Reviews for Independent Bohemia

The average rating for Independent Bohemia based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-02-09 00:00:00 Lawrence Austin Roper has a vague idea of the story. But nothing more clear. In short this book rehashes the conspiracy theory existing in the Romanian books and spices things up with the Communist Party Propaganda. Stumbled upon this and examined some parts of the book closer. Roper isn't aware that the PCR started in 1965 and gives the actions of PMR to the PCR which exists before 1944 in his documentation. Also, as noted above, Roper makes a story out of facts he does not grasp. Ex. p. 20 where he talks about Dej's personal campaign for industrialization. Only Marx, and later Lenin were exclusively concerned with the proletarians, the factory workers. In the case of peasants the gospel is silent and when the peasants cling to the private ownership of the land they are exterminated. In the case of Romania, there were almost no proletarians, and most of the population was peasant, so Dej had no other option than covert the population to proletarians so he could follow the guides. Also Roper does not seem to be away that there were three warring factions within the PMR, not two.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-05-20 00:00:00 Gary Puszakowski General (later Marshal) Ion Antonescu was the leader of Romania from 1940 to 1944. Taking over the government from the incompetent King Carol II, Antonescu was put between rock and hard places. Recently, Romania just lost its territories of Bessarabia to Soviet Union. Unlike Finland, who at least put up resistance and earned sympathies from democratic powers that became understandable reason to its cooperation with Nazi Germany, Carol chose not to fight, making its decision to align to Axis branded as traitorous opportunism. Romania itself was vital to Axis' war effort. It was the fourth largest military power in the Axis, and its oil fields fueled German war machines in its drive to Soviet Union. Marshal Antonescu, and his regime by extension, was ambiguous at best. Was he a fascist? Evidently, while he rose to power by the support of fascist Iron Guards, he ended up tossing them away by the next year. A furious antisemite himself, yet he often heard and took action after numerous pleas from jewish communities. He was responsible, though, for jewish persecutions, massacres and deportations within Romania, yet stopped short on participating in Hitler's 'final solution', preferring to evacuate remaining Jewish community to Palestine instead. As a political football, his reputation within Romania is also ambiguous, from traitor to saint, he was branded. For me, I also choose to put Antonescu within those gray area, with people who don't have much of a choice within their times and places. Overall, this book is an interesting one, that discusses reasons for Axis-aligned countries to align themselves with Germany, as shown by Antonescu's Romania.