Timothy Snyder: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin

Timothy Snyder, historian of Eastern European history talks about his book Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin.

Americans call the Second World War "The Good War." But before it even began, America's wartime ally Josef Stalin had killed millions of his own citizens--and kept killing them during and after the war. Before Hitler was finally defeated, he had murdered six million Jews and nearly as many other Europeans. At war's end, both the German and the Soviet killing sites fell behind the iron curtain, leaving the history of mass killing in darkness.

Bloodlands is a new kind of European history, presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of a single history, in the time and place where they occurred: between Germany and Russia, when Hitler and Stalin both held power.

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• pbs
• npr
• wgbh
• forum network
• harvard bookstore
• hitler
• stalin
• german
• world war
• the good war
• germany
• european history

[ursusplacidus]

@kingpoostick As an European (a Pole to be precise), who also had read one of his previous books "The reconstruction of nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999", I can assure you that this particular Yank is a brilliant scholar, who understands history of central and eastern Europe better than any other western historian I know (including N. Davies) and even many Polish ones.

[sylwiatime]

@cjtyrrell1969 Well, after Stalin starved the Eastern Ukraine he brought people from Russia to replace the dead Ukrainians. Those tend to be Stalinophiles. Ukrainians are usually those who lived in Western part of the country which was in Poland at that time.

[cjtyrrell1969]

@TEPM0METP Damn it's hard to believe anyone in the Ukraine would be a Stalinophile. I was under the impression that the people of the Ukraine initially greeted the Nazi's as liberators until the SS started doing their thing as they believed the Slavs were sub-human. Ok - I stand corrected. I always thought Stalin could give a rats ass about the people of the USSR; it was about him retaining power at all cost and eliminating all opposition as he formed a cult of personality... Party on...WTF?????

[cjtyrrell1969]

@kingpoostick Arrogant?? Wow - thats the Pot calling the Kettle black. I have always admired and respected the English. However, the sun was setting on the Empire by WWII and the British were getting their asses kicked all around the world by the Germans and the Japanese. I can only assume your bitter about your countries fortunes, loss of Empire, and relegation as a second rate power after WWII. Two words: Lend Lease. You're welcome.

I have come to this conclusion: You are ungrateful

[kingpoostick]

@ursusplacidus Yeah well im just sick of yanks period this guy maybe good but in general yanks are clueless.

[kingpoostick]

@tupolevsoundcrash No thank you, i dont want to waste my time reading a silly yank opinion on WW2 which was largly a european matter, also since the English are known for being intelligent and they made the world we live in today i have came to this conclusion, your arrogant.

[tupolevsoundcrash]

@kingpoostick Read the book before commenting son, your 21 and English what would you know?

[HaulinHearse]

@TEPM0METP Are you retarded?

[kingpoostick]

A American lecturing people on Europe has has probely hasnt even been to Europe.

[TEPM0METP]

Stalin was the great and invincible!

And to the "millions of victims of" terrible Stalinist regime ", it is all nonsense Solzhenitsyn and other enemies of the USSR Feeding America ... Is not it obvious? :) Yes it was a difficult time, our country to industrialize, since we would have lost the war, and miserable Frenchman, the British and Americans would smelyais over us ... But we always defend our land and other choice for us and our hero Stalin was not.

Hello from Ukraine :)