subsequently became part of the Greater German Reich. I mention the South Tyrol in Italy, because Austrians saw that as part of their lands, as well as other satellites in Yugoslavia, for instance. I have also examined the plight of the so-called ‘ethnic’ Germans who were expelled, mostly from Czechoslovakia, but also from Hungary and Romania. Elsewhere ‘Germany’ is defined by its 1937 borders, and I have referred to towns and villages by the names Germans would have known. Where possible I have included the Polish or Czech names too.
Although it was my first intention to study the German-speaking peoples as they suffered their chastisements on the ground, I soon realised that it was impossible to make any sense of what was happening without reference to what was taking place on Mount Olympus: the Allied command HQs and the political forces behind them. I had to travel de haut en bas and vice versa - to examine the effect of the occupation on the Germans, but also to look upstairs at what the Olympians were doing, and see what they had in store. On the other hand I have always tried to focus on Germans, not on the Allies.
The book is the fruit of my long acquaintance with both Germany and Austria. My interest began during a short stay in Cologne in my mid-teens and a meeting with one of the two modern German novelists whose writings have most coloured this book. I was a guest of the Böll family and one afternoon the later Nobel Prize winner Heinrich Böll came to tea. He introduced me to Underberg, the viciously powerful bitters, and I can still feel the wave of fire travelling up from my stomach to my cheeks. We argued about Irish Republicanism, which he favoured. It wasn’t until much later that I began to respect his books, and admire the picture of the returned soldier in those early stories and novels.
I met Ernst Jünger many years later, through my friend the eccentric hotelier Andreas Kleber, who was then still in possession of his family hotel, the Kleber Post in Saulgau in Württemberg (incidentally one of the first venues for the writers’ group Gruppe 47). One night I had dinner with Jünger there and the two of us spoke to ZDF television about the meaning of Prussia. Jünger was a writer from the generation before Böll, but outlived the younger man by decades. He was a mere ninety-seven when I met him and had another six years to live. Again conversation turned to drink: the bottle of Pommard he consumed with his wife every night (he had two-thirds of it, he confessed), and his real love - Châteauneuf-du-Pape.
He became more serious when he complained that he could not wear his Pour le Mérite medal, which he had won in the Great War, when he had been left for dead on the field of battle. He was, I think, the last surviving military holder of the medal. The Allies had swiftly banned the wearing of decorations, and the Federal Republic has followed suit. War could not be officially celebrated, and that went for acts of heroism too. I recalled the First World War memorial in the little park in Berlin-Friedenau where I had stayed with friends. The inscription had been chipped off: in Germany such things were taboo, while in Britain war memorials were still placed at the focal point of any town or hamlet. In Germany there were no more heroes. The Germans had lost the right to them.
Friends of mine, even published historians, have often told me that the Germans ‘deserved what they got’ in 1945: it was a just punishment for their behaviour in occupied lands and for the treatment of the Jews at home. This book is not intended to excuse the Germans, but it does not hesitate to expose the victorious Allies in their treatment of the enemy at the peace, for in most cases it was not the criminals who were raped, starved, tortured or bludgeoned to death but women, children and old men. What I record and sometimes call into question here is the way that many people were allowed to exact that revenge by
Although it was my first intention to study the German-speaking peoples as they suffered their chastisements on the ground, I soon realised that it was impossible to make any sense of what was happening without reference to what was taking place on Mount Olympus: the Allied command HQs and the political forces behind them. I had to travel de haut en bas and vice versa - to examine the effect of the occupation on the Germans, but also to look upstairs at what the Olympians were doing, and see what they had in store. On the other hand I have always tried to focus on Germans, not on the Allies.
The book is the fruit of my long acquaintance with both Germany and Austria. My interest began during a short stay in Cologne in my mid-teens and a meeting with one of the two modern German novelists whose writings have most coloured this book. I was a guest of the Böll family and one afternoon the later Nobel Prize winner Heinrich Böll came to tea. He introduced me to Underberg, the viciously powerful bitters, and I can still feel the wave of fire travelling up from my stomach to my cheeks. We argued about Irish Republicanism, which he favoured. It wasn’t until much later that I began to respect his books, and admire the picture of the returned soldier in those early stories and novels.
I met Ernst Jünger many years later, through my friend the eccentric hotelier Andreas Kleber, who was then still in possession of his family hotel, the Kleber Post in Saulgau in Württemberg (incidentally one of the first venues for the writers’ group Gruppe 47). One night I had dinner with Jünger there and the two of us spoke to ZDF television about the meaning of Prussia. Jünger was a writer from the generation before Böll, but outlived the younger man by decades. He was a mere ninety-seven when I met him and had another six years to live. Again conversation turned to drink: the bottle of Pommard he consumed with his wife every night (he had two-thirds of it, he confessed), and his real love - Châteauneuf-du-Pape.
He became more serious when he complained that he could not wear his Pour le Mérite medal, which he had won in the Great War, when he had been left for dead on the field of battle. He was, I think, the last surviving military holder of the medal. The Allies had swiftly banned the wearing of decorations, and the Federal Republic has followed suit. War could not be officially celebrated, and that went for acts of heroism too. I recalled the First World War memorial in the little park in Berlin-Friedenau where I had stayed with friends. The inscription had been chipped off: in Germany such things were taboo, while in Britain war memorials were still placed at the focal point of any town or hamlet. In Germany there were no more heroes. The Germans had lost the right to them.
Friends of mine, even published historians, have often told me that the Germans ‘deserved what they got’ in 1945: it was a just punishment for their behaviour in occupied lands and for the treatment of the Jews at home. This book is not intended to excuse the Germans, but it does not hesitate to expose the victorious Allies in their treatment of the enemy at the peace, for in most cases it was not the criminals who were raped, starved, tortured or bludgeoned to death but women, children and old men. What I record and sometimes call into question here is the way that many people were allowed to exact that revenge by
Similar Books
