Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II Read Online Free PDF Page A

expression to some of the frustration that had built up throughout the years of Nazi repression.
    Acts of vengeance certainly gave individuals, as well as communities, a sense that they were no longer passive bystanders to events. Rightly or wrongly, the mobs who lynched German soldiers on the streets of Prague or Black Brigade members on the streets of Milan were collectively satisfied by what they had done: not only had they struck a blow at fascism, but they had taken power back into their own hands. Likewise, the millions of foreign slave labourers who were released from captivity in Germany usually took delight in stealing food and valuables from German houses, and occasionally also mistreated the German families they found there. They saw this as their right after years of their own hunger and mistreatment.
    In some parts of Europe, where the people had lost all faith in their institutions of law and order, the recourse to vengeance at least gave them the sense that some kind of justice was possible. In other parts, the less violent forms of revenge were sometimes thought to have had quite positive effects on society. The most common form of vengeance in western Europe – the shaving of women’s heads – was credited at the time with reducing violence and giving occupied towns and villages a new sense of pride. Though we now find such events reprehensible, it is undeniable that they brought communities together and made them, at last, feel re-empowered. Acknowledging such facts does not mean that we have to condone vengeance – but if we fail to acknowledge them we will never have a proper understanding of the violent forces that drove events during this chaotic period.
     
    The issue of vengeance has always been an extremely controversial part of the aftermath of the Second World War, and is still used as a political football today. The most graphic indication of this is the repeated use that has been made of bogus statistics. Exaggerated and emotional claims have been made both by people who genuinely suffered in the aftermath of the war and by certain groups who wish to capitalize on that suffering. For example, writers from the French political right claimed for decades that over 100,000 suspected collaborators were murdered by the Resistance during and after the liberation – a figure that is on a par with the number of résistants killed during the war. The true number of collaborators killed was probably a tenth of that, and only one or two thousand can realistically be categorized as revenge attacks. The French right wing was effectively trying to deflect attention from its own role during the war, and perhaps even gain absolution for it, by fiddling the figures.
    Likewise, Germans who were expelled from their homelands at the end of the war often make exaggerated claims about the most famous atrocities that occurred in eastern Europe. They say that 2,000 civilians were killed in Aussig, and 6,500 at Lamsdorf prison camp (when in fact the figures are more likely to be 100 and 1,500, respectively). Words like ‘genocide’ and ‘Holocaust’ are deliberately used in an attempt to reclaim the concept of victimhood for Germany. And to drive the point home, the most gruesome stories are repeated again and again, despite the fact that some of them are little more than hearsay. Such exaggerations are unnecessary and counter-productive: the true figures, and the verifiable stories, are terrible enough without having to embellish them.
    To our collective discredit, historians have sometimes failed to question these claims, either because of a dearth of reputable source material or, in some cases, because the exaggerations happen to suit our own political points of view. This is a problem that plagues postwar history, just as it plagues the history of the Second World War itself. (As another example, books and articles are regularly published today claiming that as many as 100,000 people died during the bombing of