Hitler and Stalin: The Tyrants and the Second World War

by Laurence Rees

Overview

An award-winning historian plumbs the depths of Hitler and Stalin's vicious regimes, and shows the extent to which they brutalized the world around them.

Two 20th century tyrants stand apart from all the rest in terms of their ruthlessness and the degree to which they changed the world around them. Briefly allies during World War II, Adolph Hitler and Josef Stalin then tried to exterminate each other in sweeping campaigns unlike anything the modern world had ever seen, affecting soldiers and civilians alike. Millions of miles of Eastern Europe were ruined in their fight to the death, millions of lives sacrificed.

Laurence Rees has met more people who had direct experience of working for Hitler and Stalin than any other historian. Using their evidence he has pieced together a compelling comparative portrait of evil, in which idealism is polluted by bloody pragmatism, and human suffering is used casually as a political tool. It's a jaw-dropping description of two regimes stripped of moral anchors and doomed to destroy each other, and those caught up in the vicious magnetism of their leadership.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781610399654
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	02/14/2023
Pages:	560
Sales rank:	360,516
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Laurence Rees is an award-winning historian and documentary film maker, and author of Auschwitz, and Holocaust, both published by PublicAffairs. He lives in London.

Table of Contents

List of Map ix

List of Illustrations xi

Preface xv

Introduction xix

1 The Pact 1

2 Eliminating Poland 22

3 Opposite Fortunes 47

4 Dreams and Nightmares 74

5 Hitler's War of Annihilation 91

6 Invasion 107

7 Desperate Days 131

8 A World War 150

9 Hunger 176

10 Stalin's Overreach 194

11 Across the Steppe 214

12 Struggle on the Volga 234

13 Fighting On 255

14 Fiction and Reality 283

15 Mass Killing 305

16 Collapse of the Centre 324

17 Dying Days 350

18 Victory and Defeat 379

Afterword 395

Acknowledgements 403

Notes 405

Index 465

Editorial Reviews

09/14/2020

Historian Rees (The Holocaust) draws on eyewitness testimony to identify “key differences” between Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler in this informative yet somewhat skewed account. Stodgy bureaucrat Stalin was deeply committed to the Communist Party, according to Rees, while Hitler was a charismatic leader who regarded the National Socialist German Workers’ Party as “disposable.” Both leaders tried to build utopian societies (racist ideology shaped Hitler’s vision; Stalin’s was influenced by Marxism), yet Hitler’s tendency to self-deceive blinded him to crippling military losses, and Stalin’s growing paranoia sabotaged the Red Army, forcing 400,000 Russian soldiers into penal units and another 160,000 to their deaths as enemies of the state. Rees decisively interprets the thinking behind Hitler’s actions, including the decision to invade the Soviet Union, yet tends to speculate when it comes to Stalin’s strategies, concluding that it is “hard, if not impossible” to understand why Stalin proposed a military alliance with Britain and France, and offering “likely” reasons for why he miscalculated the 1939 invasion of Finland, which resulted in a humiliating loss for the Red Army. Despite the lack of balance, this richly detailed history powerfully documents “the destruction that tyrants with utopian visions can inflict upon the world.” (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

"Via meticulous research and mesmerizing testimonies, Rees expertly reveals the 'malleability of the human mind'."
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"This richly detailed history powerfully documents the destruction that tyrants with utopian visions can inflict upon the world."—Publishers Weekly

“This excellent book for the general reader is shorter and gives an authoritative and very readable understanding of who Hitler and Stalin were and what they did.”—BookPage

“Rees is incredibly successful with this dual biography of the most notorious figures of the 20th century, focusing specifically on the war years.”
 —JulzReads

"In this fascinating study of two monsters, Rees is extraordinarily perceptive and original."—Sir Antony Beevor, author of Stalingrad.

"Coming from one of the world's experts on the Second World War, this is an important and original - and devastating - account of Hitler and Stalin as dictators. A must read."—Professor Robert Service, author of Stalin: A Biography.

"Laurence Rees brilliantly combines powerful eye-witness testimony, vivid narrative and compelling analysis in this superb account of how two terrible dictators led their countries in the most destructive and inhumane war in history."

—Professor Sir Ian Kershaw, author of Hitler - Hubris and Hitler - Nemesis

"Presenting this complex history with his usual clarity, his latest study is an enthralling read, weaving many fresh eyewitness accounts into the narrative, offering new insights and commanding his reader's attention despite the huge scope of his task."—Julia Boyd, author of Travelers in the Third Reich

"A vivid and terrifying portrait of the twentieth century's two most brutal tyrants. His mastery of the subject shines through on every page. Provocative, gripping and full of fresh insights, Hitler and Stalin is narrative history at its very best."—Henry Hemming, author of Churchill's Iceman

From the Publisher

This engaging dual biography of the two dictators who started WWII in Europe is given an able narration by John Sackville. Rees gives insights into the two alpha-narcissists—okay, sociopaths. Like all such tyrants, they were surrounded by beta-narcissists who enabled them to implement their plans. Added to this are the author’s portrayals of the Western Allies’ leaders, such as Roosevelt, which make it seem as though they were all cut from the same cloth. Sackville’s narration is clear, and his pacing is easygoing overall. His delivery is a bit soft but easy to understand. He does not affect an accent for quotes. M.T.F. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2020 - AudioFile

This engaging dual biography of the two dictators who started WWII in Europe is given an able narration by John Sackville. Rees gives insights into the two alpha-narcissists—okay, sociopaths. Like all such tyrants, they were surrounded by beta-narcissists who enabled them to implement their plans. Added to this are the author’s portrayals of the Western Allies’ leaders, such as Roosevelt, which make it seem as though they were all cut from the same cloth. Sackville’s narration is clear, and his pacing is easygoing overall. His delivery is a bit soft but easy to understand. He does not affect an accent for quotes. M.T.F. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2020 - AudioFile

★ 2020-09-10
A dual biography of two of history’s most notorious dictators from a master historian who has “spent the last thirty years making documentaries and writing books about the Third Reich, Stalinism and the Second World War.”

Referencing and updating Alan Bullock’s Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives (1992), British historian Rees uses “millions of words of original eyewitness testimony,” much of it never published before, to create this rich biographical and historical study. “Hitler and Stalin were catapulted into prominence only in the wake of an epoch-shattering event over which they had no control,” World War I, and both believed they had the perfect vision for building and maintaining power for their nations. After the incisive, context-setting preface and introduction, the author proceeds in largely chronological fashion, beginning with the 1939 nonaggression pact that divided Poland, an agreement so cynical between the two former ideological enemies, the Communists and the Nazis, that even Stalin did not believe the global community would accept it. "The Soviet and Nazi governments may have been far apart in their ideological and political goals,” writes Rees, “but in the practical mechanics of oppression they were closely linked." Both dictators presided over unprecedented programs of mass deportations and launched ambitious military plans to opposite effect—e.g., Stalin's obliteration of the elite officer corps left his army weakened while Hitler was able to invade Western Europe. As the invasion of Russia became imminent, Hitler professed overweening confidence and Stalin dithered; the Russian leader was incompetent as a military commander, but he had to project a fatherly air to keep up morale. Each leader demonstrated "monumental disdain for the suffering of his troops,” and each understood the power of hunger as a method of control. Ultimately, they shared an idea that Stalin articulated: “War is pitiless…there must be no mercy.” Rees concludes with an appalling comparison of their respective numbers killed and how “of the two tyrants…it is Hitler who is more broadly seen as a symbol of evil today.”

Via meticulous research and mesmerizing testimonies, Rees expertly reveals the "malleability of the human mind."

Kirkus Reviews