A Cautionary Tale

Reflections on Keith Lowe's book Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II

Nov 20, 2024

Being the 44th edition of Assorted Nonsense, the official newsletter of Donovan Street Press Inc.

Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II

Warning: this is a bit grim. If you’re psychologically in a place where you need to tune out all the bad news of late, I completely understand, and you’ll want to give this one a miss.

I referred to this book in a previous newsletter but I want to get into it in a bit more detail now.

In terms of subject matter, this is a brutal book, providing in stark detail, page after page, chapter after chapter, just how awful people can be to one another, given the opportunity. But it’s expertly structured, researched and written. I highly recommend it, if you can stomach it.

The context is the closing years of the second world war and the immediate aftermath. As power structures transitioned or became largely absent, chaos reigned. Most of us already know about the concentration camps and the great battles on land and sea and in the sky. We know that many people suffered and died tragically. But there’s plenty most of us probably don’t know. In Savage Continent, author Keith Lowe gets into the nitty gritty of “things we never knew and our fathers would rather forget,” as one review put it.

Lowe reveals that it wasn’t just the Allies fighting the Axis powers; the second world war gave just about everybody on the continent who had ever had a grievance about anybody else license to fight. There were wars within wars within wars. When the big war officially finished, micro wars raged on for years. Ethnic communities turned on one another. Poles turned on Ukrainians and vice versa. Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt arbitrarily changed the borders of countries, resulting in the displacement of millions. Residents of occupied countries turned on collaborators. Everybody turned on the Germans (whether they had had anything to do with the war or not, some families having not lived in Germany for decades.) Tito’s partisans slaughtered tens of thousands (at least) in what became Yugoslavia. Everybody turned on the Jews. Concentration camps didn’t end with the Germans and the war; new concentration camps emerged, run by evil, warped (quite likely damaged) men fond of inflicting humiliation and suffering (and all too often death) on their fellow human beings, whom they considered less than human.

You get the idea.

Humanity is a species of extremes, of saints and devils. Capable of the greatest good… and the greatest evil. The potential for each extreme appears to exist within each of us. I’ve always been fascinated (and horrified) by this. It’s the same with life. It can be great, and it can be horrible. Existence has no “safe” mode. Lowe’s book Savage Continent examines one of these extremes: the awful depths to which humanity can plummet when civilization’s guardrails are removed, and it is a sobering sight.

Just look at some of the chapter headings:

Physical destruction
Famine
Moral Destruction
The Thirst for Blood
Vengeance Unrestrained
The Ethnic Cleansing of Ukraine and Poland
Cuckoo in the Nest: Communism in Romania

I found the chapter about Romania especially fascinating (and alarming). Romania was well on its way to becoming a democratic nation following the war but found itself hijacked by some deft manoevring on the part of the local communist party. (It didn’t hurt to have the Soviets lurking in the background, while the Allies were preoccupied elsewhere.)

It went something like this:

1. Manouvre to acquire control of the state’s most influential institutions

2. Once in charge of those institutions, appoint loyalists to positions of power

3. Remove political opponents (in this case, mostly by arresting them)

4. Rig all the next elections

At least it all went down fairly bloodlessly in Romania, unlike in Greece and Yugoslavia.

This episode in Romania’s history illustrates the fragility of democracy. I read that chapter just before the US election and found it chilling, aware that a presidential candidate with (apparently) little respect for democratic norms might be about to win. Now that he has won, people like Robert Reich, a former U.S. Secretary of Labour (who writes a prominent newsletter here on Substack), believes that the United States is well on its way to becoming a fascist state. An oligarchy in the style of today’s Russia, controlled by self-interested billionaires. Others have called this take on it unnecessarily alarmist. Many of those who voted for Trump either don’t believe it or don’t care, democracy (perhaps) not being high on their priority list, alongside issues such as the economy, immigration, abortion, and social norms. I guess only time will tell.

For those of us who do care about liberal democracy (defined as emphasizing “the separation of powers, an independent judiciary, and a system of checks and balances between branches of government”) history provides an abundance of cautionary tales. We’ve already covered Romania. You couldn’t call the empire Romania was named after a liberal democracy but for centuries Romans abhorred the notion of being ruled by a king. And then along came Julius Caesar, who (whatever you might believe about his actual motives) set the stage for Octavian to swoop in a few years later and turn the republic into a de facto lifelong dictatorship. (Rome, as you might know, had had many dictators prior to this in times of need, leaders with absolute authority, but their terms had always been limited to a year or two, and, unlike Octavian, they had always, without fail, handed over this absolute power whenever their terms ended.)

Of course, Octavian turned out to be a benevolent dictator. You get those from time to time. Much later Diocletian would also be pretty good, updating and reorganizing the Roman Empire (until he tarnished his reputation later in his term by persecuting Christians and setting the stage for a thousand years of feudalism).

But these are exceptions. Usually, dictatorships don’t turn out quite so well. Often, dictators are either incompetent or cruel, or both.

Keith Lowe’s Savage Continent is, in part, about the result of placing a handful of evil lunatics in control of a powerful nation, resulting in the death and suffering of tens of millions. This is something else that fascinates (and infuriates) me: how is it that so often the actions of so few results in the suffering of so many?

And, really, looking for further examples of the fragility of democracy who even needs history when we’ve got examples like Maduro in Venezuela, Erdogan in Turkey, Putin in Russia, democracy on its last legs in Hong Kong, and Taiwan hovering on the brink?

Venezuela is a strikingly good example of how one incompetent, greedy leader can almost singlehandedly turn a wealthy, successful nation into a failed state.

It’s difficult for me to understand why any citizen of any country would leave themselves even the slightest bit open to the possibility of authoritianism. And to actually have voted for the possibility? That seems completely antithetical to me. Except that, I do understand, in part. As I’ve suggested above, a citizen may prioritize other issues. And, if I may be so bold, they may not be aware of the historical precedents, and just how dire the consequences can be.

Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II may help with that. It amply illustrates the devastating impact of placing evil idiots in charge of countries with powerful armies. It’s depressing; it’s grim, and I think it should be required reading for everyone pschologically capable of absorbing it.

Now, I don’t want to end on such a negative note, so let me add this. I tend to think in terms of story. And everything happening now will one day be a story. A thousand years from now some podcaster like Mike Duncan will be relating the events of our current era and I bet it won’t take up more than two thirty minute episodes, if that. Cuz that’s the thing about history; it comes and it goes. The Roman empire is gone. You have multiple countries in its place. The nazi party in Germany lasted what, twelve years? Despite what happened at the end of World War Two, Romania now enjoys a democratic, multi-party system. Feudalism didn’t last forever. Of course, each of these eras probably felt like forever at the time, and I’m not saying I’d want to live through any of them.

But one feature you’ll see in many a good story is a nice, unexpected plot twist. We’ve already seen several in the last few months. And the thought I’d like to leave you with is that I am absolutely certain that we haven’t seen the last of them.

We’re still in the thick of this era’s story. The end, I’m sure, will be both surprising and inevitable.

And hopefully happy.

Okay, here’s something a little lighter, from the Assorted Nonsense vaults:

On Adverbs

One day I found myself reading over a woman’s shoulder. She was reading a novel that had lots of blurbs on the front cover: “Riveting.” “A compelling read.” “Best Freakin’ Book Ever.” That sort of thing.

I was struck by the book’s prose. Kind of bland. Prose like: “They got in the car. The car took them outside the town.”

Hemingway wrote like that, didn’t he? Straight and to the point. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just not the prose I aspire to write. I like prose with a little pizzazz. Like the kind Bill Bryson writes, and Douglas Adams wrote.

Anyway, the other thing I noticed was the use of adverbs. As in:

“Get in the car,” he told her merrily.

“Okay,” she replied happily.

I almost never use adverbs like that. I’m prejudiced against them. Just the same, sometimes I worry that not using adverbs like that hurts my prose. Because it’s so much easier just to write:

“Put that thing down,” Ralph said irritably.

Then readers know Ralph’s irritated. I don’t have to think about it, and my readers don’t have to think about it. But I almost never do it because some instinct tells me it’s better if I show that Ralph’s irritated. Such as:

Ralph furrowed his brow. “Put that thing down,” he said.

Or do it with dialog:

“Put that goddamn thing down,” Ralph said.

Or string them all together:

Ralph furrowed his brow. “Put that goddamn thing down,” he told Nikolai, shortly before snatching the mandolin from Nikolai’s hands and shoving it up his butt.

Ahem.

Perhaps the book I glimpsed was actually a compelling read, and the use of adverbs didn’t hurt the story. Writing that way, I bet you complete novels one heck of a lot more quickly than I do. But it just ain’t my style.

Me, I agonize over each word, each sentence, each unused adverb.

I blame Frederick, an online pal who has critiqued some of my writing. Frederick hates adverbs, and it’s his cyber-voice I hear every time I use one:

“Don’t think you need that adverb, Joe,” he’d write. “It dilutes the prose.”

Damn you, Frederick.

But I agree with him.

Sadly, I’ve never actually met Frederick in person. Someday I hope to get the chance to thank him in person.

“Thanks for the advice,” I’ll tell him earnestly.

A Peculiar Symmetry by Tanah Haney

Available December 1st from Donovan Street Press Inc!

Aiden and Minnie. Two of the least ordinary people you’re likely to meet.
Aiden’s missing the first eight years of her life, yet she can play Beethoven’s Concerto without ever having been taught. Minnie can see people’s emotions, in vivid colour, no less. That doesn’t help much when she meets Aiden, who doesn’t seem to have any.
When British Intelligence sweeps in, along with belligerent spies and a half-brother Aiden never knew existed, Minnie soon discovers that whatever Aiden might lack, she more than makes up for in intrigue. Getting to know one another will have to wait, though; when bullets start to fly, and the bodies begin to pile up, the two young women find themselves caught up in a clandestine war for control over the human psyche…and their own lives.

About the Author:

When not writing, Tanah Haney divides her time between playing the Celtic harp, teaching music, gardening and cat wrangling. She is a published poet and is co-author of Where the World Bleeds Through with her husband, photographer and digital artist Mark A. Harrison.

The character of Aiden in Tanah’s debut novel, A Peculiar Symmetry, was inspired by Tanah’s own experience with neurodiversity. Late diagnosed with ADHD at age 50 but neurodivergent from day one, Tanah is determined to be a more vocal champion of everyone who has ever felt different, and for the free expression of same in a diverse, inclusive, and compassionate society.

Tanah lives in Peterborough, Ontario, with her husband Mark and a small but vocal menagerie.

Advance Readers Wanted

Donovan Street Press Inc. is looking for advance readers for upcoming books. If you’re interested, drop us a line at contact@donovanstreetpress.com.

Podcast

Re-Creative: a podcast about creativity and the works that inspire it.

Last week Mark A. Rayner and I spoke to Jen Prince to discuss one of her favorite shows, Veronica Mars.

As an indie filmmaker, Jen has done it all. Producing, directing, acting, and more. She's a graduate of USC film school. She's worked in television, including reality TV shows such as The Amazing Race. Eventually, she landed on producing indie movies and teaching when she’s not making films.

Jen makes a strong case for watching Veronica Mars. If you haven't seen it already, you'll want to after hearing Jen!

Another scintillating conversation with a super interesting person. So fortunate to get to talk to all these neat people!

Jen Prince on Re-Creative

All previous episodes are available online, comprising the first 3 seasons, over 60 conversations with creative people from all walks of life about the art stoking their imaginative fires.

Assorted Nonsense