Today.
As is usual, I have learned a lot about something I thought I already knew about.
I was quite shocked on reading the chapter about events in East Prussia, the atrocities commited there. This is an area about which I found I have only a very generalised idea of events. As one German comments, "it was our holocaust, but nobody cares".
I come to see with greater clarity than ever the truth of the old "if not for the Red Army"...., as the book makes it abundantly clear that the Western Allies alone could not have outfaced the Wehrmacht. In fact, if you remove the Eastern Front from the equation, I find it hard to envisage the Normandy landings having anything but a very bleak future.
I was also quite taken aback by the chapter on the Dutch "hungerwinter" of 44-45. Again, I had no idea of the suffering of the Dutch at that time, or the refusal of the Allies to liberate the country in its entirety.
Finally, the knife edge upon which the Western Alliance was balancing at that time.
Perhaps my upbringing, but I can't help feeling the Brits were given short shrift after all their efforts in the defeat of Hitler.
All in all a good if not great book. I sometimes found it to be a bit "patchy" - somewhat like a literary patchwork quilt, perhaps inevitable considering the enormous amount of research material.
As is usual, I have learned a lot about something I thought I already knew about.
I was quite shocked on reading the chapter about events in East Prussia, the atrocities commited there. This is an area about which I found I have only a very generalised idea of events. As one German comments, "it was our holocaust, but nobody cares".
I come to see with greater clarity than ever the truth of the old "if not for the Red Army"...., as the book makes it abundantly clear that the Western Allies alone could not have outfaced the Wehrmacht. In fact, if you remove the Eastern Front from the equation, I find it hard to envisage the Normandy landings having anything but a very bleak future.
I was also quite taken aback by the chapter on the Dutch "hungerwinter" of 44-45. Again, I had no idea of the suffering of the Dutch at that time, or the refusal of the Allies to liberate the country in its entirety.
Finally, the knife edge upon which the Western Alliance was balancing at that time.
Perhaps my upbringing, but I can't help feeling the Brits were given short shrift after all their efforts in the defeat of Hitler.
All in all a good if not great book. I sometimes found it to be a bit "patchy" - somewhat like a literary patchwork quilt, perhaps inevitable considering the enormous amount of research material.
