Not to know what happened before one was born is always to be a child.

I found this Cicero quote on Lapham’s Quarterly’s about page. A little research dug out the supposedly original version found in Orator Ad M. Brutum (46 BC). It goes like this:

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?

The series was thus intended to be set against the general public hagiography of Sparta and its intended audience was what I’ve heard termed the ‘Sparta Bro’ – the person for whom the Spartans represent a positive example (indeed, often the pinnacle) of masculine achievement, often explicitly connected to roles in law enforcement, military service and physical fitness (the regularity with which that last thing is included is striking and suggests to me the profound unseriousness of the argument). […] In that light, I think the series holds up fairly well.

As a former 100% Sparta Bro, I qualified for the target audience. Paraphrasing Marx, one could say that ignorance is the opium of the people. Take 300 the movie. I’m glad I saw it as entirely ignorant of Sparta’s ‘real’ prowess, or most fun would have been spoiled.

Nelson is firm in her dissection of the source material. However, it can be a challenge to weave critical discussion of sources and fluid narrative, and at times this book leans a little on the dry side. Nelson does not speculate; she instead focuses on what we know or can be reasonably inferred from the sources. The downside is that some of the more exciting episodes from Charlemagne’s life are glossed over: the 792AD rebellion of Charlemagne’s eldest son, Pippin, receives only three pages of discussion, whereas Charlemagne’s canal-building project, which follows, receives double that. Personally, as a general reader rather than a historian, I would have preferred more on the “interesting bits” of Charlemagne’s reign, but a more academic reader may not mind.

Overall, this is an excellent biography, and I would recommend it to an informed reader. The scholarly attention to sources might deter the casual reader, but the motivated ones will take profit from the effort.

The book is merciless towards Hitler’s heirs and not accommodating at all towards Germans of that age in general. Reading the behaviors and things said in those days is gruesome. Under track are the horrible consequences of war and concentration camps. The resulting picture is that of the supreme horrors and mistakes that humanity can reach.

The text focuses on the protagonists of those days, the Nazi hierarchs (not just the most infamously well known) and their Allies and Red Army counterparts. There are few notable exceptions, like the story of Marlene Dietrich, already a Hollywood star, who served as an American army officer and returned to Germany to look for her sister lost in the fog of war. To her dismay, she found that her sister had prospered, cooperating and taking advance of the Nazi regime. Marlene bought her sisters’ silence, and for the rest of her life, fiercely negated the very own existence of a sister.

I found the part on the German population and its shocked, instinctive reaction to the regime’s fall particularly informative. The immediate turncoat of most, along with the lying denial of knowing anything about the atrocities.The disturbing (George Orwell’s word), immediate sympathy for the Allies. Also, the eulogy for the few who courageously conducted a desperate, clandestine and seemingly hopeless resistance within the Reich. It is especially relevant that the author is German.

This book leaves me stunned. It is always painful to read about that historical period. The millions of deaths. The suffering. The atrocities. We need to keep going back, walk the way over and over, never to forget, never to repeat. To that end, Eight Days in May is a book everyone should read.

By May 8, 1945, Germany was a humiliated, devastated country. Most major cities were annihilated, the economy had collapsed, and millions of people were reduced to hunger. The contrast with today’s Germany is mind-blowing. With the help of the winning countries, sure, but predominantly and undoubtedly thanks to grit and desire for rebirth, Germany resurged from the catastrophe as a modern country and a sought-out model for democracy, economy, justice, and reception of diverse cultures.