After the Reich

July 9, 2007
This absorbing study of the Allied occupation of Germany and Austria from 1945 to 1949 shows that the end of WWII by no means ended the suffering. A vengeful Red Army visited on German women an ordeal of mass rape, while looting the Soviet occupation zone of almost everything of value, from watches to factories. Millions of ethnic Germans were driven from Poland and Czechoslovakia, stripped of their possessions and subjected to atrocities on the way. The Western Allies behaved better, but sidestepped the Geneva Conventions, using German POWs as slave laborers and letting thousands of them die in captivity, while keeping their zones on starvation rations. Nor were the Germans, with their own death camps finally coming to the world’s appalled attention, in a good position to complain. Journalist and historian MacDonogh (The Last Kaiser: A Life of Wilhelm II
) gives a gripping, if choppy account of the occupation while portraying Truman, Churchill and Stalin at Potsdam as squabbling over the spoils as feral children scrabbled through the ruins. The result is a sobering view of how vengeance stained Allied victory. Photos.

July 1, 2007

Edwin B. Burgess, a longtime LJ reviewer, is director of the U.S. Army Combined Arms Research Lib., Fort Leavenworth, KSself-helpBy Deborah Bigelow, Director, Leonia P.L., NJ Spiritual Living By Graham Christian Up-to-date Beliefs

We all want to be modern, even in the oratories and meditation centers; this season, "Library Journal" has seen an unusually insistent emphasis on the ultracontemporary, from a Protestant, everyday take on Ignatius of Loyola through the tangles of the web for contemporary Christian parents. We've come to terms with a pagan spirituality that negotiates a dozen traditions for the modern practitioner, as well as the reinvention of the Christian wisdom tradition for a 21st century and global outlook; we've seen the face of God in the crass cleverness of "Family Guy", read a philosopher's bloggings, and found redemption with Katharine Hepburn. With these latest titles, we find Joan Chittister as rewarding as always; among the newer authors, Greg Garrett and Bruno Barnhart prove to be especially worth watching. Barnhart, Bruno. The Future of Wisdom: Toward a Rebirth of Sapiential Christianity. Continuum. 2007. c.218p. ISBN 978-0-8264-1932-3. pap. $29.95. REL

Barnhart ("The Good Wine; Second Simplicity") is also a monk of the New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur, CA. His new book, a substantial contribution toward the renewal of Christian spirituality, is rather more controversial than it might first appear, given Barnhart's good Catholic background. Barnhart seeks and desires no less than a wholehearted rediscovery and reinvigoration of the mystical wisdom tradition that was once a powerful component of Christian spirituality, both Western and Eastern. As he rightly points out, this tradition, which he allies with Aldous Huxley's "philosophia perennis", went into decline hand in hand with the overall decline of monastic orders, as Christianity became more public and congregational in its focus. He sees this moment of history as the "new dawn" of the wisdom tradition within Christianity; whether he is correct, and what role his learned and passionate advocacy will have, only time will tell. For most collections.

Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2007
Mass deportations, murder, and brutalization of helpless noncombatantsthese are the crimes one readily associates with Hitlers minions as they ravaged their way across Europe. But Macdonogh, a journalist with particular expertise in German history, convincingly illustrates that this was the fate of millions of German-speaking civilians in the period from the fall of Vienna to the Soviets to the Berlin airlift. The massive number of rapes conducted by Soviet soldiers in their zone of occupation has already been well documented. Less publicized but equally disturbing, as Macdonoghs use of eyewitness testimonies confirm, was the treatment of ethnic Germans in their enclaves in various Eastern and Central European nations. There, murder and the driving out of millions of people were routine, and the French, British, and Americans did nothing to stop them. Given the horrors visited upon Europe by the Nazis, one might be tempted to consider these atrocities as just retribution. However, Macdonoghs eloquent account of the suffering of these people is, hopefully, able to evoke strong feelings of both revulsion and compassion from most readers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)