Starred review from December 20, 2010
In the vast literature on WWII, scholars have largely ignored the 10 million to 15 million displaced persons who confronted the Allies in 1945. British writer and documentarian Shephard (After Daybreak: The Liberation of Bergen-Belsen, 1945) tells a fascinating story of their ordeal. Although concentration camp victims made headlines, their numbers were hugely augmented by millions of foreign workers and slave laborers later joined by millions of destitute Germans expelled from former conquered nations. Aid planners expected a typhus epidemic, but generous use of DDT prevented this. They expected to repatriate everyone only to discover that many objected to returning to Soviet rule; Shephard describes American soldiers dragging terrified Russians and Ukrainians to assembly points. Despite relief efforts, in 1947 a million refugees lingered in dreary camps; Germany remained devastated. Matters only improved after the Marshall Plan's massive infusion of money and supplies, sold to a reluctant Congress as an anticommunist program. Shephard reveals that however well planned, post-WWII relief also produced shambles. His masterful account mixes history, colorful personalities, and moving individual stories. 8 pages of photos; 1 map.
Starred review from March 15, 2011
Most books on postwar Europe are about the political and military division of the continent, without accounts of the social, cultural, and human turmoil. Shephard helps fill the gap with this study of what happened to the war's millions of displaced persons (DPs) and refugees. This is also a history of the official relief administration efforts as the Allied bureaucracy tried to bring order out of mass chaos and rebuild a devastated continent. Shephard intersperses descriptions of particular personal experiences to illustrate some of the conditions the DPs faced. Hanging over so many were memories of the aftermath of World War I, the challenge of what to do with Jewish refugees, and the looming start of what would become the Cold War. Shephard's book is a fine choice for general and scholarly audiences.
Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
January 1, 2011
The enduring images of VE Day are of the unrestrained, joyful celebrations that swept European and American cities. But as this detailed and absorbing study illustrates, massive human suffering and even violence was far from over. Left in the wake of the cataclysm were millions of so-called DPs (displaced persons), many of whom were Jewish survivors of the concentration camps, although the massive scale of the Holocaust was not yet evident. But the miserable also encompassed numerous other nationalities tossed about by the vagaries of war. Tasked with the responsibility for dealing with their misery was the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). Oxford-educated historian, writer, and documentary-film producer Shephard is sympathetic to the difficulties of the mission. Yet his description of the efforts of UNRRA is replete with examples of bureaucratic bumbling and political manipulation that imposed an immense human cost on already destitute people. Shephard has provided a depressing but valuable examination of a largely neglected aspect of WWII.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)