Product Description

This gripping and richly illustrated account of wartime Greece explores the impact of the Nazi Occupation upon the lives and values of ordinary people. The first full account of the experience of occupation, it offers a vividly human picture of resistance fighters and black marketeers, teenage German conscripts and Gestapo officers, Jews and starving villagers.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #311090 in Books
• Published on: 2001-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 462 pages

Review
"[A] sensitive, illuminating and richly textured account of painful, complex experience." Richard Overy, Observer "Fascinating... [Mazower] succeeds in getting under the skin of the occupation... [This book] conjures up, in vivid detail, life under an occupation that had shattered old certainties and replaced them with painful choices, cynical compromises, and hopes undercut by the daily death toll." Mark Almond, The Times "This is the first thorough account in English of almost every aspect of life in Axis-occupied Greece. It draws on a mass of material, including Greek wartime newspapers and German military archives. All of this is absorbed into a highly readable narrative and illustrated with sometimes heartbreaking contemporary photographs." Noel Malcolm, Sunday Telegraph "Mazower's elegant prose and meticulous eye for detail cut to the heart of the nature and effects of the occupation on Greek society and political life... With its rich historical detail, vivid accounts, its sheer scope and perceptiveness, it is a must for the professional historian and an eye-opener for the interested general reader." Spyros Economides, The European "A vivid picture of the German occupier's mind and actions... Mazower's arguments are always fair." Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times Book Review Winner of the 1994 Longman/History Today prize. Joint winner of the 1993 Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History."

Mark Almond, The Times
"Fascinating ... [Mazower] succeeds in getting under the skin of the occupation ... [This book] conjures up, in vivid detail, life under an occupation that had shattered old certainties and replaced them with painful choices, cynical compromises, and hopes undercut by the daily death toll."

Noel Malcolm, Sunday Telegraph
"This is the first thorough account in English of almost every aspect of life in Axis-occupied Greece. It draws on a mass of material, including Greek wartime newspapers and German military archives. All of this is absorbed into a highly readable narrative and illustrated with sometimes heartbreaking contemporary photographs."

Customer Reviews

Wonderful, illuminating, expert study
It's not appreciated very well outside Greece just how brutal the German occupation was. Greek society was turned upside down in a way that no country in western Europe experienced. This is by far the best English-language study of this traumatic episode in Greek history, but it is also one of the best studies of any Nazi-occupied country in the second world war.

Outstanding work..
Every Greek MUST STUDY this book.What can happen to a country when the winds of war sweep all aside,but the role of the various political factions and collaborators brought the total misery that was experienced in the period 1941 to 1950 and beyond. Greece was destroyed both by outsiders and locals alike and this book explores and relates all details. The true democratic character of the country was brutally supressed,first by the Germans and then by the "Allies". Greece did not achieve true democracy until AFTER 1981 when Papandreou was elected.The root causes of all misery that prevailed in Greece during Hitler's occupation were also responsible for the post war problems. This book tells all and a message should emerge from reading it.... for all Greeks "We have met the enemy and it is mostly us" Costas Spalaris

Interesting read but
Mazower describes the german occupation in Greece accurately and in detail. However, his position on the divisions produced in the greek society by the occupation is somewhat unbalanced and with a bias in favor of leftist/communist points of view. For example, it is dissapointing that the town of Meligalas is not mentioned at all in the book.