Synopses & Reviews
Wendy Lowerand#8217;s stunning account of the role of German women on the World War II Nazi eastern front powerfully revises history, proving that we have ignored the reality of womenand#8217;s participation in the Holocaust, including as brutal killers. The long-held picture of German women holding down the home front during the war, as loyal wives and cheerleaders for the Fand#252;hrer, pales in comparison to Lowerand#8217;s incisive case for the massive complicity, and worse, of the 500,000 young German women she places, for the first time, directly in the killing fields of the expanding Reich.
Hitlerand#8217;s Furies builds a fascinating and convincing picture of a morally and#8220;lost generationand#8221; of young women, born into a defeated, tumultuous postand#8211;World War I Germany, and then swept up in the nationalistic fervor of the Nazi movementand#8212;a twisted political awakening that turned to genocide. These young womenand#8212;nurses, teachers, secretaries, wives, and mistressesand#8212;saw the emerging Nazi empire as a kind of and#8220;wild eastand#8221; of career and matrimonial opportunity, and yet could not have imagined what they would witness and do there. Lower, drawing on twenty years of archival and field work on the Holocaust, access to post-Soviet documents, and interviews with German witnesses, presents overwhelming evidence that these women were more than and#8220;desk murderersand#8221; or comforters of murderous German men: that they went on and#8220;shopping spreesand#8221; for Jewish-owned goods and also brutalized Jews in the ghettos of Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus; that they were present at killing-field picnics, not only providing refreshment but also taking their turn at the mass shooting. And Lower uncovers the stories, perhaps most horrific, of SS wives with children of their own, whose female brutality is as chilling as any in history.
Hitlerand#8217;s Furies will challenge our deepest beliefs: genocide is womenand#8217;s business too, and the evidence can be hidden for seventy years.
Review
Tony Judt “For over a decade in the middle of twentieth century, the lands between Russia and Germany were the killing fields of Europe. Tens of millions of civilians from Poland to Ukraine, Lithuania to Belarus were starved, beaten, shot and gassed to death by the authorities and armies of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. We think we know this story and we assign it shorthand labels: Auschwitz, the Gulag. But neither the concentration camps (which were mostly not death camps) nor the Soviet network of labor camps in Siberia (from which many survived) were representative of the worst crimes committed in these years. Jews were without question the supreme victim (and in the Nazi case, the dominant target); but there were many other victims with whom western readers are far less familiar. Without a better grasp of the scale and breadth of the suffering experienced in these lands, we cannot hope to appreciate the true impact of the twentieth century.
“In his path-breaking and often courageous study of Europe’s ‘bloodlands,’ Tim Snyder shows how very much more complicated the story was. His account of the methods and motives of murderous regimes, both at home and in foreign war, will radically revise our appreciation of the implications of mass extermination in the recent past. Bloodlands – impeccably researched and appropriately sensitive to its volatile material – is the most important book to appear on this subject for decades and will surely become the reference in its field.”
Review
Kirkus, Starred Review “A chillingly systematic study of the mass murder mutually perpetrated by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany…. A significant work of staggering figures and scholarship.”Professor Norman Davies, F.B.A., author of Europe: A History:“Nearly seventy years after VE-Day, World War Two continues to be perceived through a narrow Western perspective, and many basic problems about the war of 1939-45 remain unresolved. In Bloodlands – which refers to the huge belt of territory between Germany and Russia – Timothy Snyder examines the little known tract of the European continent that was scourged by Stalin as well as Hitler, and reaches some disturbing conclusions. Combining formidable linguistic and detective skills with a fine sense of impartiality, he tackles vital questions which have deterred less courageous historians: Where and when were the largest casualties inflicted? Who were the perpetrators, and which ethnic and national groups were victimized? How can one calculate and verify the numbers? This is a book which will force its readers to rethink history.” Christopher R. Browning, Frank Porter Graham Professor of History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill:“Historians of Nazi Germany have analyzed Hitler’s war of destruction in the East, Final Solution, and vast racial revolution and colonization project outlined in the Generalplan Ost. Historians of the Soviet Union have analyzed Stalin’s collectivization, Great Terror, Gulag archipelago, deportation and exile of mistrusted minorities, and rapid sovietization of newly-annexed territories on the western border. In both cases the focus has been more often on the politics and decision-making of the dictatorships than on the fate of their victims. The stunning contribution of Tim Snyder’s book is to present a synthetic account by an East European historian in which the focus is on the geographic zone where the lethal policies of Hitler and Stalin interacted, overlapped, and mutually escalated one another. As Snyder vividly demonstrates, their combined impact on the people living in the ‘bloodlands’ was quite simply the greatest man-made demographic catastrophe and human tragedy in European history.” Tony Judt, author of Postwar and Ill Fares the Land“For over a decade in the middle of twentieth century, the lands between Russia and Germany were the killing fields of Europe. Tens of millions of civilians from Poland to Ukraine, Lithuania to Belarus were starved, beaten, shot and gassed to death by the authorities and armies of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. We think we know this story and we assign it shorthand labels: Auschwitz, the Gulag. But neither the concentration camps (which were mostly not death camps) nor the Soviet network of labor camps in Siberia (from which many survived) were representative of the worst crimes committed in these years. Jews were without question the supreme victim (and in the Nazi case, the dominant target); but there were many other victims with whom western readers are far less familiar. Without a better grasp of the scale and breadth of the suffering experienced in these lands, we cannot hope to appreciate the true impact of the twentieth century.“In his path-breaking and often courageous study of Europe’s ‘bloodlands,’ Tim Snyder shows how very much more complicated the story was. His account of the methods and motives of murderous regimes, both at home and in foreign war, will radically revise our appreciation of the implications of mass extermination in the recent past. Bloodlands – impeccably researched and appropriately sensitive to its volatile material – is the most important book to appear on this subject for decades and will surely become the reference in its field.” Jewish Book World
“Snyder’s book forces us to framethe Holocaust within a wider landscape ofgenocidal policies by both the Nazis and theSoviets without diminishing the uniquenessof Hitler’s war against the Jews.”
Policy Review “Surveying a time and subject that has been studied, dramatized, and argued about perhaps more thoroughly than any other in history, Bloodlands is an incredibly original work. It seeks to redirect our understanding of the Holocaust as primarily an eastern phenomenon, and one which took place among a spate of mass killing policies…. With this magisterial book, [Snyder] has rendered the Holocaust, and the horrors that preceded and accompanied it, their rightful place.” Michigan War Studies Review “Bloodlands, is in a class of its own, a real blockbuster that profoundly reconfigures our understanding of World War II and the 1930s…. [A] triumph of measured writing and sound judgment…. The story is brilliantly accessible—clear, compelling, lively, and sparkling with insights…. Bloodlands is the perfect companion for the scholar and student of mid-twentieth-century Europe. Accessible and extraordinarily comprehensive, it will be widely read and cited as the standard work.” Concord Monitor“[A]n important, carefully researched and compelling story, well told…. The numbers and the narrative are gripping. But Snyder's great strength is bringing home the humanity that was being destroyed.” Deseret Morning News “[Bloodlands] brilliantly examines how government policies in Berlin and Moscow led to unimaginable suffering and death for millions in Eastern Europe…. Throughout Bloodlands, Snyder brings a considerable intelligence to bear as he deftly illustrates the horror and misery of the Nazi and Soviet systems in their quest for social perfection.” The Jewish Daily Forward“Bloodlands…reassure[s] us that the pursuit of authentic Holocaust consciousness is still flourishing in the scholarly community, with no end in sight.” The Polish Review “Many books are useful; a handful can be called important; Bloodlands does no less than change the way we think of 20th century history, and of the deadly human cost of the totalitarian utopianism that was among its most distinctive characteristics…. Bloodlands is a wrenching, enlightening, moving, and intellectually challenging examination of the most compelling and painful topic of 20th century history. Few who study it carefully will be able to forget Timothy Snyder’s masterly autopsy of the fourteen million times one human being’s destroyed in the name of the totalitarian dystopia.” Slavic Review “[A]mbitious…. Bloodlands seeks to fit the Holocaust into an appropriate historical context by examining the struggle between the Third Reich and the USSR from the perspective of the civilian populations caught in between.”
Review
Fareed Zakaria GPS, Book of the Weekand#147;If you want to understand the real history of what is going on between Ukraine and Russia and the West, you have to read this harrowing history. Between 1943 and 1945, 14 million people died in Eastern Europe, killed by Stalin or Hitler. Snyder explains why and how this part of the world became the 20th centuryand#8217;s hell hole.and#8221;
New York Times Book Review
and#147;Timothy Snyderand#133;compels us to look squarely at the full range of destruction committed first by Stalinand#8217;s regime and then by Hitlerand#8217;s Reich. Each fashioned a terrifying orgy of deliberate mass killing.... Snyder punctuates his comprehensive and eloquent account with brief glimpses of individual victims, perpetrators and witnesses.and#8221;
The New Republic, Editorsand#8217; Picks: Best Books of 2010
and#147;Between 1933 and 1945, 14 million people were murdered in Eastern Europe. Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin catalogues how, where, and why these millions died. The cumulative effect makes you reconsider every aspect of modern Europe and World War II. Along the way, Snyder achieves something more vital: he wrests back some human dignity for those who died, without treating them solely as victims.and#8221;
and#160;
Washington Post
and#147;Snyderand#8217;s research is careful and thorough, his narrative powerful.... By including Soviet with German mass atrocities in his purview, Timothy Snyder begins the necessary but as yet still taboo examination of the full depravity of total war as it was practiced in the 20th century, before the advent of nuclear weapons foreclosed it.and#8221;
and#160;
The Economist, Books of the Year
and#147;How Stalin and Hitler enabled each otherand#8217;s crimes and killed 14m people between the Baltic and the Black Sea. A lifetimeand#8217;s work by a Yale University historian who deserves to be read and reread.and#8221;
The Financial Times
and#147;[A] superb and harrowing history.... Snyder presents material that is undeniably fresh and#150; whatand#8217;s more, it comes from sources in languages with which very few western academics are familiar. The success of Bloodlands really lies in its effective presentation of cold, hard scholarship, which is in abundance.and#8221;
and#160;
Ian Thomson, Telegraph (UK)
and#147;In this scrupulously researched history.... Snyder does not argue for a supposed moral equivalence between Hitlerand#8217;s extermination of the Jews and the earlier Stalinist extermination of the kulaks. On the contrary, the industrial exploitation of corpses and their ashes was a uniquely Hitlerian atrocityand#151;a unique instance of human infamy. Nevertheless, this is the first book in English to explore both German and Soviet mass killings together. As a history of political mass murder, Bloodlands serves to illuminate the political sickness that reduced 14 million people to the status of non-persons.and#8221;
Samuel Moyn, The Nation
and#147;Snyder is perhaps the most talented younger historian of modern Europe working today. Astonishingly prolific, he grounds his work in authoritative mastery of the facts, mining tomes of information in multiple languages and brilliantly synthesizing his findings. At the very least, Bloodlands is valuable for its astounding narrative integration of a gruesome era of European history.... A preternaturally gifted prose stylist, [Snyder] strives for a moral urgency appropriate to his depressing topics, and he rarely succumbs to bathos.... [B]y any measure Bloodlands is a remarkable, even triumphant accomplishment.and#8221;
and#160;
Istvan Deak, The New Republic
and#147;[A] genuinely shattering report on the ideology, the political strategy, and the daily horror of Soviet and Nazi rule in the region that Timothy Snyder calls the bloodlands.... Timothy Snyder did archival research in English, German, Yiddish, Czech, Slovak, Polish, Belorussian, Ukrainian, Russian, and French. His learning is extraordinary. His vivid imagination leads him to see combinations, similarities, and general trends where others would see only chaos and confusion.... This is an important book. I have never seen a book like it.and#8221;
and#160;
The Economist
and#147;[G]ripping and comprehensive.... Mr. Snyderand#8217;s book is revisionist history of the best kind: in spare, closely argued prose, with meticulous use of statistics, he makes the reader rethink some of the best-known episodes in Europeand#8217;s modern historyand#133;. Even those who pride themselves on knowing their history will find themselves repeatedly brought up short by his insights, contrasts and comparisons.... Mr. Snyderand#8217;s scrupulous and nuanced book steers clear of the sterile, sloganising exchanges about whether Stalin was as bad as Hitler, or whether Soviet mass murder in Ukraine or elsewhere is a moral equivalent of the Nazisand#8217; extermination of the Jews. What it does do, admirably, is to explain and record. Both totalitarian empires turned human beings into statistics, and their deaths into a necessary step towards a better future. Mr. Snyderand#8217;s book explains, with sympathy, fairness and insight, how that happened, and to whom.and#8221;
and#160;
Anne Applebaum, New York Review of Books
and#147;[A] brave and original history of mass killing in the twentieth century.... Snyderand#8217;s original contribution is to treat all of these episodesand#151;the Ukrainian famine, the Holocaust, Stalinand#8217;s mass executions, the planned starvation of Soviet POWs, postwar ethnic cleansingand#151;as different facets of the same phenomenon. Instead of studying Nazi atrocities or Soviet atrocities separately, as many others have done, he looks at them together. Yet Snyder does not exactly compare the two systems either. His intention, rather, is to show that the two systems committed the same kinds of crimes at the same times and in the same places, that they aided and abetted one another, and above all that their interaction with one another led to more mass killing than either might have carried out alone.and#8221;
Wall Street Journal
"Bloodlands does what every truly important book should: It makes us see the world differently.and#8221;
Review
The Wall Street Journal “The story of World War II, like that of most wars, usually gets told by the victors. Diplomatic and military accounts are set largely in the West and star the morally upright Allies—the U.S., Britain and Soviet Union—in battles against fascism. The Holocaust gets its own separate history, as a case apart in its genocidal intent and human tragedy. Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin forces a dramatic shift in these perceptions…. Among his other goals in Bloodlands, Mr. Snyder attempts to put the Holocaust in context—to restore it, in a sense, to the history of the wider European conflict. This is a task that no historian can attempt without risking controversy. Yet far from minimizing Jewish suffering, Bloodlands gives a fuller picture of the Nazi killing machine.”Guardian (London)“[Bloodlands] modifies our view of this appalling period. . . . Snyder insists that the colossal atrocities in his ‘bloodlands’ have to be set inside a single historical frame. To look at them separately – for instance, to see Hitler’s crimes as ‘so great as to stand outside history’, or Stalin’s as a monstrous device to achieve modernisation – is to let the two dictators ‘define their own works for us’. . . .This book’s unforgettable account of the Ukraine famine shows conclusively that Stalin knew what was happening in the countryside and chose to let it run its course. . . . The figures are so huge and so awful that grief could grow numb. But Snyder, who is a noble writer as well as a great researcher, knows that. He asks us not to think in those round numbers.” The Sunday Times (London)“This is a superb work of scholarship, full of revealing detail, cleverly compiled from a number of previously little-known sources, and in places beautifully written…. He searched hidden archives in five countries and judiciously mined unknown memoirs and diaries. . . . Snyder does justice to the horror of his subject through the power of his storytelling.” Foreign Affairs“[A] magisterial work…. Snyder’s account is engaging, encyclopedic.” David Denby, The New Yorker“[A] stunning book…. Certainly, we need to know everything, understand everything, feel everything. Snyder’s book, by making an original account of the period in copious detail laid out in sombrely blunt declarative sentences, should expand these three faculties in anyone who engages its grim but lucid exposition.” Washington Times“Statistics are an important part of Mr. Snyder’s narrative, but he does not forget that every number was once a human being…. This book is a grim but important read.” Seattle Times“To us in the West, the horrors of World War II are associated with the names of Auschwitz, Iwo Jima and Hiroshima. Without denying the significance of these places, Snyder, an immensely talented historian at Yale University, radically alters our understanding of the mass murder that went on during these years by showing in convincing fashion where and how most victims met their end. Bloodlands overflows with startling facts and revelations…. In a conclusion that should be required reading for all, Snyder addresses the moral questions raised by this murderous history with insight and recognition of the shades of culpability that make it difficult at times to neatly separate victims from perpetrators. He also shines much-needed light on the dangers of ‘competitive martyrology’ of the recent past, as the nations of the bloodlands have tried to claim greatest victim status.” Stephen Howe, Independent (UK), Book of the Year“For deliberate mass murder, Hitler and Stalin still stand unsurpassed. Although we have long possessed vast stores of knowledge about their crimes, it may be that we still misunderstand their character and extent—not least because we fail to see how the two great dictatorships interacted. We miss the significance of where, between the mid-1930s and the mid-1940s, the worst horrors took place: Poland, western Russia, and what are now Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic republics. So argues Timothy Snyder in Bloodlands, which seeks persuasively and movingly to offer a new interpretive framework for the nightmare of Europe’s mid-20th century.” BBC History Magazine (UK)“A talented historian and an accomplished storyteller, [Snyder] expertly negotiates an extremely complex story, debunking myths, correcting misconceptions and providing context, analysis and human interest in equal measure, always with a sympathetic ear for the victims themselves.... Bloodlands is an excellent, authoritative and imaginative book, which tells the grim story of the greatest human demographic tragedy in European history with exemplary clarity. Snyder set out to give a human face to the many millions of victims of totalitarianism. He has succeeded admirably.” The Wichita Eagle
“Snyder has written a painstakingly researched book which manages to strike a balance between superb scholarship and gut-churning drama. To say that the horrors depicted in this book demand a strongly gifted storyteller is an understatement. By combing archives, depicting the victims as individuals and not numbers or statistics, and by exposing the interior motives of both Hitler and Stalin, Snyder has produced a unique work, something brand-new, riveting and monumental.”
Review
The Boston Globe “Part of the freshness of Bloodlands is that it flips around our traditional viewpoint on the Second World War and the years that led up to it: Instead of seeing the conflict from the top down, as a struggle between powers, it begins with the perspective of the victims and those who were closest to the murder.”Slate“[A] groundbreaking new book about Hitler’s and Stalin’s near-simultaneous genocides…. Certainly one’s understanding of both Stalinism and human nature will be woefully incomplete until one does read Snyder’s pages.” Adam Hochschild, Harper’s Magazine“[M]eticulously researched…. [A]s a corrective to our usual picture of the period, Bloodlands is immensely valuable…. [A] forceful and important lesson in historical geography.” Globe & Mail“A must-read for anyone interested in the history of Eastern Europe.” Michael Savage, New York Times bestselling author and host of The Michael Savage Show“[T]he most definitive book ever written on the atrocities of Hitler and Stalin…It’s one of the most shocking books I have ever read in my life…written by a genius, Timothy Snyder, professor of history at Yale. This is a really amazing book…I thought I’d seen it all, heard it all—I didn’t.” Adam Kirsch, Tablet“[An] important new history…. One of Snyder’s major achievements in Bloodlands is to preserve this sense of the singularity of Jewish experience, even while showing its complex relationship to the terrible experiences of the peoples among whom Jews lived.... The relationship between Jews and Communism is probably the most explosive of all the subjects Snyder addresses, and here he benefits most from the strengths he shows throughout the book—deep learning, wide compassion, and clear, careful moral judgment.... [A]nyone who wants to fully comprehend the Holocaust—at least, as far as it can be comprehended—should read Bloodlands, which shows how much evil had to be done in order to make the ultimate evil possible.” National Review Online “In page after grueling page, Snyder depicts the pogrom that erupted across the Bloodlands. After all these years, after all the histories, there are still details that appall…. In an interesting twist, Snyder reveals how the usual Western understanding of the Holocaust, centered on the almost clinical danse macabre of deportation and eventual extermination in a camp far from Paris, Amsterdam, or Rome, fails to reflect the more typical experience to the east.” Maclean’s (Toronto)“[A] masterful history…. Snyder forces many of us to change the way we understand the Second World War.” Booklist“Solid and judicious scholarship.” Timothy Garton Ash, Professor of European Studies, University of Oxford, and author of The File
“Timothy Snyder has written a nuanced, original and penetrating analysis of Europe’s twentieth century killing fields between Russia and Germany, drawing on many little-known sources. History of a high order, Bloodlands may also point us towards lessons for our own time.”
Review
Choice
“[A] popular history of the highest order. Not only does Snyder effectively relate the motivations behind Stalin’s and Hitler’s crimes, but he also exhibits a capable eye for the telling detail. The numerous stories of individuals who suffered in the ‘bloodlands’ humanize the carnage perpetrated in the name of the Stalinist and National Socialist ideologies. This is, perhaps, Snyder’s most noteworthy accomplishment.”American Diplomacy“[A] brilliant, profoundly unsettling volume…. [Bloodlands is] so tempting to put down because of the tragedies it describes, [but] so impossible to dismiss because of its revelations.”
Review
and#8220;
Hitlers Furies will be experienced and remembered as a turning point in both womenand#8217;s studies and Holocaust studies.and#8221;and#8212;Timothy Snyder, author of
Bloodlands and#8220;Hitler's Furies is the first book to follow the biographical trajectories of individual women whose youthful exuberance, loyalty to the Fand#252;hrer, ambition, and racism took them to the deadliest sites in German-occupied Europe.and#160; Drawing on immensely rich source material, Wendy Lower integrates women perpetrators and accomplices into the social history of the Third Reich, and illuminates them indelibly as a part of post-war East and West German memory that has been, until this book, unmined.and#8221;and#8212;Claudia Koonz, author of Mothers in the Fatherland
and#8220;Hitlerand#8217;s Furies is a long overdue and superb addition to the history of the Holocaust.and#160;and#160; The role of women perpetrators during the Final Solution has been too much glossed over.and#160; Wendy Lowerand#8217;s book provides an important and stunning corrective.and#160;and#160; It is a significant addition to our understanding of the role of ordinary Germans in the Reichand#8217;s genocide.and#8221;and#8212;Deborah Lipstadt, author of Eichmann on Trial
and#8220;Lower shifts away from the narrow focus on the few thousand female concentration camp guards who have been at the center of previous studies of female culpability in Nazi crimes and identifies the cluster of professionsand#8212;nurses, social workers, teachers, office workersand#8212;that in addition to family connections brought nearly one-half million women to the German East and into close proximity with pervasive Nazi atrocities.and#160; Through the lives of carefully-researched individuals, she captures a spectrum of career trajectories and behavior.and#160; This is a book that artfully combines the study of gender with the illumination of individual experience.and#8221;and#8212;Christopher R. Browning, author of Ordinary Men
"A virtuosic feat of scholarship." -- Kirkus Reviews
"Lower sheds some much-needed light on an aspect of WWII history that has remained in the shadows for decades . . . Surprising and deeply unsettling, the book is a welcome addition to the literature on the Holocaust.and#8221; -- Booklist
"Intriguing and chilling . . . feminism run amok." -- Chicago Tribune "Disquieting . . . Ms. Lowerand#8217;s book is partly the study of a youthquake . . . Earlier books about the Holocaust have offered up poster girls of brutality and atrocity . . .[Lowerand#8217;s] insight is to track more mundane lives, and to argue for a vastly wider complicity." -- New York Times "Well-researched . . . as gripping and eye-opening as it is chilling." -- People "The triumph of Lowerand#8217;s book is its meticulous biographical impulse. Nothing gets muffled in social science, and by tracing the lives of a dozen or so women, Lower brings out the uniqueness of their stories and the gray areas...This measured judgment gives Lowerand#8217;s documentation its power. Hitlerand#8217;s Furies is above all a brave book. It is brave in forcing from the archives a story that no one wanted to tell. It is brave as well in its willingness to imagine women lashing out with the same murderous will and rage as men." -- New Republic "Compelling . . . Lower brings to the forefront an unexplored aspect of the Holocaust." -- Washington Post "Hitlerand#8217;s Furies is an unsettling but significant contribution to our understanding of how nationalism, and specifically conceptions of loyalty, are normalized, reinforced, and regulated. By asking important questions about the pervasive culpability of Nazi women, Lower has highlighted a historical blind spot." -- Los Angeles Review of Books
Synopsis
Americans call the Second World War and#147;The Good War.and#8221; But before it even began, Americaand#8217;s wartime ally Josef Stalin had killed millions of his own citizensand#151;and kept killing them during and after the war. Before Hitler was finally defeated, he had murdered six million Jews and nearly as many other Europeans. At warand#8217;s end, both the German and the Soviet killing sites fell behind the iron curtain, leaving the history of mass killing in darkness.
Bloodlands is a new kind of European history, presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of a single history, in the time and place where they occurred: between Germany and Russia, when Hitler and Stalin both held power. Assiduously researched, deeply humane, and utterly definitive, Bloodlands will be required reading for anyone seeking to understand the central tragedy of modern history.
Synopsis
"The most important work of history for years." --Antony Beevor, Telegraph, Book of the Year
Americans think of World War II as the "Good War." But his view overlooks the horrors perpetrated by America's own ally, the Soviet Union. In deliberate killing policies carried out over twelve years, the Soviet and Nazi regimes killed 14 million people in a zone of death between Berlin and Moscow. At war's end, these bloodlands fell behind the iron curtain, leaving their history in darkness. In Bloodlands, acclaimed historian Timothy Snyder offers an assiduously researched, deeply humane, and utterly definitive account of this central tragedy of modern history.
Synopsis
From the bestselling author of On Tyranny, the brutal story of the 14 million civilians killed in death zone between Germany and Russia in World War Two Americans call the Second World War "The Good War."But before it even began, America's wartime ally Josef Stalin had killed millions of his own citizens--and kept killing them during and after the war. Before Hitler was finally defeated, he had murdered six million Jews and nearly as many other Europeans. At war's end, both the German and the Soviet killing sites fell behind the iron curtain, leaving the history of mass killing in darkness.
Bloodlands is a new kind of European history, presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of a single history, in the time and place where they occurred: between Germany and Russia, when Hitler and Stalin both held power. Assiduously researched, deeply humane, and utterly definitive, Bloodlands will be required reading for anyone seeking to understand the central tragedy of modern history.
Bloodlands won twelve awards including the Emerson Prize in the Humanities, a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Leipzig Award for European Understanding, and the Hannah Arendt Prize in Political Thought. It has been translated into more than thirty languages, was named to twelve book-of-the-year lists, and was a bestseller in six countries.
Synopsis
From the bestselling author of On Tyranny comes the definitive history of Hitler's and Stalin's wars against the civilians of Europe in World War II.
Americans call the Second World War "The Good War."But before it even began, America's wartime ally Josef Stalin had killed millions of his own citizens--and kept killing them during and after the war. Before Hitler was finally defeated, he had murdered six million Jews and nearly as many other Europeans. At war's end, both the German and the Soviet killing sites fell behind the iron curtain, leaving the history of mass killing in darkness.
Bloodlands is a new kind of European history, presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of a single history, in the time and place where they occurred: between Germany and Russia, when Hitler and Stalin both held power. Assiduously researched, deeply humane, and utterly definitive, Bloodlands will be required reading for anyone seeking to understand the central tragedy of modern history.
Bloodlands won twelve awards including the Emerson Prize in the Humanities, a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Leipzig Award for European Understanding, and the Hannah Arendt Prize in Political Thought. It has been translated into more than thirty languages, was named to twelve book-of-the-year lists, and was a bestseller in six countries.
Synopsis
From the author of the international bestseller On Tyranny, the definitive history of Hitler's and Stalin's politics of mass killing, explaining why Ukraine has been at the center of Western history for the last century. Americans call the Second World War "The Good War."But before it even began, America's wartime ally Josef Stalin had killed millions of his own citizens--and kept killing them during and after the war. Before Hitler was finally defeated, he had murdered six million Jews and nearly as many other Europeans. At war's end, both the German and the Soviet killing sites fell behind the iron curtain, leaving the history of mass killing in darkness.
Bloodlands is a new kind of European history, presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of a single history, in the time and place where they occurred: between Germany and Russia, when Hitler and Stalin both held power. Assiduously researched, deeply humane, and utterly definitive, Bloodlands will be required reading for anyone seeking to understand the central tragedy of modern history.
Bloodlands won twelve awards including the Emerson Prize in the Humanities, a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Leipzig Award for European Understanding, and the Hannah Arendt Prize in Political Thought. It has been translated into more than thirty languages, was named to twelve book-of-the-year lists, and was a bestseller in six countries.
Synopsis
A prize-winning historian recasts the history of modern Europe around its central catastrophe: the fourteen million people killed by totalitarian regimes in the lands between Hitler and Stalin
Synopsis
A revelatory new history ofand#160;the role of German women in the Holocaust, not only as plunderers and direct witnesses, but as actual killers on the eastern front during World War II.
About the Author
Timothy Snyder is Professor of History at Yale University. He received his doctorate from the University of Oxford and has held fellowships in Paris, Vienna, Warsaw, and at Harvard. His four previous books have all received awards, including the George Louis Beer Prize for
The Reconstruction of Nations and the
Pro Historia Polonorum for
Sketches from a Secret War.
MORE PRAISE FOR BLOODLANDS:
A bold book, from a brilliant scholar who has emerged as an important voice in the fields of eastern European history, Soviet history, and Holocaust studies. This grand narrative is beautifully constructed, and written with empathy and rigor. Snyders work stands as a counterweight to the popular tendency to lump together the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as a tragic era, an age of catastropheswithout delineating distinctions between the two; without showing how different people actually suffered under the two regimes
For those who wish, for whichever reason, to exaggerate the crimes of Stalinism while minimizing those of Hitler and his collaborators, Snyder sets the record straight. He makes his case based on the latest research in Soviet, Nazi, eastern European history and Holocaust studies, impressively drawing from sources in several European languages. This is a laudable achievement, and a service to all of these fields, which still lack much in the way of cross-fertilization.”Wendy Lower, Journal of Genocidal Research
[An] important new history
. One of Snyders major achievements in Bloodlands is to preserve this sense of the singularity of Jewish experience, even while showing its complex relationship to the terrible experiences of the peoples among whom Jews lived.... The relationship between Jews and Communism is probably the most explosive of all the subjects Snyder addresses, and here he benefits most from the strengths he shows throughout the bookdeep learning, wide compassion, and clear, careful moral judgment.... Anyone who wants to fully comprehend the Holocaustat least, as far as it can be comprehendedshould read Bloodlands, which shows how much evil had to be done in order to make the ultimate evil possible.”Adam Kirsch, Tablet
Snyders revisionist history describes how about 14 million people died in the lands between Germany and the Soviet Union, giving a fresh take on the tragedies that occurred during World War II.”Roll Call
[An] important new work of history
Snyder offers a powerful reminder that the true killing fields of the Holocaust were in German-occupied territories in the east
Snyder [is] a walking encyclopedia of arresting facts and conclusive figures
In Bloodlands Snyder locates the Holocaust alongside other atrocities in an all-embracing single scheme
Snyder is perhaps the most talented younger historian of modern Europe working today. Astonishingly prolific, [Snyder] grounds his work in authoritative mastery of the facts, mining tomes of information in multiple languages and brilliantly synthesizing his findings. At the very least, Bloodlands is valuable for its astounding narrative integration of a gruesome era of European history
. A preternaturally gifted prose stylist, [Snyder] strives for a moral urgency appropriate to his depressing topics, and he rarely succumbs to bathos
By any measure Bloodlands is a remarkable, even triumphant accomplishment
Ultimately, Snyders main achievement is his juxtaposition of two homicidal regimes to make a point so well as to make it unanswerable, when not long ago it still elicited howls of outrage for trivializing the unique fate or special honor of particular victims.”Samuel Moyn, The Nation
Part of the freshness of Bloodlands is that it flips around our traditional viewpoint on the Second World War and the years that led up to it: Instead of seeing the conflict from the top down, as a struggle between powers, it begins with the perspective of the victims and those who were closest to the murder
There will continue to be intense arguments about the extent to which the crimes of Hitler and Stalin can, or should, be seen in the same light. But there is one thing we can know unequivocally: For the victims, there was no difference.”Gal Beckerman, Boston Globe
Statistics are an important part of Mr. Snyders narrative, but he does not forget that every number was once a human being
. This book is a grim but important read.”Washington Times
To us in the West, the horrors of World War II are associated with the names of Auschwitz, Iwo Jima and Hiroshima. Without denying the significance of these places, Snyder, an immensely talented historian at Yale University, radically alters our understanding of the mass murder that went on during these years by showing in convincing fashion where and how most victims met their end. Bloodlands overflows with startling facts and revelations
. In a conclusion that should be required reading for all, Snyder addresses the moral questions raised by this murderous history with insight and recognition of the shades of culpability that make it difficult at times to neatly separate victims from perpetrators. He also shines much-needed light on the dangers of competitive martyrology of the recent past, as the nations of the bloodlands have tried to claim greatest victim status.”Seattle Times
Snyder presents material that is undeniably fresh whats more, it comes from sources in languages with which very few western academics are familiar. The success of Bloodlands really lies in its effective presentation of cold, hard scholarship, which is in abundance.”The Financial Times
Solid and judicious scholarship.”Booklist
A chillingly systematic study of the mass murder mutually perpetrated by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany
. A significant work of staggering figures and scholarship.”Kirkus Reviews, starred review
An impeccably researched history
. One of the great strengths of Snyders book is that it brings back to life some of the forgotten voices of those who died in the bloodlands. The Nazi and Soviet regimes turned people into numbers, but Snyder reconnects the broad narrative of eastern Europes unparalleled tragedy with its intimate impact on the lives of individuals.”Irish Times (London)
This book will revolutionize how any reader thinks about the mid-20th century.... Snyder manages two difficult tasks at the same time. He examines a frequently investigated period and casts it in an entirely new light. He also sheds light on underexamined historical events while putting them through the prism of a region Eastern Europe where history frequently produces few witnesses while it unfolds.... Bloodlands is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in 20th-century history, and even more so for those interested in how historical narratives are established and maintained. Snyders examinations of the past will be worth following in the years to come.”The Prague Post (Czech Republic)
Deeply arresting and provocative.”Washington Monthly
A must-read for anyone interested in the history of Eastern Europe.”Anna Porter, Globe and Mail (Canada)
A brilliant, important and highly original look at a swath of territory that includes not only Poland but also Belarus, Ukraine and the Baltic states.”The Jewish Journal
[A] striking and important new book
Snyder writes with a boldness that will make some people uncomfortable. He questions the usefulness of the word genocide, and prefers the term "mass killing". By putting what Stalin did in the context of Hitler's Final Solution
Snyder does not engage in a facile search for equivalents; his arguments are carefully restricted in scope. What he shows is how Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union created a mutually reinforcing dynamic that resulted in the deaths of 14 million people in Poland, Lithuania, the Ukraine, and Belarus.”The National (Abu Dhabi)
A bold, brilliant, discomfiting book which seeks to juxtapose the Nazi and Soviet horrors of the mid-20th century and place them within the same narrative. Concentrating on the areas where those two regimes overlapped and competed, namely Poland, the Baltic States, Ukraine and Byelorussia the Bloodlands of the title Snyder gives a human face to the countless victims of totalitarianism. It is a timely, authoritative and well-written book, which for me is easily the history highlight of the year.”Roger Moorhouse, History Today (London)
Timothy Snyder has written a nuanced, original and penetrating analysis of Europes twentieth century killing fields between Russia and Germany, drawing on many little-known sources. History of a high order, Bloodlands may also point us towards lessons for our own time.”Timothy Garton Ash, Professor of European Studies, University of Oxford, and author of The File
Nearly seventy years after VE-Day, World War Two continues to be perceived through a narrow Western perspective, and many basic problems about the war of 1939-45 remain unresolved. In Bloodlands which refers to the huge belt of territory between Germany and Russia Timothy Snyder examines the little known tract of the European continent that was scourged by Stalin as well as Hitler, and reaches some disturbing conclusions. Combining formidable linguistic and detective skills with a fine sense of impartiality, he tackles vital questions which have deterred less courageous historians: Where and when were the largest casualties inflicted? Who were the perpetrators, and which ethnic and national groups were victimized? How can one calculate and verify the numbers? This is a book which will force its readers to rethink history.”Professor Norman Davies
For over a decade in the middle of the twentieth century, the lands between Russia and Germany were the killing fields of Europe. Tens of millions of civilians from Poland to Ukraine, Lithuania to Belarus were starved, beaten, shot and gassed to death by the authorities and armies of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. We think we know this story and we assign it shorthand labels: Auschwitz, the Gulag. In his path-breaking and often courageous study of Europes bloodlands, Timothy Snyder shows how very much more complicated the story was. His account of the methods and motives of murderous regimes, both at home and in foreign war, will radically revise our appreciation of the implications of mass extermination in the recent past. Bloodlands impeccably researched and appropriately sensitive to its volatile material is the most important book to appear on this subject for decades and will surely become the reference in its field.”Tony Judt, author of Postwar and Ill Fares the Land
No other historian could have written this book.”Professor Terry Martin, Director, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University
The most definitive book ever written on the atrocities of Hitler and Stalin
Its one of the most shocking books I have ever read in my life
written by a genius, Timothy Snyder, professor of history at Yale. This is a really amazing book
I thought Id seen it all, heard it allI didnt.”Michael Savage, New York Times bestselling author and host of The Michael Savage Show
Meticulously researched and ambitious in scope, Bloodlands provides an engrossing, if highly disturbing, account of some of the greatest evils of the twentieth century.”Ethics and International Affairs
In page after grueling page, Snyder depicts the pogrom that erupted across the Bloodlands. After all these years, after all the histories, there are still details that appall
. In an interesting twist, Snyder reveals how the usual Western understanding of the Holocaust, centered on the almost clinical danse macabre of deportation and eventual extermination in a camp far from Paris, Amsterdam, or Rome, fails to reflect the more typical experience to the east.”National Review Online
[A] masterful history
. Snyder forces many of us to change the way we understand the Second World War.”Macleans (Toronto)
[Bloodlands] examines some of the most devastating collective memories of the modern world. With scholarly rigour and engaging prose, [Snyder] seeks to explain both the causes and effects of the two most daunting mass murderers of the 20th century.”The Economist, Prospero blog
Bloodlands is an uncomfortable read because of its subject matter
The book is well written and will be important to all who study the history of the middle third of the 20th centuryyears that were soaked in blood.”The Federal Lawyer
[The] linking of Hitler and Stalin marks the groundbreaking part of Snyders book. Many others have argued for this coupling of these like-minded mad men, but no other author that I know of has analyzed it as relentlessly as Snyder. He examines almost every facet of this twisted relationship, along the way adding to our understanding of the Soviet famines, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact (also known as the Hitler-Stalin pact) and the true nature of Stalins anti-Semitism.”Robert Leiter, The Jewish Exponent
Snyders book forces us to frame the Holocaust within a wider landscape of genocidal policies by both the Nazis and the Soviets without diminishing the uniqueness of Hitlers war against the Jews.”Jewish Book World
In Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, author Timothy Snyder takes a broader, forward-looking and potentially controversial new look at the most devastating period of murder and mass destruction in human history
. A chilling and instructive story of how 14 million unarmed men, women and children were murdered.”Ottawa Citizen (Ottawa)
Timothy Snyders thesis, boldly spelled out in this book, and argued with great precision, is that the recent history of central Europe can be appreciated in its right colours only if it is understood as the result of the interaction between these two great empires
. [Bloodlands] combines great rigour and passionate engagement with the texture of the time it treats. It conveys the mood of an era, it gives the keys that make terrifying event-sequences comprehensible.”Weekend Australian (Australia)
An important book
. An impressively coherent narrative.”Canadian Jewish News
We see the dilemmas and horrors facing those who inhabited the bloodlands how they survived, collaborated, resisted, loved, hoped, watched, lived and died. [Snyder] tears the historical narrative from the hands of Stalin and Hitler, and places it in the hands of the victims. This is all underscored by Snyders powerful prose: He is not only a skilled historian, who brings together hundreds of sources in several languages, but also a sharp and moving writer.”The Kyiv Post (Kyiv)
Bloodlands deserves to be read. It is instructive history in every sense of the word.”Winnipeg Free Press (Winnipeg, Canada)
Timothy Snyders Bloodlands is not a book whose time has come; it is a book whose time is long overdue. The sooner this volume is absorbed by a wide East European readership, the more likely real headway will be made in resetting some of the regions most enduringly acrimonious bilateral relationships.”The Moscow News (Moscow)
[Snyders] literary scholarship teaches on a subject the world can not afford to forget. Make the time and take the patience to read his book. You will be greatly rewarded by the promise that knowledge brings.”The Exchange (Spokane, WA)
Bloodlands is based on quite extraordinary scholarly labor, carried out in sixteen archives and a half-dozen languages. The result is a meticulous description of mass murder presented in restrained, almost clinical prose whose power comes from the gradual, relentless accumulation of horrific detail.
[A] monumental work, the product of a scholars humane and tireless efforts to recapture what remains of those millions of men, women, and children who were murdered during Europes darkest hours.”Commonweal
[A] stunning historical inquiry into the wholesale slaughter of 14 million people by the Hitler and Stalin regimes.”Business Insider
A powerful and chilling history
. [Bloodlands] provides a new perspective on the sheer madness and ruthlessness with which the two totalitarian dictators, Hitler and Stalin, dispensed with human lives on a scale unprecedented in the annals of human brutality.”Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Snyder has written a painstakingly researched book which manages to strike a balance between superb scholarship and gut-churning drama. To say that the horrors depicted in this book demand a strongly gifted storyteller is an understatement. By combing archives, depicting the victims as individuals and not numbers or statistics, and by exposing the interior motives of both Hitler and Stalin, Snyder has produced a unique work, something brand-new, riveting and monumental.”The Wichita Eagle
Start at the beginning of Bloodlands, or open to any page and choose any paragraph and you will immediately become captivated and engrossed in something terrible, in the unconscionable and depraved acts of two ambitious leaders and their followers
. In turns engaging, remarkable, and horrific, Snyder has included many passages and snippets from the victims journals, from accounts of survivors, from news reports of the time, and from personal letters
. Snyder weaves these accounts into a story that is both an alarming account of the decision making process inside Hitlers and Stalins regime, and a wrenching narrative of the people who inhabited Poland, Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic republics during World War II.”Kindle Daily Post
Surveying a time and subject that has been studied, dramatized, and argued about perhaps more thoroughly than any other in history, Bloodlands is an incredibly original work. It seeks to redirect our understanding of the Holocaust as primarily an eastern phenomenon, and one which took place among a spate of mass killing policies
. With this magisterial book, [Snyder] has rendered the Holocaust, and the horrors that preceded and accompanied it, their rightful place.”Policy Review
Bloodlands, is in a class of its own, a real blockbuster that profoundly reconfigures our understanding of World War II and the 1930s
. A triumph of measured writing and sound judgment
. The story is brilliantly accessibleclear, compelling, lively, and sparkling with insights
. Bloodlands is the perfect companion for the scholar and student of mid-twentieth-century Europe. Accessible and extraordinarily comprehensive, it will be widely read and cited as the standard work.”Michigan War Studies Review
An important, carefully researched and compelling story, well told
. The numbers and the narrative are gripping. But Snyder's great strength is bringing home the humanity that was being destroyed.”Concord Monitor
[Bloodlands] brilliantly examines how government policies in Berlin and Moscow led to unimaginable suffering and death for millions in Eastern Europe
. Throughout Bloodlands, Snyder brings a considerable intelligence to bear as he deftly illustrates the horror and misery of the Nazi and Soviet systems in their quest for social perfection.”Deseret Morning News
Bloodlands
reassures us that the pursuit of authentic Holocaust consciousness is still flourishing in the scholarly community, with no end in sight.”The Jewish Daily Forward
Many books are useful; a handful can be called important; Bloodlands does no less than change the way we think of 20th century history, and of the deadly human cost of the totalitarian utopianism that was among its most distinctive characteristics
. Bloodlands is a wrenching, enlightening, moving, and intellectually challenging examination of the most compelling and painful topic of 20th century history. Few who study it carefully will be able to forget Timothy Snyders masterly autopsy of the fourteen million times one human beings destroyed in the name of the totalitarian dystopia.”The Polish Review
Ambitious
. Bloodlands seeks to fit the Holocaust into an appropriate historical context by examining the struggle between the Third Reich and the USSR from the perspective of the civilian populations caught in between.”Slavic Review
[A] popular history of the highest order. Not only does Snyder effectively relate the motivations behind Stalins and Hitlers crimes, but he also exhibits a capable eye for the telling detail. The numerous stories of individuals who suffered in the bloodlands humanize the carnage perpetrated in the name of the Stalinist and National Socialist ideologies. This is, perhaps, Snyders most noteworthy accomplishment.”Choice
[Bloodlands] throws a great deal of light on the policies shared by Hitler and Stalin, especially starvation as a form of ethnic cleansing. It is a horrifying story but the wider emphasis should do much to give readers a more accurate understanding than is often presented.”Contemporary Review (Oxford)
[An] instant classic
.[Snyder] dispenses much little-known history.”Foreign Policy in Focus
Table of Contents
Introduction: Hitler and Stalin
1. The Soviet Famines
2. Class Terror
3. National Terror
4. Molotov-Ribbentrop Europe
5. The Economics of Apocalypse
6. Final Solution
7. Holocaust and Revenge
8. The Nazi Death Factories
9. Resistance and Incineration
10. Ethnic Cleansings
11. Stalinist Anti-Semitism
Conclusion: Humanity