"Bloodlands: A History of Europe During the Rule of Hitler and Stalin," by Timothy Snyder

DW_4343: I bought this book because I was interested in the background of the current Russian - Ukrainian war. I got much more than I expected. This is an extensive history of Eastern Europe based on the political and economic developments and struggles within and between the USSR under Stalin and Germany under the rule of Hitler.
I was interested in more details about the Holocaust and I got more than expected. The details for the numbers killed is mind-numbing. The author made an interesting point that from the perspective of Eastern Europeans the Jewish deaths were not as central a factor as I have been led to believe in reading American history texts.
The book does an excellent job putting all of the body counts into the context of the political/social/economic of the two dominant nation states, Russia and Germany.

United States on Oct 05, 2023

LindaLinda:

United Kingdom on Oct 02, 2023

Matija Potocnik: Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder is essential to understanding East and Central Europe's history and politics today. It is not an easy book to read, but it is sobering to see the holistic picture behind the mass murders in the region and the role our people played in these sad stories. It is not just Nazi Germany that killed the Jews, Slavs, the Romani, gays and the disabled. Most of our nations did just as much killing, if not more. Suppose our societies are ever to move ahead and stop letting history repeat itself (see contemporary Poland and Hungary as the most pertinent examples). In that case, we must face our past and acknowledge our responsibility.

United States on Sep 21, 2023

Amazon Customer: As a non historian, but someone with an interest in learning more about the history which has shaped twentieth century Europe, I found this book extremely informative. For the most part I found the writing easy to follow and understand. It was only towards the latter part of the book, particularly in the post war section, that the mass of figures and characters became a little difficult to follow. I was particularly pleased that the author included a couple of shorter chapters, at the end of the book, which summarised the main content. I look forward to reading more of Mr Snyder’s books on this period in history.

United Kingdom on Sep 01, 2023

Sara Barron: I thought I knew a lot about this subject, but realized I only knew it from a military-historical point of view. Bloodlands looks at the conflicts in the zone between Germany and Russia from the civilian point of view, and it's astounding. The breadth and depth of Snyder's scholarship is staggering. I learned so much about what befell the Jews, Poles, Belorussians and Ukrainians. The genocidal cruelty of the Nazis was well known to me, but I learnt a lot about how the Soviets were comparably genocidal, including before the war. I learnt too that most of the Holocaust carried out by the Nazis was outside of Germany itself, and how it swung back and forth between needing Jews to work versus wanting to exterminate them. It makes for very difficult but necessary reading. Thank you, Professor Snyder.

Canada on Aug 09, 2023

MAC: It is somewhat obvious that since the Berlin Wall came down and the West has been able to access Soviet records of what the so-called communists under Stalin got up to domestically as well as what the Red Army found on their march to Berlin in WWII. New facts and new perspectives on the horrors of it all would emerge.

And why not?

What better way for the victims to be recognised and remembered? The innocents who have suffered because of the inbuilt ignorance and prejudice of the state proponents of hate. They deserve to have their story told and Snyder's naming of the some of the victims is more than just a sentimental literary device - it is a form of justice of which he should be proud and of which the reader should be mindful.

And what better person to evaluate it all than a non-European such as Timothy Snyder? His gaze is unrelenting, his conclusions comprehensive as well as humane. Snyder's national objectivity is put to good use and is fair in its conclusions as he turns over the historical record.

The sheer scale of human suffering - firstly explored under Stalin and then under Hitler from the years 1933 to 1945 - is simply staggering to the...

United Kingdom on Jul 31, 2021

Anna v. D.: Timothy Snyder beschreibt akribisch und nüchtern wie zunächst der sowjetische Bolschewismus, danach der nationale Sozialismus und zuletzt wieder der sowjetische Bolschewismus (nunmehr geronnen zu einer Art bizarrem Nationalbolschewismus) die Bloodlands, Länder und Gebiete östlich der Grenzen des Deutschen Reiches von 1938 und westlich der Linie Leningrad-Smolensk-Rostow am Don, nachhaltig zerstört haben. Die verstörenden Details hierzu sind im Werk selbst nachzulesen und brauchen an dieser Stelle nicht repetiert zu werden.

Auf der Metaebene protokolliert Snyder das Zeitalter der Ideologien, den Mythos des 20. Jahrhunderts, das im Ringen um ideologische und territoriale Vorherrschaft zwischen der marxistisch-leninistisch-stalinistischen klassistischen Variante des Sozialismus und der rassistisch-faschistischen nationalsozialistischen Variante des Sozialismus seinen tödlichen Gipfelpunkt fand. Die Verschränkung zwischen Bolschewismus und Nationalsozialismus tritt deutlich hervor, ebenso die Art- und Wahlverwandtschaft zwischen beiden, der allmählichen Anverwandlung des Anderen im jeweils eigenen und der daraus resultierenden Eskalation an Gewalt, Völkermord und...

Germany on Jun 12, 2021

John P. Jones III: “Without history, the memories become private, which today means national; and the numbers become public, which is to say an instrument in the international competition for martyrdom.”

One such number is 33,761. That is the number of Jews shot at Babi Yar, near Kiev, in the Ukraine. On numerous occasions throughout this monumental and essential history, Timothy Snyder uses very precise figures such as 33,761. Admittedly, it rubbed me the wrong way, since in the world of much uncertainty, as Heisenberg and others have proclaimed, it is impossible to know such a number, with that type of certainty and precision. But on the very last page of his account, the author, a Yale historian, explained fully why it is so important to use the “odd” number. It is the humanity that is revealed in the “1”, which can be multiplied by a million or more. It is the fragments of the stories of individuals who once had a real name, that have been preserved in diaries, or the memories of others, or simply a departing sentence scratched on a wall.

Snyder does also use “round” numbers, as in 14,000,000. That is his estimate of the number of CIVILIAN deaths in an area he...

United States on Nov 02, 2015

Seaski: I began reading this book as a tool for gaining a better understanding of what is going on in the Ukraine. There is no understanding of Ukraine's current situation without understanding the cultural, social and criminal history laid out in this groundbreaking book. The key to Bloodlands is that it is based upon STATISTICS. This book is not based upon he said she said third party accounts. That is all that German histories of the Holocaust can be since the key point is that 95% of "Holocaust" deaths did not occur in or near Germany. They occurred in Eastern Europe, and the Allies never even reached the places where the killing happened. The Nazis were meticulous record keepers and they also had plenty of help from the local populations of the countries they invaded. Timothy Snyder brings a wealth of statistical evidence to bear on the subject of Genocide.

Ukrainians are begging us today to free them from the Holodomor denying Russians. I hate to admit this, but I did not even understand what the Holodomor was. The "History" books sold me on the lie that Stalin was just doing what he had to do to establish the Soviet state and the Kulaks were a resistance group who had to be...

United States on Mar 08, 2014