\u201cDownfall\u201c featuring a meme-able Hitler tirade<\/a> \u2014 as the predicate for the multiple European surrenders to come. If rehashing Hitler\u2019s suicide, in April 1945, early in the book seems anti-climactic, \u201cVictory \u201945\u201d justifies itself by moving on to the unsung but equally dramatic tales of those who navigated the confusion of a war that was won but hardly finished.<\/p>\nThe first significant capitulation began weeks earlier when two backstabbing rivals in the Nazi SS high command in Northern Italy separately schemed to save their own postwar skins. Their intrigues delayed the first of Europe\u2019s unconditional surrenders, limited to their sector, signed just a day before Hitler\u2019s demise. A recurring motif was the futile attempts by the Germans to only yield to the West in hopes of splintering the Allies and escaping Soviet vengeance.<\/p>\n
While Holland and Murray include brief profiles of famous politicians and commanders as further European surrender ceremonies were staged and announced, \u201cVictory \u201945\u201d finds its relevance and poignancy when it directs its focus downward. There, ordinary individuals journeyed to the intersections of triumph and despair, relief and revulsion.<\/p>\n
Examples include the Jewish-American college student haunted by the atrocities at a slave compound in Austria seized by his Army unit. Those rescued included a Jewish-Czech teen who lied about his age to avoid extermination at Auschwitz and joined his father in surviving stints at multiple camps. Liberation was punctuated by grief just days later in a makeshift hospital when his father died in his arms.<\/p>\n
On the Eastern Front, a young female translator in Soviet military intelligence was integral to a search in Germany\u2019s devastated capital. Were the reports of the Fuhrer\u2019s death Nazi disinformation? She interrogated captured witnesses, attended the autopsy of the burned corpse, and was even given custody of the teeth that were eventually confirmed as Hitler\u2019s. Not much further west, a bedraggled teenage German conscript who did escape Berlin\u2019s aftermath lived on the run until captured by a Russian soldier who simply told him, \u201cWar is over! All go home!\u201d<\/p>\n
Turning to the Pacific Theater, \u201cVictory \u201845\u201d examines the grim prospect the Western Allies faced in \u201cunconditionally\u201d conquering a warrior ethos in Japan, epitomized by their civilians\u2019 suicidal resistance to the Allied invasion of Okinawa. The necessity of the atomic bombings was proven by the attempted military coup staged by high-ranking Japanese holdouts who wanted to defy Emperor Hirohito\u2019s orders and continue fighting despite the threat of nuclear annihilation.<\/p>\n
Not simply targeted to WWII enthusiasts, \u201cVictory \u201945\u201d illustrates for those with a broader historical interest the myriad challenges in bringing to heel the dogs of war. Brits Holland and Murray cannot be expected to quote Yankee baseball legend Yogi Berra, but their book deftly explains 80 years later why in war as well as sports, \u201cIt ain\u2019t over \u2019til it\u2019s over.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Douglass K. Daniel is the author of \u201cKill \u2014 Do Not Release: Censored Marine Corps Stories from World War II\u201d (Fordham University Press).<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP book reviews: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/book-reviews<\/a><\/p>\nDouglass K. Daniel, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Most wars begin with a unilateral act. Americans fired \u201cthe shot heard round the world\u201d in Lexington in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29901,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[353,49,48,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-29900","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}