How do civilians come to grips with of the catastrophe of war? This is the all-too-timely question driving Peter Fritzsche's An Iron Wind: Europe under Hitler. Fritzsche's ninth historical monograph, An Iron Wind analyzes European civilians' “labor of comprehension and the struggle for meaning” during WWII (xii). This ambition, to capture civilians' intimate thoughts and experiences, has engaged a growing number of scholars of late, but Fritzsche brings a unique perspective, formidable scholarly expertise, and expert storytelling to the task. Moving away from grand narrative, Fritzsche illuminates the street view, synthesizing a tremendous number of accounts to recreate what Europeans heard, saw, and said. What caught the eye of the passersby on the metro, for instance? What conversations did they overhear in breadlines?
An Iron Wind draws as much attention to what Europeans did not see—that is, what they denied or rationalized away—as to what they did see. A central tension of the civilian experience (and of Fritzsche's study) was the need to articulate the trauma of war on the one hand and the inability to do so on the other (xiv, 311). He bookends his narrative with powerful statements about the inadequacy of language while highlighting the value of these broken, fragmented accounts. Fritzsche analyzes these texts primarily to uncover civilians' psychological and intellectual states. He gives less attention to his historical actors as authors who carefully crafted their depictions of war. Although he acknowledges that censorship and fear impact a text's authenticity, Fritzsche does not probe the gap between lived and written experience. At times, there is an implicit assumption that if his historical actors did not comment on a particular event, they either did not see it or were unmoved by it. In fact, there are multiple explanations for such silences. By the same token, genre does not noticeably inform Fritzsche's analysis. He treats letters, memoirs, diaries, and spoken speech using a similar set of analytical tools.
Indeed, Fritzsche does not disclose much about his analytical or theoretical apparatus, and this is likely because An Iron Wind targets a general audience. In light of this readership, Fritzsche also is less focused on bringing new archival sources to light than on weaving a rich tapestry of civilian voices and experiences for non-specialists. Still, even scholars of WWII will find themselves emotionally stirred by the stories Fritzsche produces and intellectually stimulated by his contributions to longstanding debates about collective responsibility, for instance, or indifference in the face of mass death.
This is an ambitious project to carry out in one volume. Naturally, Fritzsche made difficult choices when selecting regions and individuals to spotlight. An Iron Wind focuses on French, Polish, German, Swiss, and Jewish voices, and it highlights Paris and Warsaw as contrasting examples of German occupation. Fritzsche admits that this “leaves a great deal out” (xvii). Readers of Slavic Review will welcome his detailed treatment of the Polish experience, which quite aptly plays a central role in this story about civilians confronting inconceivable brutality. Readers may be more unsettled by how the text handles the Soviet Union, which—despite the author's decision not to cover it—is raised repeatedly in the monograph. Fritzsche whets the reader's appetite for a discussion of the Soviet war experience several times, such as in Chapter 5, “Journey to Russia.” That chapter offers German and Swiss views of the occupation of Smolensk but without giving voice to the occupied, say by using Laurie R. Cohen's published interviews with Smolensk survivors. Such voices seem especially important when discussing, as An Iron Wind does, German dehumanization of Soviet people, so that the Nazis' detached, indifferent view of them is not unintentionally replicated. Moreover, the monograph notes that Tolstoi and Dostoevskii often framed Europeans' interpretations of war and morality. Even the title, An Iron Wind, is drawn from Stalingrad (xiv). The text maintains an uneasy balance of mentioning but not treating Russian and Soviet experiences.
Nevertheless, a major contribution of this work is that it illuminates common concerns and attitudes of Europeans across the continent. Fritzsche manages to knit together the particular and the shared, providing new insight on European identity and the “European spirit” at a time when both were in peril. This sweeping, panoramic work successfully makes room for local stories told by civilians who were united, above all, in their struggle to make sense of the senseless. An Iron Wind captures the extraordinary experiences of ordinary people and masterfully tells their stories.
