Lara Feigel. (2016). The Bitter Taste of Victory: Life, Love, and Art in the Ruins of the Reich. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Lara Feigel. 2016. The Bitter Taste of Victory: Life, Love, and Art in the Ruins of the Reich. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Lara Feigel, The Bitter Taste of Victory: Life, Love, and Art in the Ruins of the Reich. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016.

Lara Feigel. The Bitter Taste of Victory: Life, Love, and Art in the Ruins of the Reich. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016.

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   • fileAs: Feigel, Lara
   • bioText: Lara Feigel is a Professor of Modern Literature and Culture at King's College London. She is the author of four previous works of non-fiction: Literature, Cinema and Politics, 1930-1945 (2009), The Love-charm of Bombs (2013), The Bitter Taste of Victory (2016) and, most recently, Free Woman (2018), as well as one novel, The Group (2020). She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and writes regularly for the Guardian and other publications. Lara lives in Oxfordshire.
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2016-05-17T00:00:00-04:00

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title

The Bitter Taste of Victory

fullDescription

When Germany surrendered in May 1945 it was a nation reduced to rubble. Immediately, America, Britain, Soviet Russia, and France set about rebuilding in their zones of occupation. Most urgent were physical needs—food, water, and sanitation—but from the start the Allies were also anxious to indoctrinate the German people in the ideas of peace and civilization.
Denazification and reeducation would be key to future peace, and the arts were crucial guides to alternative, less militaristic ways of life. In an extraordinary extension of diplomacy, over the next four years, many writers, artists, actors, and filmmakers were dispatched by Britain and America to help rebuild the country their governments had spent years bombing. Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, Marlene Dietrich, George Orwell, Lee Miller, W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Billy Wilder, and others undertook the challenge of reconfiguring German society. In the end, many of them became disillusioned by the contrast between the destruction they were witnessing and the cool politics of reconstruction.
While they may have had less effect on Germany than Germany had on them, the experiences of these celebrated figures, never before told, offer an entirely fresh view of post-war Europe. The Bitter Taste of Victory is a brilliant and important addition to the literature of World War II.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: Library Journal
   • content: Essential for those interested in postwar Germany; the impact World War II had on the arts; and the role that individuals such as filmmaker Billy Wilder, writer Martha Gellhorn, and actress Marlene Dietrich had in rebuilding Germany.
2. • premium: False
   • source: Wall Street Journal
   • content: [Feigel's] narrative is a fine balance of political insights, cultural observations and tabloid fodder . . . Feigel powerfully describes the destruction and suffering that these Americans and Brits confronted . . . The many private letters that Ms. Feigel cites proves to be particularly effective in capturing the artists' feeling and the mentality of the time. She also skilfully represents the predicament faced by these figures—and indeed by the civilized world
3. • premium: False
   • source: The Los Angeles Review of Books
   • content: Intelligent and moving . . . Feigel is excellent at defining the moral and intellectual distinctions between this group and other writers and filmmakers who were both more forgiving and more hopeful of German redemption . . . . She is an exceptional storyteller, braiding the chronicles of exiled writers with life back in Germany. And the move is an intelligent way of showing that postwar cultural history has to be considered in a transcontinental light. . . . Feigel's book is one of the most original recreations of postwar Germany we have.
4. • premium: False
   • source: Publishers Weekly
   • content: A well-constructed, fascinating, and anecdote-rich work about the early Cold War and the influence of postwar Germany on Western culture.
5. • premium: False
   • source: The Guardian
   • content: Artists and writers would help rehabilitate the country and its people—to cleanse its poisoned soul . . . Lara Feigel's absorbing book relives the era in all its uncertainty, and delves into the irreconcilable differences and contradictions that would come to thwart the project . . . She makes a sympathetic narrator, and has certainly unearthed some fascinating material.
6. • premium: False
   • source: The Independent
   • content: In her justly praised debut, The Love-charm of Bombs, Feigel braided five authors' lives in wartime London into a densely atmospheric tapestry of love, work, imagination and anguish under the shadow of the Blitz. Her second book repeats the method but expands the canvas . . . As in her first book, Feigel entwines politics and passion, the wide screen of history and the close-up of desire among the ruins . . . Always illuminating and richly textured.
7. • premium: False
   • source: Sunday Times
   • content: [Lara Feigel] has had the clever idea of exploring the country's plight through the eyes of writers, artists and intellectuals, mostly British and American, as well as German exiles such as Marlene Dietrich and the novelist Thomas Mann . . . Well researched and beautifully written.
8. • premium: False
   • source: Literary Review
   • content: The Bitter Taste of Victory is an ambitious book, ranging across a sea of events and characters and filled with enjoyable details.
9. • premium: False
   • source: Daily Telegraph
   • content: The most striking aspect of this story, recounted by Lara Feigel in her fine book, lies in the contrast between the stillness and slow time of Mann's exile and the hectic pace of life for the Allies in occupied Germany . . . The Bitter Taste of Victory is more than a
10. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      March 7, 2016
      In this colorful narrative, Feigel (The Love-charm of Bombs), a senior lecturer in English at King’s College, London, uses the lives of 20 American, British, and German cultural figures as a lens through which to examine post-WWII Germany, from the Nazis’ surrender to the early fall of 1949. Some of Feigel’s subjects are well known, such as novelist Thomas Mann, filmmaker Billy Wilder, and poet W.H. Auden; others, considerably less so, including photographer Lee Miller, journalist Martha Gellhorn, and novelist Rebecca West. Feigel is at her best in describing the immediate year after Germany’s defeat, when rubble was “spread for mile after mile, scattered with corpses,” and the occupiers treated civilians harshly. Vivid chapters address the Nuremberg Trials and the Berlin Airlift, and Feigel shows how the politics and sensibility of the early Cold War period led to a measure of growing Western sympathy for Germans and the abandonment of an in-depth denazification of German culture and society. Unfortunately, in her last three chapters, she focuses too heavily on Mann and his oldest children, Erika and Klaus; she also writes too little on life in the Soviet sector. Despite these flaws, this is a well-constructed, fascinating, and anecdote-rich work about the early Cold War and the influence of postwar Germany on Western culture.

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When Germany surrendered in May 1945 it was a nation reduced to rubble. Immediately, America, Britain, Soviet Russia, and France set about rebuilding in their zones of occupation. Most urgent were physical needs—food, water, and sanitation—but from the start the Allies were also anxious to indoctrinate the German people in the ideas of peace and civilization.
Denazification and reeducation would be key to future peace, and the arts were crucial guides to alternative, less militaristic ways of life. In an extraordinary extension of diplomacy, over the next four years, many writers, artists, actors, and filmmakers were dispatched by Britain and America to help rebuild the country their governments had spent years bombing. Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, Marlene Dietrich, George Orwell, Lee Miller, W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Billy Wilder, and others undertook the challenge of reconfiguring German society. In the end, many of them became disillusioned by the...

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