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Kevin McDermott and Matthew Stibbe (eds), Stalinist Terror in Eastern Europe: Elite Purges and Mass Repression

merely as a ‘container of discourse’ (9). The main basis for Vaizey’s reconstruction is provided by research on letters sent between German soldiers and their families during World War Two. An estimated 30 to 40 million letters passed back and forth between the private sphere and the front. Far fewer have been archived. While recognizing some of the pitfalls of censored letters as a source, Vaizey argues that we can ‘witness the dialogue between men and their families as it unfurls on the page’ (11). Such material suggests that families were at the very heart of most people’s experience of war (150). In addition to the letters, she has collected material from diaries, contemporary sociological studies and postwar women’s magazines. What seems slightly strange is Vaizey’s decision not to cover ‘incomplete’ families or families in what became East Germany. She also ignores the extent to which the letters themselves were shaped by discourse. The letters are remarkable for their candour, but offer only thin slivers through which to see wartime relationships. Sustaining a long-distance relationship with loved ones was difficult and at times highly strained. Vaizey argues that ‘Wartime correspondence between husbands and wives gives us a wonderful insight into the intimate world of individual marriages’ (91). But there is more than a frisson of voyeurism in eavesdropping on these intimate exchanges. Recounting the horrific postwar conditions in great detail, Vaizey shows that most women did not feel liberated by the absence of men. Rather than a change in gender roles, above all what they wanted was the reinstatement of old ones (110). For many this meant a return to peacetime normality. In contrast to the discursive emphasis on the ‘crisis of the wartime family’, Vaizey stresses its resilience. Families pulled together to overcome adversity and despair. In essence, this book marks the beginning of an important debate about discourse. Not all of its arguments stand up to critique, but it provides a much-needed emphasis on ordinary human beings and on their struggle to sustain loving relationships amid unimaginable horror.