Europe has a long history of
violence. Against the advances in philosophy, science and the arts, one must
weigh the prolonged episodes of war, massacres, pogroms, colonial terror and
oppression. The latter do not look good, so there is often a convenient framing
of events in Europe’s historical memory, one that finds no place for the bad
stuff. For example, every European country has its own mythology about the
Second World War. Although the myths usually cannot withstand the slightest collision
with facts, they nevertheless continue as persistent reference points for the
mass of people in a particular country.
The UK has a particular weakness
for this, with images of how the Dunkirk spirit, squadrons of spitfires and
Churchill’s wartime speeches saved the day and led to victory over Nazi
Germany. For some reason the historical ‘memory’ does not consider how it was
that British deaths in the Second World War numbered only some 300,000, less
than 1% of the population, compared to more than 25 million killed in
the Soviet Union, 14% of its population. In the biggest confrontation with
Germany that turned out to be the turning point for the whole war – the Battle
of Stalingrad from August 1942 to February 1943 – the Soviet Union suffered
nearly 500,000 killed or missing.
The main course
A record of how many people died
in a long and extensive war is difficult to pin down with any precision, but
the following map gives an interesting picture of the order of magnitude for
different European countries in the 1939-1945 period. Brackets below the totals
for each country show another chilling statistic for the murders of Jewish
people. The bulk of the figures are from Germany, Austria, Central and Eastern
Europe and the Soviet Union, but it is also worth comparing the absolute
numbers with the sizes of the relevant populations to get an idea of the scale
of the human destruction. While Poland’s number is large in both absolute and
relative terms, six million dead (of which three million Jews) and around 17%
of the population, Latvia’s and Lithuania’s figures are much smaller but still
more than 12% of their populations. A Wikipedia tabulation
here gives a fuller record.[1]
The dessert
With its topic being World War
Two, the previously cited Wikipedia article and tables do not spell out that
the human carnage in Europe continued until well after 1945. That is the focus
of a book by Keith Lowe, from which the European map is taken: Savage
Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II (Penguin/Viking, 2004).
To read Lowe’s review of post-war Europe is shocking, even if one first allows
for the fact that it is unlikely that violence completely stops when formal
hostilities cease.
Among other things, Lowe’s book
details the continued attacks on Jewish people from 1944-45, especially in
Central and Eastern Europe. Discussing the anti-Semitism and pogroms in Poland,
he notes that
‘Poland was easily the most dangerous country for Jews after
the war. At least 500 Jews were murdered by Poles between the German surrender
and the summer of 1946, and most historians put the figure at around 1,500.’
It was not only murder, but also
looting and theft:
‘In Hungary many peasants came into possession of decent clothes
and footwear for the first time when the property of expelled Jews was shared
out in 1944. In Poland, where the Jews had made up a substantial portion of the
middle class, a new, Polish middle class rose to take their place.’
As you might imagine, any Jewish
people returning home did not have much success in getting
compensation.
But don’t think the violence was
limited to anti-Semitism. The immediate post-war years had to deal with the
aftermath of the destruction, with famine and millions of ‘displaced persons’
across the continent. Although some former collaborators with the German
occupation found a way into the post-war establishment, they also risked
humiliation or summary execution. Under the cover of revenge by resistance
fighters, personal scores were settled. More importantly, there was a dramatic
trend of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in the immediate post-war years.
In terms of numbers, the most
striking development was the expulsion of over 11 million Germans from
countries in Central and Eastern Europe. These were the so-called Volksdeutsch,
the long-established populations of expatriate German speakers. Many also
suffered forced labour in camps in Poland and Czechoslovakia.
Often the attacks on different
groups were linked to their supposed role in the war. But the motive of revenge
easily came to embrace all those in the ‘wrong’ community. Referring to
developments in 1944-46, Lowe notes the tens of thousands killed in Poland and
the Ukraine: ‘Poles and Ukrainians slaughtered one another and burned each
other’s villages with an enthusiasm that far exceeded any of their actions
against the German or Soviet occupiers’.
There was an attempted genocide
of Serbs in Croatia, and Hungarians were expelled from Slovakia. Summing up on
the Central and Eastern Europe dimensions, Lowe puts it like this:
‘These were the kinds of actions that were taking place all
across Europe. Hungarians were also expelled from Romania, and vice versa.
Albanian Chams were expelled from Greece; Romanians were expelled from Ukraine;
Italians were expelled from Yugoslavia. A quarter of a million Finns were
forced to leave western Karelia when the area was finally ceded to the Soviet
Union at the end of the war. As late as 1950 Bulgaria began expelling some
140,000 Turks and Gypsies across their border with Turkey. And so the list goes
on.’
‘As a result of all this forced population movement, Eastern
Europe became far less multicultural than it had been at any time in modern
history. In the space of only one or two years, the proportion of national
minorities more than halved. Gone were the old imperial melting pots where
Jews, Germans, Magyars, Slavs and dozens of other races and nationalities
intermarried, squabbled and rubbed along together as best they could. In their
place was a collection of mono-cultural nation-states, whose populations were
more or less ethnically homogeneous.’
These events, barely 70 years
ago, are something to consider when you observe the reactionary developments in
European politics today.
[1] The
Wikipedia article lists casualties from a wide range of countries, not just in
Europe. Notable is the huge number of deaths in China, some 15-20 million and
3-4% of the population. China is little covered in films and books on the
Second World War, but a good source is Rana Mitter’s Forgotten Ally: China’s
World War II, 1937-1945, First Mariner Books, 2013.
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