La Segunda Guerra Mundial dejó a Europa sumida en el caos. Paisajes y cultivos destruidos, ciudades completamente arrasadas y más de 35 millones de muertos. En la mayor parte del continente, las instituciones como la policía, los medios de comunicación, el transporte, los gobiernos locales y nacionales, habían dejado de existir. Los índices de criminalidad aumentaron, las economías colapsaron y los ciudanos europeos estaban al límite de la extenuación.

An interesting and well written history of an understudied historical period. I'd really never read anything about the years immediately after WWII in Europe, and I guess I'd just never really thougth about how horrible it must have been. Great book. ( )

This book should be required reading for serious WWII historians. Lowe deals with a subject that is often glossed over....what happened (and how it has been mythologized) in the immediate aftermath of the war. "The story of Europe in the immediate postwar period is therefore not primarily one of reconstruction and rehabilitation - it is firstly a story of the descent into anarchy." Further, Lowe opens our eyes to how the story was not simply one of a local person supporting their state against the Nazi occupiers. That local person could also have been fighting wars against people of different religions, different ethnicities, against the government of the state, against other neighbors who might be of different political persuasions, etc. "The sheer variety of grievances that existed in 1945 demonstrates not only how universal the war had been, but also how inadequate is our traditional way of understanding it." This _IS_ a difficult book to read....both because of the subject matter and keeping track of the particular conflict Lowe is focusing on at the moment, and how that conflict relates to other conflicts. But that doesn't make it unreadable or not worth the time it takes to read it. Can't recommend highly enough. ( )

Brutal and unrelenting. An extremely hard book to read, where every new page brings to light a new atrocity. The machinations of the world powers post WWII are thoroughly sifted through and show that no one, including those bronzed heroes of yesteryear was on the side of angels. Highly recommended. ( )

Good stuff--well written, plenty of facts, a few too many anecdotes, but not too long. Not quite as good as 'The Vanquished,' which is a similar idea applied to the first world war, but certainly more worth reading than yet another book about how world war II started or played out. ( )