Summary of Ian Buruma's Year Zero

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The Liberation complex is when prisoners of Hitler’s fallen Reich, who were expected to be grateful and cooperative, were instead exultant and revengeful. It was not limited to DP camps, but was also applied to entire countries newly liberated.
#2 The Dutch women were in a state of frenzy, like teenage girls at a rock concert. They couldn’t help themselves. They were reliving their hours of exultation.
#3 The Dutch did not surrender to the Canadians on May 5, nor was the war over on that date. The Germans still had not surrendered to any Allied forces. On May 7, crowds had gathered on Dam Square in Amsterdam in front of the Royal Palace, cheering, dancing, and singing, in anticipation of the triumphant British and Canadian troops.
#4 The end of the war in Europe was officially marked by the signing of the unconditional surrender of all German troops in a schoolhouse in Rheims on May 6. However, celebrations could not begin until Stalin had been satisfied that General Eisenhower had accepted the German surrender for the eastern as well as western fronts.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Segunda Guerra Mundial
• Military
• World War II
• History
• Seconde Guerre mondiale

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 05 mai 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822501157
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Ian Buruma's Year Zero
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The Liberation complex is when prisoners of Hitler’s fallen Reich, who were expected to be grateful and cooperative, were instead exultant and revengeful. It was not limited to DP camps, but was also applied to entire countries newly liberated.

#2

The Dutch women were in a state of frenzy, like teenage girls at a rock concert. They couldn’t help themselves. They were reliving their hours of exultation.

#3

The Dutch did not surrender to the Canadians on May 5, nor was the war over on that date. The Germans still had not surrendered to any Allied forces. On May 7, crowds had gathered on Dam Square in Amsterdam in front of the Royal Palace, cheering, dancing, and singing, in anticipation of the triumphant British and Canadian troops.

#4

The end of the war in Europe was officially marked by the signing of the unconditional surrender of all German troops in a schoolhouse in Rheims on May 6. However, celebrations could not begin until Stalin had been satisfied that General Eisenhower had accepted the German surrender for the eastern as well as western fronts.

#5

On May 8, crowds were already going crazy in New York. They were also pouring into the streets in London, but a peculiar hush fell over the British crowds, as though they were waiting for Churchill’s voice to set off the celebrations.

#6

In Paris, a reporter for the Libération newspaper watched a moving mass of people, bristling with allied flags. An American soldier was wobbling on his long legs, in a strange state of disequilibrium, trying to take photographs.

#7

The reaction of many people who were pining for their husbands or sons who were still in the military was not joy, but rather relief and hope. The reaction of my grandmother in England was peculiarly English: she missed her husband too much to celebrate.

#8

The return of light was celebrated all over Europe, with the lights of the Opéra being lit for the first time since September 1939.

#9

The music that was played during the liberation of countries such as France and Holland was meant to be erotic, and it was. The Dutch and French women who were liberated by the Allied soldiers looked delicious, and many ended up marrying them.

#10

The Allied forces were not allowed to fraternize with the Germans, but they did fraternize with the Dutch and French women who were eager to fraternize with them.

#11

The French writer Benoîte Groult was extremely homminisé, or pretentious, when she was writing about American and Canadian soldiers. But her accounts illustrate a point made by a French historian of the German occupation: the presence of many young German men in France during the war offered many women a chance to rebel.

#12

Some people thought that the women who slept with the Allied soldiers were no better than prostitutes. But the fact that some of the women still wore headscarves to hide the evidence of recently shaved heads, the mark of punishment for those who had taken German lovers, only increased the suspicion.

#13

The summer of 1945 was one long orgy indulged in by foreign servicemen and local women, out of greed, or lust, or loneliness. However, many people were simply looking for warmth, companionship, and love.

#14

The British army was sent to liberate Belsen, and when they arrived, they were shocked by what they saw. The women were still alive, but hundreds of people were dying every day.

#15

The birth rate in the DP camps was high in 1946, as many survivors were waiting to show the world that they were still alive, and not just that, but capable of producing life.

#16

There was a biological aspect to the sex and drinking that went on in the DP camps. The Jews who were in the camps were not death camp survivors, and most were from parts of the Soviet Union. They had lost family members, and they needed to reproduce to survive.

#17

The experience of being a German or Japanese in 1945 was very different from being French, Dutch, or Chinese. The Allied forces came to conquer, not liberate, Berlin and Japan.

#18

The Japanese government began setting up comfort facilities for the Allied soldiers, who were allowed to have sex with the women there. This went on for a few months, until the Japanese came up with more efficient arrangements.

#19

The author of this article, if we choose to be charitable, had no idea that the senior officers in charge of suppressing the Japanese sex trade had already secured Japanese mistresses in 1945. Things changed only when a new wave of military officers arrived, who were less tolerant of fraternization.

#20

The Japanese sex industry was extremely popular with American soldiers, who were fed a lot of negative propaganda about the Japanese being rapey and murderous. But most Japanese were glad to see the Americans, and their new sense of liberty came with the sound of Glenn Miller’s In the Mood.

#21

Rape was a common occurrence in the Soviet zone of Germany, but not in the Western zones. This was because American troops were not as vengeful as the Soviets, and their superiors did not encourage them to do as they liked with German women.

#22

In 1945, the American military enforced a nonfraternization policy for its soldiers in Germany. But many American soldiers saw no reason for the ban, and many German women were attracted to American soldiers.

#23

The Western powers allowed soldiers to fraternize with Germans, but not marry them. The Soviets allowed soldiers to fraternize with Germans, but not marry them. In both cases, this was a result of Big Power rivalry.

#24

Some women, like Benoîte Groult, saw the American game for what it was: a dream that was bound to disappoint in the end. They abandoned it, and moved on.

#25

The more common view of American fraternization with Japanese women was that it was extremely inappropriate and should not have been allowed. But there was also a lot of envy from Japanese men towards American soldiers, and this led to a lot of resentment towards the Americans.

#26

The fraternization ban was lifted in Germany in 1945, and similar sentiments were expressed towards the end of the war about Niggerwomen and their intimate relations with Allied soldiers.

#27

The Allies wanted to stamp out the reactionary political views that were common among the Germans they had just defeated. This included the humiliation of women who had relations with the American soldiers, which many Dutch girls experienced.

#28

The moral panic that followed the occupation of countries by the Allied forces was due to the fact that many people, apart from the author, may have felt it that way. sleeping with the foreign soldier was the same as prostitution.

#29

The Dutch gynecologist and sexual reformer Wim Storm saw merit in fraternization, but many people were not ready for such a change. The voices for moral regeneration were stronger in an atmosphere of moral panic.

#30

The liberation of France in 1944 was not without some positive consequence. Women in France were given the right to vote in March 1944 by the provisional government even before France was liberated, a right born from the dearth of men.

#31

The Dutch famine of 1944 was the only western European country to be subjected to hunger as a deliberate collective punishment. The Germans cut off food supplies to the still occupied western part of the country, and switched off the electricity.

#32

The American bombers that dropped food supplies in the