i. Contemporary Eye-Witness Accounts
Norman Lewis, Naples ’44: An Intelligence Officer in the Italian Labyrinth (London: Eland 1983)
To my mind, this is the great source work. A British Intelligence officer serving with the American Army in the invasion of Naples, he was sufficiently distant from the American forces to maintain a critical perspective. Concise and perceptive. A convincing, troubling account of a Liberation which was not liberating.
George Clare, Berlin Days 1946—1947 (London: MacMillan, 1989)
Worked as an interpreter for British Control Commission Germany. His Berlin Days is a vivid disillusioned view on the process of Occupation and apparent ‘Liberation’.
Stig Dagerman, German Autumn translated by Robin Fulton Macpherson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011 [1947])
A Danish journalist’s report on Germany 1946. Some vivid description of urban devastation and poverty.
Victor Gollancz, In Darkest Germany (London: Gollancz, 1947)
British publisher who visited Germany in 1946—47. Tries hard to give a sociological and statistical representation of German devastation and poverty, but the most powerful passages in the book are Gollancz’s descriptions. Gollancz warned of the consequences of keeping Germany in poverty.
Kathryn Hulme, The Wild Place (London and New York: Shakespeare Head, 1954)
American novelist who worked in UNRRA. Her Wild Place won the Atlantic non-fiction award in 1952. Some memorable descriptions of the inside of an UNRRA camp; has become famous for her phrase ‘spam-maddened adults’ to describe a crowd of DPs, impatient for rations.
Marvin Klemme, The Inside Story of UNRRA; An Experience in Internationalism; a First Hand Report on the Displaced People of Europe (New York: Lifetime Editions, 1949)
American UNRRA worker. Written as a forthright critique of UNRRA with some Cold War echoes in its hostility to Communism and left-wing thinking in general. Useful for his description of the UNRRA training camp at Granville. An inspiration for the character of Victor.
Leonard O. Mosley, Report from Germany (London: Victor Gollancz, 1945)
British journalist, working for the Sunday Times. Solid descriptions of Germany immediately after the defeat of Nazism.
Susan T. Pettiss and Lynne Taylor, After the Shooting Stopped: the Story of an UNRRA Welfare Worker in Germany 1945-1947 (Crewe: Trafford, 2004)
Work by an American UNRRA worker, aided by a professional history. Good in opening up a female perspective on UNRRA work.
Stephen Spender, European Witness (London: The Right Book Club, nd [1946?])
British writer. Self-consciously right-of-centre perspective on devastated Germany in 1945. Notable for the author’s willingness to express bewilderment.
Francesca M. Wilson, Aftermath: France, Germany, Austria, Yugoslavia; 1945 and 1946 (West Drayton: Penguin, 1947)
British Quaker who joined UNRRA. The Quaker sense of ethics in impossible circumstances make this work come alive. One inspiration for the character of Eleanor.
Edward Blishen, A Cackhanded War (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1983 [1972])
Memoirs from a rather reluctant British Contentious Objector, who spent most of the war digging ditches in East Anglian fields. Useful as a type of worm’s-eye-perspective of the war.
Kibbutz Buchenwald, ‘Homecoming in Israel’ in Leo W. Schwarz (ed), The Root and the Bough: the Epic of an Enduring People (New York: Rinehard, 1949), pp.308-45. Breath-takingly idealistic. One of the inspirations for the character of Hanke.
Ruth Kluger, Landscapes of Memory: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered (London: Bloomsbury, 2003)
Bitter, angry record of oppression and exclusion before and after 1945.
ii) Historical Studies
There’s obviously a flood on historical writing on the Second World War. I won’t attempt to summarize it: I’ll just highlight a few works I found inspiring, particularly informative or thought-provoking.
Richard Bessel, Germany 1945: From War to Peace (London: Simon & Schuster, 2009)
Solid historical work which, unlike many historical works, doesn’t stop in May 1945.
Petra Goedde, GIs and Germans: Culture, Gender, and Foreign Relations, 1945-49 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003)
Very useful on relations between Allies and Germans.
Ian Kershaw, The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1944—45 (New York: Penguin, 2011)
Solid historical writing by one of Britain’s best historians. But says little about the post-1945 period.
Sean Longden, To the Victor the Spoils: Soldiers’ lives from D-Day to VE-Day (London: Robinson, 2004)
Amateur history, but extremely informative on the lives and attitudes of ordinary British soldiers.
Sharif Gemie, Fiona Reid and Laure Humbert, with Louise Ingram, Outcast Europe: Refugees and Relief Workers in an Era of Total War, 1936—48 (London: Continuum, 2012). Many times in the 2000s, while researching this book, I stopped and said to myself: this sounds like a novel! Little did I know.
D. Bankier (ed), The Jews are Coming Back (New York: Berghahn, 2005 & Jerusalem: Yad Vasher, 2005). Useful collection of essays on issues of post-1945 integration and exclusion
