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

 

 

Putin's Folly

Men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves against attack, and then they attack others.

Niccolo Machiavelli

Republican hawks, including the inimitable John McCain, are dyspeptically belching bellicosity over the expected Russian annexation of the Crimea and possibly Eastern Ukraine.

"Obama is weak," they all sing, cacophonously. "Obama has sapped the strength of the United States.  The North Koreans and the Iranians sense it.  And we will pay the price for his gutting our military."

"We are in danger of losing all our geo-strategic power."  They make no mention of our invasions Iraq and Afghanistan having increased American influence.

The fact is that the US has lost much of its global empire, just as did the British.  But now we are gaining a new empire--energy independence.   Globalization does not function through territorial conquest or dominance and those who think so are residing in the last century, including the prominent senior senator from Arizona who, despite his heroism and captivity has never seen a war he does not like.

Global strength lies in homegrown economic success, but that is not to imply that the world should not speak out and sanction Russian thuggery, a naked power-grab by a latter-day Cossack.

The world, however, has changed since 1939, rendering the Munich--Chamberlain--Hitler appeasement analogies no longer the paradigm of international puissance.    Angela Merkel, speaking to the Bundestag, voiced Germany's concern about Russian aggression, not speaking only for Deutschland, but speaking for 27 members of the European Union.   Students of the alliances that led to the First World War (one hundred years ago) understand that alliances that led to that war and to World War II are no longer de rigueur.  The United States, a reluctant entrant to that war as well as a semi-reluctant entrant to World War II twenty years later, should understand that nation-states no longer have the influence over their populace they once had.  "Putin is engaging in 20th century politics," Merkel said angrily.  She ought to know, her forebears were champion malefactors of the art.

The lessons of Iraq, Viet Nam, Afghanistan, and other failed wars costing thousands of American lives, garnished by trillions of lost dollars, have soured Americans on the unexpected consequences of poorly chosen battles.    The empowerment of "everyman" through information technology enables people to clearly and more quickly see the misfeasance of their leaders.   Putin, despite his attempts at suppressing internal dissent, is seen by most of the world community as the thug that he is, his preening Olympic strut in Sochi having vanished with the melting snows.  Even if he annexes the Crimea and the dubious referendum provides a pretext to do so, he is going to pay the price with the world community, despite Republicans in congress heaping blame on the President for American "weakness."

There will be sanctions, served up by the world community for Vladimir Putin.  But let's take a deeper look at his worldview. Historically part of Russia, and always an obsession since the Czars, the Russians enjoy contractual rights to the Crimea's warm water ports because the rest of the Russian northern ports are locked in ice for most of the year.  Without warm water ports, Russian influence and global shipping diminishes exponentially, obliging them to rely on land transport, and even worse, needing access through other countries for a route to the seas.  But these ports were not in jeopardy.  And now, the war waged by the European Union and the United States will be economic and not military.

What some are forgetting that it is the Ukrainians themselves who are to blame for much of the current crisis.   Their Slavic Polish brethren have managed to straighten out their economy as a prerequisite to having been admitted to the European Union, frightening Putin.  Happy consolidating his power because of the Ukrainian government's incompetence, he can divert attention from the growing perception by his own people about manifold problems within Russia itself.   Obsessing about NATO and the EU moving toward the Russian borders, Putin promulgates a Western conspiracy to undermine Russian hegemony.  He is partially right; the West does seek incorporation of most of Europe into the EU, both as a war preventative and, just as importantly, as a key to growing the European Union economic sphere.   This is not necessarily contrary to Russian interests, unless the leadership fears more transparency and integrity in government, the latter not a lesson taught in the KGB.

What Putin does not realize is that the same nationalist forces that caused the break up of the Soviet Union are still extant in Ukraine and even in the Crimea.  Having not disappeared, those forces are simply exacerbated by a failing economy, the key to Western influence that Putin ignores in his imperial quest. The disparate forces in Ukraine, ethnic Russian speakers and ethnic Ukrainians are still going to clash, unless the basket case Ukrainian economy shows dramatic improvement, a process that will take years.  The Russian economy, meanwhile, now dependent more than ever on energy and gas prices, will be obliged to sustain more impoverished geography without the wherewithal to do so, especially if energy prices tumble and sanctions bite.  (This principle also applies to places like Venezuela, shoring up the sputtering Cuban economy with subsidies from oil revenues, whilst restless Venezuelans riot in the streets.) 

Putin may find himself in an economic dungeon, sanctions operating against him; more discontented Russians, and no way out.

Russian natural gas is propping up an essentially gangster regime--a regime that suppresses dissent, stifles free expression and needs an external diversion to coalesce the Russian public over foreign "enemies."  A classically cynical maneuver, it was the policy of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Lenin, Castro, Chavez, Arafat and even Assad and Saddam Hussein.  Often this policy is successful in the short term but ultimately masks a deep, corrosive interior.  It is said that Putin has become one of the world's wealthiest men with a fortune in excess of $100 billion.  His efforts to rescue his comrade, Viktor Yanukovych, demonstrably a satiric clone of Putin himself, as depicted by the deposed Ukrainian President’s opulent palace, festooned with stuffed animals and ornate Sevres vases reminiscent of Versailles devolved into Las Vegas.   No one ever said that dictators are tasteful.

One can hardly imagine Mr. Putin living in less Nero-like splendor.

Big Pharma and the Fountain of Youth or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Meds (as well as other thoughts.)

Those of us who are old enough to tune into the ridiculous network news on, say, CBS, for example, are treated to a few minutes of news whilst being berated by a slew of ads for neuropathic pain, high blood pressure, testosterone, Viagra, and Cialis among other bromides to cure septuagenarians, octogenarians, and other people of a certain age through the miracle of medical science, who by now, should be dead, or by the time they have finished the “newscast,” wish they were.  

The network news with, for example, Scott Pelley is usually an inane conglomeration of human interest stories, snowstorms, heat waves, tornadoes (depending upon the season) and people who rescue dogs, cats and other creatures fortunate enough not to be subjected to the insulting prattle serving as a vehicle to sell products that should not be advertised at all.  This, all bolstered by an unusually sappy Steve Hartman human interest story about someone who is usually in a wheelchair who has learned to play the oboe through the same straw he uses to operate his transportation.  Fortunately, this only appears as the last segment on Friday night, when the mercies of the DVR allow a quick fast forward to spare us the last insult to even those with a modicum of intelligence.   

“Talk to your doctor. It may be low T”  Folks, more like, Talk to your doctor about how you can suffer a heart attack, stroke, shortness of breath, insomnia, rage, depression, suicidal impulses, prostate cancer, and various other side effects of this hormone, which naturally declines during the aging process.  This is a blatant snake oil pitch, and there seems to be no restraining it, because the Supreme Court says that restrictions on commercial speech violate the first Amendment.  These folks watch the CBS news, I can assure you.

Testosterone medications are marketed simply because they make money.  There is  no public policy reason to allow drug companies to cynically hawk these medications, no matter how beneficial, to the general public.  These are products to be evaluated by physicians.   The information concerning the medications during the “sale” phase of the ad, differs from the voice during the “warning” phase of the ad.  It is conceived and designed to deceive the public, no less than the tobacco companies which lied about the dangers of tobacco.

The 1950s ads about the “T” zone and more doctors smoking Camels than other brands have simply morphed into a different phase of marketing.  And now the phase is low “T” instead of the the “T” zone.

Testosterone marketing is no less a danger to the public and it is clear that the marketing of it will eventually lead to a plethora of claims for the foreseeable harm that it causes. 

Thoughts on the Presidential aspirations of a certain New Jersey Governor.

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”

Abraham Lincoln

Governor Christie is in trouble, and deservedly so.  His transparently false denials and his tossing his friends to the wolves speak volumes about his dubious character. 

There was something disingenuous about his two hour apologia marathon, something that did not ring true.   His disavowal of his friendship with his high school friend, his denigration of his friend's status in high school as opposed to his own, rings a bell about those who are supposedly pristinely qualified for public office, who travel under the mantle of “plain speaking,” and who generally are exposed by the other Lincoln maxim of fooling some of the people some of the time but not fooling all of the people all of the time.

Now there is a feeding frenzy among the press and subpoenas will soon reveal that Mr. Christie is probably a fraud as well as a bully.

Sometimes America is fortunate enough to learn why some men are not presidential timber before they are elected.

That is not to say that politicians are not as flawed as the rest of us, or that they are saints, but some are more flawed than others and that is something we should be glad to know before the campaign even starts.

The Likud and the Boycott by the European Union

The Palestinians and the upcoming EU boycotts of Israel may have more of an impact on Israeli policy toward the eventual necessity of the two-state solution than all of the previous wars and violence perpetuated by Arab nationalists.  Although Israel received rockets in return for their exit from Gaza, they may be faced with, in the eyes of the right wing government, an even more undesirable alternative.  The impact on Israeli business and employment if the boycott takes effect.   

This may have more influence on Israeli political decisions concerning the West Bank than the foolishly conducted violent Palestinian intifadas.

It seems like the Netanyahu government wishes to create a de facto annexation of the territories.  

This, as I have written previously represents more of a threat to Israel than ending the occupation.  If the EU carries out the boycott, there are many in Israel, including the newly popular potential prime minister, Yair Lapid, who believe that the 350,000 settlers will ultimately have to return to Israel, in exchange for NATO peacekeepers and what possibly might become a stable peace.

There are many Israelis who think that the climate has now changed enough to give peace a chance. Many Jewish American supporters of Israel agree.

Israel at the Crossroads

            I have long believed that an experimentalist should not be unduly inhibited by theoretical untidiness. If he insists in having every last theoretical T crossed before he starts his research the chances are that he will never do a significant experiment. And the more significant and fundamental the experiment the more theoretical uncertainty may be tolerated. By contrast, the more important and difficult the experiment the more that experimental care is warranted. There is no point in attempting a half-hearted experiment with an inadequate apparatus.

Biographical Memoirs, Robert Henry Dicke

May 6, 1916-March 4, 1997

The Iranian revolution of 1979 brought forth a great schism between the United States and that religiously fervid theocracy.   And now the Obama administration is trying to achieve détente with a country that has viewed America as the “Great Satan” for the past 34 years.  A nation that, in 1979, violated the international rules of diplomacy by imprisoning US diplomats and is still driven by religious zealotry and intolerance.

Whether the American gambit on the geo-strategic chessboard will be successful is one of those questions being debated at the highest levels of government and, at the same time, is causing a great deal of angst among American Jewry, especially conservatives, most of whom now believe, along with the Netanyahu government that Israeli abandonment is the soupe de jour.

American interests and Israeli interests, in many respects, are diverging.  The United States, realizing, after Iraq, that it is almost powerless to alter events in the Arab world, is seeking to get off the road and let the actors involved determine the hegemonic outcome.   Israel, dependant on American military force is possibly facing existential threats from places that may no longer be controlled by American military power.

Strange times, these.   Israel is in alliance against Iran with Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, and Egypt, now again a military dictatorship over 83 million people.   The religious feuds between Shia and Sunni smolder deeply.   These divisions have endured for 1,400 years and now have arisen to the surface of a world still militarily weaker than the United States, but increasingly less subject to its influence.   The colonialism of the British, French and Germans, who divided amongst themselves, the Arab and African worlds no longer exists.  It has vanished with the Raj that left India and Pakistan to their own antipathies. 

The bipolar power struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union provided a type of stability that has faded away with the twentieth century.  States that were the clients of the two former hegemons are now free to set their own agendas, which no longer include the seeking of a protective umbrella from either the United States or the Russians, but do aspire for military support from the great powers against each other. (Iran and Egypt)  Our policy makers are now forced into the continual dilemma of who to support and picking the winner is not our great attribute.

Those who think that extra US aircraft carriers and bombs are the solution for our problems of loss of influence are deluding themselves in a haze of Theodore Rooseveltian reverie.  Most conservatives long for the past, but it is never to return.

 

Instead, we are engaged in a world struggle for the minds of the newly empowered, tweeting, and disaffected youth of countries that have their own agendas that do not necessarily coincide with ours.  Israel is not one of them--they are with us. This empowerment has upset the world order, and the great powers are struggling to devise a foreign policy that, to some extent, is mired in the past.  

New foreign policy in the United States is attempting to move past the old order.  "The forces of freedom against the forces of totalitarianism."   Existential angst against interests that no longer believe in the same definition of "threat." 

Our hope is that Iran, a nation of 70 million people and more than half of who are under 35 years of age, will move toward democracy.  The same for Egypt, but possibly less likely.  In examining the education level of the Iranian population, one could hope that reform will be swifter than we think.  Young, educated people are increasingly secular, and more susceptible to democratic ideals than the ignorance and superstition peddled by the Ayatollahs.  The present "faith based" Iran is reminiscent of 15th century Europe before the enlightenment, of Marxism before the collapse of the Soviet Union, and even Nazism.  The latter two "isms” being religions of their own.

This enunciates a new reality for Americans, especially Jewish ones, who fear that any departure from the U.S.-Israel alliance constitutes the seeds of destruction for the Jewish State, which should perhaps pay more heed to the internal forces that threaten its existence:  Ultra Orthodox zealotry, continued occupation of the territories, expansion of settlements and the possible incorporation of a very likely, due to higher birth rate, Arab majority into the Israeli body politic should Israel annex the west bank, which seemingly is the intention of the Likud government as evidenced by the expansionism in the settlements.   These settlements are clear evidence of religious zealotry among the ultra Orthodox, who claim, without pretense, that God gave them the land of Judea and Samaria.   Therein lies the existential threat to Israel.

Even, however, if Israel cedes the territories and settlements or does land swaps for peace, there is no guarantee that the arrangement will bear fruit, because the forces that are now sweeping the Arab world are not really concerned with Israel.   They are concerned with promoting Shiite or Sunni prevalence.  They are engaged in a cultural/religious war, advancing their concept of Allah to the denigration of the other tribe whose Allah is not as genuine as the other's Allah.  It is not fanciful to say that generations may pass before the issue is resolved.

And now throw another ingredient into this nasty ragout--the incipient complete energy independence of the United States, making its need for middle east oil diminished to perhaps disruption of the entire OPEC economies; perhaps necessitating their own reformation, in education, the rights of women and in globalization.

All these forces render the problem seemingly more insoluble than the cold war.  It is an increasingly distressing picture that defies even the most creative of minds, except perhaps those who advance the dubious solution of bare American power, a cascade of bombings and war to bring all these forces to heel.  On the other hand, those of us who have lived long enough can remember the days when the Soviet monolith threatened to envelop the world in a wicked blanket of communism.