Scenes from the End: The Last Days of World War II in Europe

Interviewing prisoners of war as an intelligence officer during the closing days of WWII provided Manuel, a journalist and historian,with an unusual view of the conflict. Social, cultural and moral disintegration are the subjects here, not combat, and this account, based on excerpts from letters and notes Manuel wrote at the time, constitutes ""a documentary record"" of his feelings and observations. Whether during the Battle of the Bulge or in Alsace or Germany, the interviewees cling to beliefs that a new weapon will still bring victory. They alternately fend off or embrace responsibility, and express bitterness toward their leaders and relief that the Americans (and not the Russians) have finally arrived. Most often, the prisoners serve as illustrations that hunger and survival usually take precedence over dignity. Throughout, there are problems of judgment facing Manuel. Some are immediate and specific: is an eccentric with wild claims one of the valued scientists to be shipped to America or a madman to be left for the Russians? Others border on the cosmological: does justice demand that the vanquished be punished or assisted? The young Manuel, who had been a journalist during the Spanish Civil War, sees ""sloppy romantics"" who ""slobber over the vanquished,"" and feels like an accessory to injustice for treating the guilty with some respect. The mature Manuel, looking back, sees in himself the ""sentiments of superior virtue that besmirch all victors."" With stream-of-consciousness prose more literary than journalistic and observations more layered and nuanced than chronological or even logical, this book is a brief glimpse through relatively sophisticated eyes of humanity stripped of the cloak of civilization. (Feb.)