   Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War Two,
By Keith Lowe   In his memoir If This is a Man, the Italian
writer Primo Levi recalls that the most terrifying time for him
at Auschwitz was not the years of incarceration by the Nazis,
when beatings, hunger, back-breaking work and the threat of
murder were omnipresent. He came closest to despair during the
vacuum between the flight of the guards and the arrival of the
Red Army. This period, in which the prisoners were effectively
left to their own devices, was characterised by a complete
breakdown of all authority, however unjust, as well as the
system of supply. I was reminded of these passages when reading
Keith Lowe's Savage Continent: an excellent account of the two
years or so between the end of hostilities in Europe with the
defeat of Hitler, and the establishment of the Cold War order.
As the author points out, the Second World War did not end in
1945. In large parts of the continent, the contest lasted a lot
longer as Polish, Ukrainian,