After the Reich by Giles MacDonogh

This book is about what happened after the Armistice of 1945. It is not a pretty story.

Women, of course, suffered tremendously. The German women were basically raped by everyone. The Russians and French were atrocious. The Americans tried to stop their soldier from raping. The British were somewhat better where they basically tried to use chocolate to get sex.

There was ethnic cleansing of the German peoples by Czech nationalists, and by the people in Poland, Silesia, and East Prussia. There are no Germans today in what was East Prussia. Russia moved eastward their border with Poland and told Poland to move their western border to include previously German lands, which they did. And, they did so with great cruelty to the German peoples in the area they took over.

We sort of know about the harsh treatment of German soldiers by the Russians, but the British and Americans were no far behind them in the appalling treatment of German soldiers after the Armistice. Of course, it is not only German soldiers that died. A lot of women, children and old people died too.

The thing is that we should know our history. Hopefully, by knowing it, we can avoid the same mistakes in the future. This is one very good reason for reading history.

One very good review of this book is at Dialog International. The title of the Telegraph review tells a great deal of the story. Their title is how 3 million Germans died after VE Day. See The Telegraph. Another great article is at Rense.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See MacDonogh. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.