Customer Reviews:
Were they human beings?.......2007-04-10
This book has become a classic and justifiably so. It succeeds in drawing a chronological, sociological and psychological comparison between the two most inhuman dictators in recent history. Some pictures are as revealing as Bullock's brilliant text: the school class picture showing both Hitler and Stalin in the same defying position at the same age, some 10 years apart, is ominous and already frightening.
The comparison between the ultimate, sly and ruthless burocrat and the violent, seductive and emotional politician, both deceitful, both obsessed with power and both verging on insanity, ultimately leading the same deadly and disastrous policies, is a brilliant piece of narrative history.
This is definitely a reference book, a landmark.
UNDERSTANDING HISTORY.......2007-03-09
THIS BOOK BY ALLAN BULLOCK IS AN AMAZINGLY HYPNOTIC WORK OF ART THAT DESCRIBES TWO OF THE 20TH CENTURY'S MOST INFAMOUS MONSTERS TO HAVE SURFACED UPON THE FACE OF THE EARTH. THESE INDIVIDUALS WERE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DEATHS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE; INCLUDING FOREIGNERS AND FROM THE SAME RESPECTIVE COUNTRIES. UNDERSTANDING THESE EVENTS LEAD INDIVIDUALS TO UNDERSTAND THAT THERE CAN BE MORE MASS ATROCITIES, MORE DEATH AND MUCH MORE SUFFERING LIKE PREVIOUS INSTANCES. IT IS IMPORTANT FOR SOCIETY TO UNITE IN ORDER TO MAKE SURE THAT THESE SCENARIOS DO NOT REOCCUR BECAUSE THE EFFECTS OF WORLD WAR DURING THESE TIMES WOULD INDEED, BE CATASTROPHIC.
Two of a kind.......2006-02-25
Bullock takes on the daunting task of writing a dual biography on the two most notorious men in the Twentieth Century. He is able to provide a well written in-depth look at both Hitler and Stalin while showing the numerous parallels in their lives. Drawing on several first hand accounts, Bullock shows how each rose to power and ultimate destruction. The author shows little bias towards or against his subjects which is difficult considering the disdain his subjects have garnered. Hitler and Stalin is a stand alone epic that educates and entertains. Well worth the 1100 plus pages.
PARALLEL MONSTERS.......2006-01-10
This is an excellent read for anyone interested in the lives of these 20th Century Monsters. I was particularly keen on learning about their worldviews and how they were shaped by historic events. For the most part Bullock does an excellent job here, jumping back between the two evil minds as they manuevered through European politics. The possibility that the two could have brushed shoulders in Vienna in 1913 is especially chilling.
Sadly, though the book falls apart some during the crucial war years! Bullock abandons comparitive analyses here, and gives us a traditional WWII history, including little the history reader won't already know. He should have concentrated on the dictators themselves, and how they saw the conflict. Instead we get a textbook account of the European conflict. Still a fairly good job overall.
Excellent.......2005-01-09
This dual biography is excellent. Bullock is an excellent writer with an uncluttered style and the content of this book reflects Bullock's considered judgements based on a careful reading of a large volume of scholarship. The balance between the narratives of Hitler's and Stalin's lives, explanations of the relevant contemporary history, and efforts at psychological insight is excellent. While a very thick book, it is a gripping read.
Bullock shows very well the distinct courses of Hitler's and Stalin's lives, a function both of their very different circumstances and personalities. Hitler rose to power in a partially democratized society, his success based on charismatic leadership, demagogic mass politics, and shrewd exploitation of the political weaknesses of his opponents. Once in power, he delegated power to trusted subordinates and presided over an anarchic state composed of competing power centers jockeying for his approval. Stalin, on the other hand, was a consummate bureaucrat and backroom politician. A tireless worker and master political infighter, he largely constructed the state apparatus that was the instrument of his power. His serial purges had the effect of elimnating any potential rival seats of power.
The major question, of course, is why produce a combined biography instead of 2 separate books? It is true that Hitler's and Stalin's lives intersected in very important ways but these issues could easily have been handled in separate books. The advantage of Bullock's approach is that it demonstrates, both implicitly and explicitly, the convergence of the Nazi and Stalinist states. Both were based on personal rule, crude but powerful ideological constructs that held the loyalty of the leaders and numerous followers, ruthless repression, and both states produced results that garned significant popular support. Both were constructed by monsters with considerable insight into human nature but no real sympathy for their fellow men. Both leaders were incredible egoists. Bullock uses the term narcissism in its clinical sense to describe both Hitler and Stalin, who saw the states they led as extensions of themselves. Not surprisingly then, in the depth and organization of repression and many other features, the Nazi and Stalinist states had major similarities. These basic patterns can be seen in many tyrannical states throughout human history and are independent of ideology.
Book Description
This gripping book assembles and translates into English for the first time top secret Soviet documents from 1932 to 1939, the era of Stalin`s purges. The nearly 200 documents-dossiers, police reports, private letters, secret transcripts, and more-expose the hidden inner workings of the Communist Party and the dark inhumanity of the purge process.
Customer Reviews:
A Paper Trail Of Arbitrary Terror And Murder!.......2006-12-19
This review refers to the hardcover edition of the book. I have always been one of those who prefer primary source material, as opposed to second hand material. Not that the latter is without merit, however, with the primary documents one gets a better look into history. And without a doubt the history of Soviet Russia under Stalin was truly a road to terror. The books material has been culled and translated from primary source documents from the archives of the former Soviet regime. These documents were preserved at three major archives in Moscow, and provide invaluable primary source material for those wishing to delve into the mindset of the criminals whose actions against the Russian people are there for all to see.
The purges by Stalin in the 1930s have been well documented, however, these latest documents add further to those whose research into Stalin's crimes, also implicate many of his cronies, who without their support, Stalin would not have been able to carry out his heinous crimes. The documents in the book are also accompanied by commentary by the authors. I remember talking with Dr. Arch Getty many years ago at UCLA, and was fascinated when he discussed how he had always been more interested in those in lower positions of power who carry out the crimes of their leaders, than by those that are in positions of power. For without the willing executioners, those in power cannot carry out their twisted and appalling crimes.
Dr. Getty's discussion was very enlightening. [As were his seminars and lectures]. The fact that the terror was not planned in the begining, but consisted of haphazard steps until Stalin took charge in 1937, leading to his crushing of ALL resistance in the Communist Party is a very fascinating look into Stalin's reign of terror. And as one of the other reviewers noted, until a diary is discovered with Stalin's own reasons for his actions, we will never know fully why Stalin did what he did. However, these docuements are insightful into the terror of the purges which took place under Stalin in the 1930s, and in a sense act as a sort of diary. The book is highly recommended as a supplement to your history library.
be careful.......2005-09-05
before buy it, use amazon.com look inside at In Denial: Historians, Communism, & Espionage - John Earl Haynes; Hardcover
Brilliant.......2003-03-12
Dr Getty's study of the Terror is among the most groundbreaking and insightful of the last decade. I believe it is the best book on the Terror yet written. What began as a moderate attempt to clean up the Party in 1933 through controled means turned into violent chaos in mid-1937. The Yezhov years are covered deeply with a great reliance on archives avalible. For the first time the documents themselves can be viewed by the reader. Getty clearly defines the periods of the Terror according to their severity. In 1933 people were purged from the Party but it only ment dismissal and a chance for readdmition. In 1936 things began to get bloody but it was still controled by the elites. The explosion of 1937 with the liquidation of top Soviet Marshals signaled the coming of a full blown bloodbath. This period lasted from the last half of 1937 to the first half of 1938. This was largely directed by the NKVD under Yezhov but Getty stresses Yezhov was ordered by Stalin and the Politburo to conduct arrest and executions of party elites in both the Center and provinces along with mass shootings of social marginals. The Terror was horrible yet more conservative numbers of deaths are given. Elites were the primary victims. Getty's statistics appear to be correct. Millions were not executed but social trama of the Terror was horrid. This work shreds Robert Conquest to pieces...
Bolshevik Crimes Exposed.......2000-07-19
Unlike other mass murderers, the Bolsheviks left a paper trail detailing their horrific criminal deeds. Naturally, dictator Josef Stalin is prominently cited in the formerly top secret transcripts of the Soviet's Central Committee. Others, however, like his nomenklatura henchmen; Lazar Kaganovich, a Jew and rabid Christian hater; Vyacheslav Molotov; Lavrenti Beria; and Genrikh Yagoda, were just as complicit as him. The historian, H. R. Trevor-Roper put it well, "Great massacres may be commanded by tyrants, but they are imposed by people." The authors conservatively estimate that "1.5 million" Communist Party members were killed during the "Great Terror" purges of the 1930s. The majority were shot to death, others died in the GULAG camps, originally established by the fanatical Bolshevik thug, Vladimir I. Lenin. This riveting story opens by telling the sad tale of one Alexander Yulevich Tivel. It is typical of what happened to many of Marxism's true believers. A hack propagandist for Pravda, Tivel was shot as an "enemy of the people" on March 7, 1937, in Moscow, after a perfunctory trial. He was also a Zionist, who had made the fatal mistake of knowing Grigory Zinoviev and Karl Radek. Like Tivel, they were all Jews, who were suspected by the Kremlin elite of plotting with its arch rival, the exiled zealot, Lew Davinovich Bronstein, a/k/a Leon Trotsky. The Tivel drama didn't end there. His wife was sent to Siberia and she wasn't freed until 1953. Their young son was placed in an orphanage for being a "member of the family of a traitor of the Motherland." In this book, too, surprisedly, you will find the modern seeds of the dubious "Hate Crime" concept, championed by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY). Stalin, in a rant about the putative enemies of his Communist hell hole, is quoted in October, 1937, as saying, "Anyone who by his actions and thoughts-yes, his thoughts-encroaches on the unity of the socialist state, we will destroy them and their kin." I'm sure Schumer, a pompous windbag, will deny the alien-based connection to his legislative scheme. This is an authoritative book that exposes the unspeakable crimes of Stalin's Bolshevik gang against its own party faithful. It should be a sobering lesson to anyone who tends to believe in extremist solutions.
William Hughes, J.D. Baltimore, MD. (Published in the journal of the Social Justice Review, July-August, 2000 issue.)
Gives an exceptionally valuable insight into Stalin's purges.......2000-07-11
This book is tremendously useful because it gives a hitherto unknown insight into exactly how Stalin and his closest cronies set in motion the purges of the 1930s. The heart of the book consists of around 200 secret Communist Party documents interspersed with commentary from the authors. The archival material suggests very strongly that the path to the terror was not planned meticulously from the start but consisted of a series of false starts and zigzags until Stalin decided in 1937 to crush all resistance to the party's rule. Of particular interest are a couple of documents which show how many members of the inner Politburo demanded stricter punishments for alleged wrong-doers than Stalin did himself. Barring the discovery of Stalin's diary many of the dictator's motives will remain unknown forever but the documents in this book do paint a largely convincing portrait of an unpopular regime in Moscow lurching from crisis to crisis, trying both to stablise the internal situation and also to eliminate the possibility of serious internal resistance. What does come through very clearly is how arbitrary the terror was and how many of those charged with repressing alleged foreign spies and saboteurs were almost guaranteed to be shot themselves. First the Politburo lashed out at the secret police for not doing enough to stamp out centres of Trotskyite resistance and then issued orders demanding the execution and arrest of millions of people across the country. Later the secret police came under fire for allegedly indulging in indiscriminate terror and repressing too many people. I can understand the point of the Kirkus Reviews contributor who doubted the authors' explanation that the Politburo pushed ahead with the purges because they were indeed convinced enemies lay behind every corner and a coup was always possible. A sense of self-preservation and the need to show Stalin they were onside surely did partly explain their enthusiasm for spilling blood. But this is a minor quibble about an otherwise excellent book.
Book Description
On June 22, 1941, Hitler launched a massive three-pronged attack on the Soviet Union, and in days his troops were within reach of Moscow. The attack was stunning, but Stalin's response was even more astonishing. During the invasion, the mighty Soviet military stood in place while its soldiers were slaughtered by the hundreds of thousands. Drawing on a wealth of newly available documents, from classified Politburo papers and diaries of key generals to diplomatic cables and secret police memos, the Russian historian Constantine Pleshakov paints a startling portrait of Stalin, one of history's most feared despots, as a vulnerable and paralyzed leader. Refusing to believe that the Germans would strike first, despite repeated warnings, he continued to supply them with war materials in the days before the attack, then tied his generals" hands in the crucial first hours of the invasion. For more than a week, while Hitler rolled over Soviet territory, Stalin cowered in his dacha, leaving the country rudderless and as Pleshakov reveals here nearly losing power. The Red Army's effort to regain the territory lost in those first ten days cost more than 10 million Soviet lives. Stalin's Folly is a dramatic hour-by-hour account that sheds light on an enigmatic and ruthless figure while providing a new and far deeper understanding of Russian history.
Customer Reviews:
A good but not flawless account of those first ten days.......2007-06-13
Pleshakov has written a very detailed and lively account of those tragic first ten days, and the events leading up to them. His style is easy to enjoy, while his knowledge of the topic is extensive.
I only have two complaints:
(1) I think the endnotes should have been flagged by numbers so that it would have been easier to follow them.
(2) His theory that Stalin wanted to attack Germany by early July 1941 is not widely accepted, and there is no hard evidence whatsoever supporting it. It is just one possible explanation of Stalin's actions (or the lack of them) before Barbarossa, and (in my point of view) not even the most likely. Still Pleshakov regards it to be fact, and although he admits the lack of evidence, some readers may believe that what they're reading is the only (or at least by far the most likely) explanation of the known facts. Well, it is not.
Still, I recommend this book for anyone who's interested in the history (and the Soviet side) of the German Eastern Front.
Stalin's Folly.......2007-03-06
Just finished reading this book, interesting theory, that Stalin was going to preempt Hitler's attack on the USSR. What does Pleshakov think?, that Stalin is George Bush Jr? Clearly this theory is part of the revisionist interpretation of the facts. Stalin was a basket case and not a cunning foe of Hitler as being depicted. His commentary on the situation in Ukraine,the Ukrainian people and their representatives, the OUN, was stupid. Let me explain when the Nazis turned on the Ukrainians he called the OUN terrorists and then when the OUN fought the Soviets at the same time as they were fighting the Nazis-lo and behold-he also called them terrorists again. What?? Get your facts straight. He also called the Ukrainian trident an agressive symbol-what????? The trident is the national symbol of the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian nation-nothing more and nothing less. His commentary on Ukraine, clearly tells me that he is speaking as a Russian imperialist who has not gotten use to the reality that Ukraine is a independent nation and no longer a part of the Russian empire. I guess he is having withdrawal pains-lets give him a shot of vodka-might help him. In conclusion, this book is a revisionist study of a truly dark period in European history-a good read but you have to be selective in what you believe.
No cigar.......2006-04-25
The book is a description of the first ten days of the German invasion of Russia in 1941. The interest of the book is the suggestion that Stalin had decided on a pre-emptive assault on Germany and this was foiled. The notion of Stalin's folly being organising his troops in such a way that they were vulnerable to a German attack. The notion of a Soviet pre-emptive attack is mostly popular with right wing or pro Nazi historians who try to justify Hitler by the suggestion of Bolshevik expansionism. The writer of this book is far from being a Nazi sympathiser and although anti-communist is more of a Russian nationalist.
The writer however concedes that there is simply no evidence at all to support his assertion that Stalin was going to attack Germany. He advances his thesis and suggests that evidence will turn up in the future. The preponderance of opinion is of course against him. In fact if Stalin wanted to attack Germany it is the sort of thing that would have turned up in someone's memoirs by now. If Stalin wanted to attack Germany it is the sort of thing which requires enormous organisation. It is not just the matter of him giving an order for armies to move west. Rather the various armies have to be given enough ammunition to wage a campaign, transport has to be arranged to support the needs of the armies once they advance maps supplied to the troops and so on. No Russian figure has ever suggested that Stalin ordered preparation for an attack and there is no suggestion that the Russian armies were actively preparing for an attack in 1941. Part of the reason for the initial success of the German operation was the poor state of Russian preparedness.
After the discussion around the proposed attack by Stalin the book breaks down into a largely anecdotal account of the first days of the Barbarossa campaign. The approach is descriptive rather than looking quantitatively about what happened and there is only one map. There are much better books about this phase of the campaign by Glantz and others. In short a disappointing book that does not come up with the goods that it promised.
Great Reading, Informative and Passionate.......2006-03-31
Pleshakov is a young historian that deserves to be considered as a nascent star by any history buff and so taken into acount seriously in any endeavour he can or could undertake. This book about the first 10 days of war in the Eastern front is not only full of information, much of it new, but well written and with passion. Perhaps this last feature could seem a defect by some that believes science -if ever history is a science at all- requires a diet-kind of style, dry and deprived of life, but in fact, on the contrary, just to begin to grasp the sense of so colossal events as those told by Plashakov, passion is a neccesary element or you simple lose the scent of those awful days and the kind of society and polity that made them possible.
a must read, but be careful.......2006-01-04
First, why it is a must read. This is the first book that (in my opinion) provides a non-conflicting with known facts version of the war preparations made by USSR, as opposed to both the official Soviet version and the revisionist version spelled out by V.Suvorov.
This is the first book that pays attention to the important dynamics of personal relationships between Zukov, Timoshenko and Stalin. This book as no other one highlights the truly critical role played by Zukov and to lesser extent by Timoshenko before the war and on its outbreak.
It has a very good grip on the events in the Soviet corridors of power, among other things it has the best description of the purge of generals that started right before the war.
Second, what is not so good. A big part of the book repeats tired (and not so true) official narrative about what was happening on the ground during the first 10 days of the war. There are way better books on this very interesting subject by M.Solonin and V.Beshanov (unfortunately, not available in English translations).
Third, there are few not so important but truly ridiculous claims. For example, the author goes to the great lengths describing a conflict between "cavalrymen" (Budennyi, Voroshilov, Kulik) on one side and Timoshenko with Zukov on another side. Strictly speaking Timoshenko and Zukov (and Rokossovsky) are cavalrymen themselves and the author should pick up a better term. There is a claim that Rokossovsky was a second marshal after Zukov, clearly the second by significance marshal was Konev.
There is another ridiculous claim that Rokossovsky used military force against Polish students in 1956 because he was once a gulag prisoner. Rokossovsky was a committed Communist and he did not hesitate to use military force against civilians during the Civil War in Russia, long before going to gulag.
To sum it up: this is an important work but do not get carried away.
Book Description
The follow-up to the acclaimed The Road to Stalingrad tells the compelling story of the Red Army's epic struggle to drive the Germans out of Russia and back to Berlin. Using Soviet, German, and Eastern European primary sources, John Erickson describes fighting and hardship on an almost unimaginable scale. The detailed narrative covers battles on all the fronts. The inside information on the Soviet system of war reveals how, under maximum stress, the Russian army achieved near-impossible feats in the field and the factories. All the diplomatic moves and counter-moves, including the all-important conferences at Tehran and Yalta, also come vividly alive.
Customer Reviews:
Best book on the Russian-German war.......2007-06-12
John Erickson's 2-part history of the Soviet-German war in 1941-1945 is the definitive English-language publication on the topic, and this is the second volume. Because the Second World War was basically won and lost on the Eastern Front, and because conquest of the Soviet Union and the rest of Eastern Europe was Hitler's primary motivation for going to war in the first place, this book is a must-read for anyone truly interested in military history or the history of the 20th Century in general.
There is a lack of maps in the book, so I would suggest to the reader that they invest in a WWII atlas of some sort if they really want to follow what is happening. And the book is mostly told form the Soviet perspective, but that is not such a bad thing as there are far more English-language books about the Third Reich anyway. But there is nothing else written in English that comes close to Erickson's history in terms of overall balance and exhaustive, well-documented research.
Book Description
Overthrowing the conventional image of Stalin as an uneducated political administrator inexplicably transformed into a pathological killer, Robert Service reveals a more complex and fascinating story behind this notorious twentieth-century figure. Drawing on unexplored archives and personal testimonies gathered from across Russia and Georgia, this is the first full-scale biography of the Soviet dictator in twenty years.
Service describes in unprecedented detail the first half of Stalin's life--his childhood in Georgia as the son of a violent, drunkard father and a devoted mother; his education and religious training; and his political activity as a young revolutionary. No mere messenger for Lenin, Stalin was a prominent activist long before the Russian Revolution. Equally compelling is the depiction of Stalin as Soviet leader. Service recasts the image of Stalin as unimpeded despot; his control was not limitless. And his conviction that enemies surrounded him was not entirely unfounded.
Stalin was not just a vengeful dictator but also a man fascinated by ideas and a voracious reader of Marxist doctrine and Russian and Georgian literature as well as an internationalist committed to seeing Russia assume a powerful role on the world stage. In examining the multidimensional legacy of Stalin, Service helps explain why later would-be reformers--such as Khrushchev and Gorbachev--found the Stalinist legacy surprisingly hard to dislodge.
Rather than diminishing the horrors of Stalinism, this is an account all the more disturbing for presenting a believable human portrait. Service's lifetime engagement with Soviet Russia has resulted in the most comprehensive and compelling portrayal of Stalin to date.
Customer Reviews:
Helpful, but disappointing.......2007-07-31
While I sense as a non-expert that this biography has freed us from some of the stereotypes about Stalin which clouded the views of him in the past, probably exactly because Stalin's hold on power was defined by his ability to operate in the shadows before he emerged on center stage, and even then managed to keep a lot of the world guessing about what exactly his role was. Deniability figured big time in his history. The book nevertheless falls short. The style is somewhat plodding, and there is an implicit assumption that we are experts on Soviet history, and geography, and no aids are on offer in that regard. So in being NOT an expert on Soviet history, I find myself after reading this book that I need to read a history of the Soviet Union and probably of Russia, in order to provide me with the context which this book sorely lacks.
Stalin is Still A Mystery.......2007-06-11
Service has written a well-researched history of Stalin's life here. It is very thorough and complete and yet it is still quite readable. Unfortunately though, Stalin still remains the cipher that he always has been. No new insight into his lust for power emerges from the six hundred plus pages of text.
Perhaps there is no answer; maybe Stalin was just the uber-sociopathic dictator he appears to be and that he survived and flourished in the dog-eat-dog milieu of revolutionary era Russia because he was very lucky and the best at what he did.
Dictators in the modern era have all to some extent (consciously or not) modeled themselves after Stalin. Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro and Saddam Hussein come to mind. It is said that Saddam had a room in his personal library composed of all the major biographies written about Stalin in Arabic translation, and that he read every one.
I recommend this book though as an excellent work of scholarship and a most comprehensive survey of Joseph Stalin's life and times
Thorough perhaps but redundant.......2006-10-11
Contrary to what some other reviewers have stated, I do not believe Service goes out of his way to humanize Stalin. However, Service glosses over huge and momentous events, such as the Great Terror. We have all heard of the monstrous acts committed by Stalin but none of the details are given, other than numbers and names. It seems inconceiveable that a 600 plus page book would be superficial and lacking specificity but it does. One gets the feeling Service felt previous biographers had already provided the dirty details and therefore left them out. He also does not tell Stalin's story in any chronological manner. He jumps around endlessly. I cannot recommend this book.
Very well then --- a sane and accomplished monster.......2006-07-28
Many people may view Stalin as a blood-thirsty killer but the author's view is that Stalin "..was long practised in the art of solving public problems by means of the physical liquidation of those who embodied them." (page 471). Physical liquidation sounds so much better than murder, slaughter or killing. It is a much more civilized way to solve public problems.
Stalin as Communist Emperor.......2006-04-15
A very readable biography of Stalin that describes his entire life, from his beginnings in Georgia to the top of the Soviet Union. His relationship to Lenin and other members of the Bolshevik clique and his rise to power are all chronicled.
There is a letter from Tito to Stalin that was found in Stalin's desk drawer shortly after he died. Tito, in this letter, is out-dueling Stalin in threatening assassination attempts. It encapsulates the gangster tactics of the entire communist regime. Service points out that there were no innocents in the rise to power after the October revolution. Stalin learnt well from his teacher Lenin. Bolshevism may have been based on the books of Marx and Engels, but its practice was raw power and Stalin wielded this for over thirty years.
Sometimes in this work there seems to be too much focus around Stalin and not enough history of the outside forces - such as the effects of famine during the 1930's.
Nevertheless we are left with the portrait of a ruthless individual who amassed power for its' own sake. Stalin accrued very little personal wealth during his reign - for example he only wore good clothes during his World War II meetings when the Allied powers came to visit.
It is also interesting to note that it is only during World War II that Stalin had any prolonged and direct contact with the outside world. At the end of the war Stalin effectively shut the door on the West - he met with the leaders of China and his East European satellites, but this was more like the bully dealing with his victims in the schoolyard.
Service does give Stalin credit for pushing the Soviet Union into the twentieth century - industrially and educationally. Without this the Soviet Union would not have been able to cope with the German onslaught in 1941.
But there was a heavy price to pay for all this- the Soviet Union was cut-off culturally from the rest of mankind and its' ideological dogmatic path collapsed in the 1990's. It was Stalin that led his country into this one-way street from which it was never able to veer away from and adjust to a different lifestyle.
Book Description
“Music illuminates a person and provides him with his last hope; even Stalin, a butcher, knew that.” So said the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, whose first compositions in the 1920s identified him as an avant-garde wunderkind. But that same singularity became a liability a decade later under the totalitarian rule of Stalin, with his unpredictable grounds for the persecution of artists. Solomon Volkov—who cowrote Shostakovich’s controversial 1979 memoir, Testimony—describes how this lethal uncertainty affected the composer’s life and work.
Volkov, an authority on Soviet Russian culture, shows us the “holy fool” in Shostakovich: the truth speaker who dared to challenge the supreme powers. We see how Shostakovich struggled to remain faithful to himself in his music and how Stalin fueled that struggle: one minute banning his work, the next encouraging it. We see how some of Shostakovich’s contemporaries—Mandelstam, Bulgakov, and Pasternak among them—fell victim to Stalin’s manipulations and how Shostakovich barely avoided the same fate. And we see the psychological price he paid for what some perceived as self-serving aloofness and others saw as rightfully defended individuality.
This is a revelatory account of the relationship between one of the twentieth century’s greatest composers and one of its most infamous tyrants.
Customer Reviews:
Extraordinary Is Right.......2007-07-01
Utterly fascinating tale of an extraordinary moment in history. I can't think of another place in modern times when a political leader took such an interest in the arts, albeit, for political reasons. How fascinating it is that a dictator - it isn't conceivable in a democracy - would become obsessed with the things said and done by cultural figures such as Shostakovich, Mayakovsky, and Pasternak. Stalin was a brute, but the picture drawn here of him and his relationship with the great Russian composer makes for the sort of suspense one associates with murder-mysteries. The entire Soviet aesthetic is on display here, an odd and finally ruthlessly destructive dance between art and politics. Stalin comes over as a ghoulish monster, while Shostokovich is depicted as wholly sympathetic. Artistically it is as rich a milieu as Elizabethan England or Periclean Athens. The Kremlin comes over as a house of horrors on the order of Idi Amin's slaughter house. The book is beautifully written, well-researched, and told from an artist's point of view, not an academic political scientist's. No other regime in the 20th century is as horrifying; no artists were ever as creative and brave.
The long awaited supplement to "Testimony".......2005-04-28
When Dmitri Shostakovich's memoirs appeared in print under the title "Testimony" its compiler, Solomon Volkov, was widely excoriated and the authenticity of the text challenged. As a composer, being intimately familiar with how composers think and express themselves, the book rang true to me through and through. Some of the attempts to debunk it seemed to me then calculated to challenge every statement. Some things, however, can not be faked - and, as Shostakovich himself often said, "music illuminates a man through and through," a composer's way of expressing himself is instantly recognizable to another composer. There are simply far too many clues buried in the text - too many buzz words and conceptual descriptions of the type typical of the composer's perception of things.
Having said that, then, Volkov's new text provides much of the historical filler that the earlier text could not purely by virtue of its purpose and content. By illustrating, even if somewhat broadly, the cultural and political issues during Stalin's reign, much of what Volkov reported as having been said by Shostakovich is further substantiated. It is fascinating reading - but not, as others have pointed out, for those without at least a fundamental understanding of Russian history.
Those who choose, even at this late date, to challenge Volkov's original text will have more to carp about here. The truth about Shostakovich's music has long since escaped the myth makers and political hacks and into the open arena of ideas. The man's music speaks louder than any words, however, even his own. But for me, the two together can only have come from one person - Dmitri Shostakovich. Relying on old Soviet mythology and documentation to disprove a work that challenges that mythology is hardly reliable. And Volkov's most recent work is an easy, fascinating and ultimately confirming discourse on the background issues which, in the end, resulted in the music long since validated on its own terms.
to the heart of things.......2005-04-06
This book is as much a penetrating portrait of Stalin's Russia as it is a fierce look at surviving as an artist in Stalin's hands. Apart from the rich legacy of his music, Shostakovich is a fine example precisely because he survived. Those of us who find Volkov's 'Testimony' a harrowing, revealing book will dive into these pages with gusto and fly through to the end. Those who suspect 'Testimony' to be a fraud might not bother with this book, and that's too bad because it provides a genuine fleshing out of Stalin and his closest henchmen (Zhdanov, especially, is afforded thorough treatment), some beautiful pages on Shostakovich's inner life, and not a few engaging views of a number of other important artists who lived and worked in a crucible of terror day after day. Volkov courteously dispenses with the ridiculous "holy fool" controversy in his prologue. The author is strongest when he composes life from inside the experience of survival in Soviet Russia. It's one thing to admire Shostakovich's genius, quite another to reach the underpinnings of a man who was more a gentleman fixed on physical (and therefore emotional and artistic) survival than he was a musical prophet. At that point, we're experiencing something well beyond biography. That is Volkov's unique gift. The focus is indeed Shostakovich, but the lessons reach farther. There are some fine photographs included - pen and inks of Akhmatova and Pasternak by Annenkov, the spiky, not often seen 1933 portrait of Shostakovich by Akimov, and an unforgettable photograph of a very young Shostakovich looking directly and defiantly at the camera, in which he seems to foretell all the pain and glory to come. If you're looking for a searing rehearsal of the meaning of freedom, I suggest this book.
Artistic sufferance under a totalitarian regime.......2004-07-10
The scope of the book goes far beyond the relation between Shostakovich and Stalin; it's a dramatic view into artistic life while living in an authoritarian regime. There is an immense list of great artists who where deported, killed or psychologically terrorized in Stalins regime. Shostakovich is only one of them, and seemingly one of the lucky ones, since he outlived the dictator. But his sufferance under Stalins terror was as trying for him as it was for any other artist. I don't entirely agree with the comment that Stalin is depicted as an idiot, but he is portraited as having a very one-sided, utilitarian view on arts.The given inside in one of the most horrible regimes that ever existed, must be mind blowing for every one in the democratic world.
The book tells Shostakovich life only fragmentarilly, including discussing his major pieces. It gives real insight into his music, makes it more accessible. Even if only to enable you to understand this music better, this book is worthwile.
Shoot the piano player?.......2004-04-30
The book seems somewhat padded with "backstory" and questionable Darwinianism, e.g., Shostakovich v. Stalin as ineluctable successor to Pushkin v. Tsar Nicholas I. Or it may be that the publishers simply opted for too narrow a title, creating an expectation of a closely focused account restricted as near as possible to the marqueed characters. Volkov does not so limit himself; Stalin's grip on all the arts is explicated, music being but one of his concentrations.
The simplistic view of Stalin as ignorant thug is certainly easier to live with than the lately emerging portrait of a man of no mean intelligence, taste, and aesthetics who was nonentheless a swine of an almost inconceivable murderousness.
This picture of authoritarian absolutism over all media is well worth the read, especially when we ourselves are never short of bombastic blusterers ready to impose their situational moralities on everyone else for the sake of a few votes back home.
Volkov, happily, is no discount Freudian, and leaves it to the reader to ponder what delights--outside of the strict demands of "socialist realism"--Stalin derived from the squirming and survival techniques of those he didn't summarily dispatch.
Amazon.com
Granted privileged access to Russia's secret archives, Edvard Radzinsky has broken down the iron curtain of myth, secrecy and lies that has surrounded Stalin's life and career, painting a picture of the Soviet strongman as more calculating, ruthless and blood-crazed than has ever been described or imagined.
Book Description
From the author of The Last Tsar, the first full-scale life of Stalin to have what no previous biography has entirely gotten hold of: the facts. Granted privileged access to Russia's secret archives, Edvard Radzinsky paints a picture of the Soviet strongman as more calculating, ruthless, and blood-crazed than has ever been described or imagined. Stalin was a man for whom power was all, terror a useful weapon, and deceit a constant companion.
As Radzinsky narrates the high drama of Stalin's epic quest for domination-first within the Communist Party, then over the Soviet Union and the world-he uncovers the startling truth about this most enigmatic of historical figures. Only now, in the post-Soviet era, can what was suppressed be told: Stalin's long-denied involvement with terrorism as a young revolutionary; the crucial importance of his misunderstood, behind-the-scenes role during the October Revolution; his often hostile relationship with Lenin; the details of his organization of terror, culminating in the infamous show trials of the 1930s; his secret dealings with Hitler, and how they backfired; and the horrifying plans he was making before his death to send the Soviet Union's Jews to concentration camps-tantamount to a potential second Holocaust. Radzinsky also takes an intimate look at Stalin's private life, marked by his turbulent relationship with his wife Nadezhda, and recreates the circumstances that led to her suicide.
As he did in The Last Tsar, Radzinsky thrillingly brings the past to life. The Kremlin intrigues, the ceaseless round of double-dealing and back-stabbing, the private worlds of the Soviet Empire's ruling class-all become, in Radzinsky's hands, as gripping and powerful as the great Russian sagas. And the riddle of that most cold-blooded of leaders, a man for whom nothing was sacred in his pursuit of absolute might--and perhaps the greatest mass murderer in Western history--is solved.
Customer Reviews:
Literate and dramatic bio.......2007-06-06
This is a literate and dramatic telling of Stalin's life and times from birth to death. The knowns and unknowns of Stalin are covered, as well as his colleagues (or adverseries in Stalin's case). The author's style is literary - a playwright by vocation - as if writing a novel. So, yes, there are the usual cliffhanger chapter endings and is suspensful to a degree - - a definite page turner overall. Also, the author is a native who lived part of his childhood during the Stalin era and his father felt the full brunt of Stalinism. So I like the touch of the personal emotion here. Is more readable and personable than the Conquest and Service bios, and covers more time than Montefiore. I heartily recommend.
Great Book.......2007-05-19
Of all the Stalin books, this is the best one by far. I strongly recommend it.
Very biased and Anti Communist Propaganda book.......2006-10-17
I m not a big fan of communism, nor of Stalin. But I cross checked the facts mentioned in this book with facts in some other books I have read on similar subject and found that author Edvard Radzinsky is strongly biased against Stalin. In the entire book he seems to give no credit for anything to Stalin nor to his leadership qualities during the course of Second World War. Dont waste your money on a propaganda book. Better to go for an unbiased account from a neutral observer, thats what Biographies are supposed to be.
Engaging.......2006-03-31
This is one of the most interesting biographies that I have ever read. It should be, as the author is also a successful Russian playwright, and he is not inexperienced at writing biographies. Combine this talent for researching and telling dramatic stories with the fact that the author had privileged access to formerly top-secret archives of the Soviet Union, and the ingredients are there for the compulsive read that it is.
Radzinsky makes it clear just how little is known about Stalin's early years. Nevertheless, he considers various testimonies and documents to offer several possibilities about the nature of each of his parents - an absent father and a poor, toiling mother. Considering similar kinds of evidence, and also painting a picture of how Georgia may have been like at the close of the 19th Century, the author also offers glimpses of a child who was always small, feisty, and yet natural as a leader.
His mother pressures him into going to a seminary school so that he may become an orthodox priest. However, this proves to be against a backdrop of various ideologies and revolutionaries, and so we can imagine the transition as Stalin goes from bright student, to atheist, and on to zealous terrorist who has no qualms about taking innocent lives for his ideals.
Stalin's rise to prominence is just as fascinating, in its own way, as Hitler's; but we don't only meet Stalin. We see a lot of Soviet history in the making, and we meet an array of colourful contemporaries along the way. The book is gripping as we read about revolutions, wars, civil wars, the rise and death of Lenin, and the rise of Stalin as he consolidates absolute power into his own hands. By now, we have already glimpsed just how un-human his heart can be, but that is only just the beginning in what is to become an all out attempt to eliminate all political rivals and all classes who may not conform to a system that promises a utopia built upon a foundation of human bones.
There is brief respite during WWII, where some power had to be given back to the generals. With this sense of relative freedom, and the victory over Nazi Germany, it seems as if for a while things will get better. However, as soon as the war is over, the time for independent thinkers is over, and it's back to purges, and then the purges of those who purged, once more.
Unfortunately, I could never really get a feel for how accurate some of the story was, as this is the first major biography on Stalin that I have read, and I have also read relatively little on Soviet history in general. Some reviewers praise this book, saying how they use it to teach their high-school students. Others attack it for being unfounded lies and propaganda. Having been a student of history for some while, I never got the sense that it was too much of the latter; but then I wouldn't be aware of some of the more technical points. Still, if like any other book it can't be assumed to be absolute fact, I continue to feel there has to be much to it that is fair.
Overall, I thought Radzinsky was clear about the fallibility of his explanations, and I always felt as if I were being allowed to draw my own conclusions. The only time that I really questioned the validity of some of his arguments was when it came to Radzinsky's interpretation of Stalin's death, and the seeming conclusion that one way or another Stalin was murdered. This was when at best it looked as if people had been slow to help him because he was not in his normal place to issue commands from the top; and at worst it looked like he may have suffered from a well-deserved dose of neglect. Neither of these possibilities would personally lead me to conclude 'murder'. Still, as I have said, I was able to reach this conclusion for myself, based on the fact that Radzinsky presented alternative evidence and that he was clear when his own conclusions were not absolute.
To sum up, this is a fascinating read; a real page-turner. The story seemed fairly balanced and accurate to me (but then I couldn't be certain). Nevertheless, it was very colourful and highly entertaining. I think it's a very recommendable book.
Solid Research Based on Russian Archives.......2006-02-02
The research done in this book is solid. I read both Russian and English stories, articles, and even books on the recently (if you can call mid nineties that) opened archived by the FSB (then KGB).
Radzinsky does little to interfere with his opinion. He is solely the messenger here, the message is what has been rumored about, spoken of, conspired around, and basically shared in millions of dining rooms, "skomeyak" while old men played dominoes.
Most of what is projected to the reader has been known for some time, especially in Russia proper. Some of the most incredible finds are not really anything knew to most Russian; mainly those that read "Suvorov" back when he first made allegations that based on the numbers, his own eyes when documents passed him, that Stalin was, indeed, planning to attack Hitler first. The difference with Radzinsky and Suvorov, is the incentive.
These finds, of course, would be, and were met with outrage. Partisans would never want to submit they sacrificed so much just for some madman's play. The maginitude of personal destruction, farms, families, culture, religion, all for what? The more documents come to light, the more truth and evidence that this was, in fact, a very real possibility.
Radzinsky does an excellent job of sifting through a lot, picking up where there was little trace, and attempting to explain, as subtle as he can, the sheer magnificance of the issue.
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The Leader Cult in Communist Dictatorship: Stalin and the Eastern Bloc
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 1403934436
Release Date: 2004-12-23 |
Book Description
This is the first book to analyze the distinct leader cults that flourished in the era of "High Stalinism" as an integral part of the system of dictatorial rule in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Fifteen studies explore the way in which these cults were established, their function and operation, their dissemination and reception, the place of the cults in art and literature, the exportation of the Stalin cult and its implantment in the communist states of Eastern Europe, and the impact which de-Stalinisation had on these cults.
Book Description
Fifty years after his death, Stalin remains a figure of powerful and dark fascination. The almost unfathomable scale of his crimes–as many as 20 million Soviets died in his purges and infamous Gulag–has given him the lasting distinction as a personification of evil in the twentieth century. But though the facts of Stalin’s reign are well known, this remarkable biography reveals a Stalin we have never seen before as it illuminates the vast foundation–human, psychological and physical–that supported and encouraged him, the men and women who did his bidding, lived in fear of him and, more often than not, were betrayed by him.
In a seamless meshing of exhaustive research, brilliant synthesis and narrative élan, Simon Sebag Montefiore chronicles the life and lives of Stalin’s court from the time of his acclamation as “leader” in 1929, five years after Lenin’s death, until his own death in 1953 at the age of seventy-three. Through the lens of personality–Stalin’s as well as those of his most notorious henchmen, Molotov, Beria and Yezhov among them–the author sheds new light on the oligarchy that attempted to create a new world by exterminating the old. He gives us the details of their quotidian and monstrous lives: Stalin’s favorites in music, movies, literature (Hemmingway, The Forsyte Saga and The Last of the Mohicans were at the top of his list), food and history (he took Ivan the Terrible as his role model and swore by Lenin’s dictum, “A revolution without firing squads is meaningless”). We see him among his courtiers, his informal but deadly game of power played out at dinners and parties at Black Sea villas and in the apartments of the Kremlin. We see the debauchery, paranoia and cravenness that ruled the lives of Stalin’s inner court, and we see how the dictator played them one against the other in order to hone the awful efficiency of his killing machine.
With stunning attention to detail, Montefiore documents the crimes, small and large, of all the members of Stalin’s court. And he traces the intricate and shifting web of their relationships as the relative warmth of Stalin’s rule in the early 1930s gives way to the Great Terror of the late 1930s, the upheaval of World War II (there has never been as acute an account of Stalin’s meeting at Yalta with Churchill and Roosevelt) and the horrific postwar years when he terrorized his closest associates as unrelentingly as he did the rest of his country.
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar gives an unprecedented understanding of Stalin’s dictatorship, and, as well, a Stalin as human and complicated as he is brutal. It is a galvanizing portrait: razor-sharp, sensitive and unforgiving.
Customer Reviews:
Deep Inside Stalinism.......2007-10-14
Montefiore's creativity in writing this epic-like non-fiction novel is astonishing. Not only does he enlighten us about how Stalin's life looked from the inside (away from all the public idolization - or later on damnation), but he does it in a way that makes it look like a novel. Even though the events are tragic since they are a true story, it's written as a thriller, displaying a giant phase in the twentieth century in a way never shown before. Unlike many historians, Montefiore's book actually has the distinction of giving all the views available objectively and letting the reader judge accordingly.
This book, however, is exactly what it was written for: showing Stalin's court. You'll not find here any historical analysis outside Stalin's court, nor will you find a lot of information about WW II (even though it's covered in great detail).
Bringing Stalin's Russia To Life.......2007-08-23
Montefiore brings to light an astounding amount of new information from various archives and recent interviews and combines this with a very humorous readable style. Highly recommend his "Young Stalin" as well!
Makes Stalin as human as an inhuman can Be.......2007-07-25
This is a fascinating look at Stalin from the perpective of those around him. Giving a diffrent view than any other book so far. Remember this is the man who said "One death is a tradgedy, a million dealths is a statistic."
Stalin the Book Editor.......2007-06-30
What an utterly fascinating portrait the author draws of this monster. I used to think Hitler was interesting, but this blood-thirsty maniac is the one. Talk about fascinating fascism. Stalin, we are told by our communist friends, was the illiterate boob who stole the revolution from the bright and interesting Trotsky and Lenin. Here he is shown to have been every bit as bright as any other mass killers, but in this biography we are shown stages of rage, as it were, whereby Stalin developed finally into the yellow-eyed, paranoid fanatic left-wing academics love to defend. What is so interesting is his intellectual pretensions. His close involvement with authors and composers is fascinating, especially when one considers that his displeasure meant certain death for the discredited. Now there's an editorial policy! At the same time one has to take seriously the author's persuasive claim that it was Stalin's wife's suicide that finally brought an end to any restraint to the Kremlin's killing machine. One is even touched by the descriptions of the informality of the pre-suicide Kremlin, with an old-fashioned style of communal living. They had all lived like wolves in a pack for a while, and then like jackels.
Absolute power. Absolute paranoia. Absolute corruption........2007-03-30
Montefiore's impressing book presents the story about Joseph Stalin and all his subordinates in the circles of Soviet power between 1932 and Stalin's death in 1953. It is a story of power, red, ruthless, total power.
Montefiore has gone to a wide range of new sources. He has searched far in the newly opened KGB-archives in Russia, and interviewed some of the men in power, and a lot of their descendants, first class observers during two decades of terror and tyrrany.
Stalin managed to stay in the top position for so long by distributing the power between his cronies. He frequently moved them around, both positionally and geographically. Stalin constantly collected "evidence" of contra-revolutionary activity by every member of the Politburo, of the Central Committee, in the Army Command and in the secret police. After a few years in power, most of the magnates ended up accused of sabotage against bolshevism, found guilty (pleading guilty after torture, often by their earlier comrades), and killed. This hindered a build-up of an oppositional coalition.
The role of chief killer was initially held by Yagoda, who was killed by his successor Nikolai Yezhov, killed by his successor Berija. Berija outlived Stalin, but was on the verge of being killed himself. Instead, Berija was executed at the orders of Khrushchev shortly after Stalin's own, natural, death.
According to Montefiore, Stalin started to believe all the accusations that was made up. When he died, he was busy planning a purge against doctors and jews.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. May Stalinism rest, but not in peace. Thank capitalism and liberalism for this excellent book.
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- Hitler's Aggression, Genocidal Actions against Slavs, and Details of His Doom
- Somewhat interesting but hardly a "must-read"
- The Hitler Book: The Secret Dossier Prepared for Stalin from the Interrogations of Hitler's Personal Aides
- A Fascinating Read
- "Must Read" Book
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The Hitler Book: The Secret Dossier Prepared For Stalin From The Interrogations of Hitler's Personal Aides
Henrik Eberle ,
Giles MacDonogh ,
Igor Saleyev ,
Otto Gunsche ,
Heinz Linge ,
Joseph Stalin , and
Fyodor Parparov
Manufacturer: PublicAffairs
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Binding: Hardcover
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The Young Hitler I Knew
ASIN: 1586483668 |
Book Description
"An astonishingly intimate portrait" of the Furher--commissioned by, written for, and read by Joseph Stalin, before it disappeared into Soviet archives. Until now. (The Times)
Stalin had never been able to shake off the nightmare of Adolf Hitler. Just as in 1941 he refused to understand that Hitler had broken their non-aggression pact, he was in 1945 unwilling to believe that the dictator had committed suicide in the debris of the Berlin bunker. In his paranoia, Stalin ordered his secret police, the NKVD, precursor to the KGB, to explore in detail every last vestige of the private life of the only man he considered a worthy opponent, and to clarify beyond doubt the circumstances of his death.
For months two captives of the Soviet Army--Otto Guensche, Hitler's adjutant, and Heinz Linge, his personal valet--were interrogated daily, their stories crosschecked, until the NKVD were convinced that they had the fullest possible account of the life of the Furher.
In 1949 they presented their work, in a single copy, to Stalin. It is as remarkable for the depth of its insight into Adolf Hitler--from his specific directions to Linge as to how his body was to be burned, to his sense of humor--as for what it does not say, reflecting the prejudices of the intended reader: Joseph Stalin. Nowhere, for instance, does the dossier criticize Hitler's treatment of the Jews.
Today, the 413-page original of Stalin's personal biography of Hitler is a Kremlin treasure and it is said to be held in President Putin's safe. The only other copy, made by order of Stalin's successor, Nikita Khrushchev, in 1959, was deposited in Moscow Party archives under the code number 462A. It was there that Henrik Eberle and Matthias Uhl, two German historians, found it. Available to the public in full for the first time, The Hitler Book presents a captivating, astonishing, and deeply revealing portrait of Hitler, Stalin, and the mutual antagonism of these two dictators, who between them wrought devastation on the European continent.
Customer Reviews:
Hitler's Aggression, Genocidal Actions against Slavs, and Details of His Doom.......2007-05-03
This dossier is the result of the interrogation, by the Soviet NKVD, of two SS officials who knew Hitler very well--Heinz Linge and Otto Gunsche. It offers a comprehensive history of WWII, with much attention devoted to the closing stages of the European war on the eastern front. There is discussion of the Hitlerjugend sacrificed against the Soviets, the suicides of Goebbels and his family, and the self-destruction of the Fuhrer and burning of his body. (Hitler feared that the Soviets would turn him or his body into a public spectacle). The editors use numerous footnotes that clarify and correct the issues raised by the NKVD. The Editors' Afterword section provides extensive commentary, and the Notes include comprehensive biographical information on many Nazis (including dates of birth and death, and relevant postwar activities).
This dossier begins with a short, prewar history of Nazism: "The official version of the story was that Rohm had been executed for homosexuality, but Hitler concealed from the German people the fact that homosexuality was widely practiced and tolerated in the higher echelons of the National Socialist Party and the Hitler Youth." (p. 6).
Hitler is quoted, on April 17, 1943, of saying that Jews must either be annihilated of thrown into a concentration camp (p. 114). If correct, this itself suggests that, even at this late date, Hitler wasn't irrevocably committed to the extermination of every possible Jew within his reach. Interestingly, Hitler had a purely utilitarian view of Slavs that matched that of his view of Jews, as illustrated by the Nazis' use of both Slavic and Jewish forced laborers. Consider the former: "Filled with loathing Hitler remarked, `It is quite right to make Slavs do this, these robots! Otherwise they would have no right to their share of the sun!'" (p. 102).
The following was Hitler's reaction to Britain's declaration of war against Germany following the Nazi attack on Poland: "It is disgraceful to present Czechs and Poles as sovereign states when this rabble is not a jot better than the Sudanese or the Indians..." (pp. 47-48). At the start of Operation Barbarossa, the Germans fought under the slogan: "Bash the Russians' brains in...We need the Russian expanses without Russians!" (p. 76).
The editors cite an eventual figure of 11.27 million Soviet military deaths, but add: "On the other hand, it is mentioned only in a few places that the campaign against the Soviet Union was also a racially motivated war of annihilation, which claimed the lives of 18.4 million civilians. This war of annihilation was carried out above all by the SS, but a politically-indoctrinated Wehrmacht played its part." (p. 300). Combining these figures with others (e. g., the 2-3 million murdered Polish gentiles), it is obvious that the Germans' genocide of Slavs was greater than that of Jews (5-6 million). Considering this metric, the reader realizes that Jews and Slavs were indeed unequal victims--with Slavs the greater victims.
Some proponents of Holocaust uniqueness have claimed that the Nazis' disrespect and exploitation of the dead, as exemplified by the removal of tooth fillings, was done only to Jews. We learn instead that it was also done to Slavs--including living ones. Blaschke, Hitler's personal dentist, obtained crowns, bridges, and gold teeth that had been extracted from Soviet POWs (pp. 164-165).
Certain revisionists (e. g., Alfred Maurice de Zayas) have repeated the canard that the Soviets and Poles killed over 2 million German civilians during the final offensives and early postwar period. However heavy the loss of German civilian life actually was, it was clearly the fault of the Germans, not the Russians or Poles: "When the German troops fled in chaos, the population panicked and ran with their soldiers. A mass migration towards the German heartlands began. The roads and paths of East Prussia were thick with old men, women and children who had turned and run, only to become jammed in the numerous tank traps that offered only a torturously narrow path. Many--the children in particular--froze to death in the intense cold." (p. 180).
The Churchill-Roosevelt betrayal of Poland to the Soviet Union, culminating at Yalta, is often rationalized by the specter of a German-Soviet separate peace. However, Stalin ALSO feared a separate peace--a German-western one. For example, the Battle of the Bulge was framed as an attempt by the Germans to so bloody and dishearten the western Allies that they would unilaterally sue for peace (p. 170).
Somewhat interesting but hardly a "must-read".......2007-04-16
"The Hitler Book", a posthumous biography of Hitler personally prepared for Stalin, is of interest only as a historical curiosity and for the insight it provides into the strange political dynamics of postwar Stalinist Russia. Interestingly enough, and contrary to press reports and the claims of the researchers in question, this book was not recently "discovered" by a couple of German scholars digging around the Russian archives. David Irving used this dossier in the 1960s when writing his magnificent "Hitler's War", which is_the_book I would recommend for those interested in a life of Hitler, particularly his years in power.
Based on the interrogations of Otto Guensche and Heinz Linge (Hitler's SS adjutant and manservant respectively), this book covers most of the major events of Hitler's life more or less accurately, but should not be taken as an authoritative work of history. It's a gossipy, biographical caricature based on both public knowledge and the torture-induced testimonies of a butler and an aide. That's not to say that Guensche's and Linge's testimony shouldn't be trusted, but two low-level witnesses do not a biography make and, in any case, their information should be compared with what they freely told Western authors, like David Irving and James O'Donnell, after their decade in Soviet captivity. This book reveals no new information, and is also marred by the fact that it shamelessly panders to the prejudices and paranoia of its very important audience of one: Josef Stalin. It obviously makes no mention of the Ribbentrop/Molotov Pact and subsequent Soviet expansion into Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic states, and certainly doesn't deal with Soviet agressive intentions toward Germany or the reasons for the disasters of 1941. Its portrait of Hitler sticks to the wartime propaganda line, showing him as a feral, rug-chewing, cowardly maniac. And while the Soviet Union did indeed bear the brunt of the fighting against Nazi Germany, this book seriously downplays the Anglo-American contribution, deprecates the bravery and effectiveness of their troops and even accuses the Western Allies of trying to negotiate a separate peace with Hitler and of not bombing armaments factories whose weapons they knew would be used exclusively against the Soviets. It's an interesting look into the dark maze of Stalinist psychology, but is not the source to consult for a legitimate Hitler biography.
The Hitler Book: The Secret Dossier Prepared for Stalin from the Interrogations of Hitler's Personal Aides.......2007-04-16
Clearly one of the most informative books written about the life of Adolf Hitler. The account of the last days in the Fuhrer bunker is not only spellbinding, but probably the most accurate. A "must read" for the WW2 history enthusiast.
A Fascinating Read.......2007-04-11
I couldn't put this book down and was disappointed when I finished it!It's mandatory reading for all WW2 buffs as the insight it provides into the personal lives of Hitler and other top Nazis in the Third Reich is invaluable. I found it riveting as it described Hitler's personal foibles,his descent into paranoia and detachment from reality while his lackeys around him continued to pander to his gigantic ego and self-delusion.It depicts a world gone mad and rampant evil. Hitler's callous diregard for the lives of his soldiers and those of German civilians caught up in the horror that was 1945 Berlin stuns the imagination. Equally disturbing is Stalin's prurient fascination with his Fascist counterpart.
This is a superb book and of great value to the keen historian who wants more than just facts and dates.
"Must Read" Book.......2007-03-21
This is a "must read" book on the subject of Hitler and the last days in Berlin. It is a jewel from the Soviet archives.
Having said that, great caution must be used in accepting what is written in the book as the truth. Only by comparison with other accounts can the facts be sifted out from the propaganda. Read all the front and back material as well to get a better understanding of what is in this report.
The report on which the book is based was written for Stalin's consumption and therefore there are distinct biases and distortions in what information is reported and how it is presented. It is almost comical in places how the Soviet writers attempted to twist things. Almost comical - but not actually, because the intended audience of this book, Stalin was as diabolical and hideous, if not more, than the subject of the report.
The fact that it is a Soviet report is not really a flaw since it gives us insight into the Soviet mind and their use of history to indoctrinate rather than enlighten.
The true flaw in the book is that the English translation has abridged the German editor's notes and inserted additional footnotes that are often just plain wrong. The English translator also lacks any understanding of WW2 German military terminology, for example, translating "Minenwerfer" as "mine thrower" instead of "mortar". Very childish, but fortunately there are not too many of these screwups.
I still give it 5 stars because it is a priceless document. I might suggest getting the German edition for better supporting material.
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The Dictators: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia.
Hitler: A Study in Tyranny
Stalin: Breaker of Nations
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar
The Cold War: A History
