Year Zero: A History of 1945
Ian Buruma: Books
Many books have been written, and continue to be written, about the Second World War: military histories, histories of the Holocaust, the war in Asia, or collaboration and resistance in Europe. Few books have taken a close look at the immediate aftermath of the worldwide catastrophe.
Drawing on hundreds of eye-witness accounts and personal stories, this sweeping book examines the seven months (in Europe) and four months (in Asia) that followed the surrender of the Axis powers, from the fate of Holocaust survivors liberated from the concentration camps, and the formation of the state of Israel, to the incipient civil war in China, and the allied occupation of Japan.
It was a time when terrible revenge was taken on collaborators and their former masters; of ubiquitous black markets, war crime tribunals; and the servicing of millions of occupation troops, former foes in some places, liberators in others. But Year Zero is not just a story of vengeance. It was also a new beginning, of democratic restorations in Japan and West Germany, of social democracy in Britain and of a new world order under the United Nations.
If construction follows destruction, Year Zero describes that extraordinary moment in between, when people faced the wreckage, full of despair, as well as great hope. An old world had been destroyed; a new one was yet to be built.
Nee
Many books have been written, and continue to be written, about the Second World War: military histories, histories of the Holocaust, the war in Asia, or collaboration and resistance in Europe. Few books have taken a close look at the immediate aftermath of the worldwide catastrophe.
Drawing on hundreds of eye-witness accounts and personal stories, this sweeping book examines the seven months (in Europe) and four months (in Asia) that followed the surrender of the Axis powers, from the fate of Holocaust survivors liberated from the concentration camps, and the formation of the state of Israel, to the incipient civil war in China, and the allied occupation of Japan.
It was a time when terrible revenge was taken on collaborators and their former masters; of ubiquitous black markets, war crime tribunals; and the servicing of millions of occupation troops, former foes in some places, liberators in others. But Year Zero is not just a story of vengeance. It was also a new beginning, of democratic restorations in Japan and West Germany, of social democracy in Britain and of a new world order under the United Nations.
If construction follows destruction, Year Zero describes that extraordinary moment in between, when people faced the wreckage, full of despair, as well as great hope. An old world had been destroyed; a new one was yet to be built.
-------
Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
In 1945, the war ended, but a new world began. Taken and destroyed cities were transformed; the liberated celebrated; scores were settled; people starved; justice was and was not meted out; soldiers and refugees came home; suffering ended, or continued, or began anew. An eclectic scholar who has written on religion, democracy, and war, Buruma presents a panoramic view of a global transformation and emphasizes common themes: exultation, hunger, revenge, homecoming, renewed confidence. Though there was great cause for pessimism, many of the institutions established in the immediate postwar period—the United Nations, the modern European welfare state, the international criminal-justice system—reflected profound optimism that remains unmatched. Buruma’s facility with Asian history lends this selection a particularly internationalized perspective. But it is the story of his father—a Dutch man who returned home in 1945 after being forced into factory labor by the Nazis—that sews the various pieces together and provides a moving personal touch. --Brendan Driscoll
Review
Charles Simic, The New York Review of Books:
“Year Zero…covers a great deal of history without minimizing the complexity of the events and the issues. It is well written and researched, full of little-known facts and incisive political analysis. What makes it unique among hundreds of other works written about this period is that it gives an overview of the effects of the war and liberation, not only in Europe, but also in Asia… A stirring account of the year in which the world woke up to the horror of what had just occurred and—while some new horrors were being committed—began to reflect on how to make sure that it never happens again.”
Adam Hochschild, The New York Times Book Review:
“Ian Buruma’s lively new history, Year Zero, is about the various ways in which the aftermath of the Good War turned out badly for many people, and splendidly for some who didn’t deserve it. It is enriched by his knowledge of six languages, a sense of personal connection to the era (his Dutch father was a forced laborer in Berlin) and his understanding of this period from a book he wrote two decades ago that is still worth reading, The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan.”
Wall Street Journal:
“[Buruma is] one of those rare historian-humanists who bridge East and West…Year Zero has a down-to-earth grandeur. Through an array of brief, evocative human portraits and poignant descriptions of events around the globe he hints, rather than going into numbing detail or philosophical discourse, at the dimensions of suffering, the depth of moral confusion and in the end the nascent hope that 1945 entailed…Year Zero is a remarkable book, not because it breaks new ground, but in its combination of magnificence and modesty.”
The Economist:
“[Buruma] displays a fine grasp of the war’s scope and aftermath. Little conventional wisdom survives Mr. Buruma’s astringent prose. Perhaps his most important insight is that the war was not a neat conflict between two sides. The victors included villains, and the vanquished were not all Nazis. On many fronts—notably Yugoslavia—many sides were at war…Many of the consequences of victory were grim. Normality returned in the decades that followed thanks to the grit and determination of those who pushed on past the horrors of 1945. Mr. Buruma’s book honours their efforts.”
Financial Times:
“Elegant and humane…As generations with few memories of the second world war come of age in Europe and Asia, this luminous book will remind them of the importance of what Buruma terms ‘mental surgeons’, the politicians and warriors who reconstructed two continents left in rubble.”
The New Yorker:
“[A] very human history of ‘postwar 1945.’”
Smithsonian Magazine:
"[Buruma] makes a compelling case that many of the modern triumphs and traumas yet to come took root in this fateful year of retribution, revenge, suffering and healing."
The Daily Beast:
“After total war with millions dead and the Shoah comes what? That is the question that propels critic and historian Ian Buruma’s panoramic history of 1945. It is a personal story for Buruma, inspired by his own father’s experience of the war and its aftermath, but with Buruma’s sharp and careful eye it becomes a window into understanding all the years since then.”
Lucas Wittmann, The Daily Beast:
“I’ve spent countless hours reading about trenches, tank battles, and dogfights, but no book had yet captured what came after all that as superbly as Ian Buruma does in Year Zero: A History of 1945. This book will change the way you think about the postwar era, i.e. ours.”
Publishers Weekly (starred):
“Rooted in first-person accounts—most notably, the author's own father, a Dutch student forced into labor by the Nazis—Buruma's compelling book manages to be simultaneously global in its scope and utterly human in its concerns.”
Kirkus Reviews:
“[An] insightful meditation on the world’s emergence from the wreckage of World War II. Buruma offers a vivid portrayal of the first steps toward normalcy in human affairs amid the ruins of Europe and Asia…Authoritative, illuminating.”
Booklist:
"In 1945, the war ended, but a new world began. Taken and destroyed cities were transformed; the liberated celebrated; scores were settled; people starved; justice was and was not meted out; soldiers and refugees came home; suffering ended, or continued, or began anew. An eclectic scholar who has written on religion, democracy, and war, Buruma presents a panoramic view of a global transformation and emphasizes common themes: exultation, hunger, revenge, homecoming, renewed confidence. Though there was great cause for pessimism, many of the institutions established in the immediate postwar period—the United Nations, the modern European welfare state, the international criminal-justice system—reflected profound optimism that remains unmatched. Buruma’s facility with Asian history lends this selection a particularly internationalized perspective. But it is the story of his father—a Dutch man who returned home in 1945 after being forced into factory labor by the Nazis—that sews the various pieces together and provides a moving personal touch."
Fritz Stern:
“A brilliant recreation of that decisive year of victory and defeat, chaos and humiliation, concentrating on peoples, not states. Gripping, poignant and unsparing, Year Zero is worthy of its author in being at home in both Europe and Asia. It is a book at once deeply empathetic and utterly fair, marked by wisdom and great knowledge; the often personal tone inspired by the fate of his father, a Dutchman forced into German labor camps. In the face of so much horror, it is an astounding effort at deep comprehension. A superb book, splendidly written.”
Michael Ignatieff:
“Year Zero is the founding moment of the modern era. Ian Buruma’s history of that moment is vivid, compassionate and compelling. Buruma weaves together a tapestry of vital themes: the exultation and sexual liberation that came with victory, the vindictive settling of scores that came with defeat and the longing for a world of peace, justice and human rights after the horror of total war. His story takes in the world: from Holland to Japan, and his heroes and heroines are the ordinary men and women who picked up the pieces of a broken world and put it back together for their children and grandchildren. We are their heirs and Buruma does our parents and grandparents justice in this magnificent history.”
Sir Ian Kershaw:
“A graphic account—well-researched, splendidly constructed and stylishly written—of the hinge year of the twentieth century, of its horrors, hopes, illusions and roots of troubles to come. Altogether compelling—a fine achievement.”
Sir Brian Urquhart:
“Ian Buruma gives a heart-wrenching account of the horrors, the unimaginable cruelties, and the sheer stupidities of the last months of World War II, and the attempts to deal with them in the first months of peace. Even after nearly seventy years, parts of his book are still almost unbearable to read. Buruma’s Dutch father improbably survived Nazi forced labor in Berlin, under allied air attack, until the German surrender; this book reflects an intimacy with the familiar dread of the forces of evil that never goes completely away.”
“Year Zero…covers a great deal of history without minimizing the complexity of the events and the issues. It is well written and researched, full of little-known facts and incisive political analysis. What makes it unique among hundreds of other works written about this period is that it gives an overview of the effects of the war and liberation, not only in Europe, but also in Asia… A stirring account of the year in which the world woke up to the horror of what had just occurred and—while some new horrors were being committed—began to reflect on how to make sure that it never happens again.”
Adam Hochschild, The New York Times Book Review:
“Ian Buruma’s lively new history, Year Zero, is about the various ways in which the aftermath of the Good War turned out badly for many people, and splendidly for some who didn’t deserve it. It is enriched by his knowledge of six languages, a sense of personal connection to the era (his Dutch father was a forced laborer in Berlin) and his understanding of this period from a book he wrote two decades ago that is still worth reading, The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan.”
Wall Street Journal:
“[Buruma is] one of those rare historian-humanists who bridge East and West…Year Zero has a down-to-earth grandeur. Through an array of brief, evocative human portraits and poignant descriptions of events around the globe he hints, rather than going into numbing detail or philosophical discourse, at the dimensions of suffering, the depth of moral confusion and in the end the nascent hope that 1945 entailed…Year Zero is a remarkable book, not because it breaks new ground, but in its combination of magnificence and modesty.”
The Economist:
“[Buruma] displays a fine grasp of the war’s scope and aftermath. Little conventional wisdom survives Mr. Buruma’s astringent prose. Perhaps his most important insight is that the war was not a neat conflict between two sides. The victors included villains, and the vanquished were not all Nazis. On many fronts—notably Yugoslavia—many sides were at war…Many of the consequences of victory were grim. Normality returned in the decades that followed thanks to the grit and determination of those who pushed on past the horrors of 1945. Mr. Buruma’s book honours their efforts.”
Financial Times:
“Elegant and humane…As generations with few memories of the second world war come of age in Europe and Asia, this luminous book will remind them of the importance of what Buruma terms ‘mental surgeons’, the politicians and warriors who reconstructed two continents left in rubble.”
The New Yorker:
“[A] very human history of ‘postwar 1945.’”
Smithsonian Magazine:
"[Buruma] makes a compelling case that many of the modern triumphs and traumas yet to come took root in this fateful year of retribution, revenge, suffering and healing."
The Daily Beast:
“After total war with millions dead and the Shoah comes what? That is the question that propels critic and historian Ian Buruma’s panoramic history of 1945. It is a personal story for Buruma, inspired by his own father’s experience of the war and its aftermath, but with Buruma’s sharp and careful eye it becomes a window into understanding all the years since then.”
Lucas Wittmann, The Daily Beast:
“I’ve spent countless hours reading about trenches, tank battles, and dogfights, but no book had yet captured what came after all that as superbly as Ian Buruma does in Year Zero: A History of 1945. This book will change the way you think about the postwar era, i.e. ours.”
Publishers Weekly (starred):
“Rooted in first-person accounts—most notably, the author's own father, a Dutch student forced into labor by the Nazis—Buruma's compelling book manages to be simultaneously global in its scope and utterly human in its concerns.”
Kirkus Reviews:
“[An] insightful meditation on the world’s emergence from the wreckage of World War II. Buruma offers a vivid portrayal of the first steps toward normalcy in human affairs amid the ruins of Europe and Asia…Authoritative, illuminating.”
Booklist:
"In 1945, the war ended, but a new world began. Taken and destroyed cities were transformed; the liberated celebrated; scores were settled; people starved; justice was and was not meted out; soldiers and refugees came home; suffering ended, or continued, or began anew. An eclectic scholar who has written on religion, democracy, and war, Buruma presents a panoramic view of a global transformation and emphasizes common themes: exultation, hunger, revenge, homecoming, renewed confidence. Though there was great cause for pessimism, many of the institutions established in the immediate postwar period—the United Nations, the modern European welfare state, the international criminal-justice system—reflected profound optimism that remains unmatched. Buruma’s facility with Asian history lends this selection a particularly internationalized perspective. But it is the story of his father—a Dutch man who returned home in 1945 after being forced into factory labor by the Nazis—that sews the various pieces together and provides a moving personal touch."
Fritz Stern:
“A brilliant recreation of that decisive year of victory and defeat, chaos and humiliation, concentrating on peoples, not states. Gripping, poignant and unsparing, Year Zero is worthy of its author in being at home in both Europe and Asia. It is a book at once deeply empathetic and utterly fair, marked by wisdom and great knowledge; the often personal tone inspired by the fate of his father, a Dutchman forced into German labor camps. In the face of so much horror, it is an astounding effort at deep comprehension. A superb book, splendidly written.”
Michael Ignatieff:
“Year Zero is the founding moment of the modern era. Ian Buruma’s history of that moment is vivid, compassionate and compelling. Buruma weaves together a tapestry of vital themes: the exultation and sexual liberation that came with victory, the vindictive settling of scores that came with defeat and the longing for a world of peace, justice and human rights after the horror of total war. His story takes in the world: from Holland to Japan, and his heroes and heroines are the ordinary men and women who picked up the pieces of a broken world and put it back together for their children and grandchildren. We are their heirs and Buruma does our parents and grandparents justice in this magnificent history.”
Sir Ian Kershaw:
“A graphic account—well-researched, splendidly constructed and stylishly written—of the hinge year of the twentieth century, of its horrors, hopes, illusions and roots of troubles to come. Altogether compelling—a fine achievement.”
Sir Brian Urquhart:
“Ian Buruma gives a heart-wrenching account of the horrors, the unimaginable cruelties, and the sheer stupidities of the last months of World War II, and the attempts to deal with them in the first months of peace. Even after nearly seventy years, parts of his book are still almost unbearable to read. Buruma’s Dutch father improbably survived Nazi forced labor in Berlin, under allied air attack, until the German surrender; this book reflects an intimacy with the familiar dread of the forces of evil that never goes completely away.”
-------
We are wrong to think that the horrors ended after the surrenders of Germany and Japan.
ByRobert S. Hanenbergon October 2, 2013
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
At the end of World War II after the death camps were liberated, aid workers noticed a strange thing among the survivors waiting to be relocated. Half-dead, grotesquely emaciated, many became sexually promiscuous. The author of the book, Ian Buruma, quotes a doctor that one could not really blame the young girls who had passed through hell and "are now seized by an irresistible desire for affection and forgetfulness..." Outside the camps VD rates and illegitimate births rose sharply. Buruma says "the fact is that many women and men were simply looking for warmth, companionship, love, even marriage." This book is worth reading if for no other reason than to learn what happened to a case of lipstick mistakenly sent to Bergen-Belsen after the war.
More than 60 million people died in World War II, over three percent of the world's population, for no good reason as far as anyone can tell now. Among the least ignoble reasons for the German and Japanese leaders who decided to go to war was to get "living space," because it was thought that without land and colonies their countries would decline. Look at them now, Germany with no eastern territories and Japan with no colonies, two of the richest places on earth. The men in those countries who made World War II caused unspeakable suffering for an idea which was dead wrong.
The country which lost the most people was the Soviet Union. Eight million Soviet soldiers died, of whom 3.3 million were deliberately starved to death. Sixteen million Soviet civilians died. Ten million Chinese civilians died (the United States lost 0.4 million soldiers and civilians).
This is a book about the people who survived. We are wrong to think that the horrors ended after the surrenders of Germany and Japan. Although the magnitude of the horrors was smaller, the stories are harrowing. In 1945 in the Netherlands 18,000 people died of starvation, which got so bad that the British and Americans took to dropping loaves of bread from the sky. In Japan more than 20,000 people died of dysentery in 1945. In Italy 20,000 fascists and collaborators were killed in the north of Italy, 8,000 thousand in the Piedmont, 4,000 in Lombardy, 3,000 in Emilia and 3,000 in Milan province. In France over 10,000 collaborators were murdered. One American soldier machine-gunned three hundred concentration camp guards.
Some the people who were murdered after the war were "collaborators", but as Buruma points out, most of the collaborators were never punished. In fact it would have been impossible to punish all the collaborators, because there would have been no one left to govern the cities or teach the children. Many of the worst offenders went unpunished. Some people were tried and executed, but often the wrong ones and on shaky evidence. Often the people exacting revenge were themselves guilty. One feels after reading this book that a person who lived through World War II could not possibly have known which decisions might save them. The innocent, the righteous, the evil and the sadistic seem to have had equal chances of perishing.
The main point of this book is that after the war as well as during it, there were no good ways to proceed. The victors made bad decisions, but often any decision would have been bad, and many of the decisions were the lesser of many evils. As time went on, people constructed myths about the war, but nothing we thought was true turns out to have been so. For instance,
* Although the rapes committed by the Soviet troops in Germany and the Japanese in China were on a massive scale, the victims being in the millions, one estimate is that at least 40 Japanese women per day were raped by the allied soldiers in the latter half of 1945.
* Although the Germans and Russians were notorious thieves and looters, the American army had its share. After France was liberated some US soldiers deserted from the army, stole army trucks, stocked up on gasoline and sold it to French gangsters (they were caught because they took to living like kings in Paris).
* One weeps for the Jews and Poles who died in the concentration camps, but also for the captured Soviet soldiers whom the allies forced to return home to a certain death (anyone who was captured was by definition a traitor) and for the 10 million (TEN MILLION) German speaking citizens of Czechoslovakia, Poland and Romania who, after the war, were forced leave their homes for a devastated Germany, where many had never been before. Many were killed on the way.
This is one of those books which teach you that if ever you thought you knew anything definite, you are wrong. The world is too complex. Ian Buruma, half-Dutch, half English, descended from Mennonites and Jews, a scholar of Japanese history and culture, and a flawless prose stylist, is the right man to make this point.
Comment| 26 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?
----
5.0 out of 5 stars
ByRobert S. Hanenbergon October 2, 2013
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
At the end of World War II after the death camps were liberated, aid workers noticed a strange thing among the survivors waiting to be relocated. Half-dead, grotesquely emaciated, many became sexually promiscuous. The author of the book, Ian Buruma, quotes a doctor that one could not really blame the young girls who had passed through hell and "are now seized by an irresistible desire for affection and forgetfulness..." Outside the camps VD rates and illegitimate births rose sharply. Buruma says "the fact is that many women and men were simply looking for warmth, companionship, love, even marriage." This book is worth reading if for no other reason than to learn what happened to a case of lipstick mistakenly sent to Bergen-Belsen after the war.
More than 60 million people died in World War II, over three percent of the world's population, for no good reason as far as anyone can tell now. Among the least ignoble reasons for the German and Japanese leaders who decided to go to war was to get "living space," because it was thought that without land and colonies their countries would decline. Look at them now, Germany with no eastern territories and Japan with no colonies, two of the richest places on earth. The men in those countries who made World War II caused unspeakable suffering for an idea which was dead wrong.
The country which lost the most people was the Soviet Union. Eight million Soviet soldiers died, of whom 3.3 million were deliberately starved to death. Sixteen million Soviet civilians died. Ten million Chinese civilians died (the United States lost 0.4 million soldiers and civilians).
This is a book about the people who survived. We are wrong to think that the horrors ended after the surrenders of Germany and Japan. Although the magnitude of the horrors was smaller, the stories are harrowing. In 1945 in the Netherlands 18,000 people died of starvation, which got so bad that the British and Americans took to dropping loaves of bread from the sky. In Japan more than 20,000 people died of dysentery in 1945. In Italy 20,000 fascists and collaborators were killed in the north of Italy, 8,000 thousand in the Piedmont, 4,000 in Lombardy, 3,000 in Emilia and 3,000 in Milan province. In France over 10,000 collaborators were murdered. One American soldier machine-gunned three hundred concentration camp guards.
Some the people who were murdered after the war were "collaborators", but as Buruma points out, most of the collaborators were never punished. In fact it would have been impossible to punish all the collaborators, because there would have been no one left to govern the cities or teach the children. Many of the worst offenders went unpunished. Some people were tried and executed, but often the wrong ones and on shaky evidence. Often the people exacting revenge were themselves guilty. One feels after reading this book that a person who lived through World War II could not possibly have known which decisions might save them. The innocent, the righteous, the evil and the sadistic seem to have had equal chances of perishing.
The main point of this book is that after the war as well as during it, there were no good ways to proceed. The victors made bad decisions, but often any decision would have been bad, and many of the decisions were the lesser of many evils. As time went on, people constructed myths about the war, but nothing we thought was true turns out to have been so. For instance,
* Although the rapes committed by the Soviet troops in Germany and the Japanese in China were on a massive scale, the victims being in the millions, one estimate is that at least 40 Japanese women per day were raped by the allied soldiers in the latter half of 1945.
* Although the Germans and Russians were notorious thieves and looters, the American army had its share. After France was liberated some US soldiers deserted from the army, stole army trucks, stocked up on gasoline and sold it to French gangsters (they were caught because they took to living like kings in Paris).
* One weeps for the Jews and Poles who died in the concentration camps, but also for the captured Soviet soldiers whom the allies forced to return home to a certain death (anyone who was captured was by definition a traitor) and for the 10 million (TEN MILLION) German speaking citizens of Czechoslovakia, Poland and Romania who, after the war, were forced leave their homes for a devastated Germany, where many had never been before. Many were killed on the way.
This is one of those books which teach you that if ever you thought you knew anything definite, you are wrong. The world is too complex. Ian Buruma, half-Dutch, half English, descended from Mennonites and Jews, a scholar of Japanese history and culture, and a flawless prose stylist, is the right man to make this point.
Comment| 26 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?
----
5.0 out of 5 stars
Year Zero is a riveting account of 1945 throughout the world as the guns of World War II ended but not human suffering
ByC. M MillsTOP 1000 REVIEWERon January 4, 2014
Format: Hardcover|Verified Purchase
Ian Buruma is a professor of Democracy, Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College. He is a prolific author of several books. Buruma's new effort is "Year Zero" referring to 1945 when World War II finally ended. The war cost over sixty million deaths; saw the Holocaust of Europe's Jews and untold suffering and murder throughout the globe. Buruma's Preface tells the story of his father a Dutch legal student who was forced to spend the war years in Berlin who was forced into brutal labor in Berlin, His father survived the war returning to Holland to continue his studies., The book ends with Buruma, his sister and father returning to Berlin in 1989 on the night the Berlin Wall fell and the Communist empire fell. Between those two signposts we take a war ravaged tour of a world recovering from the horror of war. We learn:
a. About continuing violence against the Jews in Poland, Germany and Soviet Union.
b. We Visit DP camps in Europe and Asia.
c. Buruma shows us the move toward centralized government and utopianism in governmental planning.
d. Buruma traces the evolution of war crime trials focusing on the Nuremberg Trials of major Nazi war criminals.
e. The rise of anti-colonialism is presented. Early signs of this movement are seen in Algeria and in Vietnam in the French orbit of their colonial empire.
f. The British empire begins to disintegrate as the British economy is in shambles and post-war drabness becomes reality.
g. The Chinese Civil War in which Mao's Communists duel with the Nationalists is discussed.
h. The different ways in which Japan and Germany were treated by the Western Allies is viewed.
I. Civil war in Greece is given a chapter as the communist rebels fight the British backed conservative government.
The author evinces a deep understanding of this crucial era presenting that slim time between the end of the war and the beginning of the cold war.
A brief review does not do full service to Year Zero. The book would serve well in the classroom or for study by general readers. It is somewhat dry reading but the information is good. Buruma covers both Europe and Asia in his study. Recommended.
Comment| 8 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?
5.0 out of 5 stars
ByC. M MillsTOP 1000 REVIEWERon January 4, 2014
Format: Hardcover|Verified Purchase
Ian Buruma is a professor of Democracy, Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College. He is a prolific author of several books. Buruma's new effort is "Year Zero" referring to 1945 when World War II finally ended. The war cost over sixty million deaths; saw the Holocaust of Europe's Jews and untold suffering and murder throughout the globe. Buruma's Preface tells the story of his father a Dutch legal student who was forced to spend the war years in Berlin who was forced into brutal labor in Berlin, His father survived the war returning to Holland to continue his studies., The book ends with Buruma, his sister and father returning to Berlin in 1989 on the night the Berlin Wall fell and the Communist empire fell. Between those two signposts we take a war ravaged tour of a world recovering from the horror of war. We learn:
a. About continuing violence against the Jews in Poland, Germany and Soviet Union.
b. We Visit DP camps in Europe and Asia.
c. Buruma shows us the move toward centralized government and utopianism in governmental planning.
d. Buruma traces the evolution of war crime trials focusing on the Nuremberg Trials of major Nazi war criminals.
e. The rise of anti-colonialism is presented. Early signs of this movement are seen in Algeria and in Vietnam in the French orbit of their colonial empire.
f. The British empire begins to disintegrate as the British economy is in shambles and post-war drabness becomes reality.
g. The Chinese Civil War in which Mao's Communists duel with the Nationalists is discussed.
h. The different ways in which Japan and Germany were treated by the Western Allies is viewed.
I. Civil war in Greece is given a chapter as the communist rebels fight the British backed conservative government.
The author evinces a deep understanding of this crucial era presenting that slim time between the end of the war and the beginning of the cold war.
A brief review does not do full service to Year Zero. The book would serve well in the classroom or for study by general readers. It is somewhat dry reading but the information is good. Buruma covers both Europe and Asia in his study. Recommended.
Comment| 8 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?
5.0 out of 5 stars
History Never Ends
ByStephen Harton June 3, 2014
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
History as taught in schools is a funny thing. Because of time limitations students are taught dates, significant events, the names of historical figures and perhaps a little bit more of what really happened and why.
Ask any non-History B.A. how WWII ended and the answer is likely to be, "Germany surrendered and we dropped the Atom Bomb on Japan and they gave up too." Any knowledge or understanding of what happened to the populations of Europe and Asia during the months after the War is strictly coincidental and/or anecdotal (e.g., "The Russians raped a lot of women.")
It is to pull the curtain back on the effect of the War on those most directly effected that this book stands as a major piece of historical writing.
Ian Buruma's history of the first year after the war is at once enlightening, horrifying and in a sense, even satisfying.
The book covers the gamut of human suffering experienced in Germany, Japan and much of the rest of the world where the aggressors were defeated, their atrocities revealed and, in the rough justice of the time, avenged. Among many other topics, it looks at various aspects of how the conquered peoples were treated by their conquerors, how mass resettlements (especially in Eastern Europe) were undertaken as a precursor to Soviet Union Cold War politics, how those most vulnerable, women and children, were treated almost as terribly as Holocaust victims.
If there is a criticism of the book, perhaps the writer tries to take on too much history in a single bite. Although virtually any topic covered deserves (and many have gotten) a more in depth treatment, the events described were themselves going on currently and by and large in a time when laws were ad hoc, traditions non existent and morality itself gone on Holiday. For this reason I found the book's changing focuses throughout to be an enhancement rather than an irritant.
A good book. A needed book. A good read.
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---
5.0 out of 5 stars
ByStephen Harton June 3, 2014
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
History as taught in schools is a funny thing. Because of time limitations students are taught dates, significant events, the names of historical figures and perhaps a little bit more of what really happened and why.
Ask any non-History B.A. how WWII ended and the answer is likely to be, "Germany surrendered and we dropped the Atom Bomb on Japan and they gave up too." Any knowledge or understanding of what happened to the populations of Europe and Asia during the months after the War is strictly coincidental and/or anecdotal (e.g., "The Russians raped a lot of women.")
It is to pull the curtain back on the effect of the War on those most directly effected that this book stands as a major piece of historical writing.
Ian Buruma's history of the first year after the war is at once enlightening, horrifying and in a sense, even satisfying.
The book covers the gamut of human suffering experienced in Germany, Japan and much of the rest of the world where the aggressors were defeated, their atrocities revealed and, in the rough justice of the time, avenged. Among many other topics, it looks at various aspects of how the conquered peoples were treated by their conquerors, how mass resettlements (especially in Eastern Europe) were undertaken as a precursor to Soviet Union Cold War politics, how those most vulnerable, women and children, were treated almost as terribly as Holocaust victims.
If there is a criticism of the book, perhaps the writer tries to take on too much history in a single bite. Although virtually any topic covered deserves (and many have gotten) a more in depth treatment, the events described were themselves going on currently and by and large in a time when laws were ad hoc, traditions non existent and morality itself gone on Holiday. For this reason I found the book's changing focuses throughout to be an enhancement rather than an irritant.
A good book. A needed book. A good read.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Bleak World of Victory
ByBill Deefon December 16, 2014
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
This book might seem to have got to the party when the guests have already left, dealing, as it does with the year after the war. But that is precisely why it puts the war into perspective. You can only really understand why people fight when you see what they're left with and what they make claims for afterwards.
Sometimes, the author's youth interferes with his interpretations. For example, the unscrupulousness of the women during and after the war he attributes to their "empowerment", which is a rather quaint way of dealing with evident disloyalty and exploitation of the situation. He is quite obviously dealing with the past through today's value-system. He's a bit off kilter when he condemns the collaboration of women with the Nazi soldiers, but lauds their "collaboration" with the Allied soldiers after the war. Sometimes they are the same women.
The way inflation and starvation affected the Europeans after the war, the fear of Western powers that the communist resistance fighters were going to get any share in the spoils of war, the blind eye turned to Japanese war criminals by McArthur et al. and many other prickly issues are dealt with.
Remarkable, is the author's dealing with all the theaters, even the Eastern one, and the very valid comparison and contrast he draws between the treatment of the European and Japanese vanquished.
The result is that this book leaves you with a less smug attitude about the "just war", but still without any sympathy for the devil. I felt I had a much fuller knowledge about WWII after reading this book. BTW it is also written well.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
ByBill Deefon December 16, 2014
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
This book might seem to have got to the party when the guests have already left, dealing, as it does with the year after the war. But that is precisely why it puts the war into perspective. You can only really understand why people fight when you see what they're left with and what they make claims for afterwards.
Sometimes, the author's youth interferes with his interpretations. For example, the unscrupulousness of the women during and after the war he attributes to their "empowerment", which is a rather quaint way of dealing with evident disloyalty and exploitation of the situation. He is quite obviously dealing with the past through today's value-system. He's a bit off kilter when he condemns the collaboration of women with the Nazi soldiers, but lauds their "collaboration" with the Allied soldiers after the war. Sometimes they are the same women.
The way inflation and starvation affected the Europeans after the war, the fear of Western powers that the communist resistance fighters were going to get any share in the spoils of war, the blind eye turned to Japanese war criminals by McArthur et al. and many other prickly issues are dealt with.
Remarkable, is the author's dealing with all the theaters, even the Eastern one, and the very valid comparison and contrast he draws between the treatment of the European and Japanese vanquished.
The result is that this book leaves you with a less smug attitude about the "just war", but still without any sympathy for the devil. I felt I had a much fuller knowledge about WWII after reading this book. BTW it is also written well.
Comment| 2 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?
---
5.0 out of 5 stars
Year Zero
ByErik Petersonon February 23, 2014
Format: Hardcover|Verified Purchase
Year Zero is a sophisticated, informative, nuanced and sensitive account of the immediate aftermath of World War II.
The scope of this work is remarkably broad - it encompasses snapshots of life from across the globe, in the year 1945.
The author weaves together a narrative which tells us how these great and terrible events were experienced by ordinary individuals who were caught up in them, as well as by the larger societies of which they were a part.
Mr. Buruma delves into the damaged psyches of the survivors - the exultation of liberation, the hunger and other forms of want left in the wake of massive material destruction and social collapse, and the thirst for revenge.
With equal dexterity, he illustrates the gradual process of realization, by war-shattered societies, that what was lost can never be replaced, that the war has fundamentally altered reality, that the survivors will have to build something new upon the charred bones and burned cities of the Old World - and how elusive, in many ways, a brighter, better New Dawn will prove to be.
Buruma has produced an excellent and eminently readable work here - in reading `Year Zero', one cannot help but imagine that this would be the perfect textbook to use if you were to be given the opportunity to teach a class entitled something like `How Our Modern World Began.'
As a final note, `Year Zero' begins with a stunningly apropos preface, which faithfully reflects the sensibility, depth, and character of this work - if you like the following excerpt, you'll surely be pleased with the rest of the book:
`...This is how one pictures the Angel of History. His face is turned towards the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe that keeps piling ruin upon ruin and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.'
Buy this one today!
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3.0 out of 5 starsRebuilding after the war
ByPaulon February 5, 2014
Format: Hardcover|Verified Purchase
Good book but almost impossible to cover so many regions and nations in a few hundred pages. I had hoped to read more about his father's experience but there was little elaboration.
There are many stories of revenge and sorrows when massive numbers of people were forced to move to others areas. In World War I the concept was to move the borders; here the forced movements of thousands was horrible.
There are parts that will make you guilty for your last meal, and yet you will come away with the incredible belief of the resiliency of humanity in general.
Would also suggest Keith Lowe's Savage Continent as a supplemental work.
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4.0 out of 5 starsThe WWII history I never quite understood
ByTartan Mockingbirdon June 11, 2014
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
As a baby boomer six years older than Ian Buruma who grew up in Europe in the early 50s, the immediate post-war period unfolded during my earliest years. Somehow the history books i read jumped straight from VE day to the post war recovery of the 1950s.
Much has been written of the hoocaust and I knew that Germans had suffered inordinately. i was aware of the Katyn Forest massacre and the losses suffered by the Russians as well as the brutality they inflicted on others. My kinowledge of what happened in Asia was also sketchy at best.
However the sheer scale of killlings in this period not just in Europe but in Asia too, took my breath away. Mr Buruma has filled in the gaps in my piecemeal knowledge gleaned from newspaper articles read at a young and not so young age and left me with a better understanding of what went on then and how it formed the world we lived in today. After readng this book i see Japan and China in a different light.
This book is an antidote to the simplistic pop history depicted by Hollywood. Read it!
----
3.0 out of 5 stars
ByErik Petersonon February 23, 2014
Format: Hardcover|Verified Purchase
Year Zero is a sophisticated, informative, nuanced and sensitive account of the immediate aftermath of World War II.
The scope of this work is remarkably broad - it encompasses snapshots of life from across the globe, in the year 1945.
The author weaves together a narrative which tells us how these great and terrible events were experienced by ordinary individuals who were caught up in them, as well as by the larger societies of which they were a part.
Mr. Buruma delves into the damaged psyches of the survivors - the exultation of liberation, the hunger and other forms of want left in the wake of massive material destruction and social collapse, and the thirst for revenge.
With equal dexterity, he illustrates the gradual process of realization, by war-shattered societies, that what was lost can never be replaced, that the war has fundamentally altered reality, that the survivors will have to build something new upon the charred bones and burned cities of the Old World - and how elusive, in many ways, a brighter, better New Dawn will prove to be.
Buruma has produced an excellent and eminently readable work here - in reading `Year Zero', one cannot help but imagine that this would be the perfect textbook to use if you were to be given the opportunity to teach a class entitled something like `How Our Modern World Began.'
As a final note, `Year Zero' begins with a stunningly apropos preface, which faithfully reflects the sensibility, depth, and character of this work - if you like the following excerpt, you'll surely be pleased with the rest of the book:
`...This is how one pictures the Angel of History. His face is turned towards the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe that keeps piling ruin upon ruin and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.'
Buy this one today!
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3.0 out of 5 starsRebuilding after the war
ByPaulon February 5, 2014
Format: Hardcover|Verified Purchase
Good book but almost impossible to cover so many regions and nations in a few hundred pages. I had hoped to read more about his father's experience but there was little elaboration.
There are many stories of revenge and sorrows when massive numbers of people were forced to move to others areas. In World War I the concept was to move the borders; here the forced movements of thousands was horrible.
There are parts that will make you guilty for your last meal, and yet you will come away with the incredible belief of the resiliency of humanity in general.
Would also suggest Keith Lowe's Savage Continent as a supplemental work.
Comment| 6 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?
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NoReport abuse
4.0 out of 5 starsThe WWII history I never quite understood
ByTartan Mockingbirdon June 11, 2014
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
As a baby boomer six years older than Ian Buruma who grew up in Europe in the early 50s, the immediate post-war period unfolded during my earliest years. Somehow the history books i read jumped straight from VE day to the post war recovery of the 1950s.
Much has been written of the hoocaust and I knew that Germans had suffered inordinately. i was aware of the Katyn Forest massacre and the losses suffered by the Russians as well as the brutality they inflicted on others. My kinowledge of what happened in Asia was also sketchy at best.
However the sheer scale of killlings in this period not just in Europe but in Asia too, took my breath away. Mr Buruma has filled in the gaps in my piecemeal knowledge gleaned from newspaper articles read at a young and not so young age and left me with a better understanding of what went on then and how it formed the world we lived in today. After readng this book i see Japan and China in a different light.
This book is an antidote to the simplistic pop history depicted by Hollywood. Read it!
----
3.0 out of 5 stars
A somewhat interesting collection of disconnected anecdotes
ByJTL95on October 24, 2014
Format: Hardcover|Verified Purchase
While interesting this book is somewhat disorganized. There doesn't seem to be a point and not even a final sum up of what it all means. The chapters are arranged around a topic and contain a series of disconnected anecdotes that skip around the world in an order not even consistent from chapter to chapter. There is little cause and effect or linking how what is happening in one chapter effects what is happening in another. While many of the anecdotes are interesting they just sort of sit there all by themselves and then after some many chapters it just ends. You could read the chapters in any random order and not miss a thing.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
ByJTL95on October 24, 2014
Format: Hardcover|Verified Purchase
While interesting this book is somewhat disorganized. There doesn't seem to be a point and not even a final sum up of what it all means. The chapters are arranged around a topic and contain a series of disconnected anecdotes that skip around the world in an order not even consistent from chapter to chapter. There is little cause and effect or linking how what is happening in one chapter effects what is happening in another. While many of the anecdotes are interesting they just sort of sit there all by themselves and then after some many chapters it just ends. You could read the chapters in any random order and not miss a thing.
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---
4.0 out of 5 stars
and how these global efforts still shape our thinking about what is good, and where we are going
ByCynthia Gehrieon July 17, 2015
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
I learned about the way the world came to an end in the second world war, then began again. I thought of all the US History classes that somehow run out of time and rush through the first and second world war. With this book, I came to understand the terms by which the new world was created, and how these global efforts still shape our thinking about what is good, and where we are going.
I realized that these plans demilitarized strong current allies, while not anticipating the rise of new aggressive military power, particularly in the Middle East. We are still grappling with how to manage nuclear weapons.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
ByCynthia Gehrieon July 17, 2015
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
I learned about the way the world came to an end in the second world war, then began again. I thought of all the US History classes that somehow run out of time and rush through the first and second world war. With this book, I came to understand the terms by which the new world was created, and how these global efforts still shape our thinking about what is good, and where we are going.
I realized that these plans demilitarized strong current allies, while not anticipating the rise of new aggressive military power, particularly in the Middle East. We are still grappling with how to manage nuclear weapons.
Comment| 2 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?
----
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fear, Madness, and Chaos in the Shadow of Victory
ByBen Strangeon September 6, 2014
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
Yogi Berra famously said that it ain't over till it's over. Ian Buruma shows, in scalding detail, that a war isn't over even when it's over. The smoking ruins of Europe and Asia did not simply turn swords into ploughshares in the summer of 1945. Instead, there followed years of fear, madness, and chaos as the victors struggled to figure out how to deal with winning and the losers scratched for survival or jockeyed for revenge on old scores. The glide into what passes for peace was so gradual, and the acceleration to the next conflicts so smooth, that one wonders what we mean when we say of a war that it is over. This is a brilliantly conceived and skillfully executed explication of the complexity that worsens once the official fighting has stopped.
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←
ByBen Strangeon September 6, 2014
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
Yogi Berra famously said that it ain't over till it's over. Ian Buruma shows, in scalding detail, that a war isn't over even when it's over. The smoking ruins of Europe and Asia did not simply turn swords into ploughshares in the summer of 1945. Instead, there followed years of fear, madness, and chaos as the victors struggled to figure out how to deal with winning and the losers scratched for survival or jockeyed for revenge on old scores. The glide into what passes for peace was so gradual, and the acceleration to the next conflicts so smooth, that one wonders what we mean when we say of a war that it is over. This is a brilliantly conceived and skillfully executed explication of the complexity that worsens once the official fighting has stopped.
Comment| 2 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?
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