Prisoners of History

October 12, 2020
Historian Lowe (Savage Continent) examines WWII monuments around the world in this thought-provoking survey. “Hero” monuments, such as the Douglas MacArthur Landing Memorial in the Philippines, are less about historical reality than “our mythological idea of what it means to be a hero,” according to Lowe. The “comfort woman” statue in Seoul, South Korea (officially known as the Peace Statue), shows how “martyr” monuments can be politicized, while the destruction of Hitler’s bunker in Berlin “feels like an exercise in denial.” Ridicule might be a better way to deal with the “monsters of our past,” Lowe suggests, describing a Lithuanian sculpture park where busts of Communist leaders have been enclosed in a llama pen. Lowe also reflects on visions of “apocalypse” and “rebirth” in WWII memorials, including the balcony at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, which offers visitors a “remarkably soothing” view of the Judean hills after they’ve gone through exhibits on the horrors of the Holocaust. Lowe’s nuanced readings of these and other monuments support his argument that they should be protected from the whims of “contemporary politics.” (He notes that anti-USSR sentiment has brought down monuments to WWII heroes in Eastern Europe.) The result is a perceptive and persuasive call for remembering the tragedies and triumphs of the past.

October 15, 2020
The stories behind national monuments around the world, but definitely not a travel book. Lowe divides his 25 chapters into five categories: heroes, martyrs, villains, destruction, and rebirth. He emphasizes how many show that "every society deceives itself that its values are eternal." However, he continues, "when the world changes, our monuments--and the values that they represent--remain frozen in time." Most readers will recognize the Arlington, Virginia, memorial of Marines raising the American flag at Iwo Jima, a replica of the famous photograph. They may not recognize The Motherland Calls! a colossal female figure representing Mother Russia, sword raised, beckoning her children to fight. Nearly twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty and absurdly grandiose anywhere else, it's appropriate to celebrate the titanic 1942 Battle of Stalingrad. Lowe's "villain" examples may rightly raise some hackles. Germany and Japan committed unspeakable atrocities, but only postwar Germany handled the guilt properly by apologizing continually and never making excuses. When pressed, Japan's leaders express regret, but, unlike the case with Germany, many of her neighbors do not forgive her. Readers may fume at Lowe's account of the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, a memorial to war dead, including its convicted war criminals, and even to the Kenpeitai, the brutal Japanese Gestapo. Among monuments to destruction is the village of Oradour-sur-Glane in France, left vacant after the Nazis murdered its inhabitants. Japanese atomic bomb memorials vividly portray the horrors but treat the bombings as natural disasters similar to earthquakes, rarely mentioning more than abstract concepts such as war and suffering. Few monuments escape Lowe's critical eye. For example, the mural adorning the U.N. Security Council Chamber in New York is "hopelessly dated" and even "cartoonish." Other monuments of note include Auschwitz, Mussolini's Tomb, and the Liberation Route Europe. Insightful accounts of memorials where there is usually more than meets the eye.

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November 13, 2020

Monuments reflect values at the time they were erected, but, with time, values change. On the 75th anniversary of the close of World War II, Lowe (Savage Continent) looks at several monuments in 16 countries, from the United States and Britain to Russia, Slovenia, Germany, South Korea, China, and Japan. Among the monuments included are statues, shrines, tombs, a whole ghost town, an amusement park, and a continent-wide hiking trail. Asking readers to reflect on who is considered a hero and who is considered a martyr, Lowe's narrative analyzes artifacts such as a monument in Budapest that ignores Hungarian complicity in killings and slights the real victims, Hungary's Jews. The Peace Statue in Seoul shows a seated woman, a "comfort women," one of thousands forced into prostitution by Japanese forces. The statue faces the Japanese embassy in Seoul, witness to an infamy never fully acknowledged by the Japanese government. In evaluating a Lithuanian amusement park where a statue of Joseph Stalin is a tourist draw, Lowe wisely lets the monuments speak for themselves, but what he says is uniformly insightful. Maps and photographs add context. VERDICT An insight into World War II that will appeal mostly to military enthusiasts and those interested in social history.--David Keymer, Cleveland

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