Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler And Stalin
Holy God this is a good book:
I started it a couple of years ago, and got worn out by the carnage halfway through. Just started it up again. Massive and horrible, but absolutely a great book. One way to summarize it: the Holocaust, unfortunately, wasn't so special. It was merely (!) one episode in an on-going series of horific mass murders conducted by Stalin and Hitler in eastern Europe--often using starvation as the primary weapon. (Cannibalism turns out to have been a fairly common occurrence.)
One sort of side-note: Snyder argues that Hitler initially wanted to exterminate the Slavs and kick out the Jews (not an uncommon claim)...but when the blitzkrieg on the eastern front failed, Himmler et al. basically (as was their habit) altered the plan so as to make it seem as if Hitler's wishes were, in spirit, at least, actually being actualized. So they decided that murdering the Jews had sort of been the actual goal after all. At least it would have to do.
Also: I hadn't realized to what extent the Einsatzgruppen relied on adjunct recruits/henchmen recruited form local populations. Also, apparently, it was fairly easy to get the Einsatzgruppen to kill men. Getting them to kill women and children was a kind of hump they had to be pushed to get over. Unsurprisingly, I suppose.
One major conclusion I draw from the book: if you lived roughly between Germany and Russia during the relevant time period, you were basically just f*cked.
I started it a couple of years ago, and got worn out by the carnage halfway through. Just started it up again. Massive and horrible, but absolutely a great book. One way to summarize it: the Holocaust, unfortunately, wasn't so special. It was merely (!) one episode in an on-going series of horific mass murders conducted by Stalin and Hitler in eastern Europe--often using starvation as the primary weapon. (Cannibalism turns out to have been a fairly common occurrence.)
One sort of side-note: Snyder argues that Hitler initially wanted to exterminate the Slavs and kick out the Jews (not an uncommon claim)...but when the blitzkrieg on the eastern front failed, Himmler et al. basically (as was their habit) altered the plan so as to make it seem as if Hitler's wishes were, in spirit, at least, actually being actualized. So they decided that murdering the Jews had sort of been the actual goal after all. At least it would have to do.
Also: I hadn't realized to what extent the Einsatzgruppen relied on adjunct recruits/henchmen recruited form local populations. Also, apparently, it was fairly easy to get the Einsatzgruppen to kill men. Getting them to kill women and children was a kind of hump they had to be pushed to get over. Unsurprisingly, I suppose.
One major conclusion I draw from the book: if you lived roughly between Germany and Russia during the relevant time period, you were basically just f*cked.
posted by Winston Smith at
8:48 AM
2 Comments:
Ooo, serious historical downers recommendation time:
(1) Forgotten Ally, by Rana Mitter - a bit like Blood Lands, but with Japan in China. Chiang Kai-shek was no Stalin (though he was willing to kill half a million people in a flood for just to halt a Japanese advance), but the Japanese war in China was nearly as insane as the German one in Russia. The book also gives a much needed corrective to Tuchman's over flattering account of General Stilwell.
(2) Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy, by Eri Hotta - the audio book almost made me crash my car in a moment of hitorical WTF, when the Emperor's Lord Chamberlain talks Hirohito into appointing Hideki Tojo as Prime Minister to (I swear!) prevent war with the US, on the theory that "You need a thief to catch a thief." As a bonus, the book kills dead the FDR-tricked-them conspiracy theory beloved of the Japanese right & American left.
(3) Big Show in Bololand, by Bertrand Patenaude - Kind of not a downer, since the American relief mission did save millions of lives during the 1921 Volga Famine. But, but: Herbert Hoover's incredible success in responding to the challenge of famine relief really throws his failure to deal with the depression into sharp relief. Also, the Soviets learned a valuable lesson from the immense power accumulated by American relief workers in so short a time, and applied it in Ukraine later.
I'm sure I'll think of some more later.
Ehhh...thanks, I think...
I mean need a little time before I dive into another horrific account of human mass psychopathy and evil...
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