Summary of Ian Buruma's Year Zero

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The Liberation complex is when prisoners of Hitler’s fallen Reich, who were expected to be grateful and cooperative, were instead exultant and revengeful. It was not limited to DP camps, but was also applied to entire countries newly liberated.

#2 The Dutch women were in a state of frenzy, like teenage girls at a rock concert. They couldn’t help themselves. They were reliving their hours of exultation.

#3 The Dutch did not surrender to the Canadians on May 5, nor was the war over on that date. The Germans still had not surrendered to any Allied forces. On May 7, crowds had gathered on Dam Square in Amsterdam in front of the Royal Palace, cheering, dancing, and singing, in anticipation of the triumphant British and Canadian troops.

#4 The end of the war in Europe was officially marked by the signing of the unconditional surrender of all German troops in a schoolhouse in Rheims on May 6. However, celebrations could not begin until Stalin had been satisfied that General Eisenhower had accepted the German surrender for the eastern as well as western fronts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822501157

IRB Media

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Insights on Ian Buruma's Year Zero

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The Liberation complex is when prisoners of Hitler’s fallen Reich, who were expected to be grateful and cooperative, were instead exultant and revengeful. It was not limited to DP camps, but was also applied to entire countries newly liberated.

#2

The Dutch women were in a state of frenzy, like teenage girls at a rock concert. They couldn’t help themselves. They were reliving their hours of exultation.

#3

The Dutch did not surrender to the Canadians on May 5, nor was the war over on that date. The Germans still had not surrendered to any Allied forces. On May 7, crowds had gathered on Dam Square in Amsterdam in front of the Royal Palace, cheering, dancing, and singing, in anticipation of the triumphant British and Canadian troops.

#4

The end of the war in Europe was officially marked by the signing of the unconditional surrender of all German troops in a schoolhouse in Rheims on May 6. However, celebrations could not begin until Stalin had been satisfied that General Eisenhower had accepted the German surrender for the eastern as well as western fronts.

#5

On May 8, crowds were already going crazy in New York. They were also pouring into the streets in London, but a peculiar hush fell over the British crowds, as though they were waiting for Churchill’s voice to set off the celebrations.

#6

In Paris, a reporter for the Libération newspaper watched a moving mass of people, bristling with allied flags. An American soldier was wobbling on his long legs, in a strange state of disequilibrium, trying to take photographs.

#7

The reaction of many people who were pining for their husbands or sons who were still in the military was not joy, but rather relief and hope. The reaction of my grandmother in England was peculiarly English: she missed her husband too much to celebrate.

#8

The return of light was celebrated all over Europe, with the lights of the Opéra being lit for the first time since September 1939.

#9

The music that was played during the liberation of countries such as France and Holland was meant to be erotic, and it was. The Dutch and French women who were liberated by the Allied soldiers looked delicious, and many ended up marrying them.

#10

The Allied forces were not allowed to fraternize with the Germans, but they did fraternize with the Dutch and French women who were eager to fraternize with them.

#11

The French writer Benoîte Groult was extremely homminisé, or pretentious, when she was writing about American and Canadian soldiers. But her accounts illustrate a point made by a French historian of the German occupation: the presence of many young German men in France during the war offered