Read The Bitter Taste of Victory Online
Authors: Lara Feigel
The Bitter Taste of Victory (94 page)
‘“
La difficulté d’être
” weighs upon me, every hour, every moment.’ Klaus Mann, 1949.
‘Out of the present crisis a new feeling of human solidarity, a new humanism will be found.’ Thomas Mann, garlanded by the crowds on his way to collect the Goethe prize at the Nationaltheater in Weimar, August 1949.
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First published in Great Britain 2016
First U.S. edition 2016
© Lara Feigel, 2016
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ISBN: HB: 978-1-63286-551-9
ePub: 978-1-63286-553-3
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Table of Contents
PART I: The Battle for Germany, 1944–45
1 ‘Setting out for a country that didn’t really exist’
3 ‘We were blind and unbelieving and slow’
PART II: Ruin and Reconstruction, May–December 1945
5 ‘Berlin is boiling in sweltering summer heat’
6 ‘A pain that hurts too much’
PART III: Judgement and Hunger, 1945–46
9 ‘Let this trial never finish’
10 ‘The law tries to keep up with life’
PART IV: Tension and Revival, 1946–48
11 ‘Their suffering, and often their bravery, make one love them’
12 ‘I’ve been the Devil’s General on earth too long’
13 ‘In Hell too there are these luxuriant gardens’
PART V: Divided Germany, 1948–49
14 ‘If this is a war who is our enemy?’
15 ‘Perhaps our deaths will shock you into attention’