Modern Age - Summer 2014 - 57

REVIEWS

example, was not "prosecuted as a Soviet
spy" (327) but rather on charges of perjury
stemming from his denial of spying. Though
the Left may have "played a dominant role
in the resistance in many countries," their
demand "that postwar societies should be
shaped according to their wishes" (175) can
hardly be credited. The reality is that the
resistance did not contribute decisively to
winning the war: that role was played by the
armed forces of Britain, the United States,
the Soviet Union, and other allied nations.
Buruma fails to make this important distinction and thus leaves it unclear as to whether
he supports the Left's claims, including the
Japanese Left's assertion that they had been
"betrayed" by General MacArthur.
Likewise, the claim that British and American women who had entered the workforce
during the war "were no longer content
to swap their economic independence for
domestic subservience" (8) is simplistic at
best. I suspect that Rosie the Riveter was not
altogether ecstatic about the standard sixtyhour workweek prevailing at munitions
plants and other facilities during the war, nor
did most women who returned to domestic
roles consider themselves subservient. One
also doubts that everyone, even middle-aged
housewives in Des Moines, celebrated the
end of the war in quite the erotic fashion that
Buruma suggests in the opening section of
Year Zero. Certainly, there were public demonstrations of exultation, but to interpret
these as "erotic" seems mistaken. "Jubilant"
might be a better characterization.
A larger problem is the book's apparent
bias toward a reductive reading of human
nature. Any history of 1945 ought surely to
speak of the nobility of those who opposed
fascism, including not just combatants but
all who sacrificed in support of the war
effort. (None of America's 464 Second
World War Medal of Honor recipients is

mentioned in this book, not even the most
famous, such as Audie Murphy and Jimmy
Doolittle. Surprisingly, the names of heroic
Europeans such as Raoul Wallenberg and
Oskar Schindler are also absent.) A balanced
account ought also to speak of the ideals of
democracy and liberty that were at the heart
of that fight and to communicate the joy of
ordinary men and women as they anticipated
returning to a normal peacetime existence.
Not everyone behaved as did the Soviet army
in Germany-raping, pillaging, and murdering at Stalin's behest. The U.S. forces in
occupied zones generally conducted themselves with a marked degree of humanity. For
an entire generation of Japanese, memories
of the U.S. occupation were so positive that
they helped shape U.S.-Japanese relations
for the better for decades to come. Unfortunately, Year Zero has far less to say about the
heroic and virtuous than it does about the
darker side of human nature.
The role of goodness and forbearance
receives some discussion in the final section,
but that aspect of 1945 is not the focus of
Buruma's book. It may be that the author is
determined to oblige the reader to acknowledge the more ghastly aspects of that
critical year by concentrating on the more
sensationalistic details, more or less in the
same manner and for the same reasons that
Allied leaders required German civilians to
tour Buchenwald and other concentration
camps after the war. Certainly, this gripping account should disabuse any reader
of the illusion that evil has been banished
from the earth. The Old Adam is still with
us, as is the malevolent force of authoritarianism, much of it exercised in the name of
progress. The most important lesson of Year
Zero may be that, given the overwhelming
evidence of human imperfection, the need
for a traditional order of belief remains as
great as ever.
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Modern Age - Summer 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Modern Age - Summer 2014