The Bitter Road to Freedom by William I. Hitchcock

Much of that assistance, however, went to people even more spectacularly needy: the tens of thousands of nomads. By contrast, in the war’s immediate aftermath liberated Europe was largely left to its own resources, with episodic help from the embryonic United Nations. Instead of behaving punitively, the Western occupiers quickly embarked on programs of relief and recovery, with an increasing hope they would foster rehabilitation. Americans in particular simply liked the Germans-who in turn sought to reinforce that sentiment with compliant behavior. Ironically, Germany under British and American occupation often fared better than liberated Europe. The western Allies’ soldiers were far less violent, but from a civilian perspective they shared with the Russians a level of power and authority that invited abuse and created randomness no less terrifying than the organized oppression wielded by the Germans. Soviet troops raped and pillaged their way across eastern Europe with small regard for the national identity of the victims. Nor was liberation’s human face always benign.

Today’s polite euphemism is “collateral damage.” Yesterday’s reality was that much of Europe turned to rubble.

Americans, the British, and Soviets alike had no compunction in limiting their own casualties by the massive use of firepower, in the full knowledge that doing so meant civilians would suffer and die. The Germans fought for every yard of the territory they occupied. The liberation’s true keystone was violence. Hitchcock, a professor of history at Temple University, displays an impressive command of archival and published sources in challenging the heroic myth of liberation. The removal of a brutal overlord would be seamlessly followed by locally initiated and sustained reconstruction, with minimal and temporary American involvement. A case can even be made that the ill-conceived policies pursued in Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein reflected the oversimplified conflation of 2003 Iraq with the France or Netherlands of 19. Sixty years afterward, the liberation of Europe remains one of the events defining World War II as a “good war” in America’s consciousness. The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europeīy William I. WWII Book Review: The Bitter Road to Freedom Close

The Bitter Road to Freedom by William I. Hitchcock