Bloodlands
Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
by Timothy Snyder · first published 2010
69% recommend31% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Rigorous history of the mass killings in Eastern Europe under both Hitler and Stalin, covering the Ukrainian famine and the Holocaust shootings; accurate and engaging, though brutal reading for those who can stomach it.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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,
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…of us were growing up, is a journalist who was the product of his time. His books are mostly regarded as a primary source by modern scholars. "Concise History of the Third Reich" by Wolfgang Benz, "Bloodlands" by Timothy Snyder, "The Unwomanly Face of War" by Svetlana Alexeivich, and "Burned Bridge" by Edith Sheffer are solid scholarly entry points for those of us for whom this more nuanced and even approach…
on “A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)” ↗…territory that eventually was held by the Soviets). There's a good book on how the empires of Hitler and the USSR squeezed between them the jews and slavs of Eastern Europe, resulting in millions of deaths, "Bloodlands" https://www.amazon.com/Bloodlands-Europe-Between-Hitler-Stal...
For something more modern (and referencing Solzhenitsyn himself) I recommend _Bloodlands_ by Timothy Snyder.
on “Holodomor” ↗…sunk 609 ships at a loss of only 22 u-boats. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Happy_Time) A recent examples of a book that has changed emphases and perceptions about WWII is Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands, on the unique savagery of the Eastern European conflict.
on “A lot of what we think we know about WWII is wrong” ↗…his feet for a week.) They even took up more square miles. And after the war, they did horrible things like keep Buchenwald running for their own purposes. A good place to understand this is to read _Bloodlands_ by Timothy Snyder. Send a bill to both of them I say.
on “Poland plans to seek $1.3T in reparations from Germany for WWII” ↗…mirror image of Nazi Germany (they were evil to same degree - Stalin actually pulled genocide on Ukrainians before Hitler did it to the Jews), please make sure to read this book: http://www.amazon.com/Bloodlands-Europe-Between-Hitler-Stali...
on “Soviet gamification” ↗…what really started the Holocaust (this is an unforgettable read, I feel like author literally accounted for every death batch (and yes ‘batch’ has to be used due to the scale): https://www.amazon.com/Bloodlands-Europe-Between-Hitler-Stal... Basically, it was simple broad directives that got interpreted by these disparate elements of the Nazis in the Eastern front. What does it mean if someone is not only a…
on “What happens when the CCP decides that you need to die” ↗…year. - Working Backwards by Colin Bryar, Bill Carr: The Amazon/Bezos love choked me a couple of times but I’ve put in practice some of what learned in this book to good effect. Non-Fiction, history: - Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy D. Snyder: This is a hard book to read. Not slow hard. Terrifying and apocalyptic and true hard. Gives a lot of context to current events. - The Enemy of…
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2022 and recommend for 2023” ↗Fair enough! (And if you want a good history of horror in broadly-speaking early-middle 20th century Eastern Europe, I suggest reading Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder.)
on “One of the last Navajo code-talkers died on October 19th, aged 107” ↗…theory etc) but once the Beer Hall Putsch happens it really takes off. It was written by William Shirer, an American journalist who lived in Germany and stayed through from the end of WW1 through WWII. Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder was horrific reading and just gruesomely sad but also incredibly well researched and fascinating. I liked it so much I then when on an Ann Applebaum…
on “Where is the scrutiny over FDA’s role in the overdose epidemic?” ↗…of thinking about NATO for several reasons: 1. Eastern European countries were not in the USSR or their satellites by their own choice. They were conquered and enslaved by Russians during the WWII. "Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin" by Timothy Snyder is an excellent book on how Eastern European nations fared as German and Russian war machines rolled over them. Russians raped, murdered, pillaged…
on “The $1.5T Nuclear Weapons Program You've Never Heard Of” ↗Fair, I read this book: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodlands Which is well researched. The Nazis killed about 5.4 million, Russians and Stalin killed the rest of the 14 million people that died during this period
…overestimate the worst-case scenario and the slipperiness of the slope Timothy Snyder (historian of Eastern Europe) wrote a book about the conditions needed to happen to get murders in millions. It's called Bloodlands - Europe between Hitler and Stalin, and I highly recommend it, it's cured me of many misconceptions about Holocaust and WW2 (and I thought I know it pretty good, I'm interested in history and I'm Polish…
on “George Soros: Facebook and Google are a menace to society” ↗Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands is excellent on the Holodomyr. He cites various sources estimating the victim count at 3M to 10M, and suggests 6M himself IIRC. He also details Stalin's orders in 32 and 33. The NKVD confiscated grain.…
on “Apple changes Crimea map when viewed from Russia” ↗The Nazis committed many mass shootings, predating the concentration camps in many cases. Snyder’s Bloodlands is the definitive work on the subject. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodlands
on “I am an Uighur who faced China’s concentration camps” ↗