Year Zero is a landmark reckoning with the great drama that ensued after war came to an end in 1945. One world had ended and a new, uncertain one was beginning. Regime change had come across Asia and all of continental Europe. It was the greatest global power vacuum in history, and out of the often vicious power struggles that ensued emerged the modern world as we know it.
In human terms, the scale of transformation is almost impossible to imagine. Great cities around the world lay in ruins, their populations decimated, displaced, starving. Harsh revenge was meted out on a wide scale, and the ground was laid for much darkness to come. At the same time, in the wake of unspeakable loss, the euphoria of the liberated was extraordinary, the revelry unprecedented. The postwar years gave rise to the European welfare state, the United Nations, American democracy, Japanese pacifism, and the European Union. Society-wide reeducation was imposed on the vanquished on a scale that had no historical precedent. Much that was done was ill-advised, but in hindsight these efforts were relatively enlightened, humane, and effective.
A poignant grace note throughout his history is Buruma's own father's story. Seized by the Nazis during the occupation of Holland, he spent much of the war in Berlin as a slave laborer and by war's end was literally hiding in the rubble of a flattened city, having barely managed to survive starvation rations, Allied bombing, and Soviet shock troops when the end came. His journey home and attempted reentry into "normalcy" stand in many ways for his generation's experience.
A work of enormous range and stirring human drama, conjuring both the Asian and European theaters with equal fluency, Year Zero is a book that Ian Buruma is perhaps uniquely positioned to write. Prologue
PART 1: LIBERATION COMPLEX: CHAPTER 1: Exultation
CHAPTER 2: Hunger
CHAPTER 3: Revenge
PART 2: CLEARING THE RUBBLE: CHAPTER 4: Going Home
CHAPTER 5: Draining the Poison
CHAPTER 6: The Rule of Law
PART 3: NEVER AGAIN: CHAPTER 7: Bright Confident Morning
CHAPTER 8: Civilizing the Brutes
CHAPTER 9: One World
Epilogue
"Ian Buruma's lively
new history, Year Zero, is about the
various ways in which the aftermath of the Good War turned out badly for many
people and splendidly for some who didn't deserve it. It is enriched by his
knowledge of six languages, a sense of personal connection to the era (his
Dutch father was a forced laborer in Berlin), and his understanding of this
period from a book he wrote two decades ago that is still worth reading, The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in
Germany and Japan."
"A very human
history."
"Year Zero…covers
a great deal of history without minimizing the complexity of the events and the
issues. It is well written and researched, full of little-known facts and
incisive political analysis. What makes it unique among hundreds of other works
written about this period is that it gives an overview of the effects of the
war and liberation, not only in Europe but also in Asia…A stirring account of
the year in which the world woke up to the horror of what had just occurred
and-while some new horrors were being committed-began to reflect on how to make
sure that it never happens again."
"[Buruma] makes a compelling case that many of the modern triumphs and traumas yet to come took root in this fateful year of retribution, revenge, suffering, and healing."
"Buruma presents a panoramic view of a global transformation and emphasizes common themes: exultation, hunger, revenge, homecoming, renewed confidence."
"Insightful meditation on the world's emergence from the wreckage of World War II…Recounting the occupations of Germany and Japan and life in the Allied nations, Buruma finds that the war was a great leveler, eliminating inequalities in Great Britain and rooting out feudal customs and habits in Japan. Despite much longing for a new world
