Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II (2 page)

Neither did the end of the war signify the birth of a new era of ethnic harmony in Europe. Indeed, in some parts of Europe, ethnic tensions actually became worse. Jews continued to be victimized, just as they had been during the war itself. Minorities everywhere became political targets once again, and in some areas this led to atrocities that were just as repugnant as those committed by the Nazis. The aftermath of the war also saw the logical conclusion of all the Nazis’ efforts to categorize and segregate different races. Between 1945 and 1947 tens of millions of men, women and children were expelled from their countries in some of the biggest acts of ethnic cleansing the world has ever seen. This is a subject that is rarely discussed by admirers of the ‘European miracle’, and even more rarely understood: even those who are aware of the expulsions of Germans know little about the similar expulsions of other minorities across eastern Europe. The cultural diversity that was once such an integral part of the European landscape before, and even during, the war was not dealt its final death-blow until after the war was over.

That the reconstruction of Europe was begun in the midst of all these issues makes it all the more remarkable. But in the same way that the war took a long time to end, so the reconstruction took a long time to get going. The people who lived amidst the rubble of Europe’s devastated cities were more concerned with the minutiae of everyday survival than with restoring the building blocks of society. They were hungry, bereaved and bitter about the years of suffering they had been made to endure – before they could be motivated to start rebuilding they needed time to vent their anger, to reflect and to mourn.

The new authorities that were taking up office across Europe also needed time to establish themselves. Their first priority was not to clear the rubble, or repair the railway lines, or reopen the factories, but merely to appoint representatives and councils in each area of their countries. These councils then had to win the trust of the people, the majority of whom had learned through six years of organized atrocity to treat all institutions with extreme caution. In such circumstances the establishment of some kind of law and order, let alone any physical reconstruction, was little more than a pipe dream. It was only outside agencies – the Allied armies, the United Nations, the Red Cross – that had the authority or the manpower to attempt such feats. In the absence of such agencies, chaos reigned.

The story of Europe in the immediate postwar period is therefore not primarily one of reconstruction and rehabilitation – it is firstly a story of the descent into anarchy. This is a history that has never properly been written. Dozens of excellent books describe events in individual countries – especially in Germany – but they do so at the expense of the larger picture: the same themes occur again and again throughout the continent. There are one or two histories, like Tony Judt’s
Postwar
, that take in a broader view of the continent as a whole – however, they do so over a much larger timescale, and so are obliged to summarize the events of the immediate postwar years in just a few chapters. To my knowledge there is no book in any language that describes the whole continent – east and west – in detail during this crucial and turbulent time.

This book is a partial attempt to rectify this situation. It shall not, as so many other books have done, seek to explain how the continent eventually rose from the ashes and attempted to rebuild itself physically, economically and morally. It will not concentrate on the Nuremberg trials, or the Marshall Plan, or any of the other attempts to heal the wounds that had been created by the war. Instead it is concerned with the period before such attempts at rehabilitation were even a possibility, when most of Europe was still extremely volatile, and violence could flare up once again at the slightest provocation. In a sense it is attempting the impossible – to describe chaos. It will do so by picking out different elements in that chaos, and by suggesting ways in which these were linked by common themes.

I shall begin by showing precisely what had been destroyed during the war, both physically and morally. It is only by fully appreciating what had been lost that we can understand the events that followed. Part II describes the wave of vengeance that swept across the continent, and suggests ways in which this phenomenon was manipulated for political gain. Vengeance is a constant theme of this book, and an understanding of its logic, and the purposes to which it was put, is essential if we are to understand the atmosphere of postwar Europe. Parts III and IV show what happened when this vengeance, and other forms of violence, were allowed to get out of hand. The ethnic cleansing, political violence and civil war that resulted were some of the most momentous events in European history. I shall argue that these were, in effect, the last spasms of the Second World War – and in many cases an almost seamless link to the beginning of the Cold War. The book will therefore cover, roughly, the years 1944 to 1949.

One of my main aims in writing this book was to break away from the narrow Western view that tends to dominate most writing on the period. For decades books about the aftermath of the war have focused on events in western Europe, largely because information about the east was not readily available, even in eastern Europe itself. Since the break-up of the Soviet Union and its satellite states this information has become more available, but it still tends to be obscure, and generally appears only in academic books and journals, often only in the language of the originator. So while much pioneering work has been done by Polish, Czech or Hungarian writers it has remained accessible only in Polish, Czech or Hungarian. It has also remained, largely, in the hands of academics – which brings me to another purpose of this book: to bring the period to life for the general reader.

My final, and perhaps most important, purpose is to clear a path through the labyrinth of myths that have been propagated about the aftermath of the war. Many of the ‘massacres’ I have investigated turn out, on closer inspection, to be far less dramatic than they are usually portrayed. Equally, some quite astonishing atrocities have been hushed up, or simply lost in the sweep of other historical events. While it might be impossible to unearth the exact truth behind some of these incidents, it is at least possible to remove some of the untruths.

A particular bugbear of mine is the plethora of vague and unsubstantiated statistics that are regularly bandied about in discussions concerning this period. Statistics really do matter, because they are often employed for political purposes. Some nations routinely exaggerate the crimes of their neighbours, either to distract attention from their own crimes or to further their own national causes. Political parties of all colours like to exaggerate the misdeeds of their rivals, and play down those of their allies. Historians also sometimes exaggerate, or merely pick the most sensational number from the range of figures available, to make their stories seem more dramatic. But the stories from this period are fantastic enough – they do not need exaggeration. For this reason I have tried where possible to base all my statistics on official sources, or on responsible academic studies if official sources are missing or suspect. Whenever statistics are in dispute I shall put what I consider to be the most reliable number in the main text, and alternative numbers in the notes.

That said, it would be foolish to imagine that my attempts at accuracy cannot be improved upon. Neither can this book pretend to be a ‘definitive’ or ‘comprehensive’ history of the immediate postwar period in Europe: the subject matter is far too broad for that. Instead it is an attempt to shine a light on a whole world of surprising and occasionally terrifying events for those who might never otherwise have discovered them.

My hope is that it will open up a debate about how these events affected the continent during the most painful stages of its rebirth and - since there is enormous scope for further research – perhaps stimulate others to investigate more deeply. If the past is a foreign country, this period in Europe’s history still has vast regions marked only by the phrase ‘Here be dragons’.

PART I

The Legacy of War

I thought you’d be there waiting for me … What greeted me instead was the lingering stench of ashes and the empty sockets of our ruined home.

Samuel Puterman on his return to Warsaw, 1945
^1
;
2

We could see the physical destruction but the effect of vast economic disruption and political, social, and psychological destruction … completely escaped us.

Dean Acheson, US Under-Secretary of State, 1947

1

Physical Destruction

In 1943 the travel book publisher Karl Baedeker produced a guide to the Generalgouvernement — that part of central and southern Poland that remained nominally separate from the Reich. As with all publications in Germany at the time, it was just as concerned with disseminating propaganda as with giving its readers information. The section on Warsaw was a case in point. The book waxed lyrical about the city’s German origins, its German character and the way that it had become one of the world’s great capitals ‘predominantly through the effort of Germans’. It urged tourists to visit the medieval Royal Castle, the fourteenth-century cathedral and the beautiful late-Renaissance Jesuit Church – all the products of German culture and influence. Of special interest was the complex of late baroque palaces around Piłsudski Square – ‘the most beautiful square in Warsaw’ – now renamed Adolf Hitler Platz. The centrepiece was the ‘Saxon’ Palace, built of course by a German, and its beautiful Saxon Gardens, which were again designed by German architects. The travel guide conceded that one or two buildings had unfortunately been damaged by the battle for Warsaw in 1939, but since then, it reassured its readers, Warsaw ‘is being rebuilt once more under German leadership’.
¹

No mention was made of the western suburbs of the city, which had been converted into a ghetto for Jews. This was probably just as well because even as the book was being published an uprising broke out here, obliging SS-Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop to set fire to virtually every house in the district.
²
Almost four square kilometres of the city were entirely destroyed in this way.

The following year a second uprising broke out throughout the rest of the city. This time it was a more general insurgency inspired by the Polish Home Army. In August 1944, groups of Polish men, women and teenagers began ambushing German soldiers and stealing their weapons and ammunition. For the next two months they barricaded themselves in and around the Old City, and held down more than 17,000 German anti-insurgent troops.
³
The uprising only came to an end in October after some of the most brutal fighting of the war. Afterwards, tired of Polish disobedience, and aware that the Russians were about to enter the city anyway, Hitler ordered the city to be completely razed.
⁴

Accordingly, German troops blew up the medieval Royal Castle that had so impressed Baedeker. They undermined the fourteenth-century cathedral and blew that up too. Then they destroyed the Jesuit Church. The Saxon Palace was systematically blown up over the course of three days just after Christmas 1944, as was the entire complex of baroque and rococo palaces. The European Hotel, recommended by Baedeker, was first burned down in October and then, just to make sure, blown up in January 1945. German troops went from house to house, street to street, systematically destroying the entire city: 93 per cent of Warsaw’s dwellings were destroyed or damaged beyond repair. To complete the destruction they burned down the National Archive, the Archives of Ancient Documents, the Financial Archives, the Municipal Archives, the Archives of New Documents and the Public Library.
⁵

After the war, when the Poles were turning their thoughts to rebuilding their capital, the National Museum held an exhibition showing fragments of buildings and artworks that had been damaged or destroyed during the German occupation. They produced an accompanying guide book, which, unlike Baedeker’s guide book, was written entirely in the past tense. The intention was to remind the people of Warsaw, and the wider world, of exactly what had been lost. There is a realization implicit in both the guide book and the exhibition itself that those who lived through the destruction of Warsaw were no longer able to appreciate the immensity of what had happened to their city. For them it had happened gradually, beginning with the bombardment in 1939, continuing with German looting during the occupation and ending with the destruction of the Ghetto in 1943 and the final devastation in late 1944. Now, just a few months after their liberation, they had become used to living in shells of houses, surrounded on all sides by mountains of rubble.
⁶

In some ways the true scale of the destruction could be appreciated only by those who saw its results without actually witnessing it taking place. John Vachon was a young photographer who came to Warsaw as part of the United Nations relief effort after the war. The letters he wrote to his wife Penny in January 1946 display his complete incomprehension at the scale of the destruction.

This is really an incredible city and I want to give you an idea of it, and don’t know how I can do it. It’s a big city, see. Over one million pre war. Big as Detroit. Now it is 90 per cent
all
destroyed … Wherever you walk here it is hunks of buildings standing up without roofs or much sides, and people living in them. Except the Ghetto, where it is just a great plain of bricks, with twisted beds and bath tubs and sofas, pictures in frames, trunks, millions of things sticking out among the bricks. I can’t understand how it could have been done … It’s something that’s so vicious I can’t believe it.
⁷