I used to find history boring at school with its impersonal lists of dates and its pointless wars from centuries ago. Over recent years however, books like Endgame 1945 have brought history to life with their combination of personal accounts and a narrative which provides a sense of immediacy and relevance to today’s world.
In Endgame 1945, David Stafford manges to cover the whole arena of the Nazi clear-up operation in which the Allies swept across Europe from the west and up the back-bone of Italy. He uses the personal records of many people, but focusing particularly on British Intelligence Officer Geoffrey Cox, Fred Warner, a refugee from Nazi Germany, and Rober Reid, a BBC journalist. Particularly interesting are the extracts from the memoirs of Fey von Hassell, German mother separated from her young children and imprisoned in various locations because of her husband’s anti-Nazi political views.
The reader meets these participants through their journals and letters which tell of their concerns about family and friends while also covering their desperate struggle to make progress in the waste-land of 1945 Europe.
Perhaps some of the most moving sections are those which deal with the discovery of concentration camps, where Allied troops were appalled to find scenes of total suffering and degradation. After going into the notorious Belsen camp, the British forces compelled the burgermeisters of neighbouring towns to tour the camps and see the burial pit, still half full of bodies. As I read these chapters I could only feel how dreadful the clear-up job must have been for these ordinary men and women who had to cleanse the rotting camps, while dealing with the profound emotions which they would inevitably have experienced. Very often the humanitarian workers who followed the troops had as traumatic a task as those who fought on the front-line.
On the Italian side, for the most part the British and American troops were warmly welcomed as they chased the remnant German army north into the Alps. The race was on to prevent the Germans building strongholds in the Alps, but in scenes of incredible bravery the Allies dealt with mines and snipers on their break-neck journey to overtake the Germans. Roberts describes in some detail the downfall of the dictator Mussollini who at the end of his venture found himself friendless and despised, meeting a violent end, his corpse suffering various indignities (which later caused Hitler to demand that his own corpse be burnt to prevent a similar venting of hatred on it).
Fey Von Hassell in her various prisons met many Nazi dissenters including Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer (who contributed to the plot to assassinate Hitler) and Pastor Martin Niemoller. She was present when after a morning service conducted by Bonoeffer, two civilians burst in and commanded him to depart with him for his final trial and execution. Neimoller, who ended in the Dachau camp, had formed a dissident Confessional Church and from his pulpit in a fashionable part of Berlin had condemned Nazi rule, urging his congregation to “fight the evil that was spreading through Germany”. It was Neimoller who coined the much-quoted epigram,
First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.
There are many episodes describe in the book which have been largely forgotten. For example, the luxury German passenger ship, the Cap Arcona which used as a prison ship and was crammed with 6400 people (including 4600 concentration camp prisoners). Alas, the ship was not marked to indicate its status and was bombed and sunk by the RAF who believed it contained SS troops.
It would be impossible to do justice to this book in such a short review. I would just like to point out that it reads like a high-quality adventure story and for me at least left me wanting to share it with others who are only vaguely acquainted with the facts. It reminded this reader yet again of the earth-shaking events that happened a mere 66 years ago. The personal accounts which are the main feature of this book provide a great sense of immediacy, while showing that in desparate times, the most unlikely people can rise to perform heroic deeds.
