Year Zero: A History of 1945

this book covered some of same time periods as savage continent which focused on europe but i thought this book was a much better read & it did cover all of the globe after wwII, i recomend to anyone interested in that time period & what happened as soon as the war ended

Readable, well researched account of the immediate aftermath of World War II. An incredible mix of leniency, vengeance, political intrigue and idealism went into a the legacy that haunts international relations still. Excellent account of our collective historical context.

A revealing account of the pivotal 12 months, a necessary and well-researched, elegantly written analysis of the psychology, politics and personalities that played their parts in the transit year between the awful destruction of WWII to the lengthy painful chess game of the Cold War

This very good history book summarizes what happened in every major country in the world in 1945. It primarily focuses on Europe and Japan and the various stages of recovery after a brutal war. It is an analytical history that is well written and informative.

Rich narration of events shortly after WWII that most of us have forgotten about or never knew. The author did a great job of building a historical foundation under the geographical and political changes that took place during 1945/46.

filled with interesting little known facts about the immediate effects of WWII, however, Buruma has a tendency to make sweeping general statements that are often limited in perspective. As such, the book reads disjointedly and seems to jump from one interesting case to the next--still a good read though.

A must read if you want to understand the enormous progress Europe has made after WW II.
Well structured and very well written it offers an insight into where we really came from after the first truly global war.
Erik Akre

I enjoy history, but not dry history. My interest is in the interplay of character and historical circumstances and in social history--the human angle. This book very much appealed to me. It is less about geopolitics than about people adjusting to the changed situation they found themselves in after the defeat of Germany and Japan in World War II. The author presents an interesting and detailed portrait of the world in 1945. He makes the story a bit more personal by discussing the life of his own father, a Dutch national who was carted off to perform forced labor in Germany.

This is the world seen through an extremely wide view lens, so I won't try to summarize everything in the book but just mention a few aspects that stand out for me. I found it striking how Ian Buruma pointed to the seeds of both successful change and contemporary conflicts sown in 1945. Somehow, the United States managed to do some crucial things right in both Germany and Japan. The Americans were sometimes misguided and ignorant, but they were not particularly vengeful. There was a lucky mesh between democratic capitalism, which the U.S. tried to foster, and the cultures of the two conquered nations. The relative prosperity and stability of Germany and Japan obviously owes a great deal to this.

Turning to the question of refugees, the author clarifies a currently relevant and heartbreaking, fact about the Jewish survivors of the concentration camps. No existing nation wanted these people. The fact that Israel was originally a life boat for shipwrecked survivors is too often forgotten now.

To his great credit, Buruma often focuses on the situation of women during and after the war. The widespread rapes--by Japanese troops of women in Asian countries Japan conquered, by Russian troops in Germany--are rarely spoken of nowadays. Buruma does not shrink from this subject, and the reader may be stunned by the incredible barbarism. The book also contains an interesting discussion of fraternization after the war. Former enemies sometimes fell in love, and sometimes got married. Sometimes they just used each other--and it could be a disturbingly unequal exchange between conqueror and conquered.

This book held my interest the way a good novel might and it taught me a great deal about subjects I thought I was fairly well versed in. It is one of the best works of history I've read in recent years. Highly recommended.

Buruma spends too much time on his own personal story. This is not so much a work of history, as a personal narrative. He also breaks grammatical convention by writing, for example: "I think" as opposed to "the author thinks." This gets kind of annoying, because the reader doesn't really care about Buruma's personal opinion. The author will go off on tangents to talk about his father's life. Also, he spends too much time attacking the Poles in the book, and lets the Germans off too easily. This had the potential to be a great work of history/ tragedy, but falls somewhat short. It would be smart to wait for the softcover.

"History ... is littered with dreams of starting afresh." The first chapters of this remarkable study attempt to capture people's responses to the end to years of living in Hell. Buruma has personal insight into the topic. His young Dutch father was captured by the Germans and forced to work in wartime Germany. At the end of the war, he was nearly executed by accident as a collaborator although he wasn't one. He wended his way home through a bombed out Europe, only to find when he got back that everything had changed while he was gone. No one wanted to hear his story. They had had enough of that sort of stuff.

Lucien Febvre, co-founder of the Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales in 1929, argued that the history of sensibility (histoire de sensibilite') was just as important to our understanding of the past as the economic and social history that was more standard fare in that groundbreaking journal. We are feeling animals, he argued, and thus how the events of a time make us feel sits deeply in us.

This short book by Ian Buruma (Luce Professor of Democracy, Human Rights, and Journalism at Bard College; author of thirteen previous books) is proof that Febvre was right. There are other books on the aftermath of the Second World War which portray the devastation, unresolved antagonisms and mixed feelings caused by the destructiveness of that long, devastating war (wars?) -- Keith Lowe's Savage Continent (2012) and parts of Timothy Snyder's chilling Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2012) are recent entries, and for Europe, Tony Judt's magisterial Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (2006) can't be bettered, but no work of history that I know of that captures so well, and elegantly, the emotions that drove the survivors of that hellish conflict. Nor do I know of another book that spans the Western and Asian conflicts so neatly.

The section of the book which I enjoyed the most addresses such issues as guilt, humiliation and exultation; sex and prostitution; the complicated feelings women had when confronted by conquering healthy soldiers who looked so much better and could offer so much more than their own defeated, malnourished, unattractive men; racism (the persistence of anti-Semitism, attitudes toward African-American soldiers in both Europe and Japan, the enflaming of racial and national enmities in Asia and Eastern Europe); new opportunities for women and their resistance to being shoved back into a box; greed and revenge; the refusal of subject peoples to slide back into the routines of the old colonialism, regardless of the efforts of the colonial powers to contain them; and "the desire to retrieve a sense of normality," which at times led to the ignoring of inconsistencies in attitudes and behavior and to the undervaluing of potential troubles for the future. It's a heady but jolting ride.

The latter half of the book addresses efforts to assess and punish war guilt (concerns about economic recovery trumped concerns about justice in most cases) and to reestablish order locally and internationally, no small task in a world in ruins. I found Buruma's comments on the enthusiasm for state planning in postwar Europe and Asia illuminating. If I don't write much about the second half of the book, it's because it 's been captured elsewhere, but throughout, Buruma is on top of his material and writes with incisiveness and grace.

One of the joys of history as a professional discipline is that academic historians can, if they take the effort, write history that is enjoyable and approachable but still up to the highest professional standards. As in this enjoyable and informative book.

Buruma spends too much time on his own personal story. This is not so much a work of history, as a personal narrative. He also breaks grammatical convention by writing, for example: "I think" as opposed to "the author thinks." This gets kind of annoying, because the reader doesn't really care about Buruma's personal opinion. The author will go off on tangents to talk about his father's life. Also, he spends too much time attacking the Poles in the book, and lets the Germans off too easily. This had the potential to be a great work of history/ tragedy, but falls somewhat short. It would be smart to wait for the softcover.

"History ... is littered with dreams of starting afresh." The first chapters of this remarkable study attempt to capture people's responses to the end to years of living in Hell. Buruma has personal insight into the topic. His young Dutch father was captured by the Germans and forced to work in wartime Germany. At the end of the war, he was nearly executed by accident as a collaborator although he wasn't one. He wended his way home through a bombed out Europe, only to find when he got back that everything had changed while he was gone. No one wanted to hear his story. They had had enough of that sort of stuff.

Lucien Febvre, co-founder of the Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales in 1929, argued that the history of sensibility (histoire de sensibilite') was just as important to our understanding of the past as the economic and social history that was more standard fare in that groundbreaking journal. We are feeling animals, he argued, and thus how the events of a time make us feel sits deeply in us.

This short book by Ian Buruma (Luce Professor of Democracy, Human Rights, and Journalism at Bard College; author of thirteen previous books) is proof that Febvre was right. There are other books on the aftermath of the Second World War which portray the devastation, unresolved antagonisms and mixed feelings caused by the destructiveness of that long, devastating war (wars?) -- Keith Lowe's Savage Continent (2012) and parts of Timothy Snyder's chilling Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2012) are recent entries, and for Europe, Tony Judt's magisterial Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (2006) can't be bettered, but no work of history that I know of that captures so well, and elegantly, the emotions that drove the survivors of that hellish conflict. Nor do I know of another book that spans the Western and Asian conflicts so neatly.

The section of the book which I enjoyed the most addresses such issues as guilt, humiliation and exultation; sex and prostitution; the complicated feelings women had when confronted by conquering healthy soldiers who looked so much better and could offer so much more than their own defeated, malnourished, unattractive men; racism (the persistence of anti-Semitism, attitudes toward African-American soldiers in both Europe and Japan, the enflaming of racial and national enmities in Asia and Eastern Europe); new opportunities for women and their resistance to being shoved back into a box; greed and revenge; the refusal of subject peoples to slide back into the routines of the old colonialism, regardless of the efforts of the colonial powers to contain them; and "the desire to retrieve a sense of normality," which at times led to the ignoring of inconsistencies in attitudes and behavior and to the undervaluing of potential troubles for the future. It's a heady but jolting ride.

The latter half of the book addresses efforts to assess and punish war guilt (concerns about economic recovery trumped concerns about justice in most cases) and to reestablish order locally and internationally, no small task in a world in ruins. I found Buruma's comments on the enthusiasm for state planning in postwar Europe and Asia illuminating. If I don't write much about the second half of the book, it's because it 's been captured elsewhere, but throughout, Buruma is on top of his material and writes with incisiveness and grace.

One of the joys of history as a professional discipline is that academic historians can, if they take the effort, write history that is enjoyable and approachable but still up to the highest professional standards. As in this enjoyable and informative book.

4.5 stars. A truly illuminating piece of historical research and writing. Buruma, son of a Dutch man who survived years in a Nazi forced labor camp, has looked at year most of us likely think we know. 1945. Through a variety of sources, including interviews and first person accounts via journals and memoirs, he has simultaneously expanded our view of the war and its aftermath and focused our attention on the human impact. His writing brings alive the discomfiting mixture of joy and sorrow, triumph and defeat, liberation and death, that attended the end of World War II. He juxtaposes the celebrations in many European capitals of VE Day with the stunned horror of troops liberating Nazi camps. He highlights how good intentions gave way to unfamiliar realities as troops tried to feed emaciated camp inmates only to have the unaccustomed rich and plentiful food kill them. He winds his way through Europe and Asia, through the war crimes trials and the partition of territory between East and West, through US occupation of Japan and a split Germany. These stories are at once familiar and new, as he gives the reader the vantage point of lesser known details and unintended consequences. This is not just the story of a pivotal year in modern history, but the prologue to many of the years to come. A truly enlightening work that everyone, especially those with a grounding in WWII, should read.

Exciting history, written imaginatively and enthusiastically, with much to instruct us.

Chapter One shows that the sexual revolution actually began in 1945.

"The desire for revenge is as human as the need for sex or food." Chapter Three, the most horrifying stories I've read since the Colosseum slaughter of Christians and slaves.

Of other interest, the post war explosion of socialism (Churchill lost the election before WWII was over!), punishment (the Nuremberg Trials), the Manila Massacre, the Korean conundrum.

High brow history, too all over the place sometimes; ex, getting into anticolonialism in SE Asia, Indonesia, & Africa.

"Germans and Japanese were disenchanted with the heroic ideal. They wanted nothing more to do with war. British and Americans, on the other hand, could never quite rid themselves of nostalgia for their finest hours, leading to a fatal propensity to embark on ill-advised military adventures so they and their nations could live like heroes once more."

Let the facts presented in this book be a testament to how “man’s inhumanity to man” continued well beyond the official end of hostilities in 1945. The author does not only relate the big world picture of the who-what-where of that monumental year but also delves into the cruel, unjust and even deadly minutiae of events that affected the fate of millions of human beings.

Reading this book is no stroll in the park, to put it mildly. I have always had an interest in history and, being a war-child, whose father was a member of the army and resistance, I have taken special interest about the events of WW2. This book revealed much about heartless atrocities and political deceptions perpetrated by the victorious factions that I had not learned about from other sources. Incidents of vengeance, greed, barbarity, starvation and forced displacement were rampant. The usurping of power was epidemic in every strata of society. Buruma has done his research and he leaves no stone unturned to examine not only the actions of the players but also their motivations. So many were caught in nets of militarism and imperialism from which escape was near to impossible.

The plight of the Jews under Hitler and his SS commandos is well documented. Also the racial hypocrisy and cultural/ethnic ignorance and biases of many politicians and administrators—including members of the highest echelons—as well as military generals and their henchmen, receive close scrutiny. Although the book focuses on events of 1945, the author includes antecedent developments to provide greater understanding of what came to transpire in that year of worldwide hellish anger and chaos.

I was disappointed by Buruma’s complete lack of information about Denmark and Norway. A number of times he uses the word “quisling” in reference to leaders who acted as puppet dictators on behalf of the occupying forces. But he fails to include the actions of the original quisling, Vidkun Quisling, who acted as “Minister President” of Norway, 1942-1945, under the German command of Reichscommissar Josef Terboven. The author should have included at least a paragraph or two about Quisling’s trial for embezzlement, murder and high treason. He was found guilty and executed by firing squad in October, 1945.

“Resistance, quite deliberately romanticized after the war, played a tiny role in the military defeat of Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan.” (p 169) However, the author fails to recognize that Nazi Germany’s nuclear energy project was successfully sabotaged by Norwegian resistance commandos, trained by the the covert British SOE (Special Operations Executive) and carried out in two operations in 1943 and 44. The German intent was to develop nuclear armaments by acquiring heavy water (deuterium oxide) from the Vemork hydroelectric plant in Telemark, Norway. Not only were the production facilities destroyed but railway tank cars containing heavy water were derailed and sunk. After post-war evaluation by the SOE it declared that this operation had been the most effective act of sabotage in WW2. What would the war have looked like if the Germans had developed nuclear bombs for use in 1944? Almost certainly this act of resistance did not just play a “tiny role” in the war’s outcome. Yet, the author fails to even mention it.

Another act of resistance against the Final Solution worthy of note was the Danish underground’s smuggling of Jews from Denmark to Sweden. This operation prevented hundreds of Jews from meeting their fatal fate in Polish extermination facilities. Buruma should have at least given it a mention. He could also have included a commentary of neutral Sweden’s complicity in cooperating with Nazi Germany when it so suited them, as, for example, allowing the shipping of iron ore by rail from Sweden to Norway, and then onward by ship to Germany. The supply of iron ore was crucial for the manufacture and supply to the German military operation.

Borrowing its title from Roberto Rossillini's 1948 film, _Germany Year Zero_, Buruma similarly explores the destruction and human struggle in Europe (and across the world) in 1945. While mush has been written on the war itself and the emergence of the Cold War shortly after, Buruma instead focuses narrowly on the often overlooked problems that Europe and Asia faced in the months immeadiately following the cessation of hostilities. It is disturbing, shocking and unnerving.

Among the many things I like about Buruma's history is his scope: while most attention is given to Europe (both western and eastern), he also looks at the effects of the war on Asia: Japan and China (of course), but also Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines and the Islamic world (North Africa and the Middle East.)

Buruma's exporation of the gamut of emotions experienced by those who suffered in the war become the chapter titles, and become the tools with which the aftereffects of the war are discussed. In "Exultation," for example, the relief and joy of the end of the war is contrasted with the confusion and uncertainty shared by millions of DPs ("Displaced Persons" in military parlance - "refugees" as they are known now) - not only non-combatants, but concentration camp survivors, POWs, and even those who served overseas. Who these people had become after years of war and privation was very different from who they were in 1938. How individuals and societies responded to these changes made for riveting reading.

Subsequent chapters ("Hunger" and "Revenge") graphcially remind us of the brutality of the days and months after the war that are often overlooked (or glossed over) in most histories of the period: the lack of food everywhere on the Continent, the disease, the gang rape by Soviet soldiers (and the fraternization by American and Canadian GIs, the thriving black market - and most appalling (and suprising of all) the way in which Jewish survivors of the Holocaust were treated upon their return "home."

"Draining the Poison" and "The Rule of Law" were particularly fascinating in Buruma's discussion of the societal, mental and political responses to Nazi occupation - and the sticky (and cynical) problems that arose in determining who was (and was not) a "collaborator." The fact that most all Europeans under Nazi occupation "went along" with the Nazis in order to simply survive is understandable; at what point one was a "collaborator" therefore becomes a huge grey area. Added to this is the sense of shame and immasculation that people felt and one begins to understand the magnitude of the problem, and the desire to "punish" those who "betrayed" their homelands in order to make the rest of society feel better about themselves. In particular, Buruma does a magnificent job of destroying the myth of French (and Dutch) "resistance", and of showing how and why that myth was created.

Along these lines, Buruma also underscores the political problems that the months following the end of hostilities witnessed: the most vehement anti-Nazis were those on the Left - anathama to both the Americans and the British, who saw them as partners with the Soviets and therefore a threat to the future of the Europe the victorious Allies wanted to create. That so many businessmen, politicans and others who worked so closely with (and who benefitted from) their ties to the Nazis were exonerated, slapped on the wrist and went on to become Prime Ministers or powerful men of means is disturbing.

Buruma concludes by pointing to the creation of modern Europe - the NHS in Britain, the EU, the UN, on a somewhat hopeful note, fitting given the "fresh start" and "tabula rasa" that a destoryed Europe presented. While I wish greater attention was given to decolonialization, that process is really out of the scope of the book, its anteceedents very clearly illustrated throughout the book.

_Year Zero_ is not only well written and broad in scope, it is well written, immensely detailed and marvelously cited. Highly recommended for any student of 20th century history, or for those who want a more detailed and nuanced perspective on the post-war world.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5 out of 5 stars.

Ian Buruma has written a short volume about the year 1945, in which he describes the end and the beginning on a new period in conteporary history. The most vicious and brutal war in the annals of humanity has changed everything and Professor Buruma is excellent when describing whatever happened to the common people immediately after the end of this horrible conflict, which took the lives of tens of millions of soldiers and civilians alike. The chapters are organized thematically and in the background there is the personal history of the author's father who was sent to Berlin during the war.
It would be a waste of time to describe again the contents of each chapter, since previous critics have already done so before.
I would say that the conclusion of the author is not original and he is extremely careful and honest to point this out, and the things that matters most is his optimism about the future of Europe, in particular. This is mandatory reading for any intelligent man or woman who cares about the human race. More than highly recommended !

Comparing the Second World war to a party is obscene. However, the national mythologies of the victorious allies, especially the USSR, UK, and above all the USA, portrayed in movies books, television shows and general nostalgia tell of an inexorable passage to victory over unambiguously evil adversaries by the superior moral character of these nations in a unique coinciding of might and right culminating in a juster and more prosperous, largely peaceful world.
Regardless of the facile nature of this telling of the story, the party left an almost unimaginable mess which had to be cleaned up and largely got cleaned up with help of those victorious nations. It was far from flawless and the subsequent conflicts in former colonial dominions, the disgusting behavior of the USSR in Eastern Europe among other places and the undeniable overcall of the the communist threat in many regions of the world subsequently tarnished the reputations of the these same nations almost from the beginning of the post war world. Ian Buruma has written an engaging survey of this time using his Dutch father's enslavement in a Berlin factory during the war and liberation as a point of departure.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The subject of the immediate post-World War II period has been popular in history books in recent years, including William I. Hitchcock's The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe, Tony Judt's Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 and Tony Judt's The Politics of Retribution in Europe. These are all excellent, well-documented histories.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Very good book, especially in the global survey of the suffering and destitution in so many post-war nations. Here in the U.S., most people have no concept of the post-war despair of so many other countries. Regarding the election of the Labor Party in England in July 1945, the author makes note of several circumstances which probably brought that on, going back to the Beveridge Report of November 1942. An incident five months earlier played a major part in the Beveridge Report and also in the 1945 change of government to Labor--that was the coal miners strike in June 1942. The miners were starving, and they wouldn't listen to labor leaders Bevin or Clement Attlee who tried to get them back to work.Strangely enough, it took the U.S. Ambassador John Winant to speak with them. It's a fascinating story in "Citizens of London" by Lynne Olson (pub. in 2011). So, in 1948, Britain got their National Health Insurance, and everyone is better off for having done so.

Excellent text by Ian Buruma that concentrates on the end of war and the occupation by allied powers, the aspirations of Colonial territories toward self determination and the gross errors and assumptions of the victors; and what they did right.
This touches on the revenge and post-War purges, and the difficulty of deciding who was a collaborator, and which politicians, Nazis & Japanese, bankers and industrialists would get passes. A study in cultural attitudes that appear even handed in assigning blame, identifying hubris and gross misjudgment.
This also looks at the aspirations of the idealists who formed the United Nations, and how it strengths and weaknesses were entrenched by politics and expediency.
Much of this material is tucked into sections of other books. The value of this book is that all of the material lauded to in larger texts about the War are brought together to look at how that first post-War year dealt with the politics, humanitarian issues, punishment and revenge. Important in any World War II library.

Fascinating, intelligent, and above all, humane. Perhaps this is the best account on the world immediately after WWII. Of course, this is not the first book to tell the story. There are other books which also describe with equal passion and diligence, Tony Judt's "Postwar" being a prime example (BTW, I think it's the best book on postwar Europe, if you haven't read it yet, then read it! It's definitely worth the time). But this book's peculiarity lies in its breadth as well as in its depth. Not only does it cover western/eastern Europe but also many parts of Asia which most of times are neglected by western historians (Actually, I had no idea what WW2 meant to the Philippines or Indonesia, but this book helped me to get a little bit of info and understanding on that matter). From coast to coast, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, this books tells the story of a world torn apart, devastated by war and famine, which nevertheless had the spirit to go on and make the world anew. It tells the story of the men who survived the war and struggled to rebuild their societies from the ashes and bloodshed. But, it also tells the story of women: women who were victims of a particularly heinous form of violence as well as women who had to survive on their own with whatever means possible, women such as Maria Braun, the main character of Reinhardt Fassbinder's celebrated film. Guilt, revenge, redemption are also important subjects which the book deals thoroughly. A whole nation had to be redeemed, real or imagined traitors had to be killed and new national myths had to be created. In short, the past had to be buried, left to oblivion, and a new future had to be settled. Thus, the modern world began. Indeed, 1945 marks the very start point our own era, as the title of the books exemplifies. It is a highly readable book, full of details (despite its relatively short length) and of insights.

It flashed by so quickly saying all the things we already knew...how the end of that year, 1945, ended one era and opened another. It does feel very much like a new era and yet, the Cold War, for me as a child and adolescent didn't feel any safer than I imagined the time through which my fathers and uncles lived felt to them. My own generation has been better off in many, many ways. Perhaps the most obvious being that we have been allowed to claim the Traumatic Stress Syndrome (huddling under our school desks waiting for the end of the world) that was denied our fighting forces in World War II.

Buruma brings a light touch to a significant year in world history. This is an easy survey that offers an almost casual attitude to a brutal time. He also shows some ignorance of significant moments and groups. He refers, for example, to the Federal Council of Churches - the precursor of the National Council of Churches - the largest organization of Christian churches in the U.S. - as "an outfit." Overal, this was a disappointment.

Ian Buruma's "Year Zero: a History of 1945" offers a very comprehensive discussion of the aftermath of World War II, taking into account Asian involvement as well as that of Europe and the United States.

This is not at all a relaxing read, especially at first. The early chapters describe the hideous atrocities that continued past the end of the war. However, as the chapters go by, Buruma provides more and more helpful insights.

I found most fascinating part of the book to be the chapters on postwar reeducation, as the allied powers struggled to institute reforms and hopefully prevent further violence. This process brought up probing questions: punish or just educate? Who was in charge of what? How should they "denazify" the schoolchildren of Germany? Would it be better to remove local leaders or keep them in place for the sake of stability? Buruma discusses these very messy challenges and many others at great length. Germany and Japan each prompted questions of their own, and it was very good to have these two very different situations explored and contrasted.

Buruma provides example after example of conflicts and attempts at resolution, all over the affected areas of the world, and acquaints us with the words of a wide variety of writers, politicians, resisters, innocent bystanders, etc., backed up with footnotes, etc. I also appreciated the chapters on the founding of the United Nations and the first signs of the Cold War.

Though Buruma's writing is sometimes thick with detail, it never drags. There is a wealth of information here to return to. "Year Zero" will make a great reference when reading other books about those times. Highly recommended.

Ian Buruma's "Year Zero: A History of 1945" brings to light the ferocity of brutal human behavior that continued after World War II ended. World War II produced tremendous migratory shock waves as the flight of millions of civilians from front lines became a feature of life. This continued after the war ended as the expulsion of civilians, the resettlement of survivors, the deportation of those unwanted, and revenge became the unsavory reality after countries found themselves free from the yoke of Nazism. The dislocating effects and the civil wars that erupted had repercussions on the ethnic and nationality mix of many regions. This stored up explosive mix was fertile ground for many conflicts that today are still unresolved in Europe and Asia.

When the war ended the killing did not and in "Year Zero" we find that a war does not end when the last battle is fought. Buruma writes with authority and humanity, about the reality of suffering that millions liberated Europeans and Asians endured. He reveals how for most people victory over the Axis powers was merely a brief pause in the action. The hardships and horror lasted long after surrender.

In the end Allied victory did not bring worldwide peace, prosperity, justice or freedom; it brought just a fraction of those things to some who had taken part. Buruma looks into subjects that many would try and forget such as the persistence of anti-Semitism, for instance in Bavaria where thousands of Jewish survivors were crowded into dozens of displaced persons camps. In other places those who had openly denounced Jews under Hitler simply donned new clothes and reinvented themselves. Buruma conveys the dilemma the Allies faced. The occupation of Germany had to be rigid enough to crush any remaining remnants of Nazism, but they could not be too heavy handed because they did not want resistance groups forming. They also needed many civil servants and administrators to rebuild the infrastructure and maintain service.

In "Year Zero" we witness how even with the liberation of concentration camps and death camps hardships continued as the Allies struggled to deal with the unexpected millions who were displaced, homeless, or in many cases unwanted. Also, how with the consent of the Allies, the remaining German population of East Prussia, Silesia, Pomerania and the Sudetenland was deported to West Germany. In many countries it transformed demographic and ethnic structures completely out of former recognition.

Drawing upon a vast array of memoirs, testimonies, interviews, official records and publications, Ian Buruma brilliantly brings to print the killing, suffering, and civil wars that continued to plague the world after World War II was officially declared over. "Year Zero" is a book that will inform, educate, and distress many who are unaware of the misery that continued after the war ended. I highly recommend "Year Zero" and give it 5 Stars.

Ian Buruma in Year Zero has written a fairly quick paced history of the events that occurred largely after the war, yet remain connected to the recently concluded conflict. Buruma's writing style is clear and he really excels at creating images so that the reader feels like they themselves are at the camps, conference rooms, and on the many battlegrounds of the world war and the resulting civil conflicts that resulted after the war. The reader can really feel the plight of those impacted by the war--that I feel is Buruma's greatest strength.

If I can come up with a criticism, it's that it doesn't read like a conventional history book. I almost expect history to go in a chronological order, but Buruma's book seems to jump around people and continents and frames of time that constructing a conventional chronological order. I think the book as a whole came together fine, but if your one who insists on pure chronological order this may not be the book for you. Absent that minor quibble, its' a nice history that provides a look at where 1945 went after the war.

A fascinating and very readable account of the end of WWII and the birthpangs of the new world that was created in the War's wake. The author is an Anglo-Dutch Japan expert and it shows, the frame is his Dutch father's captivity as a forced laborer in Germany during the Occupation and from there he discusses social events related to sex, the effects of the North European famine of 1944-45, revenge and retribution, the dealing with collaborators, and the political and social currents that created the post war world. The story focuses on the Netherlands, France, and their chief colonies (Dutch East Indies, Vietnam, Algeria, and a little on the end of French rule in Syria), the Poles, Greeks, and most effectively on the end of the Japanese Empire, especially Korea and Manchukuo. The rest of the world is mostly ignored, but there is much here to ponder on. It works best when it is about people as individuals, the discussion near the end of the various conferences among the Allies, especially San Francisco, is well written but not nearly as fresh.

I enjoyed reading this, Buruma has always been an excellent writer, and unlike most who write at his level, he never writes from ignorance (even when I disagree with him). I really debated giving this four stars, at some level it felt like I was punishing the author for not meeting my expectations, but when I thought about it and compared the portions of Year Zero that really stood out, I felt that if he had narrowed his focus to just the Dutch/Franco-German/Japanese portions the book would have been far more profound. While much of his analysis covers well trodden paths, often well trod by Mr Buruma himself, I was never bored and always interested.

The Germans called it Stundenull, or "Zero Hour." The idea was that with the collapse of the Third Reich and the Allied occupation of Germany, everything was changed and the world would start over. Ian Buruma, who has a unique personal perspective (his father was a Dutch survivor of forced labor in Berlin), builds on this idea and universalizes it across Europe and through Asia. Year Zero builds on the major themes of the war's end, themes which were problems in their own right and few of which were satisfactorily settled by January 1, 1946: liberation, justice, hunger, repatriation, political realignment, and prevention of another, even greater, catastrophe.

In many ways, Year Zero is a replay of William I. Hitchcock's The Bitter Road to Freedom (2008) in that it uses some of the same vignettes and sources to examine the hard life liberated, occupied, and repatriated Europeans endured. What sets this book apart, though, is its coverage of Asia. Here the story of millions of Chinese, Vietnamese, Malay, Indonesians, Koreans, and Japanese is told (obviously the author could have included many other peoples), with compassion and realism. The liberated Asians had additional, colonial, burdens to carry, and how the victorious Allies dealt with these people often spoke the lie to the ideals of the Atlantic Charter or the idea of a one world United Nations for peace. We still live with the compromises of that era.

Year Zero is not as well documented as I would have liked it, but it is clearly written for a popular audience, who will be generally familiar with the closing of the war and the main personalities involved. To that extent, the author is very successful -- Year Zero is highly readable and the ideas are compelling. Few wars end cleanly. For a war that ended in unconditional surrender (almost literally in Europe, with a few caveats in Asia), there was an unexpectedly significant amount of work remaining to win the peace. Buruma brings all the texture out and sketches the contours of our modern world. As he says, for better or worse, we have to live with the world our forebears were able to imperfectly put together in 1945.

The subtitle, A History of 1945, might be a little misleading. This is not a day-by-day chronicle of the year beginning with the final battles of the war and focusing on the decision-makers. The book focuses exclusively on what happened after the war in the liberated or conquered nations. It is also organized thematically rather than in strict time order.

The thesis of the book is that nations recovering from war proceeded through a sequence of predictable stages. Hence, the narrative skips around in time according to when each country was in a particular stage. These stages include, among others:

o The exultation of liberation.
o Dealing with feeding people in a shattered economy.
o Seeking quick revenge on perpetrators or collaborators.
o Re-establishing the rule of law.
o Envisioning and building a new society.

This approach actually works quite well. The result is primarily history from the ground up; leaders seldom intrude in the story except to make some moral or political mistake. The author weaves together stories of real people, some of whom he interviewed sixty-odd years after the events, with research into the experiences of the common people. He is also not shy about sharing his opinions and moral judgments, but he is never overbearing.

The author points out how many war criminals and collaborators rose to prominence in the post-war world. The western allies were quick to reimpose colonialism and snuff out any political group that was too anti-fascist, even if it meant making deals with the devil. These decisions have affected the politics of the Philippines even to this day, for example. But the author does not romanticize the leftists, and he also notes that the Soviets merely liquidated the opposition in Poland and elsewhere.

The story can be depressing at times. Too many soldiers raped too many women in all theaters of the war. And the hopes and dreams for a truly new world were so quickly disappointed. But I would recommend this book to any general reader of history who is somewhat familiar with the events of World War II.

For "top-down" histories of the era, see The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1941-1945,The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, and The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire: Churchill, Roosevelt, and the Birth of the Pax Americana.

Those of us who consider ourselves well-versed in the outlines of WWII will have some difficulty describing the immediate aftermath of the war. We can talk about Normandy, or Coral Sea, or Manchuria, Rommel or Patton. We may know about the events that came a little later--the Berlin Blockade, the Marshall plan. But those few months after the war are foggy, and it's far too easy to compress the following few years into that time.

That's no longer possible, thanks to Ian Baruma. The first half of the book is absolutely horrifying. There were scores to settle and tens of thousands more were to die after the peace was won. Much was racial and cultural: Chinese, Japanese, Koreans and Vietnamese slaughtered one another depending on where slim majorities might exist. The unification of the restive Balkans under Tito came at a tremendous human cost. The Jews of Europe who had been the target of so much brutality were now to blame that the whole thing had happened. The Cossacks--useful for a while--became stateless. The crushing of Poland under Stalin began. Women across Europe and Asia--the same women who had sacrificed souls and bodies to support fatherless children--were brutalized and slaughtered to salve the pride of defeated men. My few sentences barely describe how hard it is to read these chapters. But we must bear witness.

It's simple to imagine that the victorious Allies had a plan to put Europe and Japan back together. That's the way that common history tells the story. But that's hardly true. The remainder of Buruma's book shows how ignorant the 'experts' were and how much there was to learn. The war was all-consuming. The peace would get sorted out somehow. The closing chapters illustrate the beginning of that time, showing how our armies began the transition from conquerers to occupiers. They show the beginnings of independence movements in Asia and Africa. They show the births of events that troubled us later and that trouble us still--Vietnam, the breakup of Yugoslavia, the birth of North Korea. The title, 'Year Zero', is apt. This was the death of the world that came before and was the beginning of the world we know now. It's a tough read in many places, but a necessary one.

As the world sighed in relief following the end of history's most devastating conflict, Europe and Asia still faced a grim spectacle ... the need to sift through the emotional and physical devastation and start living again. Ian Buruma's YEAR ZERO: A HISTORY OF 1945 offers an engaging glimpse into the oft-forgotten pain of recovery, retribution and reformation that gripped Europe and Asia once the guns were silenced.

The death toll and physical destruction caused by six years of a global war that was fought on almost every continent and in every conceivable manner (land/air/sea) is daunting enough to comprehend. But, although the war ended convincingly, the aftermath was not so clear cut. YEAR ZERO touches on the multitude of issues impacting the continents (decimated cultures, destroyed cities, political upheaval, millions of misplaced persons, ruined economies and newfound freedom (from decolonization)), the effort to resolve them (rebuild, repatriate and punish) and the roadblocks encountered. Rather than focusing on the obvious: the recovery of the vanquished (Germany and Japan), Buruma takes a broad approach and looks at the postwar impact throughout Asia and Europe. Buruma manages to un-wrinkle an immensely convoluted subject and present it in very readable format with fascinating detail. At times, the lack of a chronological path and the tendency to jump from Europe to Asia in the same paragraph makes reading a bit arduous. Overall, however, the book addresses some deep issues with appreciated brevity and clarity.

What I found particularly enjoyable with YEAR ZERO was the author's attention to the lesser-known or obscure issues of the postwar world. One of the first issues covered in the book was the initial sense of elation that followed the war's end and how uninhibited sex was such a big part of the celebration ... including, ironically, concentration camp survivors who sought sex as a simple method of "re-humanizing" themselves. Another interesting area the book explores is the struggle faced by countries that endured German and Japanese occupation. Countries freed from the grip of brutal occupation were subject to being picked apart and pawed-at by the victors eager to spread their political and economic ideology. Buruma contends that World War II didn't really end for some European nations until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989. I also found it fascinating how the desire to punish individuals guilty of war crimes was often over-ridden by the need to retain these individuals because their expertise and leadership was so desperately needed to retain order and rebuild Germany and Japan.

YEAR ZERO clearly shows the efforts of the dazed postwar world to reset/start-anew were fraught with success and failure. Ian Buruma manages to consolidate a great deal of complicated subject matter into a solid, concise read. Adding to the appeal of the book is that Buruma's father experienced the war as a forced laborer in Germany, giving the author a personal first-hand source and plenty of passion. YEAR ZERO is a great resource for those interested in understanding how we arrived at the world we have today.

In the Epilogue the author submits that World War Two ended in 1989, not 1945. It could be argued that the entire 20th Century was one big war for global domination. No matter--Ian Burma covers the year 1945 and adds in his father's experience as a young Dutch citizen drafted as slave labor by Nazi Germany.
The dying in Europe didn't stop on VE Day, only slowed down a bit. Ditto for Asia and the Pacific on VJ Day. The survivors had differing agendas, from restoring the lost golden age to establishing a new world order out of the rubble and ashes of a blasted world. Some people, the DP, had no home to return to.
Divided into three parts, the author imposes a structure on chaos so as to describe what happened to the world. Part One is titled "Liberation Complex" and is divided again in three chapters: Exultation, Hunger and Revenge. Part Two is "Clearing the Rubble" and its three chapters are Going Home, Draining the Poison and The Rule of Law. Part Three is "Never Again" and its three chapters are Bright Confident Morning, Civilizing the Brutes, and One World.
Put this book on your shelf as the Epilogue to World War Two.