Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II

496 pp. The end of World War II in Europe is remembered as a time when cheering crowds filled the streets, but the reality was quite different. Across Europe, landscapes had been ravaged, entire cities razed, and more than thirty million people had been killed in the war. The institutions that we now take for granted―such as police, media, transport, and local and national government―were either entirely absent or compromised. Crime rates soared, economies collapsed, and whole populations hovered on the brink of starvation.