Nothing For Tears

Rating:
Summary: Germany sows the wind ... and reaps the whirlwind
Review: Like the reader from Brisbane, I found this an interesting yet perplexing book. For details of what it was like to live in a German city and the German countryside under Allied bombings and occupation, this book is fine. But when it comes to being honest about what Germany did to earn the terrible retribution the Allies inflicted upon Germany, the author is ludicrously and eventually, for me, irritatingly silent. Horstmann's Germany is too often just some innocent victim, wondering why all these mean countries (the Allies) were bombing her. Also, the Russians throughoutare refferred to as "Asiatic", "non-European', "oriental" (indeed she calls them everything but out-and-out "non-Aryan"!). The author's tone and attitude throughout the book simply kept reminding me it was Germany, after all, that had started the war, invaded Poland, invaded Russia, and that it was ordinary Poles, Russians, etc., who had to suffer under Germany's maniacal racism and barbarism of the day.

The class-hatred of the author's Prussian Aristocratic family towards the "low-born" Hitler and other Nazis is interesting, but ultimately makes the Prussian high-born look all more feeble for not standing up to him firmly and decisively - if he was such a dumb yob, why did he easily subdue them? Were they on his side through most of the war, until he started to lose? I wondered how much of Horstmann's attitude in this book developed after Germany's defeat, whether she really thought like this during Hitler's days of triumph.

Needless to say, the Jews hardly rate a mention, while the Allied bombings of German cities are deplored as crimes without even a footnote admitting Germany's role in inducing such a response. A lot of detail is given on the horrible, "Old Testament-style wrath" that descended upon the Germans when the Russians arrived, but never does the author admit Germany's own initial barbarism inside occupied Russia following its invasion, nor does she dare to contemplate whether the effects of her country's "mobile killing units" possibly influenced the ordinary Russian soldier's attitude towards Germany - effects which the Russian soldiers would have seen as they pushed the German army back from Stalingrad across those areas where German savagery had been most intense. The author even refers to Polish-Russian slave laborers she sees inside Germany as simply "workers."

I came to this book after reading William Shirer's *the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,* Alan Bullock's *Hitler: A Study in Tyranny,* and Alexander Dallin's *German Rule in Russia*. All three sowed doubt in my mind (to put it mildly) as to post-war German protestations that it had never supported Hitler. Therefore, one of the best reasons to read this book (along with others of its genre, like Bielenberg's *The Past Is Myself* and Marie Vassilitchkov's *Berlin Diaries*) is to become aware how difficult it is for Germans of that era to "come clean" about German atrocities (*Berlin Diaries* was, I thought, the closest to an honest response, with some admitting of the truth, less of the "poor little Nazi Germany" attitude expressed too often in Horstmann.)

I thought this a good book for a description of how Germany reaped the whirlwind; while Shirer, Bullock, Dallin, etc., gave me what was left out - how Germany sowed the wind in the first place.

Rating:
Summary: A Perplexing Book
Review: This is the story of a courageous and well educated woman and the death of her world - and of her husband. It is well written and ties in well with other writings about the barbarous behaviour of the Russians when they invaded Germany.

However, Frau Horstmann is lamenting the passing of her class, the Prussian nobility and aristocracy. She draws parallels with the French revolution. She rarely mentions Hitler, though she leaves it quite clear that she regards the Nazis as her social inferiors.

She portrays the Germans as a civilised European nation, unlike the Russians who she describes as "Asians". But hold on....wasn't it the Germans who invaded eastern Europe (not least Russia) with such brutality; and who gassed millions of Jews? Life was hard for the Horstmanns under the Russians. It was a lot harder for the Jews under the Germans. But like Hitler, they hardly get a mention.

As I say, a perplexing book.