Book description
After the Great War, the millions killed on the battlefields were
eclipsed by the millions more civilians carried off by disease and
starvation when the conflict was over. Haunted by memories, the Allies
were determined that the end of the Second World War would not be
followed by a similar disaster, and they began to lay plans long
before victory was assured.
Confronted by an entire continent starving and uprooted, Allied
planners devised strategies to help all 'displaced persons', and
repatriate the fifteen million people who had been deprived of their
homes and in many cases forced to work for the Germans. But over a
million Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians and
Yugoslavs refused to go home.
This book offers a radical reassessment of the aftermath of World
War II. Unlike most recent writing about the 1940s, it assesses the
events and personalities of that decade in terms of contemporary
standards and values. This the true and epic story of how millions
ultimately found relief, reconciliation and a place to call home.
Ben Shephard read History at Oxford University. He was a producer on
the television series
The World at War
and
The Nuclear Age
and has made numerous historical and scientific documentaries for the
BBC and Channel Four. He is the author of the critically acclaimed
A
War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists 1914-1994
and
After Daybreak: The Liberation of Belsen, 1945
. He lives in Bristol.
