Aftermath

A scholarly but accessible history of the diplomatic conflicts that began when in 1945 the guns fell silent.

Often books on diplomatic history can seem quite dry but this one moves along at quite a pace and at less than 400 pages not too lengthy either.

Crowder writes in an easy to read style and adds depth and personality to the characters involved. There’s some excellent pen portraits of some the great leaders of the period such as Ernest Bevin, Truman and Stalin. ( I never knew that Stalin was prone to doodling wolf’s heads during his conferences!)

The book covers the immediate post war period including the formation of the United Nations, NATO, the IMF and the Marshall Plan and is certainly a good primer for anyone studying that period.

Published on the 70th anniversary of the events it highlights how those events of 70 years ago still shape and influence so much of the world we live in today.

One lesson that history keeps trying to teach us is that the most important part of a war is often the peace immediately afterwards. More often than not, the seeds for the next war is often found in the resolution of the current one. WWII was a logical conclusion from the peace treaties of WWI, and the cold war had it roots in WWII. Aftermath is the story of the end of WWII, and the beginning of the cold war.

=== The Good Stuff ===

* Richard Crowder does a nice job of examining and relating the history of post WWII Europe. I always felt this was a neglected part of history, and one with huge consequences that are still being felt today. Crowder examines the personalities, politics, economics, rivalries, and agendas of the key players (US, GB, France and the USSR) and weaves a narrative how they each projected their goals and interests.

* The story is told in mostly a narrative form, so events are chained together and follow in some form of a logical sequence. This makes is much easier to understand what is going on. And while this format almost forces the author to include some of his own opinions, for the most part Crowder remains a neutral observer.

* I have read quite a bit of WWII history, but I must admit that I didn’t know many of the details of the post-war settlement process. The book filled in many gaps, and gave me a better understanding of the events from 1945 to roughly 1950. It is a great piece of history to understand, and the roots of the cold war can be examined and better understood. I won’t give away the details, but it was amazing how prescient some of the predictions made in 1945 turned out to be.

=== The Not-So-Good Stuff ===

* I could call it poor explanation, or poor comprehension on my part. Either way, some of the detail laid out in the book just escaped me. It was almost as if I needed a set of “reader’s notes” to understand the motivations and the negotiating position that some of the politicians involved took. For example, giving away $15B in the Marshall Plan seemed to be one of the most difficult tasks in modern diplomacy, and many of the positions taken by European leaders were somewhat baffling.

* The narrative gets a bit jumpy at time, hopping from story line to story line with little notice or transition. It became a bit confusing, and required a little work to get back in the swing of the new plot. Part of the problem is that Crowder attempted to keep the narrative to a reasonable length, and these stories probably needed more words to be totally explained.

=== Summary ===

I enjoyed the book, and leared a lot about some parts of history that I hadn’t known much about. I think this is an important part of 20th century history, and a part that many of us amateur historians have mostly neglected. The “plot” line is a bit confusing, since there are no set-piece battles, and it wasn’t clear from examining the battlefield who won, but with a little work, the reader can get a good grasp of the events. I’d recommend the book to anyone with an interest in how WWII ended…or the Cold War started.

=== Disclaimer ===

I was able to read an advance copy through the courtesy of the publisher and NetGalley.