The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War

(Paperback)

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The epic story of the aftermath of World War Two and the repatriation of over fifteen million people across a devastated Europe. After the Great War, the millions killed on the battlefields were eclipsed by the millions more civilians carried off by disease and starvation when the conflict was over. Haunted by memories, the Allies were determined that the end of the Second World War would not be followed by a similar disaster, and they began to lay plans long before victory was assured. Confronted by an entire continent starving and uprooted, Allied planners devised strategies to help all 'displaced persons', and repatriate the fifteen million people who had been deprived of their homes and in many cases forced to work for the Germans. But over a million Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians and Yugoslavs refused to go home. This book offers a radical reassessment of the aftermath of World War II. Unlike most recent writing about the 1940s, it assesses the events and personalities of that decade in terms of contemporary standards and values. This the true and epic story of how millions ultimately found relief, reconciliation and a place to call home.

Reviews

It's amazing, a really fine achievement and has a wonderful balance between argument and narration, where the individual stories draw the reader into the moral and emotional complexities, while the sense of structure and proportion gives it a very strong sense of being in safe hands -- Nick Stargardt, author of 'Witnesses of War'
A thoughtful retelling of an important and timely story -- Alan Allport * Literary Review *
(Even today, thousands of people displaced by the Second World War remain unaccounted for)The Long Road Home speaks for them by proxy and with proper sympathy -- Ian Thompson * Sunday Telegraph *
[A] well researched and comprehensive account -- Caroline Moorehead * Spectator *
Excellent book... his research is meticulous * Independent *

Author Bio

Ben Shephard read History at Oxford University. He was a producer on the television series The World at War and The Nuclear Age and has made numerous historical and scientific documentaries for the BBC and Channel Four. He is the author of the critically acclaimed A War of Nerves- Soldiers and Psychiatrists 1914-1994 and After Daybreak- The Liberation of Belsen, 1945. He lives in Bristol.