Year Zero: A History of 1945 - ALA Notable Book for Adults | WWII Historical Nonfiction | Perfect for History Buffs & Book Clubs

$15.59

$20.79

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Year Zero: A History of 1945 - ALA Notable Book for Adults | WWII Historical Nonfiction | Perfect for History Buffs & Book Clubs

$15.59

$20.79

25% Off

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Description

A marvelous global history of the pivotal year 1945 as a new world emerged from the ruins of World War IIYear Zero is a landmark reckoning with the great drama that ensued after war came to an end in 1945. One world had ended and a new, uncertain one was beginning. Regime change had come on a global scale: across Asia (including China, Korea, Indochina, and the Philippines, and of course Japan) and all of continental Europe. Out of the often vicious power struggles that ensued emerged the modern world as we know it.In human terms, the scale of transformation is almost impossible to imagine. Great cities around the world lay in ruins, their populations decimated, displaced, starving. Harsh revenge was meted out on a wide scale, and the ground was laid for much horror to come. At the same time, in the wake of unspeakable loss, the euphoria of the liberated was extraordinary, and the revelry unprecedented. The postwar years gave rise to the European welfare state, the United Nations, decolonization, Japanese pacifism, and the European Union. Social, cultural, and political “reeducation” was imposed on vanquished by victors on a scale that also had no historical precedent. Much that was done was ill advised, but in hindsight, as Ian Buruma shows us, these efforts were in fact relatively enlightened, humane, and effective.A poignant grace note throughout this history is Buruma’s own father’s story. Seized by the Nazis during the occupation of Holland, he spent much of the war in Berlin as a laborer, and by war’s end was literally hiding in the rubble of a flattened city, having barely managed to survive starvation rations, Allied bombing, and Soviet shock troops when the end came. His journey home and attempted reentry into “normalcy” stand in many ways for his generation’s experience.A work of enormous range and stirring human drama, conjuring both the Asian and European theaters with equal fluency, Year Zero is a book that Ian Buruma is perhaps uniquely positioned to write. It is surely his masterpiece.

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Reviews

*****

Verified Buyer

Too many people tend to believe that the horror of WW II stopped with V.E. and V.J. Days. After all, what else is there? The Allies won. The Axis lost. End of story...No. Far from it. In his absolutely brilliant overview of immediate events following the Allies' victory, Ian Buruma pointedly chronicles the tragic events that ensue. It is difficult to narrate to someone who has not yet read this book the feelings of ambivalence that this work stirs in its reader. It is UNarguable that the war crimes committed by the Axis are beyond reprehension. It is absolutely abominable that many of the perpetrators of these atrocities escaped their just punishment or got away with little more than the proverbial "slap on the wrist." These are not the issues Ian Buruma – the son of a Dutch slave laborer seized by the Nazis and brought to Germany after his country was overran by Werhmacht -- brings to the forefront of his narrative in "Year Zero: a history of 1945." Nor is there a question that the civilian populations of Axis countries must bear some responsibility for abhorrent atrocities of that period. They do. For nothing can possibly justify the absolute and catastrophic horror and misery their military and paramilitary entities (i.e. armies, SS, Gestapo, etc.) inflicted upon their victim populations: the tears, the pain, the heartache... death, destruction, sadness... starvation, disease, abandonment...But just how much of the punishment inflicted upon Axis civilian populations in retribution can be justified? Should a line be drawn between what is morally acceptable and what is not? The revenge killings?... The way the righteous French took out their post-occupation anger on some of their own women accused of (literally) sleeping with the enemy?... The mass rapes of East German women?... The fate of Japanese civilians abandoned by the retreating Imperial Army in China and Manchuria?... The fate of Russian émigrés, who escaped the Soviets in 1918-1920, but ended up in the hands of Western Allies in 1945?... The fate of Soviet (Red Army) POWs captured by the Wehrmacht in WW II and ended up in the hands of Western Allies in 1945?...The book is meticulously researched and cogently written. Thoroughly referenced and conscientiously indexed, this text (IMHO) should be a part of any self-respecting college history curriculum. After reading every word of its 337 pages, I have but one regret – Ian Buruma's book is too short. I wish there were more.

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