Liberation: the Bitter Road to Freedom, Europe 1944-1945 by William I Hitchcock 446pp, Faber & Faber, pounds 25 T pounds 23 (plus pounds 1.25 p&p) 0844 871 1515 The lesson that Bush and Blair forgot Keith Lowe examines an unsanitised account of liberated Europe which shows up an absence of law and order

• Published in: Daily telegraph (London, England : 1969)
• Main Author: Lowe, Keith
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: London (UK) Daily Telegraph 14.02.2009
• Subjects: Blair, Tony; Bush, George W; Hitchcock, William
• ISSN: 0307-1235

[William Hitchcock]'s careful scrutiny of eyewitness accounts shows that, in general, no such bond existed. On the contrary, the overwhelming emotion expressed by Allied soldiers and reporters was repulsion. Accounts of the time uniformly describe Jews and slave labourers as if they were animals or objects of human refuse. "It is easy to adopt the Nazi theory that they are subhuman," said the first US Army report on Buchenwald, "for many have in fact been deprived of their humanity." This lack of empathy was felt by the liberated prisoners. In one of the book's most harrowing chapters we hear of the rape of several women in Auschwitz by Russian soldiers. When a group of these women fled westwards they found British troops little better. "The Tommies behaved just as badly as the Russians," remembers one. "The English soldiers said they would give us food only if we slept with them. We all had dysentery, we were sick, dirty ... and here was the welcome we got!" Hitchcock's anecdote about a French girl who had returned from a camp speaks volumes. After telling her uncle of the horrors she experienced at the hands of military men she looked at his uniform closely. "Tonton, you are not a soldier," she said with delight. "You are UNRRA. I am so glad. They were the first people to be nice to me." UNRRA has been accused of amateurishness and inefficiency, but these were prices worth paying for the immeasurable good it did.