Europe: A History.

• Author: Hartley, Anthony

It is unusual for a standard work issued by the Oxford University Press to be obscured by a fog of controversy. Unfortunately, it has happened with Norman Davies' huge history of Europe - for reasons that are not always easily comprehensible. Admittedly, there were a certain number of errors and literals in the first edition (I am assured that corrections have been made in the second), but this is surely not sufficient reason for dismissing a work of great originality without even discussing its leading ideas or the novelty of its method. To do so is to open oneself to the charge of pedantry, or else of hostility for some unstated reason.

For instance, Professor Theodore K. Rabb of Princeton, in his review in the New York Times (December 1, 1996), describes how he abandoned in despair the enterprise of reading Davies' Europe. Since he seemed determined to restrict his critical scope to the noting of errors and literals, this is hardly surprising. It must indeed have been a discouraging task to read so long a book purely to spot mistakes, and without any realization of what the author was getting at. Nor are his lists of errors entirely accurate, as noted by Anne Applebaum in The New Criterion (May 1997). I am sure that Professor Rabb does not wish to be known as the pedant from Princeton, and would prefer, therefore, the conclusion that the reading of Davies' Europe has been too difficult for him. It would be a pity, however, if readers should follow his example, since, as Tim Blanning, professor of modern European history at Cambridge University, writes in the Times Literary Supplement (December 20, 1996), "Despite all these blemishes, it is a tremendous achievement, before which one must stand in admiration, if not awe."

The obvious absurdity of Professor Rabb's review leaves one puzzled. It is so clearly meant to be a "killing" review, and the emotion contained in it is far beyond the ordinary irritation caused by inadequate proofreading. Applebaum has sensed this too and puts it down to outrage at Davies' remarks on the Holocaust. The "worst" of them, it would appear, is that after describing in the same capsule the murderous anti-Jewish 1942 actions of German Reserve Police Battalion 101 at Otwock, Poland, and the 1944-45 actions against Germans of the mainly Jewish-staffed communist Security Office (UB) in Gliwice, Poland, Davies concludes, "In this light, it is difficult to justify the widespread practice whereby the murderers, the victims, and the bystanders of wartime Poland are each neatly identified with specific ethnic groups."

If umbrage over this capsule is indeed the main explanation for Rabb's hostility to Davies, it is strange that it has become increasingly difficult to comment broadly on these terrible happenings; immediately after the opening up of Auschwitz or Treblinka there was not such sensitivity. The Holocaust remains a mysterious event, one whose motives seem clear but which leaves much to be known about how ideology was translated into awful fact. It is also mysterious because it involves the...