Presents a history of the occupation and subsequent division of Germany after the defeat of Hitler, a period in which over two million Germans lost their lives through starvation and the violent revenge killings and imprisonments inflicted upon them by the victors. When the Third Reich collapsed in 1945, the Allied powers converged on Germany and divided it into four zones of occupation. A nation in tatters, in many places literally flattened by bombs, was suddenly subjected to brutal occupation by vengeful victors. Hundreds of thousands of women were raped; hundreds of thousands of Germans and German-speakers died in the course of brutal deportations from Eastern Europe. By the end of the year, Germany was literally starving to death. Over a million German prisoners of war died in captivity, where they were subjected to inadequate rations and often tortured. All told, an astonishing 2.25 million German civilians died violent deaths in the period between the liberation of Vienna and the Berlin airlift. A shocking account of a massive and brutal military occupation, this book is a bold reframing of the history of World War II and its aftermath. Historian Giles MacDonogh has unearthed a record of brutality which has been largely ignored by historians or, worse, justified as legitimate retaliation for the horror of the Holocaust. Drawing on a vast array of contemporary first-person accounts, the author has finally given a voice to tens of millions of civilians who, lucky to survive the war, found themselves struggling to survive a hellish peace. -- Book Jacket.

pt. I, Chaos: -- The fall of Vienna -- Wild times: a picture of liberated central Europe in 1945 -- Berlin -- Expulsions from Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Yugoslavia -- Home to the Reich! Recovered territories in the Prussian East. pt. II, Allied zones: -- Prologue -- Life in the Russian Zone -- Life in the American Zone -- Life in the British Zone -- Life in the French Zone -- Austria's zones and sectors -- Life in all four zones. pt. III, Crime and punishment: -- Guilt -- Black market -- Light fingers -- Where are our men? -- The trials -- The little fish. pt. IV, The road to freedom: -- Peacemaking in Potsdam -- The great freeze -- The Berlin airlift and the beginnings of economic recovery -- Conclusion.