AFTERMATH BY HARALD JAHNER REVIEWED
"AFTERMATH" BY HARALD JAHNER BOOK REVIEW BY MAJOR A.H AMIN (RETIRED)
· January 2022
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The first thing that struck me in this book was that the much “projected” and much “acclaimed” author plays to the gallery , in pleasing western , non German audiences , who, as he must have foreseen when writing the German original version would “voraciously” read the translated English edition of his so called “MAGNUM BONUM” !
Passages like as below :--- (page-22)
“The fact that even well-intentioned people refused to think about what would happen to their deported neighbours has left trust in the human species severely shaken even into the present day. And the majority of Germans at the time were guilty of this. The hushing-up of the extermination camps continued after the end of the war, even though the Allies tried to forcibly confront the defeated German people with evidence of Nazi crimes. “
Jahner’s remarks as below (page-22) are a snide insult to Germans who suffered massive hardships and offered Herculean sacrifices in WW 2 , in terms of family members , lost , capture, missing , maimed and traumatized !
“They saw themselves as the victims, and thus had the dubious good fortune of not having to think about the real ones.”
Now who gave Mr. Jahner the right to decide who was a “fake victim” and who was a “real victim” ? Certainly this book is “bad history” and “cheap non fiction “
Jahner miserably fails to understand and accept that “MINUS GAS CHAMBERS” there was little difference between “NAZI GERMANY” and western allies in being “ANTI COMMUNIST” and “SLAV/RUSSIAN HATERS” !
So Jahner’s rant about Nazis being reemployed in West Germany is “baseless” and “weak history”.
Certainly he is much less a historian , and much more a jester journalist , adding spice to his narrative , in this case cheap spice , in order to sell, an exercise in which he massively succeeded , winning the Leipzig prize and being published by Penguin Press.
Jahner is non committal , which is the worst kind of intellectual dishonesty like on page-30 he states, without any further explanation as below:---
“In the corporate head offices, courts and offices of the Federal Republic most of the Nazi elite cheerfully carried on.”
Jahner does not explain that the quarrel of the allies with Nazi Germany was about principles, but about political and economic supremacy , and ethics had nothing to do with allies fighting against Nazi Germany !
I have not read an author more shamelessly intellectually dishonest than Jahner.
Our supremely intellectually dishonest joker of an author crosses all limits of distortion and twisting of facts when he has nothing to say about number of Russians who died in second world war but, plays much homage to Jews and Poles ! Cannot imagine that Germany gave birth to such a grossly intellectually dishonest man ! (page-35)
“The war cost 6 per cent of all Europeans their lives. The scale of the catastrophe that befell Hamburg applied twice as much to Europe as a whole. In Poland a sixth of the population was killed, some 6 million people. Jews suffered the worst; in their families they counted not the dead but the survivors.”
Jahner leaves no stone unturned to project Jews , but has almost nothing to say about Russians who were killed , which is bad history !
Jahner’s understanding and grasp of history is shallow to the extreme ! Statements like placing complete responsibility of war on Germany are naïve to the extreme (page-36 )
“How could anything come out of this calamity, particularly in Germany, which was to blame for it all?”
Announcing judgements without historical perspective is the most odious part of this appeasing par excellence German who forgets Versailles and the humiliation inflicted on Germany after WW 1 , and pronounces , abrupt verdicts like a self styled “SOLOMON”.
Jahner’s constantly blaming Germany for starting second world war is highly irritating , as if someone has paid him something to contantly hammer war guilt into his readers heads. (page-46)
“What better solution than to enlist the very people who had instigated the disaster in the first place?”
The book contains some interesting information like how Frankfurt dealt with rubble :-- (page-58 )
“Together with the Philipp Holzmann construction company the city founded the TVG, the Trümmerverwertungsgesellschaft or Rubble Recycling Corporation, which undertook the clearance of the city – after some delay, but all the more effectively for it. With the construction of a large rubble reprocessing plant even the fine rubble which had been piled up in mountains in other cities could be made usable for reconstruction. By setting up what today we would call a public–private partnership, Frankfurt managed to keep rebuilding costs lower than in all other cities, and at the same time to make a handsome profit: the TVG was in the black from 1952. The city’s prosperity, clearly visible today in its skyline, sprang from the ruins of old Frankfurt.”
The weakest and the most dubious part of Jahner’s shallow book is his total avoidance of the players who created the rubble in German cities.
The so called strategic bombing of German cities and its pointlessness has been analysed in great detail by western authors including J.F.C Fuller and Liddell Hart , but this so called , much acclaimed by “Economist” journal , has nothing to say about the real cause of misery of German civilians. Such callous “intellectual dishonesty” is the hallmark of Jahner’s book !
A major problem with Jahner is that he sensationalizes all events of that time without analysing , why Nazism won in Germany in the first place . Thus he sees only German villains , but not dumb , biased and myopic allied statesmen who drove Germany into the hands of Nazism !
This is a serious failing of this work! The real saviour of the Nazi state were British and French statesmen of 1930s who went to the lowest depths of servility to appease Hitler. But Jahner is too mouse brained and shallow to discuss these matters! But how else could his book have been a best seller! Because truth never sells!
Discussion of West German peoples bias and hatred against their East German displaced compatriots is one of the few interesting parts of this book.
The book is best suited to read in a bathroom for people suffering with chronic and incurable constipation!
Jahner’s discussion about transformation of woman’s roles and impact on family life are nothing new , and were much discussed in countless , British and French post ww 1 and post ww 2 novels.
At best Jahner’s book is a neat , summarised collection of massive published material , printed in post 1945 German books and journals . But Jahner miserably fails in his analysis where he is lost in the trees and fails to see the forest from a high analytical vantage point !
Weaknesses of this book are summarised as below:--
1. Nothing original , but a good brief compilation of much published material between 1945 and todate.
2. Fails to see the larger strategic picture.
3. Is obsessed with rubble but myopically fails to analyse that much of this rubble was caused by allied apology of strategic bombing which had little impact on outcome of the war but only made life miserable for the civilians.
4. Fails to see the fact that Nazism was natural result of peace of Versailles and policy of appeasement.
5. Lacks moral courage to analyse the fact that the major reason for second world war was not any high moral ideal but simple power rivalry.
6. Fails to see the fact that victorious allies converted to German geopolitical mindset of anti communism and hatred of Slav Russia.
7. Fails to see that the much denazified German state is strategically clueless western vassal and incapable of fighting a war . An example is German fear of war in Afghanistan war recently.
8. Fails to see that destroyed industry became a blessing in disguise as post 1945 newly made German blast furnaces were much bigger in capacity that British or American industry which was never destroyed.
9. Although a small point, misses many marriages of German women after war with Asians, including Pakistanis particularly EME officers.
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