and aircrews who defeated Hitler's regime and restored freedom to the continent. But in recounting the heroism of the "greatest generation," Americans often overlook the wartime experiences of European people themselves -- the very people for whom the war was fought. In this brilliant new book, historian William I. Hitchcock surveys the European continent from D-Day to the final battles of the war and the first few months of the peace. Based on exhaustive research in five nations and dozens of archives, Hitchcock's groundbreaking account shows that the liberation of Europe was both a military triumph and a human tragedy of epic proportions.

Hitchcock gives voice to those who were on the receiving end of liberation, moving them from the edge of the story to the center. From France to Poland to Germany, from concentration-camp internees to refugees, farmers to shopkeepers, husbands and wives to children, the experience of liberation was often difficult and dangerous. Their gratitude was mixed with guilt or resentment. Their lives were difficult to reassemble.

This strikingly original, multinational history of liberation brings to light the interactions of soldiers and civilians, the experiences of noncombatants, and the trauma of displacement and loss amid unprecedented destruction. This book recounts a surprising story, often jarring and uncomfortable, and one that has never been told with such richness and depth.

Ranging from the ferocious battle for Normandy (where as many French civilians died on D-Day as U.S. servicemen) to the plains of Poland, from the icy ravines of the Ardennes to the shattered cities and refugee camps of occupied Germany, "The Bitter Road to Freedom" depicts in searing detail the shocking price that Europeans paid for their freedom.

Today, with American soldiers once again waging wars of liberation in faraway lands, this book serves as a timely and sharp reminder of the terrible human toll exacted by even the most righteous of wars.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, World War II, War, European History, Military History, Germany

446 pages, Hardcover

First published October 21, 2008

Reviews

[WarpDrive · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting, balanced and at times confronting book that successfully tries to tackle the complex history of the liberation of Europe by the Allied powers.

I found the nuanced, multi-faceted, well-researched, methodologically accurate and substantially propaganda-free approach by the author something really refreshing, and also something quite uncommonly found in books about this potentially touchy and an highly-sensitive subject even now, 70 years after the end of WWII.

What hit me as one of the most important messages of this book is that the devastation of Europe was not just physical but also, and most importantly, cultural, ideological and psychological. There is nothing romantic nor heroic in modern warfare - it is a dirty, inhuman business whose long-lasting effects are many and profound. Whole cultures, whole human and physical landscapes had been irreversibly destroyed. The historical contribution and participation of the Jewish community in the development of European civilization had been obliterated, and the darkest episode in European history had been written.
Some analysts argue, with some merit, that the real long-term consequences of WWII only really ended in Europe after the fall of the Berlin's wall, and they still persist in the Middle East up to the current day. The heavy toll that liberation and its aftermath took upon the liberated peoples themselves is something that is all too often disregarded, and this book commendably fills this all-too-frequent gap in the standard narratives of WWII.

There are several interesting aspects that are treated by the author, who courageously does not refrain from highlighting the episodes of abuse, theft, murder and rapes conducted by the Allies not just against the German population, but for example against the French civilian population as well. The shameful episode of the bombing of Dresden is also not glossed over. However the author does not fall into the trap of a simplistic relativism, and the overwhelming responsibility of the Nazi regime is clearly highlighted - for example, the description of the conditions of the extermination camps as found by the liberating Allied armies is quite disturbing, even to readers well versed in the history of WWII and the Holocaust. WWII was probably one of the last examples in modern history where it is still quite unambiguously clear where the "right" side was.

I also found remarkable and commendable how the author did not try to hide or minimize the fact that the biggest contribution to the victory of the Allied forces was the Red Army. Stalingrad was what broke the German army's back, and, without discounting the great sacrifices and the valiant efforts conducted by the Western allies, by the time the Allied landed in Normandy the ultimate outcome of the war was already quite clear - regardless of what some Western propaganda had ceaselessly tried to push, as dictated by the ideological demands of the so-called Cold War.

On the less positive side, I must also say that the book is not completely free of issues:
- the process of the liberation of Italy is only very succinctly described, and the close cooperation between the Mafia bosses such as Luciano and Vito Genovese on one hand, and the US authorities on the other hand (and the consequent heavy responsibility of the US military authorities in allowing for a re-consolidation of the Mafia structures and power in post-war Italy) are glossed over
- the ambiguous relationship between the civilian populations and governments of many European countries and the Nazi regime are not explored in much detail, with possibly the exclusion of well-known collaborationist Vichy's France. Antisemitism and some sympathy with the Nazi regime were present in many European countries, even in Britain, and this is not explored in sufficient depth by the author
- in the preface the author suggests that the reason European nations chose not to participate with the US in the “coalition of the willing” in Iraq was that they had experienced WWII on their own soil and had a better understanding of the consequences of an invasion and of the enormous impact and complexity of a change of regime. I personally find it a biased and weak theory - I think that in reality the European nations, together with the large majority of other nations on Earth, did see this invasion for what it really was - an illegal act of international aggression based purely on considerations of pure power, an aggression that, in an ideal world not governed by the "vae victis" logic, should have been investigated by an international criminal tribunal

Overall, a remarkable book written with honesty, balance and accuracy. 4 stars.

[zed · Rating 5 out of 5]

The thing about rating a book under such a limited system such as a star rating is that on a personal level one can rate a classic as much as an obscure history tome. This is because in the end it is what one gets out of the book be it entertainment for the sheer enjoyment of a ripping yarn or for the information that is learnt. There have been plenty of fine books that I have learnt a lot from that I have rated highly but others have not. Fine. That is life.

But it has been an interesting read so far on goodreads as to how this book has been viewed. For what it is worth I do not particularly agree with any of the criticism. For a start I read that it was critical of the allies who were in fact the good guys. Well yes and in my opinion not once did the author question the integrity of The Allies. Several times he mentioned the good intentions of the allies be that the way they fought the Nazi's or how they liberated the camps such as Belsen. In fact on page 423 of my copy William I. Hitchcock writes with profound wisdom and sadness about the inability of the Allies to understand Jewish thinking as to their liberation and how it affected the future to this day with the issues that are the middle east. As he wrote "There is to be no "new life " but a conscious carrying of the recent past into the future" The victims had had enough and with that were not going to be what the Allies wanted them be, be it nice and friendly and clean and thankful for the US nor was it going to accept the British trials at Belsen as "justice being seen to be done" in a civilised manner. Who needed civilised after what they had been through? I for one do not understand that but then I have not had to live in my own excrement for months on end while being tormented by a most vicious regime.

Parts of the first hand accounts in this book bought me close to tears. In some cases just for the naivety of the survivors. The French Jewess returns to Paris to be met by her brother who asks where her luggage was. Examples like this appear periodically and have made me realise that I too was as naive to the trials and tribulations of the displaced and I consider my self fairly well read on wartime history. As to the civilians caught up in the cross fire! could I have understood what it was like to see my neighbours dead? Understood even being wounded in crossfire? Understood undernourishment to the point of malnutrition? Understood any part of these horrors?

This book deserves high ratings just because of it's humanitarian attempt to expose the destitution of those that deserved better. Yes "us" allies did our best but be that as it may to be annoyed that we had criticism of our best is in my opinion disappointing in the least. The author of this book is to be congratulated at his attempt to make a wider audience think about war as more than a goodies and baddies* situation.


*This is a reference to a less than mature comment by the then leader of the opposition and now Prime Minister of Australia made in relation to the civil war in Syria.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I had a number of gripes about this book, I ended up deciding that it was a pretty important book. First the gripes:

1. In the preface he suggests that the reason European nations chose not to participate with the US in the “coalition of the willing” in Iraq was that, having experienced WWII on their own soil and recognizing the terrible price paid by those liberated (as well as the difficulty of the liberators), European countries had a more realistic (and “dark”) understanding of the task of regime change; they saw it as bigger and uglier than did the US. An intriguing thesis, but it was not in fact a thesis and the idea was never developed after its mention in the preface.

2. This may be inevitable in a book with such a subject, but Hitchcock narrates a truly endless tale of cruelty, neglect and, degradation, so much so that readers may be tempted to give it up and go on to something else in the same way they might choose not to watch films with endless violence. That would be a mistake because there’s an important message here, but I think Hitchcock could have organized more wisely and avoided this particular criticism.

OK. That’s out of the way. The message of this book—never explicitly stated until the conclusion—is that the “good war” wasn’t really so good and that the winners might have gone overboard not so much in making heroes and villains but in perpetrating the idea that some wars have clear outcomes and clean motives and even clean execution (except of course where the bad guys forced them into dirtier practices). In the US lately it’s been the “greatest generation” myth—when in fact American troops raped and pillaged and ran roughshod over civilians too. Earlier it was the “resistance myth” (particularly in France) when in fact, with the possible exception of Yugoslavia and Greece, resistance was materially ineffective.

Hitchcock starts in France and focuses on the sufferings of civilians through the Normandy invasions and the push into Germany and then moves on to Belgium and Holland focusing primarily on interactions between the military and the civilian population. It is odd that no one has as yet replayed these scenes; they are alarmingly reminiscent of the invasion of Iraq. Policies at the time forbad journalists from focusing heavily on civilian suffering, especially when it might cast doubt on the behavior of Allied troops and the decisions of Allied command. Since then, writers on the war have been busy building up the story of the “good war”, focusing on the military and its exploits, not on the civilians whose land they trampled.

In the process of rebalancing the view of WWII, Hitchcock sort of evens the score with respect to the behavior of British and American troops and those of the USSR. The latter are not whitewashed by any means, but troops on the Western front don’t sound like superhuman heroes either.

When Allied troops move into Germany itself, Hitchcock deals with fraternization issues. Initially US troops were forbidden to fraternize with German civilians, but ironically, they liked the German civilians more than those in France, Belgium and Holland. Even more ironically, but maybe not surprisingly, they identified with German civilians more than with those degraded humans they released from the concentration camps.

The real revelations of the book, as far as I was concerned, came when Hitchcock dealt with the problems of displaced persons immediately after the war: Jews—and others—liberated from the camps as well as civilians fleeing west to escape the Russians, plus prisoners of war or those transported to Germany to work were, in many cases, at loose ends as well. There were no plans in place to deal with them, the numbers were staggering and the problems almost insurmountable. Even defining who was entitled to what was problematic. Were Jews fleeing the Russians in the east (some bringing possessions and wealth with them) as entitled to help as those released from the camps? An early priority was returning people to their homes, but some had no homes and others didn’t want to go back to what was now the Russian zone. Soviet soldiers were returned to the USSR—where most ended up dead or in the Gulag (the result of a probably unwise agreement at Yalta), but there were civilians too. There was no solution except more camps, some without any more resources available to prisoners than had been the case in the German camps. DP camps--often built on the grounds of infamous death camps--housed “liberated” prisoners in a sort of limbo a year after the end of the war.

Other issues focused on the rescued Jews many of whom seemed hardly human after surviving the camps, most of whom were destitute, stateless and often debilitated. The liberators basically came from anti-Semitic environments and decried concentration camps and extermination, but didn’t want Jews living next door. Jews wanted to preserve memories of what happened to ensure the holocaust (it was not yet a capital letter issue) was never repeated; Western administrators wanted them to put the past behind them and move on. Large numbers of Jews with no home or families to return to wanted to start again in a Jewish homeland. Britain opposed letting Jews into Palestine, fearing clashes with Arabs they’d not have the ability to control. Other countries—including the US—didn’t want to take in large numbers of stateless, destitute, often debilitated, people.

Hitchcock doesn’t work through the problems to the end. His narrative, the theme of which is what happens to civilians in war, stops with the recognition that many of the liberated were still in camps 6 to 12 months after the end of the war. His conclusion—that we need to reevaluate our mythology about the “good war” and look at the disastrous effect of WWII on the European population—strikes me as a much-needed reevaluation. I do remember hearing about DPs and DP camps when I was a kid in the late 40s and 50s, but these days there has not been much focus on civilians (with the possible exceptions of those affected by the bombing in London which was not nearly as destructive as the wrath unleased on German cities at the end of the war).

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's frankly impossible for anyone to understand and mentally process just how many people were irrevocably affected by the very act of Liberation in 1944-45. Whether it was due to the direct attack via bombings, reprisals by retreating Fascist forces, revenge taken by advancing Soviet forces, or the sheer masses of displaced people (POWs, conscripted labor, and those Jews who'd survived to see the end of the war) suddenly freed from camps across central Europe, the end result was millions upon millions of people suddenly cast adrift. For most, they still faced months--if not years--of daily struggle and death. Homes and infrastures were in ruins, starvation and disease was rampant, and political concerns over East vs. West and the question of Palestine and what to do with Holocaust survivors cause Allied governments to either view those in question as an inconvenience, or worse, pawns and traitors to be punished. And while the Western Allies are due credit for at least anticipating the problem and working out how to humanely deal with the situation, they were still shocked, unprepared, and quickly overwhelmed by what they found as they rolled across formerly German-occupied lands.

As this book demonstrates in painful detail, with statistics the boggle the mind, the Liberation did not necessarily mean peace or safety or the end of suffering for those liberated. Perhaps for those who wonder today why unending gratitude was not more forthcoming then or now, this book explains it all.

This excerpt from the Conclusion of the book sums it up perfectly:

"It has long been a habit in the United States to narrate the history of the liberation of Europe in a heroic register, stressing the selfless sacrifice of ordinary soldiers as well as the talented generalship of American military leaders...
"By contrast, this book has drawn upon the testimony of many ordinary people, civilians as well as soldiers, to offer an alternative way of looking at the events of 1944-45... These voices have spoken of the indeterminate nature of liberation, its paradoxical joys and miseries, and the heavy toll that liberation and its aftermath took upon the liberated peoples themselves...The untold joy of seeing the war come to an end was diluted by the almost unbearable sufferings that so many had endured."

[Overbooked ✎ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely wonderful book showing the human cost paid by the people of Europe during the Liberation from Nazi Germany occupation and its aftermaths. The book is organised in four parts: liberation of the west (France, Belgium and Netherlands), advance and victory in Germany (inc. Russian Army), the return home of refugees and the war relief efforts (UNRRA) and finally the holocaust.

The author presents the material in a clear and organised manner, each parts starts with a summary of the main events and then continues by meticulously detailing first-hand evidence including reports, correspondence, diaries, testimonies bringing to life the plight of the soldiers, but more importantly the one of the local population in occupied territories.

There are hundreds of books dedicated to WWII, what differentiate this one is its aim to present the often ignored view from the civilians’ perspective, this quite different from the view from above, the “big picture” of history books.
Highly recommended, one of the best books I read so far this year.

Fav. Quotes:

The year 1945 taught Europeans a lesson they have never forgotten: that a war of liberation is still a war, and no matter how noble the cause, mothers and children will die, houses of worship will be burned, disease will spread, refugees will tramp the roads and then after all this horrors are over, liberators and liberated alike will still face the hard work of constructing freedom and restoring human dignity.

… by the time America entered the war in December 1941, two and half million Soviet soldiers had already been killed. The point here is not to detract in any way from the American sacrifice, but to explain why the Soviet soldiers that pushed into Germany in the spring of 1945 acted with such ferocity towards the German people. Unlike American, British or Canadian soldiers, the men and women of the Red Army had tasted German occupation on their own homeland. … For Soviet citizens, the war against Germany was something that could never be for their western comrades in arms: as war of survival and in its final months, of revenge.

The returnees were treated with officiousness, or as suspects; they were met with some degrees of scorn, as if time in wartime France had been harder that survival in a German camp; their stories were brushed off as incredible, exaggerated, and in any case inappropriate now that the war was over and the time of restoration had begun.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

A look at WWII from a non-American point of view. Instead of the typical, "We went over there, helped stop the madness, and lost so many of our own for a worthy cause" this book looks at the choas from the point of view of those noncombatants whose backyard the war was in. Perhaps the children of the European nations recieve more of this type of history than we do as Americans. It was eye-opening for me to hear of the trials that still existed even after the Germans were driven back off previously conquered territories. It truely was a long and bitter road to regain even a semblance of the lives these people had previous to the war. I was especially surprised by the first chapters that dealt with the coastline territories that we first landed on. I had not considered before how these peoples, though occupied by the Nazis, had been continuing to work, farm, and live throughout this period until we bombed them prior to the Allied landings and how in just a few short weeks many towns and villages were completely leveled to "soften" up the landing. I can understand from our side why it was done, but the devastation that was left was not on an Axis country these peoples were occupied allies/neutrals!...and then of course we marched on and left them in the rubble to pick up the peices as we pursued the Nazis. And the area where the Battle of the Bulge occurred! Yikes, anyone caught up in that back and forth area...It's stunning to even consider. Peoples' farms, homes, lifestock, just everything run over by both sides going back and forth and bombing and raiding. Liberated for a few months or weeks and then back come the Nazis, with even more reason to wreak havoc. This really was an enlightening read for me. I would definitely recommend it, especially for Americans who have no personal memories of a war occuring right on their doorstep. Frightening history but worth remembering.

[Alex Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

William Hitchcock's The Bitter Road to Freedom seeks to turn the conventional narrative of Europe's liberation in 1944-45 on its head by emphasizing, in lieu of those famous scenes of delirious Parisians throwing flowers at GIs and Tommies, the general suffering of Europeans in this period, even at the hands of their liberators. The advance of the Western Allies through France and the Low Countries into Germany was marked by violence and brutality: around 20,000 French civilians were killed during the fighting in Normandy (3,000 on D-Day alone); entire Belgian villages were devastated by US/UK air bombardment during the Battle of the Bulge; a serious famine broke out in the Netherlands in late 1944 to early 1945, when it remained under German occupation, that killed around 16,000 Dutch civilians (although I was not convinced by Hitchcock's argument that the Allies could have done much to alleviate this; air-drops of food largely would have been captured by the Germans and diverting troops to fight for the liberation of the Netherlands would have delayed the defeat of Germany, which means more dead everywhere). And one barely has to mention the fact that "liberation" in Eastern Europe meant swapping out one tyranny for another.

The final half of the book deals with Europe's postwar refugee crisis. Here, the US made a praiseworthy effort to provide relief through the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), disbursing $4 billion of aid to over a dozen countries. The Western Allies also moved heaven and earth to send as many displaced persons to their homelands as possible, repatriating nearly 6 million people by October 1945. And yet for many of the returnees, this was hardly a celebratory homecoming: they carried with them deep scars from their imprisonment and precarious existence during the war. There's a fascinating passage in here of a group of returning French Resistance members being bewildered and annoyed to receive an enthusiastic welcome home from a huge crowd of people at a Paris train station. They wasted away years in death camps while many of their fellow countrymen tacitly tolerated the German occupation; what was there to celebrate?

One group, Jews, continued to languish in refugee camps (sometimes built on the very ruins of the concentration camps where they were held by the Nazis) as they straddled an agonizing no-man's-land. Many refused to return home and yet were denied permission to emigrate to their yearned destination, Palestine. The camp conditions were appalling and even led one US investigator to conclude that US treatment of the Jews was only one step above that of the Nazis.

The book is disjointed and you occasionally have to go through some fairly irrelevant detours (preliminary US planning on occupation policy in Germany, British trials of the Belsen camp commandants, etc.), but overall it's a nice readable reminder that even wars of liberation are, well, still wars and a good reminder of why most of Europe does not view this war in the glossy way the US, UK, and Russia do.

[William Webb · Rating 4 out of 5]

This rating is for the audiobook.

The book was balanced and covered a topic of importance to anyone who wants to understand the aftermath of World War Two in Europe. At times I found it a bit of a tough slog, but that was more a function of the material than the author.

[carl theaker · Rating 2 out of 5]

Author Hitchcock is like the coach, who being the father of the star
athlete on the team, berates him continually to curry favor with the
parents of the other less talented kids, and to show he's really a fair
guy.

The trials and tribulations of the peoples in German occupied
territories during their liberation are the subject, the Armies of the
USA and Britain are the whipping boys for the author's
self-consciousness.

The story is a valid, and interesting one, it's the tone that
grates. The modern template and expectations for warfare is used,
that of smart bombs through keyholes, and no one hurt that isn't
a bad guy that is expected of B-17s doing carpet bombing.

When the American soldiers take a town it is 'clumsily done'.

The grasp on military events sometimes seems slim, the author telling
us '..the Germans were well prepared for the attack..' at Arnhem.
Not in any book I've ever read about it.

When the Western Allies pause in making a decision it's 'dithering',
which certainly contrasts with the Soviet pause outside of Warsaw, which
led to the slaughter of the Polish Resistance, is for strategic military
reasons.

When B-24 Liberators bomb a Belgian town killing American soldiers
as well as civilians, Hitchcock calls the Liberator 'ill-named'.
Perhaps he's trying to be witty. Of the over 18,000 Liberators made,
all flown by crews who I'm certain would have rather been doing
something else, I'm sure most earned the title.

Noting the civilian casualties in the West is grim however when the
story switches to the Eastern front where the Germans and Soviets
are grinding up thousands daily, the protests of the Western occupied
territories seem over stated.

There are some good stories in the book, always something to learn.
The jacket blurb says the author graduated from Yale and taught there
6 years. Mmmm, the same Ivy League that graduated all those MBAs
that have the world in financial mess at the moment. Maybe the
teaching of history in the Northeast isn't fairing much better?

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 5 out of 5]

A welcome corrective to the stale, orgasmic patriotic narrative of World War 2 which sees America's boys (white) kick the shit outta them fascist dogs! Oh, wait, Soviet casualties were 65 times that of America's? The Soviets basically destroyed the Nazi war machine? Just as many French civilians were killed by Allied...yes, you read that, right, Allied bombing on D-Day as US soldiers?
If you're like me and are comfortable enough with your fealty to your artificial nation-state construct yet find most of the views regarding it perfectly abominable, you'll probably love this book. This is more for the "Shaving Ryan's Privates" crowd more than the, well, other crowd.
As the above slyly hints, this book is about precisely those people who were being liberated since, well, they're supposed to matter too, right? The great American patriotic narrative might focus on the troops, but what about the people they were supposed to be saving? Well, much of Normandy was simply levelled; towns bombed out of existence; women raped; shit looted. Same as the Allies progressed northeast in Belgium, the Netherlands (where the Allies sat on their hands while half the country starved), etc. The list is long. Soldiers' accounts are dug into deeply, too, as they wonder at the French bitterness at Allied bombardments that basically killed everybody even when there weren't any Nazis around! Not to speak of the bombings of German civilian centers themselves. When they got around to finding the concentration camps that no one bothered to do anything about, soldiers are recoiling in disgust from the victims themselves. Not very American, I know.
Anyway, there's a wealth of depressing, horrible shit here that I must recommend for those seeking more nuanced views of very familiar things.

[Andrew Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

World War. Especially good description of the Hunger Winter imposed by the Germans in Holland to punish the local population for their support of Allies. Only in April 1945 Germans allowed the Allies to fly over the country and drop so needed food for people who were starving and dying over the last months of the war.

An another interesting story describes a fate of the displaced people who had worked as the slave labour in Germany. The large group of survivors, living in a camp of Wilflecken, refused to return to Poland, because their land has been taken over by the Russians, when the Allies agreed earlier on to Stalin's demand to redraw the Polish-Russian border along the Ribbentrop-Molotov line, when he partitioned Poland along with Hitler in 1939.

Finally, along the activities of UNRRA, the whole chapter is devoted to struggle of Jewish survivors who demanded for the British to drop their embargo on the migration of Jewish population to Palestine, as they did not want to return to their countries of origin, having had lost so many of their families and being treated as strangers in those countries.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

So often what we read when we read anything about the liberation of Europe in World War II is a story of heroics, gratitude and relief. This book provides a much needed antidote to that myth, describing the actual human cost of the liberation. It is really good to find out what happened after the history books finish and how the people on the ground experienced the end of the war. It puts things in perspective and perhaps emphasises the futility of war in general.

[Steve Smits · Rating 4 out of 5]

Themes of WWII military history (in Europe) are well-recognized by those with even the most casual interest. The astonishing perfidy of the German aggressors, the devastation wrought in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union followed by its massive counter offensive with millions of resuting casualties to its armed forces, the horrific murderousness of Germans directed at Jews and others, the story of the awakening of the American war machine and its stalwart actions on the western front -- these are all familiar, and valid, parts of the story.

There's another theme, though, that isn't well-chronicled and that is of the massive suffering and destruction visited on civilians in the wake of the liberators' campaigns. While the utter evilness of the Germans and their Axis allies is well-known to us, the loss of life and havoc brought by the Allies is not much written on. There are complex reasons for this void. The actions of the liberators were in pursuit of a virtuous cause. The noble sacrifices of our soldiers and airmen are paramount in our memories. That "collateral damage" (to use that unfortunate contemporary euphemism) was unavoidable and not maliciously or purposely inflicted. In a true sense, to focus on the consequences of our actions on civilian populations would distract us from the (deserved) righteousness of our massive undertaking to fight the aggressor.

But consequences there were and, whatever the moral valuation you place on them, they were awesome in their destructiveness. Hitchcock's book fills in this part of the story of WWI in Europe. He points out the hundreds of thousands of civilan casualties caused by allied bombing, some of which were unavoidable, some through recklessness, others weakly justified as militarily necessary. He discusses the massive starvation in Holland, created by German inhumanity for sure, but which might have been amelioriated sooner by the Allies. He also points out the misbehavior of soldiers toward civilians that is an inevitable occurence. American and British forces were by no means all choirboys, but their transgressions pale compared to the rapaciousness of Soviet soldiers. Hitchcock puts forth an insightful analysis of the attitudes and actions of the Allies toward displaced persons, particularly the hamhanded ways they handled the desire of Jews to relocate to Palestine. The juxtaposition of harsh attitudes toward displaced persons and how lightly Germans civilians were treated in the post war is an interesting one.

This story requires a nuanced moral tone that Hitchcock satifactorily achieves. The Allies did not initiate the war; their efforts in response to unprovoked agression were truly heroic; their sacrifices were huge; the Germans were truly monstrously evil at all stages of the conflict.
But, the virtuousness of the Allied cause does not, should not, wipe out of history and memory the impact of war making on civilians. This book does not take the easy route of blame or blamelessness; it forces us to think twice before taking the easy moral "out" of the unintended inevitability of harm to civilian bystanders. It highlights mistakes without the sanctimoniousness or simplicity of second guessing. It paints a more complete picture of the nature of our actions than is present in our popular conceptions of the "good war".

Hitchcock puts forth intriguing concepts about why this aspect of the war is so neglected by history. Among many reasons, this gap was, to some degree, engendered by the complex political dynamics following the war, including the incipient onset of the Cold War.

For anyone interested in how WWII, this is an important addition to the historical record.

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

The classic historical narrative of liberation in Europe at the end of World War II is one of celebration, thanksgiving, gratitude, relief. One thinks of images of joyful civilians throwing flowers at Allied jeeps, at soldiers being kissed by grateful young women, of celebrating crowds lining the streets in Paris and other cities. This narrative isn't inaccurate - far from it, all of these things did take place - but it isn't the entire story, and the focus on the more uplifting aspects of liberation has served to mask the true picture underneath, which was often one of death and despair, loss, hunger, even starvation.

As many French civilians died in the 1944 invasion of France as did soldiers on the beaches of Normandy. Many thousands of Dutch civilians died of starvation even after their country had been liberated from the Nazi occupation. The invading armies, most notably the Soviet Red Army, unleashed more horrors on the populations of the countries they passed through - looting, theft, rape, assault, murder. For some countries liberation did not spell freedom at all - simply exchanging one occupation under the Nazis for another under the Soviet Union. And for the Jews of Europe many were still held in camps years after liberation, often in the very same concentration camps they had been imprisoned in under the Nazis.

Hitchcock treats all of these issues with care and a real impartial eye. He readily acknowledges the immense humanitarian efforts made by the Allied countries in the wake of liberation, but also recognises where these efforts fell short and where the governments and occupying armies simply failed to comprehend what many of these suffering people had experienced, particularly the Jews and other displaced people who had no homes to return to. It is an excellent book and an important one, highlighting an important aspect of WWII history that has been neglected in favour of a narrative that highlights the uplifting and positive in place of the often-troubling truth.

[Jon Harris · Rating 3 out of 5]

For the first book of its kind, Hitchock does a decent job supporting his thesis that “Liberation was . . . both a glorious chapter in military history and a human tragedy of enormous scope." The weaknesses of the book are mostly on the periphery, though some fundamental assumptions must be challenged. First, while much of the carnage that took place in occupied countries was undeniably unjustified, little discussion is given to the possible necessity that may have existed. It is a standard dictum of war that civilian casualties are inevitable. Second, the author sometimes jumps to hasty generalizations. In chapter 5 Hitchock discusses an American officer who cited a “tendency among the naïve or the malicious to think that only Russians loot and rape. After a battle, soldiers of every country are pretty much the same." The author then goes on to cite reports that seem to indicate that rape was commonplace and the population was terrified. However, just four pages later Hitchock is discussing how settled in and welcomed Americans had become socially and sexually with the German population. A more flexible narrative that allowed for both sinners and saints within the ranks of American soldiers would have made more sense of the situation. Hitchock also seems to assume racially superior attitudes without conclusive proof. For example, he posits some of kind of mutual cooperation between French police and white Americans when it came to opposing black soldiers. Readers are told . . . “the French police, found the presence of African-American soldiers in their community unsettling." The explanations given harken back to being “conservative” and “colonial.” Then, however, readers are told that “African-American troops were more frequently punished for [criminal] acts than [were] whites." It could very well be that discrimination played a large role, but it could also be that certain ethnic groups committed crimes at higher levels. Hitchock does not even allow for this possibility.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Since I am interested in WWII books, I chose The Bitter Road to Freedom by William I. Hitchcock. It focusses where other histories often fail to mention or gloss over, namely the often horrible experiences of the civilians as their farms, village, towns and cities became battlefields. The experience of the guys doing the actual fighting are also gone into. What is not in the book except peripherally is much detail on command decisions. If you have ever wondered why the French citizens of Caen were sullen and dazed when their city was finally liberated, it becomes very clear here why they reacted so differently than the Parisians. Their city was rubble, they had lost friends, family to days of Allied bombing raids and artillery barrages. They paid a high price for liberation. The Belgians in the Ardennes and other areas fought over during the Battle of the Bulge had it even worse. Villages and farms were liberated by the Allies, only to be lost again to the Germans sometimes several times. The Germans always found time to arrest, torture and execute anyone they felt was in the resistance. One wonders how given the travails of the fighting. The air raids, bombings and Allied attacks also took their toll on the citizens of these villages. When the Allies finally recaptured one village, none of the 2000 inhabitants could be found, having been killed and scattered to the countryside. An entire town disappeared. One can begin to see that people who have suffered so greatly are not anxious to inflict such horrors on others. War is horrible, it is a nightmare and we should never forget that. We Americans have a tendency to glorify war and hold our warriors in high esteem, perhaps we should do that, but we should also be mindful how horrible war is and be more reluctant to inflict it on others.

[Marianne · Rating 5 out of 5]

For many of us Americans, WWII history goes like this: Pearl Harbor, D-Day, the atomic bombs, and V-J Day, the last conjuring photos of ecstatic citizens celebrating in Times Square. A US history book will then skip three years to the Marshall Plan--the hugely successful US funding to rebuild Europe--and the origins of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. But what happened in devastated Europe in those three years? The realities are horrendous and frightening, and need to be understood in times, like now, when the world seems ready to repeat the horrors of WWII.

Here William Hitchcock provides a significant addition to the 21st-century histories of this period; the subtitle of the paperback edition conveys its impact better than the title – The Human Cost of Allied Victory in World War II Europe. The human cost and the carcass of civilization in 1945 are beyond what most of us can imagine. There’s no Ken Burns five-part documentary on this period in Europe. Perhaps there should be.

I recommend Hitchcock’s The Bitter Road to Freedom (2008) along with Keith Lowe’s Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II (2012), and Harald Jähner’s Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, 1945-1955 (2021). But don’t read them one-two-three; leave space to breathe.

[Vince · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author covers different parts of the liberation experience in Europe during and after WW2. He makes many good points and trys to empathize with the civilan populations who traded the hell of Nazi occupation for either the hell of Russian occupation or an improved but far from idea occupation by the Americans. He's a bit critical of US and British war policy especially in regards to the bombings of population centers and the treatment of DPs. Still I would like to point out in the defense of the authorities at the time that they were making much of this up on the fly. In retrospect blasting Dresden or Hamburg to pieces seems untenable by todays standards, but I'm sure surviving bomber crews would point out that Germany and also Japan have been somewhat ideal world citizens for the last 60 years and this might be the result of their experiences in the war.

[Lana Hasper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stephen Kiernan’s excellent novel, "The Baker’s Secret", on the Allied invasion of Normandy from the French perspective motivated me to learn more about the end of the war in Europe. I am also always inspired by my Dad who spent over fours years in the army, landing on Utah Beach one month after the D-Day invasion. He was trained and assigned to locate, pump and purify drinking water for his company. He was always behind the front lines in support of the fighting men. I often wonder what it was like for him to see the devastation of the farmland and livestock, the beautiful cities and tiny villages. What were his encounters with the locals?
History books on all things military usually leave me glassy-eyed. This book, for the most part, kept my interest and helped me achieve my goal of understanding more about "people" in Europe at the end of the war. It also confirmed why my Dad’s job was absolutely imperative.
Similar to “The Lost Cause” of the Civil War, taught by most American History textbooks until recently, some of the grim realities presented in this book were sanitized for many years in celebration of the heroism, bravery, selflessness, sheer scope of planning and dogged determination that was demonstrated in liberating so many from such unimaginable evil and tyranny. This book suggests “that when considering the history of Europe’s liberation, we not lose sight of the human costs that this epic contest exacted upon defenseless peoples and ordinary lives. There is surely room enough in our histories of World War II for introspection, for humility, and for an abiding awareness of the dreadful ugliness of war.”

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

My conversation with the author can be listened to here:

http://historyasithappens.radio.washi...

By now most of us have read our share of military histories of the Second World War or seen a good number of heroic film treatments, such as Saving Private Ryan.

William Hitchcock is interested in a different story -- the liberation of Europe from the perspective of the liberated. There is heroism in this story but also misery, cruelty, indifference, and suffering that continues long after the war ended. It is the history we and the Europeans have chosen to forget about the liberation, because it spoils our mythic memories of crusading armies and brave resistance fighters.

The deliberate, needless carpet bombing of Caen, for instance, takes up many pages. The fact that Jewish survivors of the death camps continued to exist in a limbo between liberation and freedom for years after the war -- with many living behind barbed wire in camps! -- this is also part of Hitchcock's project.

The best scholarship is scholarship that surprises, fills in holes, embraces a more human, complicated picture. We have to be able to recognize both -- that the U.S. did indeed liberate Western Europe at great loss of blood and treasure, but that liberation brought its own form of brutality, even if it was often not malevolent.

Hitchcock's treatment of the liberation of the death camps is among the most moving I have read -- he lets the witnesses' words fill the pages. Scenes of indescribable horror became describable. I will not forget what I read here.

[Vic Lauterbach · Rating 4 out of 5]

This narrative history examines the plight of European civilians in 1944-45 and fills a major gap in WWII history for general readers. There's lots of good information here, and it's generally well organized. Readers like myself, who are already familiar with the final military campaigns in Europe, may want to skim some sections, but do so judiciously because some 'recaps' include material pertaining to the main topic. The tone ranges from scholarly to vituperative, which is mildly distracting. This book covers a very large subject, so out of necessity some parts of Europe get more coverage than others. Austria, Italy and Yugoslavia, for example, get short shrift compared to France, Poland, Germany and the Benelux counties. Beyond the expulsion of ethnic Germans, the plight of Eastern Europe is covered lightly. Like many Western scholars, Mr. Hitchcock is unduly reticent regarding the complicity of the Soviet Union in starting the war, its duplicitous conduct during the war and its barbaric 'liberation' of Eastern Europe. That said, Mr. Hitchcock accomplishes what he set out to do-redress the complete omission of civilian suffering from most books about WWII. In his conclusion, he acknowledges that, on balance, the story of Liberation is a positive one for Europeans. Looking at the vast suffering caused by the Second World War proves that all wars, even necessary ones, are catastrophes that take many years to recover from. I recommend this book to anyone who wishes to understand Europe today.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read many books on WWII and many of those cover the period from D-Day and the Normandy invasion through the final demise and surrender of Nazi Germany. What author William I. Hitchcock presents in The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe repeats much of the same material but his real focus throughout the book is the impact on the civilian populations who were killed and injured in large numbers by allied as well as axis military action. Mostly it was what we commonly call collateral damage, being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But this was why some did not seem so appreciative of being liberated since it came at the cost of the lives of their family members, friends, and often the total destruction of their property. It was quite often a combination of a military triumph and a human tragedy and the locals were left to clean up and rebuild, in some cases without help from their government or the military. While they were happy to be out from under the control of the Nazis, life after the destruction and loss of life left some wondering if they were really any better off. Also, there were some populations that endure multiple episodes of destruction and casualty when the Germans invaded and again when the allies pushed them out. Great read for those interested in WWII that haven't read about the non-military impact on the civilians caught in the middle.

[Russel Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps not a good book, but an important one. It could be called revisionism, though none of his themes are particularly controversial. He just joins them to paint a picture that is less flattering, a cold shower of sorts. Even casual readers of the war's history know strategic bombing was a brutal tactic of dubious efficacy, and most realize that civilians in occupied countries were victimized by Allied bombs too. His history of the East is scant, but the brutality of the Russians in 44-45 is widely accepted. The history of non-Jewish IDPs is often glossed over, reduced to a paragraph or two, and the fate of Jewish refugees often taught in conjunction with the Holocaust or not at all. By joining them together he reminds us that war's aftermath is invariably messy, inadvertently illustrating that many of the challenges of more recent conflicts are not novel and that even those we accept as great leaders struggled to find solutions. His criticism of US leniency toward Germany pays little attention to the looming bear in the room, but I don't know that it was a central theme. The history is episodic and sometimes a touch cursory, cutting off at only part of a story, and he could have written far more on the brutal and chaotic Eastern Front, but it is still an important contribution to the assemblage of popularly accessible history on the conflict and its aftermath.

[Martin Koenigsberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book- but a real chore to read. And this is a book strictly for adults, for literally everything discussed within its pages might be considered very mature. This is the story of the Liberation of Europe 1944-5- without any gloss at all. In fact, there is almost nothing positive in this tome at all. It is more a litany of all the costs of the European war with no salving military accomplishments featured. One needs to read elsewhere about strategy and tactics in WWII. This is all anecdotes and statistics of rape, displacement, house destruction, pain, and suffering. And it is good at it. I got sideswiped by the death of a favourite musician- and let this book's depressing subject get to me. If you are ready for it- its an important work work that will remind the modern western reader of why we try to avoid total unrestricted war all over the world at once. This is NOT a book for the Modeller/Gamer/Military Enthusiast -but the historian, sociologist, or curious reader will be rewarded.

[Nemo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pulitzer finalist is totally worth to read. This is exactly the kind of history book that I may enjoy: telling you something new. With a lot of solid research.

The themes of the book is not that shocking: telling the dark side of WWII. The most eye opener is that the French civilians were killed more by alliance air raids than by German. Also when British, Canadian and American soilders liberated France and Belgium they behaved so badly that local rrsidents even want the German stay. And the various resistance movements in countries like France, Holland and Belgium didn't bring much damage to German, but after the victory such movements were overrated for propaganda purpose, just like the Chinese overestimate their underground guerilla fighting against Japs. The various details about the interaction of civilians and military and about various camps and how POWs felt when they return home and how Jews behaved in their camps. Wow, read it, and you learn something that a routine history textbook will never tell you.

[cypher · Rating 1 out of 5]

“liberation”, liberation, but it just talks about the Nazis and not the Soviet horror…
DNF, i couldn’t listen to this (audiobook version) for too long, it was just making me angry, for some, that “liberation” was followed by the soviet communism tyranny, and that was not liberation…this was incredibly biased with its definition of “liberation”. just because part of Europe felt “liberated” that doesn’t mean things were ok for others with the Soviet horror.
very biased, propaganda, only talking about some positives, to make things look good for some political agenda. the reality is that after the Nazis, for some, came the Soviets…and liberation did not happen in 1945…i bet Ukraine feels liberated now too, i’m being sarcastic.
a pat on the back for defeating the Nazis, what about the Soviets US left behind?

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe" by William I. Hitchcock gives the reader a look into World War II through the eyes of those liberated and the cost of the liberation. The author gives a very visual depiction of the cost in human lives (both soldiers and civilians), destruction of complete cities and towns, cultures destroyed, innocence robbed and so much more for the Allies to not only win the war but dealing also with the aftermath of a war of horrors.
The author doesn't forget the heroes, bravery, and human determination to destroy the tyrants of the war, but also shares with nothing held back the atrocities of the war done by both sides. Atrocities sometimes done due to war itself but many times by mere selfish human desires.

[Greg Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty brisk but haunting account of the devastation wrought by WWII on Europe. Does a good job complicating the usual liberation narrative and bringing in the testimonies of affected populations, both in Allied countries and in the occupied Axis areas. Makes me want to read Postwar, which starts out with a similar chronicle of post-war devastation and goes on to cover the half-century afterward. Also does a good job covering the tail-end of the Holocaust, capturing how it was almost doubly-unimaginable: both overwhelmingly horrifying on a personal scale from survivor testimony, and then again as you try to grasp just how many millions were ground up by the Nazi death machine.

[Ron Turner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Starts out strong. The author makes a good point that the liberation of Europe during WWII has been heavily sanitized and romanticized. We forget that Italy was a nasty stalemate; that we had to bomb the hell out of France, Belgium and Germany; that our soldiers were not always on their best behavior and that occupation was a messy affair. But then it gets wobbly in the end, trying to tell the story of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration and the various groups that sprang up to deal with Jews, refugees and POWs. That really should have been a second book on its own.

[Gary Klein · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The liberation of Europe will always inspire us ... [but] there is surely room enough in our histories of World War II for introspection, for humility, and for an abiding awareness of the dreadful ugliness of war."

This book does a masterful job telling the story of World War II from the perspective of the liberated, those liberated by the Russians vs Americans/British, and the Jewish people, who often continued to live in the same camps they were liberated from for months, sometimes years.