Une comédie des erreurs, 1943-1956 by René MassigliReview by: Fritz SternForeign Affairs, Vol. 57, No. 2 (Winter, 1978), p. 421Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20040149 .

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RECENT BOOKS 421

statesman as well as an exceptionally gifted observer. A major source for the years of Ostpolitik and a clue to his success in promoting Germany's full rehabilitation; well translated and highly readable.

FRAGMENTS OF ISABELLA: A MEMOIR OF AUSCHWITZ. By Isabella Leitner. New York: Crowell, 1978, 120 pp. $7.95.

As a young woman, Isabella Leitner was deported from Hungary to Ausch witz; the Nazis murdered her mother and one sister, but by unimaginable fortitude and will to survive she and her three other sisters dodged death. Her recollections make a sparse and searing book, fragments of remembered feelings and occurrences that evoke perhaps better than most works something unfathomable.

THE AMERICAN OCCUPATION OF GERMANY: RETREAT TO VIC TORY. By Edward N. Peterson. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1978, 376 pp. $18.95. U.S. OCCUPATION IN EUROPE AFTER WORLD WAR II. Edited by Hans A. Schmitt. Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1978, 172 pp. $11.00 (Paper, $6.95).

Author of a well-known book on the limits of Hitler's power, Peterson here contends, on the basis of impressive evidence, that U.S. occupation policies

were largely ineffectual and that we succeeded only when we turned power over to the Germans. "M.G. [Military Government] had little influence in assisting

German democracy ..." is one of his principal conclusions, arrived at in part by local studies of the American impact. Schmitt edited a symposium, held in 1976,

which discussed, with the help of leading actors of the time, the policies of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. vis-?-vis defeated Germany. Both works call to mind General Clay's outstanding role and personality and constitute an important and critical contribution to the study of the postwar era.

DIE USA UND DEUTSCHLAND, 1918-1975. By Manfred Knapp and others. Munich: Beck, 1978, 254 pp. DM. 19.80.

A brief survey by four German scholars of many aspects of German-American relations which, since 1917, have had a decisive bearing on world politics. Useful and informative, it is based in most instances on earlier, related monographs by these authors.

UNE COM?DIE DES ERREURS, 1943-1956. By Ren? Massigli. Paris: Pion, 1978,540 pp.

A French diplomat who began his service at the end of World War I records his activities from the moment he escaped to London in January 1943 and de Gaulle put him in charge of Free France's foreign affairs to his many years as

postwar Ambassador to London. A man of autonomous views, close to but

independent of de Gaulle, he argued for a European Confederation under the

aegis of a tight Anglo-French entente. His recital of the early postwar years and of the misadventure of the European Defense Community as well as his

judgment of persons and policies make this a major source for future histo rians?and a pleasure to read for anyone.

L'APR?S-GUERRE: NAISSANCE DE LA FRANCE MODERNE. By Paul Marie de La Gorce. Paris: Grasset, 1978, 525 pp. Fr. 75.

A well-known French writer reconstructs what he takes to have been the sorry decline from the hopes of Liberation to the internal divisions of the cold war. A

partisan of an independent, perhaps Gaullist, France, his evocation of the spirit of French politics and life from 1944 to 1952 is impressive; his bibliography

? by

its virtual omission of Anglo-American authors ?

suggests a perhaps sympto matic insularity.

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