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A review by studeronomy
Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, 1945-1955 by Harald Jähner
3.0
When did World War II end?
In Europe, the war officially concluded at 10 am on May 8, 1945. But in "Aftermath," Harald Jähner adds millions of endings to the European conflict—each German who survived the war also experienced their own personal end of the war.
For some, the end came at different points, in different moments, as Allied and Soviet troops gradually conquered Germany, bit by bit, throughout 1944 and 1945. For others, the end didn't come until later, when they were finally released from German prisons, where they were serving sentences handed down by the Third Reich. For others, the war ended when they finally left the displaced persons camps (some of which, Jähner writes, didn't officially close until the 1970s).
This framework for thinking about WWII is the most compelling part of "Aftermath."
Jähner is a journalist, and "Aftermath" is very much a work of journalism. He provides a sense of where the historical scholarship stands, but "Aftermath" lacks the depth of a scholarly account. Jähner's sources include easily accessible newspapers, magazines, short stories, novels, poetry, art, and movies from the period. But all this makes the book very readable and accessible to a larger audience. (Shaun Whiteside's translation feels a little rushed and clunky now and then, but what do I know?)
The chapters are orgnaized by theme, and this works well. I read the book very quickly. The introduction and concluding chapter (on repression and the rise of Adenauer) are worth the price of admission, but the other chapters get a little boring after their first few pages of each. Jähner's storytelling skills aren't always great (maybe this gets lost in translation), and I found myself skimming through the body of each chapter. If you read the first and last pages of each chapter, you're not missing too much.
What's most notable about "Aftermath" is how frank and moralistic Jähner's perspective is. Maybe that's just notable for me, because I'm an American and I'm accustomed to syrupy works of popular history that sentimentalize the past and brush over the sins of our forefathers as unfortunate deviations from our inherent goodness. You won't find any of that here. Like a typical German, Jähner has absolutely no sympathy for the average German in 1945, whether or not they knew about the death camps. He unabashedly scolds Germans for their self-pity in the wake of their nation's total destruction. At no point does he treat this wholesale destruction as anything but a net positive, even when he's telling stories of unimaginable Germany suffering (the data on rapes by occupying soldiers will horrify you).
And who can blame Jähner for his repungance toward the Germans of 1945? In the West, our moral universe revolves around the negative example of the Third Reich, just as our galaxy revolves around a black hole. We understand ethics, especially geopolitical ethics, in relationship to the Holocaust. I fear for Western societies when memory of the Holocaust begins to dim—what then will serve as the yardstick for political "transgression" (as historian A. Dirk Moses calls it)? Granted, as Moses argues, the Holocaust sets a very high bar for transgression, a standard that permits Westerners to look away from their crimes in Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and much of the rest of the world.
What I most enjoyed about "Aftermath" was its insight into that moment when our modern moral universe began to take shape, when the criminality of the Third Reich was no longer in doubt but when many (most?) Germans still needed to be convinced that they were complicit in, and not merely duped by, their criminal regime.
In Europe, the war officially concluded at 10 am on May 8, 1945. But in "Aftermath," Harald Jähner adds millions of endings to the European conflict—each German who survived the war also experienced their own personal end of the war.
For some, the end came at different points, in different moments, as Allied and Soviet troops gradually conquered Germany, bit by bit, throughout 1944 and 1945. For others, the end didn't come until later, when they were finally released from German prisons, where they were serving sentences handed down by the Third Reich. For others, the war ended when they finally left the displaced persons camps (some of which, Jähner writes, didn't officially close until the 1970s).
This framework for thinking about WWII is the most compelling part of "Aftermath."
Jähner is a journalist, and "Aftermath" is very much a work of journalism. He provides a sense of where the historical scholarship stands, but "Aftermath" lacks the depth of a scholarly account. Jähner's sources include easily accessible newspapers, magazines, short stories, novels, poetry, art, and movies from the period. But all this makes the book very readable and accessible to a larger audience. (Shaun Whiteside's translation feels a little rushed and clunky now and then, but what do I know?)
The chapters are orgnaized by theme, and this works well. I read the book very quickly. The introduction and concluding chapter (on repression and the rise of Adenauer) are worth the price of admission, but the other chapters get a little boring after their first few pages of each. Jähner's storytelling skills aren't always great (maybe this gets lost in translation), and I found myself skimming through the body of each chapter. If you read the first and last pages of each chapter, you're not missing too much.
What's most notable about "Aftermath" is how frank and moralistic Jähner's perspective is. Maybe that's just notable for me, because I'm an American and I'm accustomed to syrupy works of popular history that sentimentalize the past and brush over the sins of our forefathers as unfortunate deviations from our inherent goodness. You won't find any of that here. Like a typical German, Jähner has absolutely no sympathy for the average German in 1945, whether or not they knew about the death camps. He unabashedly scolds Germans for their self-pity in the wake of their nation's total destruction. At no point does he treat this wholesale destruction as anything but a net positive, even when he's telling stories of unimaginable Germany suffering (the data on rapes by occupying soldiers will horrify you).
And who can blame Jähner for his repungance toward the Germans of 1945? In the West, our moral universe revolves around the negative example of the Third Reich, just as our galaxy revolves around a black hole. We understand ethics, especially geopolitical ethics, in relationship to the Holocaust. I fear for Western societies when memory of the Holocaust begins to dim—what then will serve as the yardstick for political "transgression" (as historian A. Dirk Moses calls it)? Granted, as Moses argues, the Holocaust sets a very high bar for transgression, a standard that permits Westerners to look away from their crimes in Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and much of the rest of the world.
What I most enjoyed about "Aftermath" was its insight into that moment when our modern moral universe began to take shape, when the criminality of the Third Reich was no longer in doubt but when many (most?) Germans still needed to be convinced that they were complicit in, and not merely duped by, their criminal regime.