On newsstands on November 19, the third issue of the series on the events of the twentieth century curated by Antonio Scurati. In the volume the horrors and sufferings of the Second World War with a reconstruction that also focuses on aspects that are usually forgotten
War, like all human affairs, is above all an individual experience. the historian’s task is to analyze facts, compare them, compile documents, create statistics, create rankings, but those who experienced events as they happened drew no consolation from knowing that others were suffering more or they were more exposed to the aberrations triggered by the conflict. Whether on the front line, bombed from the sky, hunted down by the enemy or on the hunt for something to eat, each experienced their own daily tragedy trying to push the ability to survive further.
Among the rubble, with Soviet troops at the gates, on April 22, 1945 a Berliner wrote in her diary: What a strange period. You experience the story first hand, events that later will have to be sung and told. But closely they cancel each other out in worries and fears. The story is very uncomfortable to bear. Tomorrow I have to look for nettles and get some coal. A woman like this, who probably indulged the Nazi madness and then died under an Allied bombing or was raped by a Russian, an executioner or a victim?
This too Max Hastings asks himself in his essay, the most vibrant reconstruction of the Second World War, which is not by chance entitled Inferno (on newsstands today with Corriere della Sera). Hastings, a British journalist and historian, has been recounting that apocalypse for forty years: he has written eight books focusing on the Battle of Britain, the Holocaust or the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; then, from the testimonies collected during wandering, he understood that that horror could be understood by subsequent generations (who often dismiss it with a shrug) only by telling it from below, from the testimonies, from the diaries, from the daily anguish, from the pathetic lamentation of not being able to give a gift to his wife: Also this year my hands are completely empty, not even a flower….
Inferno a book of lacerating experiences. At times it seems that you no longer have the heart to bear the story. No work of fiction capable of bringing out such devastating emotions, whether they are executioners or victims. Of victims, above all, wherever they are, dragged into the maelstrom of madness.
Hastings restores a soul to the 27,000 people who, on average, lost their lives to war every day from September 1939 to August 1945, for a total of 60 million. And also to those who survived by bearing the brunt of what they experienced for decades to come. Even thirty years later, children in the Netherlands were forbidden to associate with peers with parents who were believed to have behaved badly during the occupation. The so-and-so, it was said in London, not a bad person, too bad he ran away during the war. True or not true.
Hastings brings out truths that historiography has neglected for years as not very functional to the Western narrative of events. China, for example, relegated to an appendage of the war, yet from 1937 to 1945 the Japanese occupation killed 15 million human lives. Only the Soviet Union paid more for the butcher’s bill and during the siege of Stalingrad many Russians survived by feeding on the flesh of corpses. In India it became a necessity to sell daughters.
Hastings dedicates a large chapter to the country where the tragedy turns into agony, namely Italy. When the Allies landed in Sicily, they were amazed that the Italian no longer wanted to fight. A lieutenant wrote home: Strange people. You would think we are the liberators, instead of those who take them prisoner. Annoyed, on at least two occasions they vented by killing in cold blood 37 (Sergeant Horace West) and 36 (Captain John Compton) prisoners. The court martial judged them with leniency. During the ascent, the allied troops indulged in rape and looting, which also happened after the Normandy landings.
When an American officer protested about this animal behavior, he was told: Right, Colonel, we are animals. We live like animals, eat and are treated like animals, what the hell do you expect from us ?. In the North, Germans and Republicans were doing worse. Countess Iris Origo, in her castle in Val d’Orcia, noted: If liberation proceeds at this rate, there will be very little left to liberate: region by region, the Germans leave behind them only ruin.
There is no page where Hastings does not shake the reader. Even talking about animals. A Greek soldier has to abandon his horse which is injured when it crashed into a snowdrift: He looks at me as I walk away. I want to cry, but the tears don’t come. This too takes away the war.
The new volume. An impressive fresco of heroism and cruelty
The book by Max Hastings is out on newsstands today with Corriere della Sera and La Gazzetta dello Sport Hell. The world at war 1939-1945 at the price of e 9.90 plus the cost of the newspaper. This is the third title in the Novecento series. Democracy Library, edited by the writer Antonio Scurati, author of the two books on Benito Mussolini M. The son of the century e M. The man of providence. The series offers the reader books of various genres (some are essays, others novels), which evoke some of the crucial moments of the twentieth century. As for Hastings, it is World War II. The author, born in London in 1945, has been a foreign correspondent for the British press for many years and has followed some of the most important conflicts that broke out in the second half of the 20th century. But in addition to being a journalist Hastings also a historian much appreciated by readers. After having published several books dedicated to salient episodes of the Second World War, with Inferno (published in 2012 in English and the following year in Italian) the English author focused on civilians and their sufferings, on the way in which the life of entire peoples was upset by the titanic struggle between the different powers that faced each other over the years terrible between 1939 and 1945. The fourth issue of the series edited by Scurati The davai road by Nuto Revelli, on newsstands from November 26, which tells firsthand the dramatic Russian retreat of the Italian army. They will follow: Svetlana Aleksievic, Second hand time (December 3); George Orwell, Tribute to Catalonia (December 10); Jorge Semprn, Writing or life (December 17).
November 19, 2021 (change November 19, 2021 | 09:54)
© Time.News