Many of us have read dozens, hundreds, of books about Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, World War II, the Holocaust. Until now, however, a careful work of sound scholarship has not appeared that pulls it all together as does Bloodlands. I could write thousands of words reviewing the book, but nothing could do justice to reading it yourself. Indeed, if you or someone you know reads nothing else on this era, this is the one book that must be read. Bloodlands, by Yale historian Timothy Snyder, details the – by Snyder’s admission an undercount – 14 million individuals murdered in purposeful killing policies by Stalin and Hitler in the central zone of Eastern Europe, Poland, Belorussia, Ukraine, non-Jews and Jews, between 1930-1945. That doesn't include, and dwarfs, the millions of soldiers who died in combat or the civilians in the path of battles.
In his concluding chapter, “Humanity”, Snyder tells us, “Each record of death suggests, but cannot supply, a unique life. We must be able not only to reckon the number of deaths but to reckon with each victim as an individual.”
Snyder points out: “To dismiss the Nazis or the Soviets as beyond human concern or historical understanding is to fall into their moral trap.” Stalin and Hitler had conscious policies to extract material gain from the people who they thought stood in their way. It was boths’ commonality that had each act so barbarously: “Both the Soviet and Nazi political economies relied upon collectives that controlled social groups and extracted their resources.” Many perpetrators of the horrors, also, had material objectives or just were trying to survive themselves. Snyder says that the millions of deaths tells us as much about the living. “It is not at all obvious that reducing history to morality plays makes anyone moral.” Snyder’s recounting of the murders focuses upon the – to them – practical objectives of Hitler and Stalin: “In colonization, ideology interacts with economics; in administration, it interacts with opportunism and fear.”
The personal vignettes that fill the book, along with the details of the scale of murders, have set every reader back on their heels. No one, no country, is spared the telling of their heroes or devils. Go to Google to see how the learned react to the book. Go to your own soul to see how you react.
