Synopsis:

What does it mean to liberate a country? What is the real cost of freedom? In Liberation, William Hitchcock shows that the end of the Second World War in Europe was bloodier, messier and more complex than we would like to believe.

The traditional image of Europe in 1945 is of grateful civilians showering soldiers with flowers and dancing in the streets. In reality, it was an extraordinarily violent and chaotic process. Hitchcock looks beyond the conventional image into the experiences of ordinary civilians and soldiers. He describes the catastrophic effects of invasion on Northern France, Belgium and Holland (huge civilian death tolls, towns destroyed, crops burnt) and the vengeful despoiling of Eastern Germany by the Red Army. He shows that the behaviour of the Allied forces was far from noble: they looted homes, seized property and raped women. Hitchcock also writes about the discovery of the concentration camps, such as Belsen and Buchenwald: the often shocking lack of empathy shown by its liberators and how, for many prisoners, it was only the beginning of further torment.

Timely, lucid and compelling, William Hitchcock’s account fully explores the paradox of ‘the good war’ - its glories and its horrific human costs.