The German Expellees: Victims in War and Peace by Alfred-Maurice De ZayasReview by: Fritz SternForeign Affairs, Vol. 72, No. 4 (Sep. - Oct., 1993), p. 164Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20045755 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 17:40

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Council on Foreign Relations is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to ForeignAffairs.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.28 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 17:40:35 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Recent Books

In examining de Gaulle's views on

French national security and his legacy, this book begins with a finely balanced

study of de Gaulle, acknowledging the

genuineness of his emotional commit

ment and his extraordinary political skill, which included his ability to convey the dictates of greatness to a people defeated

and distracted by the wars in Indochina and Algeria. The author complements the biographical material with a good survey of Gaullist elements in subsequent defense policies. He sees special relevance

for today, given that the post-Cold War

world?with the reassertion of nation

states, the end of ideology and the poten tial of a Europe from the Atlantic to the

Urals?seems to resemble de Gaulle's

vision. Well written and lucidly argued.

The German Expellees: Victims in War and

Peace, by alfred-maurice de

zayas. New York: St. Martin's Press,

1993,169 pp. $35.00. The author has for years been concerned

with the fate of millions of Germans who

in the final stages of Hitler's war became

victims?either by experiencing the ini

tial Soviet onslaught on German territo

ry, or as refugees caught in the "German

Hiroshima" (his reference to the Dresden

fire storm), or by expulsion from

Czechoslovakia and territories assigned to Poland. The book, with a brief gesture toward the history of the German pres ence in some of these lands, is mostly based on eyewitness accounts of atroci

ties. De Zayas, an American activist

trained in law and history, has written

other, more substantial books on this

chapter of wartime suffering. Notable

and, to my mind, regrettable is the

author's speculation with some measure

of sympathy that in some 10 or 20 years a

German government may wish to negoti ate with Poland "for a partial revision of

the Oder-Neisse frontier." Such a

thought would only alarm the Poles, inflame surviving expellees and yet fail to

benefit the original victims?almost all of

whom would be dead by then.

Western Hemisphere KENNETH MAXWELL

Fidel Castro, by Robert e. quirk. New

York: W. W. Norton and Company,

1993, 800 pp. $35.00. Cuba After the Cold War. edited by

Carmelo mesa-lago. Pittsburgh

(PA): University of Pittsburgh Press, i993> 352 pp. $39-95 (paper, $16.95).

Robert Quirk, a professor of history emeritus at Indiana University, concludes

his very long and well-written book on

Cuba with the observation that Fidel

Castro has ".. . become irrelevant. He

had stayed too long .. .

history had

passed him by." But Fulgencio Batista said much the same thing in 1957, an<^

Quirk, like Castro, seems at a loss to

know how to conclude his work as it

marches self-confidently toward the late

1980s, only to confront what Quirk sees

as a mortal crisis caused by the collapse of

the communist regimes in Eastern

Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Quirk's book is very much a narrative

history of the old school and as such pro vides a useful summary of Castro's rise to

power and actions in government. But, as

is characteristic of this genre, it presumes

[164] FOREIGN AFFAIRS-Volume 72 N0.4

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.28 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 17:40:35 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions