London 1945

I've just completed London 1945 by Maureen Waller. If you expect a book about a triumphant city, rejoicing in its steadfastness and victory over fascism - think again! This book is chiefly a very detailed rendering of the miseries that afflicted Londoners at war's end. The catalogue of woes is long: rocket bombing by V-1 and V-2s that indiscriminately killed and maimed, housing shortages, food shortages, clothing shortages, rationing, rampant crime and corruption, limited personal hygiene (most Londoners bathed once a week - at most) and a government that seemed indifferent at times to the suffering of its civilian population. For example, the British government did not warn civilians - who had begun to return to London as the war neared its end in late 1944 - about the V-rocket attacks and suppressed most coverage of the bombings in order to deprive the Germans of potentially useful intelligence.

The book draws heavily on the experiences of ordinary people and offers sympathetic and illuminating information on the effects of the war on women and children and the difficulties of family reunification when Britain's soldiers returned home. At times, however, the detail is repetitive and excessive. There is also an illuminating discussion of the 1945 elections which decimated the Conservatives - led by Churchill - and brought the Labour party to power. Although this surprised many observers, the book makes it clear that it should not have. Churchill appears to have run a Red-baiting campaign which did nothing to address people's desire for a better life after the war and was heckled and booed at campaign stops in several London neighborhoods. Americans may be perplexed, however, that people who had been entangled in extensive government regulation of their lives during the war would turn to a party which advocated even more bureaucracy and regulation. Waller makes it clear that the vote was less an endorsement of Labour's socialist policies than a rebellion against a Conservative party which was felt to be out of touch with ordinary people and responsible for the country's lack of readiness for war.