May 1, 2016
As many journalists, filmmakers, writers, photographers, actors, and artists made their way to fallen Germany at the end of World War II, they found the country to be both a muse and a puzzle. While some transplants rejected the notion that Germans were ignorant of the atrocities committed by the Nazis, others felt conflicted. Some experienced revulsion as they considered the compliancy of average Germans in the face of Nazi barbarity. And most demonstrated sympathy for those Germans who scavenged for food, whose children died of starvation, and who endured rape and degradation in the final days of the war. Fogel (English, King's Coll. London) connects the film, art, and music of the era by recording the conflicting emotions of guilt and blame by the occupiers and the efforts of individuals concerned with guaranteeing lasting peace in Europe. VERDICT Essential for those interested in postwar Germany; the impact World War II had on the arts; and the role that individuals such as filmmaker Billy Wilder, writer Martha Gellhorn, and actress Marlene Dietrich had in rebuilding Germany.--Beth Dalton, Littleton, CO
Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
March 7, 2016
In this colorful narrative, Feigel (The Love-charm of Bombs), a senior lecturer in English at King’s College, London, uses the lives of 20 American, British, and German cultural figures as a lens through which to examine post-WWII Germany, from the Nazis’ surrender to the early fall of 1949. Some of Feigel’s subjects are well known, such as novelist Thomas Mann, filmmaker Billy Wilder, and poet W.H. Auden; others, considerably less so, including photographer Lee Miller, journalist Martha Gellhorn, and novelist Rebecca West. Feigel is at her best in describing the immediate year after Germany’s defeat, when rubble was “spread for mile after mile, scattered with corpses,” and the occupiers treated civilians harshly. Vivid chapters address the Nuremberg Trials and the Berlin Airlift, and Feigel shows how the politics and sensibility of the early Cold War period led to a measure of growing Western sympathy for Germans and the abandonment of an in-depth denazification of German culture and society. Unfortunately, in her last three chapters, she focuses too heavily on Mann and his oldest children, Erika and Klaus; she also writes too little on life in the Soviet sector. Despite these flaws, this is a well-constructed, fascinating, and anecdote-rich work about the early Cold War and the influence of postwar Germany on Western culture.