Europe in the Aftermath of World War II

Savage Continent

Keith Lowe's Savage Continent is an awe-inspiring portrait of how Europe emerged from the ashes of WWII. 
 
The end of the Second World War saw a terrible explosion of violence across Europe. Prisoners murdered jailers. Soldiers visited atrocities on civilians. Resistance fighters killed and pilloried collaborators. Ethnic cleansing, civil war, rape and murder were rife in the days, months and years after hostilities ended. Exploring a Europe consumed by vengeance, Savage Continent is a shocking portrait of an until-now unacknowledged time of lawlessness and terror. 
 
Praise for Savage Continent: 
 
'Deeply harrowing, distinctly troubling. Moving, measured and provocative. A compelling and plausible picture of a continent physically and morally brutalized by slaughter' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times 
 
'Excellent', Independent 
 
'Unbearable but essential. A serious account of things we never knew and our fathers would rather forget. Lowe's transparent prose makes it difficult to look away from a whole catalogue of horrors...you won't sleep afterwards. Such good history it keeps all the questions boiling in your mind', Scotsman 
 
Keith Lowe is widely recognized as an authority on the Second World War, and has often spoken on TV and radio, both in Britain and the United States. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg, 1943 (Penguin). He lives in north London with his wife and two children.

Grimly absorbing, conveys the pity of war and its sorry aftermath with integrity and proper sympathy

Extraordinary...exceptional...reveals a continent where moral values were often missing and basically lawlessness prevailed for several years

Savage Continent is a powerful and disturbing book, painstakingly researched and written with both authority and an impressive historical sweep

A major new historical talent has arrived... a brilliantly organised and scrupulously objective survey of a continent on the floor

An excellent account...Lowe's vivid descriptions of Europeans scrambling for scraps of food, rampant theft and 'destruction of morals' are a timely reminder that a certain humility is in order when we look at less fortunate continents today.

Impressive and heart-rendering study...Lowe marshals all the elements of the story with cool even-handedness, especially where statistics are concerned, and explains how subsequent generations have manipulated the historical record to suit their own purposes, either to diminish their guilt or demonise others.

Extraordinary, disturbing and powerful ... it is to Lowe's great credit that he resists the temptation to sit in moral judgment ... it is time we acknowledged the hidden realities of perhaps the darkest chapter in all human history

Graphic and chilling. This excellent book paints a little-known and frightening picture of a continent in the embrace of lawlessness and chaos

Keith Lowe is widely recognized as a leading authority on the Second World War. He is the author of Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg, 1943 and Savage Continent, which was a Sunday Times top ten bestseller and won the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize. He has spoken often on television and radio, both in Britain and the United States, and his books have been translated into 20 languages. He lives in north London with his wife and two children.

The end of the Second World War saw a terrible explosion of violence across Europe. Prisoners murdered jailers. Soldiers visited atrocities on civilians. Resistance fighters killed and pilloried collaborators. Ethnic cleansing, civil war, rape and murder were rife in the days, months and years after hostilities ended. Exploring a Europe consumed by vengeance, Savage Continent is a shocking portrait of an until-now unacknowledged time of lawlessness and terror.

The Devastation of Hamburg, 1943

Inferno

The shocking account of an unrelenting Allied bombing campaign that destroyed a city

A real triumph: shocking, yet sensitive and supremely fair-minded. This is a wonderful book about hellish events.

The story of that hellish summer night is one Lowe tells well, unbliningly, exactly as he should...a tour de force

Compelling, startling and gripping. The definitive account of a great tragedy

Admirable, impeccably researched and engagingly written...deserves its place on the shelves

Brilliantly researched. Lowe has produced many new first-hand accounts which give a human face to a tale of epic destruction

Scrupulous...sensitive to all the paradoxes of the bombing war

Altogether a terrific book and work of research

Captain Eric 'Winkle' Brown, WWII pilot and author of 'Wings on My Sleeve'

Well written, meticulously researched...gripping and holds the attention effortlessly - Keith Lowe says he found it a compelling subject on which to write, I found it compelling to read

Balanced, thoughtful, engaging...Inferno is well researched and well written. Admirably balances the testimony of the bombers and the bombed

Total war, Lowe shows in this extraordinary study of the bombing of Hamburg in 1943, is experienced in every sense and assails every conceivable emotion

Thoughful, scrupulous, intelligent. Inferno, humane, at times impassioned, constitues a powerful indictment of all policies that dissociate means from ends

Meticulously researched...a powerful reminder of the human face of war

In the last days of July 1943, British and American planes dropped 9,000 tons of bombs with the intention of erasing the German city from the map. The resultant firestorm burned for a month and left 40,000 civilians dead. 
 
Inferno is a searing account of terrifying destruction: of how and why the Allies dropped a hail of high-explosive and incendiary bombs; of blizzards of sparks, hurricane-force winds and 800-degree temperatures; of survivors cowering in basements or struggling along melting streets; of a city and its people near annihilated from above. 
 
Inferno is an epic story of human devastation and survival against impossible odds.

Keith Lowe

Richly-documented and wide-ranging . . . I wish schools would use books like this to introduce pupils to the complexity of the problems that face them

Theodore Zeldin, author of 'The Hidden Pleasures of Life' and 'An Intimate History Of Humanity'

Provocative, insightful and at times profoundly moving . . . I hope everyone - and our politicians especially - will read it and learn its vitally important lessons

Insightful and panoramic . . . no myth goes unchallenged. Thoroughly compelling

A masterpiece of historical inquiry: painstakingly researched, cleverly constructed and elegantly written. In surveying such a diverse panorama, Lowe displays a sensitivity to the human condition - how we got to where we are now - that is as unusual as it is welcome

The Fear and The Freedom is a deft blend of historical research, moving interviews, and challenging psychological insights. Lowe writes with elegance and perception. A truly illuminating read

Keith Lowe has written an eloquent meditation on the aftermath and the long psychological tentacles of the Second World War. Beautifully written and profoundly perceptive, The Fear and the Freedom confirms Lowe as one of our finest historians

Magnificent...headed for much acclaim, and possibly big prizes. There is no doubting the size of Mr. Lowe's achievement. By virtue of its ambition; the variety of its content; its author's talent in giving us both "large" History and smaller and anecdotal tales; and an easy narrative resting on wide-ranging scholarship, "The Fear and the Freedom" can justly claim to be one of the best, most useful books on World War II to have emerged in the past decade. It belongs in everyone's library.

Books about the causes and course of the Second World War continue to pour off the presses. Yet there are far fewer books about the world wide geopolitical, economic and personal effects of the most catastrophic event of the 20th century. So Keith Lowe's concise, lucid and highly readable book, which also includes the testimony of individual memories of the immediate years after the end of the War and their hopes of a cleansed new world of social justice and prosperity, is to be welcomed. In Lowe's opinion, the reconfiguration and realignment of nations that followed the War, led ultimately to Brexit, with Europe once again divided in a potentially dangerous and certainly disruptive way

This powerful book serves as a timely reminder of what our forefathers forged out of the ashes of the Second World War - an international order based on cooperation and interdependence together with a bold, fearless domestic agenda that set about creating a new society

Lowe's book is a compelling work of historical scholarship - but, more than that, it is an intimate portrait of how human beings carry on when their world has changed for ever

Intelligent and far-reaching . . . he blessedly forgoes the banal literalism of conventional history by considering the mythological, philosophical and psychological consequences of the war . . . Lowe brilliantly reveals how, when trapped between freedom and fear, people tether their emotional and intellectual states to world events

Overflowing with insights and ideas and steeped in curious and evocative detail . . . A very fine work of history

This is an important book, impossible to summarise, profound in its humanity, bold in its confrontation of sacred myths

Ceaselessly insightful, this masterpiece of historical inquiry - the fruit of five years' labour - dissects the impact of the war on society, politics, urban planning and much else besides

Few historians could be better placed to investigate this subject than Keith Lowe . . . riveting

Why the Second World War Still Matters

How does the experience and memory of the Second World War - one of the most catastrophic events in human history - affect our lives today? 
 
 The years after 1945 were a time of both terror and wonder, whose impact still dominates our lives. Out of the ashes of war came the superpowers and nations of the modern world. From the new technologies delivered by scientists came the possibility of nuclear war. Politicians fantasized about overhauled societies, with some arguing for global government, others for independence, leading to the arguments about nationalism, immigration and globalisation that exist today. 
 
 As well as analyzing the major changes and the myths that emerged, The Fear and the Freedom uses individual stories to examine the philosophical and psychological impact of the war, by showing how leaders and ordinary people coped with the post-war world and turned one of the greatest traumas in history into an opportunity for change. This is the definitive exploration of the aftermath of WWII - and the impact it still has.

Keith Lowe

Praise for The Fear and the Freedom

Richly-documented and wide-ranging . . . I wish schools would use books like this to introduce pupils to the complexity of the problems that face them

Provocative, insightful and at times profoundly moving . . . I hope everyone - and our politicians especially - will read it and learn its vitally important lessons

Insightful and panoramic . . . no myth goes unchallenged. Thoroughly compelling

Richly-documented and wide-ranging . . . I wish schools would use books like this to introduce pupils to the complexity of the problems that face them

Provocative, insightful and at times profoundly moving . . . I hope everyone - and our politicians especially - will read it and learn its vitally important lessons

Insightful and panoramic . . . no myth goes unchallenged. Thoroughly compelling

Richly-documented and wide-ranging . . . I wish schools would use books like this to introduce pupils to the complexity of the problems that face them

Provocative, insightful and at times profoundly moving . . . I hope everyone - and our politicians especially - will read it and learn its vitally important lessons

Insightful and panoramic . . . no myth goes unchallenged. Thoroughly compelling

Books by Keith Lowe

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