Liberation: The Bitter Road to Freedom, Europe 1944-1945 [Hardcover]

William Hitchcock's study of the liberation of Europe in the Second World War is actually four interrelated books in one. The first book looks at the experience of civilians in northwestern Europe amidst the fighting during the final months of the war. Theirs is a story of painful, often overlooked hardship, as they were subjected to bombs and shells that did not discriminate between them and the German occupiers. For many Belgians, the Battle of the Bulge meant living through the thick of the fighting, while the Dutch, though spared much direct combat, suffered starvation from the disruption of food supplies.

The second book shifts to an examination of the fighting in the east. Here Hitchcock provides a broader account, one that begins with the German invasion in 1941. This allows him to recount the atrocities committed by Nazi forces, something that allows him to put the conduct of Soviet troops into context. Civilians are much less central to Hitchcock's analysis here, as he also discusses postwar planning for Germany's fate. It is only when Germany itself becomes the battleground that the civilians reemerge as the central focus of the narrative, where again they are presented as victims of the savagery of war.

The final two sections concentrate on the development and administration of relief efforts for those who survived the fighting. The third book addresses the problem posed by 'displaced persons', the millions of refugees created by the war. Here he examines the efforts not just of the Allied forces but of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), a newly-formed agency that sought to improve on the private relief efforts that characterized the last war. Hitchcock's final book looks at the civilians who suffered the most - the concentration camp survivors. His focus here is primarily on the Western allies, with separate chapters that address separately how the Americans and the British responded to the morally horrifying and politically complicated question of what to do for those who survived the Holocaust.

Each of these books offers an enlightening examination of the problems civilians faced at the end of the war and in its immediate aftermath. Yet each section stands in seeming isolation from the others, with little effort made to tie them together into a coherent overall portrait. Instead readers are left to piece together for themselves the overall assessment of the experience of liberation. This squanders what is otherwise an interesting book about an often-overlooked aspect of war, one that provides a more complete picture of just how much Europe suffered.

A well researched and scholarly contribution to a relatively under investigated period. More for the scholar than the general reader but it filled in some gaps for me on an individual basis. It could usefully be read in conjunction with Sean Longden contribution "To The Victor The Spoils" published 2007. There is room for more on this subject matter perhaps from a lesser wider scope.

John Nicholson
2/3/09

It is very difficult to write originally about a subject (1939-45) where the bibliography is already tens of thousands of titles long.
Hitchcock writes in a scholarly and engaging way, has done a great deal of research, and approaches his subject from very many angles--yet the book is in my view not the masterpiece some suggest.
1) It is not original to write about rape by Allied troops. We have been hearing about this for about 40 years.
2) Nor was I amazed to read that the liberators did not on the whole see themselves as saving the Jews.
3) The inconsistency between chapters irritated me. In one chapter the Americans like the Germans, wish to forgive them, and find them friendly, attractive and well-fed. In another they hate them and hope the Russians will punish them. In one chapter Belgium is spared the full horror of war (compared to Holland), in another it is used as the example of German cruelty to civilian resisters.
4) Imbalance and omissions are also troubling. How curious to say the SS shot a handful of Belgians while retreating in 1944, yet not deal with what they did to Jews and Poles in Warsaw, and to describe the humiliation of 12 German soldiers' girlfriends by the French Resistance at Cherbourg yet omit the killing of between 4,000 and 15,000 Vichyites and collaborationists over the coming months.
Similarly, why cite 130 air raid deaths in central Normandy in the weeks leading up to D-Day, and mention Fromentin as a source, then not mention the massive death toll (3,000+) caused by the RAF at Le Havre 3 months later--quite the worst Allied raid on a "friendly population" of the whole war?
Extensive though the research must have been, the author has not done quite enough to convince me of some of his arguments--even on his favourite subjects of rape, bombing, Belsen, and feeding the refugees. His account of liberation politics is, I'd say, quite thin. The book is really a patchwork--as another reviewer comments, 4 or 5 separate and somewhat incompatible studies stuck together.

Obviously the labour of love of a busy researcher but not as original, or as strong in grasp, as the "blurb" claims.
Having said all this, it is worth reading and it does no harm to stress that liberation was a violent, disruptive, desttructive and traumatic process, and not a party.