A new look at a historical problem both logistical and humanitarian, with obvious implications today.
A historical survey of the plight of post–World War II refugees and their role in the formative years of the Cold War rivalry between East and West.
At the end of World War II, writes Australian historian Fitzpatrick, the four powers occupying the former Third Reich faced an unprecedented problem: feeding, housing, and otherwise caring for millions of displaced persons. Among these were the Jews who survived the Holocaust, as well as 7 million German POWs and “millions of German refugees expelled from Eastern European states who were pouring into Germany.” The Soviets adopted stern measures: a Russian who had been taken prisoner unwillingly was sent to Siberia; a Russian who had willingly gone over to the enemy was executed; someone who was an “inconvenient” between-states individual (e.g., a Polish Jew) was sent packing to the West, “trucked over into the American or British zone for the Allies to deal with”; and so on. The Western powers tended toward clemency, with displaced persons sent to college, given jobs, and often sent as émigrés to nations needing to renew their labor forces, especially Australia and Canada. The two contending systems caused friction, especially the Allied willingness to incorporate former enemies into postwar military forces: in the Soviets’ eyes, this “was sinister, an indication of the Western Allies’ intentions to use the DPs…as the nucleus of military forces that might be used against the Soviet Union in the future.” Contentions over how to treat displaced persons, and especially Jews being allowed to travel to Palestine, fed into larger disagreements between the Soviet bloc and the West, shaping the subsequent Cold War. Differences in how to treat refugees are at the forefront of much international conversation today, Fitzpatrick notes in closing, so that her study becomes an instructive lesson in practical politics as well as history.
A new look at a historical problem both logistical and humanitarian, with obvious implications today.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9780691230023
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
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