Book Review: Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin

 

 

Book Review:

 

"Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin" by Timothy Snyder

 

A monumental feat of scholarship, meticulously researched, and marked by a deep understanding of the killing fields that comprised the Ukraine, Poland, and part of the Soviet Union, during 1933-1945, Snyder, a Yale historian, has carefully documented the unspeakable with a new perspective that staggers even the most macabre of imaginations. 

 

Within the period covered by the book, and in what Snyder calls the Bloodlands, Nazi Germany murdered ten million people and Stalin another four million.  These stupefying numbers (not including Western Europe or other parts of Europe) occurred because of some events that had gone as planned and some that had not.  They occurred because of the personalities of two monstrous individuals, Hitler and Stalin, both of whom used their duplicity to rationalize their crimes to either consolidate their own power or to provide the justification for their acts.   Hitler saw the war going the wrong way in 1941 and shifted his idea of victory to make Europe Judenrein (free of Jews).  Stalin, when collectivization and modernization failed, caused massive starvation in the 1930s, created the “Great Terror,” murdering his own people by the millions through starvation, gunshot, and deportation to the Gulags in order to win a "victory" against his perceived enemies and the enemies of his brand of Communism.

 

This is a unique version of the history we are used to seeing in the countless books that have been written about World War II and the Holocaust.

 

Stalin's plans for modernization in the early 30s, causing great famine  and in 1937 and 1938, the Soviets identified kulaks (peasant farmers) as enemies of Soviet power also including minorities on his “enemies” list, instituting mass murder of his own people.

 

In 1939 Hitler and Stalin invaded Poland as allies. There followed a policy of “belligerent complicity,” involving the killing of women and children on both sides of a line drawn by the German foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop and his Soviet counterpart, Viacheslav Molotov. This line was drawn in the bloodlands, mostly the Ukraine and down the middle of Poland.

 

Stalin never suspected that Hitler would later double-cross him in 1941, ignoring many warnings from his ministers and foreign heads of intelligence.      This was followed by Hitler’s policy of General Plan Ost using the Western Soviet Union as a colony for Germany, wherein the local populace would be enslaved, murdered, deported or otherwise exterminated and then replaced with ethnic Germans. This plan had to be delayed, but when the Soviets were not conquered as quickly as Hitler expected, in 1941, Hitler then embarked on the Final Solution—the murder of all Jews he could touch. This would be his victory.

The two systems--Stalinism and Nazism, Snyder points out, created a symbiotic relationship, allowing each perversion to justify crimes committed at essentially the same time and place, an almost quantum mechanic of death.

 

This book is a must read for anyone who is interested in European history and the slaughter committed by civilized nations run by paranoid madmen--the nations of Goethe, Schiller, Beethoven, and Wagner  and the other of Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky, and Rachmaninoff.  

Country	Estimated Pre-War Jewish population	Estimated Jewish population killed	Percent killed
Baltic countries	253,000	228,000	90
Belgium	65,000	40,000	60
Belorussian SSR	375,000	245,000	65
Bohemia & Moravia	90,000	80,000	89
Bulgaria	64,000	14,000	22
Denmark	8,000	120	2
Finland	2,000	?	?
France	350,000	90,000	26
Germany & Austria	240,000	210,000	88
Greece	70,000	54,000	77
Hungary	650,000	450,000	70
Italy	40,000	8,000	20
Luxembourg	5,000	1,000	20
Netherlands	140,000	105,000	75
Norway	1,800	900	50
Poland	3,300,000	3,000,000	91
Romania	600,000	300,000	50
Russian SFSR	975,000	107,000	11
Slovakia	90,000	75,000	83
Ukrainian SSR	1,500,000	900,000	60
Yugoslavia	43,000	26,000	60
Total	8,861,800	5,933,900

 

Bloodlands are in red, and do not include non Jews who were killed in the millions as well as the above figures.

 

USSR: Bloodlands

Human losses of the USSR in World War II (included in the above figures of total war dead)

Country Population Military deaths Civilian deaths due to military activity and crimes against humanity Civilian deaths due to war related famine and disease Total deaths Deaths as % of 1939 population  Soviet Union (within 1939 borders)[10] 168,500,000 [36] 8,700,000 to 13,850,000 4,000,000 to 9,000,000 6,000,000 18,000,000 to 24,000,000 13.6 to 14.2  Estonia (within 1939 borders) 1,100,000[37][38] 50,000 50,000 4.5  Latvia (within 1939 borders) 1,900,000[37][38] 190,000 40,000 230,000 11.6  Lithuania (within 1939 borders[39][40]) 2,500,000[37][38] 275,000 75,000 350,000 14.5  Poland, Eastern Regions (figures included with Poland) 11,500,000[38][41][42] 2,000,000 2,000,000 17.2  Romania Bessarabia and Bukovina (figures included with Romania) 3,700,000 [37] 300,000 300,000 8.1 Less: population transfers ethnic Germans 1939-1941 (400,000)[43] Growth of population 1939–mid-1941 7,900,000[36] Approx. Totals(borders 1946-1991) 196,700,000[36] 8,700,000 to 13,850,000 7,000,000 to 12,000,000 6,000,000 21,800,000 to 28,000,000 11.0 to 14.2