Year Zero (47 page)

The Dutch National Socialist leader Anton Mussert is arrested by the Dutch resistance in The Hague.

The Japanese surrender to the Royal Air Force in Saigon.

Indonesian freedom fighters

Winston Churchill campaigning for reelection

Clement Attlee after his election victory
(Associated Press)

I cannot imagine how I could have written this book without my stint as a fellow of the Cullman Center for Scholars & Writers at the New York Public Library. Thanks to its excellent director, Jean Strouse, her invaluable deputy director, Marie D'Origny, and the ever helpful Paul Delaverdac, the center is a writer's paradise.

While doing my research, I benefited greatly from the advise of Robert Paxton, Fritz Stern, Hata Ikuhiko, Avishai Margalit, Ben Bland, and Geert Mak. At the NIOD research institute in Amsterdam, I was given a great deal of help by David Barnouw and Joggli Meihuizen.

Mark Mazower and Geoffrey Wheatcroft were kind enough to read the manuscript at various stages and managed to save me from making errors I would never have caught. Any infelicities that might remain in the text are, of course, entirely my own responsibility.

Andrew Wylie, Jin Auh, and Jaqueline Ko, of the Wylie Agency, have offered me their constant support, for which I am deeply grateful. Scott Moyers was involved in the book first as my agent at the Wylie Agency, then as my editor at The Penguin Press, and was equally superb in both capacities. Thanks also to Mally Anderson, at The Penguin Press, who has seen the book through to its completion.

Finally, I owe a great debt to my father, Leo Buruma, and my friend, Brian Urquhart, who have taken the time to relate their personal experiences of 1945. As a small token of my gratitude and esteem, I dedicate my book to them.

I am grateful to my wife, Eri, for her patience and encouragement.

CHAPTER 1: EXULTATION

1
. Quoted in Ben Shephard,
The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010), 69.

2
. Martin Gilbert,
The Day the War Ended: May 8, 1945: Victory in Europe
(New York: Henry Holt, 1994), 128.

3
. Brian Urquhart,
A Life in Peace and War
(New York: Harper & Row, 1987), 82.

4
. This story is well told in David Stafford,
Endgame, 1945: The Missing Final Chapter of World War II
(New York: Little, Brown, 2007).

5
. From Zhukov's memoir, quoted in Gilbert,
The Day the War Ended
.

6
. Simone de Beauvoir,
Force of Circumstance
(New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1963), 30.

7
. Gilbert,
The Day the War Ended,
322.

8
. Ibid., 319.

9
. Urquhart,
A Life in Peace and War
, 85.

10
. David Kaufman and Michiel Horn,
De Canadezen in Nederland, 1944–1945
(Laren, The Netherlands: Luitingh, 1981), 119.

11
. Michael Horn, “More Than Cigarettes, Sex and Chocolate: The Canadian Army in the Netherlands, 1944–1945,” in
Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d'études canadiennes
16 (Fall/Winter 1981), 156–73.

12
. Quoted in Horn, “More Than Cigarettes, Sex and Chocolate,” 166.

13
. Ibid, 169.

14
. Quoted in John Willoughby, “The Sexual Behavior of American GIs During the Early Years of the Occupation of Germany,”
Journal of Military History
62, no. 1 (January 1998), 166–67.

15
. Benoîte Groult and Flora Groult,
Journal à quatre mains
(Paris: Editions Denoël, 1962).

16
. See Patrick Buisson,
1940–1945
:
Années érotiques
(Paris: Albin Michel, 2009).

17
. Rudi van Dantzig,
Voor een verloren soldaat
(Amsterdam: Arbeiderspers, 1986).

18
. Buisson,
1940–1945,
324.

19
. Urquhart,
A Life in Peace and War
, 81.

20
. Ben Shephard,
After Daybreak: The Liberation of Bergen-Belsen, 1945
(New York: Schocken Books, 2005).

21
. Ibid., 99.

22
. Ibid., 133.

23
. Richard Wollheim, “A Bed out of Leaves,”
London Review of Books
, December 4, 2003, 3–7.

24
. Shephard,
After Daybreak
, 138.

25
. Atina Grossmann,
Jews, Germans, and Allies: Close Encounters in Occupied Germany
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 188.

26
. Shephard,
The Long Road Home
, 299.

27
. Ibid., 70.

28
. Norman Lewis,
Naples '44: An Intelligence Officer in the Italian Labyrinth
(New York: Eland, 2011), 52.

29
. John Dower,
Embracing Defeat:
Japan in the Wake of World War II
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), 126.

30
. Ibid., 102.

31
. Theodore Cohen,
Remaking Japan: The American Occupation as New Deal
, Herbert Passin, ed. (New York: Free Press, 1987), 123.

32
. Letter to Donald Keene, in Otis Cary, ed.,
From a Ruined Empire:
Letters—Japan, China, Korea, 1945–46
(Tokyo and New York: Kodansha, 1984), 96.

33
. William L. Worden, “The G.I. Is Civilizing the Jap,”
Saturday Evening Post,
December 15, 1945, 18–22.

34
. For more information on the
panpan
culture, John Dower's
Embracing Defeat
is an excellent source.

35
. Dower,
Embracing Defeat
, 134.

36
. John LaCerda,
The Conqueror Comes to Tea: Japan Under MacArthur
(New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 1946), 51.

37
. Ibid., 54.

38
. Dower,
Embracing Defeat
, 579.

39
. Giles MacDonogh,
After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation
(New York: Basic Books, 2007), 79.

40
. Klaus-Dietmar Henke,
Die Amerikanische Besetzung Deutschlands
(Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1995), 201.

41
. Dagmar Herzog,
Sex After Fascism
:
Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 69.

42
. Willoughby, “Sexual Behavior of American GIs,” 167.

43
. Groult,
Journal à quatre mains
, 397.

44
. MacDonogh,
After the Reich
, 236.

45
. Nosaka Akiyuki,
Amerika Hijiki
[
American Hijiki
] (Tokyo:
, 2003). First published 1972.

46
. MacDonogh,
After the Reich,
369.

47
. 
The Times
(London), July 9, 1945.

48
. Willoughby, “Sexual Behavior of American GIs,” 158.

49
. 
New York Times
, June 13, 1945.

50
. Anonymous,
A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary
(New York: Metropolitan Books, 2005).

51
. Nagai Kafu,
Danchotei Nichijo
II (Tokyo: Iwanami Pocket Books, 1987), 285.

52
. Ibid, 278.

53
. Quoted in Donald Keene,
So Lovely a Country Will Never Perish: Wartime Diaries of Japanese Writers
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 149.

54
. LaCerda,
The Conqueror Comes to Tea
, 23–24.

55
. Henke,
Die Amerikanische Besetzung Deutschlands
, 199.

56
. Ibid.

57
. Richard Bessel,
Germany 1945: From War to Peace
(New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 204.

58
. Elizabeth Heineman,
What Difference Does a Husband Make?
(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003), 100.

59
. Quoted in Willoughby, “Sexual Behavior of American GIs,” 169.

60
. Keene,
So Lovely a Country
, 171.

61
. Willoughby, “Sexual Behavior of American GIs,” 160.

62
. Curzio Malaparte,
The Skin
, David Moore, tr. (New York:
New York Review of Books
, 2013), 39. First published 1952.

63
. Quoted in Herman de Liagre Böhl in
De Gids
, periodical, May 1985, 250.

64
. Ibid., 251.

65
. Buisson,
1940–1945:
Années érotiques
, 411.

CHAPTER 2: HUNGER

1
. J. L. van der Pauw,
Rotterdam in de tweede wereldoorlog
(Rotterdam: Boom, 2006), 679.

2
. 
New York Times
, May 12, 1945.

3
. Shephard,
After Daybreak
, 109.

4
. Edmund Wilson,
Europe Without Baedeker: Sketches Among the Ruins of Italy, Greece, and England
(London: Secker and Warburg, 1948), 125.

5
. Ibid., 120.

6
. Antony Beevor and Artemis Cooper,
Paris After the Liberation: 1944–1949
, revised edition (New York: Penguin Books, 2004), 103. First published 1994.

7
. Stephen Spender,
European Witness
(New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1946), 107.

8
. Ibid., 106.

9
. Wilson,
Europe Without Baedeker,
136.

10
. Ibid., 146.

11
. Ibid., 147.

12
. Sándor Márai,
Memoir of Hungary 1944–1948
(Budapest: Corvina in association with Central European University Press, 1996), 193–94.

13
. Carl Zuckmayer,
Deutschlandbericht für das Kriegsministerium der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika
(Göttingen: Wallstein, 2004), 142.

14
. Spender,
European Witness
, 15.

15
. 
New York Herald Tribune
, December 31, 1945.

16
. Cary, ed.,
From a Ruined Empire
, 54.

17
. Dower,
Embracing Defeat
, 103.

18
. Ibid., 63.

19
. MacDonogh,
After the Reich
, 315.

20
. Ronald Spector,
In the Ruins of Empire: The Japanese Surrender and the Battle for Postwar Asia
(New York: Random House, 2007), 56.

21
. Quoted in Bessel,
Germany 1945
, 334.

22
. 
New York Times
, October 27, 1945.

23
. Julian Sebastian Bach Jr.,
America's Germany: An Account of the Occupation
(New York: Random House, 1946), 26.

24
. 
Daily Mirror
, October 5, 1945, quoted in Shephard,
The Long Road Home
, 129.

25
. Quoted in Shephard,
The Long Road Home
, 156.

26
. Joint Chiefs of Staff directive 1380/15, paragraph 296, quoted in Cohen,
Remaking Japan
, 143.

27
. MacDonogh,
After the Reich
, 479.

28
. Statement to Congress quoted in Cohen,
Remaking Japan
, 145.

29
. Quoted in Norman M. Naimark,
The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 181.

30
. Cohen,
Remaking Japan
, 144.

31
. Ibid., 142.

32
. Herman de Liagre Böhl,
De Gids
, 246.

33
. Willi A. Boelcke,
Der Schwarzmarkt, 1945–1948
(Braunschweig: Westermann, 1986), 76.

34
. Sakaguchi Ango,
Darakuron
, new paperback version (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 2008), 228. First published in 1946.

35
. Dower,
Embracing Defeat
, 139.

36
. Fujiwara Sakuya,
Manshu, Shokokumin no Senki
(Tokyo:
, 1984), 82.

37
. Quoted in Bessel,
Germany 1945
, 337.

38
. Zuckmayer,
Deutschlandbericht,
111.

39
. Irving Heymont,
Among the Survivors of the Holocaust:
The Landsberg DP Camp Letters of Major Irving Heymont, United States Army
(Cincinnati: The American Jewish Archives, 1982), 63.

40
. Carlo D'Este,
Patton: A Genius for War
(New York: HarperCollins, 1996), 755.

41
. See Shephard,
The Long Way Home
, 235.

42
. 
Yank
, August 10, 1945, 6.

43
. Quoted in Stafford,
Endgame, 1945
, 507.

44
. Alfred Döblin,
Schicksalsreise: Bericht u. Bekenntnis: Flucht u. Exil 1940–1948
(Munich: Piper Verlag, 1986), 276.

CHAPTER 3: REVENGE

1
. Norman M. Naimark,
Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 118.

2
. Tadeusz Borowski,
This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen
(New York: Viking, 1967).

3
. Gilbert,
The Day the War Ended
, 38.

4
. Shephard,
After Daybreak
, 113.

5
. Ruth Andreas-Friedrich,
Battleground Berlin: Diaries, 1945–1948
(New York: Paragon House, 1990), 99.

6
. Hans Graf von Lehndorff,
Ostpreussisches Tagebuch
[East Prussian Diary Records of a Physician from the Years 1945–1947] (Munich: DTV, 1967), 67.