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Lenin, Stalin e Hitler: A Era da Catástrofe Social
Em Lenin. Stalin e Hitler. o renomado historiador Robert Gellately disseca o período entre 1914 e 1945. uma era de turbulência quase contínua: duas guerras mundiais. a Revolução Russa. o Holocausto. a ascensão do Terceiro Reich. E mostra como esses três homens ocuparam posições centrais nesses eventos. Gellately analisa. ainda. as ligações entre estes momentos históricos e avisa: considerar tais acontecimentos como episódios não conectados equivale a não compreender suas gêneses e naturezas. O autor foca as potências dominantes da época. União Soviética e Alemanha nazista. mas analisa a catástrofe em termos globais. Afinal. mais vidas foram perdidas nesse intervalo do que em qualquer outro na história. Poucas semanas após a tomada do poder. os bolcheviques criaram forças policiais secretas muito mais brutais que os similares czaristas. Os nazistas fizeram o mesmo e instituíram a Gestapo. Sob ambos os regimes. milhões foram encarcerados. torturados e mortos. Neste livro Gellately argumenta contra a corrente que ameniza o papel de Lenin nos crimes de Stálin e mostra que o terror colhido pelo segundo foi em grande parte plantado pelo primeiro. Na Primeira Guerra Mundial. algo ao redor de oito milhões de homens morreram em combate. sete milhões ficaram permanentemente incapacitados e outros 15 milhões. seriamente feridos. Estimados cinco milhões de civis perderam suas vidas em decorrência de "causas relacionadas à guerra". tais como doenças e subnutrição. Essas mortes civis não incluem as da Rússia. onde a situação foi a mais grave de todas. extremamente amplificada por (duas) revoluções em 1917. seguidas por uma guerra civil e fome. Tudo isso aconteceu no que viria a ser somente a primeira fase da grande catástrofe social e política. A vez seguinte seria ainda mais letal.
798 pages, Paperback
Published April 30, 2010
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1909 people want to read
About the author
Robert Gellately
14 books40 followersRobert Gellately (born 1943) is a Newfoundland-born Canadian academic who is one of the leading historians of modern Europe, particularly during World War II and the Cold War era. He is Earl Ray Beck Professor of History at Florida State University. He often teaches classes about World War II and the Cold War, but his extensive interest in the Holocaust has led to his conducting research regarding other genocides as well. He is occasionally known to give lectures on specific genocides. Gellately has very strict guidelines for what he will deem a genocide, and has had several televised debates regarding his somewhat controversial views.
Gellately's most recent work is Stalin's Curse: Battling for Communism in War and Cold War (Knopf (March 5, 2013) Gellately recently published a set of original documents by Leon Goldensohn dealing with the 1945-46 Nuremberg trials of war criminals in The Nuremberg Interviews: An American Psychiatrist's Conversations With The Defendants and Witnesses (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004).
His other books include Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945 (Oxford University Press, 2001). It has been published in German, Dutch, Spanish, Czech, and Italian. Japanese and French translations are in press. Backing Hitler was chosen as a main selection for book clubs in North America and the United Kingdom.
In the book Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945, Gellately argues that the Gestapo were not in fact all-pervasive and intrusive as they have been described. The Gestapo only numbered 32,000 for the entire population of Germany, and this clearly limited their impact. In the city of Hanover there were only 42 officers. Instead, Gellately says that the atmosphere of terror and fear was maintained by 'denunciations' from ordinary Germans, whereby they would inform any suspicious 'anti-Nazi' activity to the local Nazi authority. According to Gellatley, these denunciations were the cause of most prosecutions, as in Saarbrücken 87.5 per cent of cases of 'slander against the regime' came from denunciations. This diminished the Gestapo's role in maintaining fear and terror throughout the Third Reich, however they still proved to be a powerful instrument for Hitler and continued to provide the security apparatus needed for the Nazi Regime.
His first book was The Politics of Economic Despair: Shopkeepers in German Politics, 1890-1914 (London, 1974). In 1991 he published The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy, 1933-1945 (Oxford University Press.) It has been translated into German and Spanish.
In addition, Gellately has co-edited a volume of essays with Russian specialist Sheila Fitzpatrick, Accusatory Practices: Denunciation in Modern European History, 1789-1989 (University of Chicago Press, 1997). With his colleague Nathan Stoltzfus (also at Florida State University) he co-edited a collection called Social Outsiders in Nazi Germany (Princeton University Press, 2001). With Ben Kiernan, Director of the Genocide Studies program at Yale, he recently co-edited The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
Professor Gellately has won numerous research awards, including grants from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Many of the books written or edited by him are used as textbooks in college classrooms across America.
Credits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_...
Gellately's most recent work is Stalin's Curse: Battling for Communism in War and Cold War (Knopf (March 5, 2013) Gellately recently published a set of original documents by Leon Goldensohn dealing with the 1945-46 Nuremberg trials of war criminals in The Nuremberg Interviews: An American Psychiatrist's Conversations With The Defendants and Witnesses (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004).
His other books include Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945 (Oxford University Press, 2001). It has been published in German, Dutch, Spanish, Czech, and Italian. Japanese and French translations are in press. Backing Hitler was chosen as a main selection for book clubs in North America and the United Kingdom.
In the book Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945, Gellately argues that the Gestapo were not in fact all-pervasive and intrusive as they have been described. The Gestapo only numbered 32,000 for the entire population of Germany, and this clearly limited their impact. In the city of Hanover there were only 42 officers. Instead, Gellately says that the atmosphere of terror and fear was maintained by 'denunciations' from ordinary Germans, whereby they would inform any suspicious 'anti-Nazi' activity to the local Nazi authority. According to Gellatley, these denunciations were the cause of most prosecutions, as in Saarbrücken 87.5 per cent of cases of 'slander against the regime' came from denunciations. This diminished the Gestapo's role in maintaining fear and terror throughout the Third Reich, however they still proved to be a powerful instrument for Hitler and continued to provide the security apparatus needed for the Nazi Regime.
His first book was The Politics of Economic Despair: Shopkeepers in German Politics, 1890-1914 (London, 1974). In 1991 he published The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy, 1933-1945 (Oxford University Press.) It has been translated into German and Spanish.
In addition, Gellately has co-edited a volume of essays with Russian specialist Sheila Fitzpatrick, Accusatory Practices: Denunciation in Modern European History, 1789-1989 (University of Chicago Press, 1997). With his colleague Nathan Stoltzfus (also at Florida State University) he co-edited a collection called Social Outsiders in Nazi Germany (Princeton University Press, 2001). With Ben Kiernan, Director of the Genocide Studies program at Yale, he recently co-edited The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
Professor Gellately has won numerous research awards, including grants from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Many of the books written or edited by him are used as textbooks in college classrooms across America.
Credits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 78 reviews
October 21, 2022
Robert Gellately's Lenin, Stalin and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe is a workmanlike account of the rise of 20th Century totalitarianism. Gellately's book dutifully recreates the Russian Revolution, the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis to power in Germany and the terror and repression perpetrated by each. Gellately rightly stresses that violence and terror were inimical to the Soviet Union from its onset, with Lenin encouraging arrests and executions of political opponents, dissidents and other sundry "reactionaries"; the main difference between him and Stalin, often viewed as a usurper to his revolution, is that his bloodshed served some clear ideological purpose. Stalin, while he labored to recreate Soviet society in socialist terms, seemed motivated by paranoia and prejudice as much as Marxism. Gellately's command of German National Socialism feels shakier: he leans on a premise that the Third Reich was a "dictatorship of consensus" where Hitler enjoyed the support of a broad swath of the German public, allowing him to be more lenient than Stalin in terms of terrorizing his subjects. This is unprovable at best and downplays how much Hitler's early purges and extensive police apparatus cowed dissenters into line; certainly the Nazis were sensitive to, and sought favor of the public but it's a stretch to extrapolate from that, and approval of Nazi military and diplomatic successes led to broader support of fascist policies. The book concludes with a potted history of World War II and the Holocaust that, while adequately rendered, doesn't add much to our general understanding (though Gellately's discussion of Stalinist deportation of ethnic minorities in the USSR is well-rendered). The anachronic structure also leads to some jarring shifts in time and structure, especially when a narrative account of WWII suddenly jerks backwards three years for the next chapter. Not a bad book despite a few shaky arguments and structural issues, but historians and well-read buffs won't find much they haven't encountered elsewhere.
April 22, 2013
Here they are, the evil triumvirate who definitively proved how there's no one more dangerous than someone determined to save the world. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler--they all had a vision of utopia and it was going to take a long, tortuous climb up a mountain of corpses to reach it. Unfortunately, they weren't deterred.
One aim of this work is to dispel the so-called "myth" of Lenin as a benevolent "true communist" who wasn't "as bad" as Stalin. gellately does a great job shooting this down, but Orlando Figes already exposed it as a sham in his epic history of the Russian Revolution. Far from perverting or undermining Lenin's legacy, Stalin was his logical heir. Heck, even Molotov though that Lenin was more "severe" than Stalin.
Remarkably ambitious, Gellately's book does a fine job in meeting its own goals. All the major aspects of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union are covered in fair to exhaustive detail.
Gellately examines these leaders' differing definitions of socialism. He also details their use of terror as a political weapon. In fact, Stalin's terror is comparable to the Holocaust since it eventually targeted entire ethnicities.
Nazi terror was quite different from the Bolshevik variety. Pretty much anyone could be victimized in Lenin and Stalin's Soviet Union, even old-time Communists: Stalin killed most of them in his successive purges. Not in Hitler's Germany: there, only unpopular outsider groups were persecuted, like Communists (whom even the Socialists were happy to see in concentration camps), gypsies, homosexuals and of course Jews. Only in its final winter did Nazism really exhibit its nihilistic face in Germany itself. However, once the Germans started to carve their Reich they began to show what they had in store for the rest of humanity: First in Austria (where many of the most brutal SS officers came, like Eichmann or Globocknick), then in the Sudeten, next in Czechia, in Poland, in Yugoslavia and Greece, and finally the Soviet Union, each time behaving more brutally. The dead are prominent characters in Gellately's book, as Lenin, Stalin and Hitler blithely consigned to banishment or horrible death ten thousand here, fifty thousand there, for page upon page upon page of this long book. The cumulative effect is gruesome.
Another interesting angle that Gellately explores is Hitler's hatred of communism. While everyone else saw communism and capitalism as opposites or enemies, Hitler viewed both as a form of "internationalism." Thus, he reasoned, since the Jews had no homeland, their real interests lay in communism or capitalism. So Hitler's anti-Semitism was rooted in his radical German nationalism, and his anti-Communism was an extension of his anti-Semitism. Thus, Hitler's anti-Semitism was NOT a reaction to Soviet communism.
The great social upheaval of this time period also highlight the dangers of political and national instability. When moderate representative governments do not seem to "work", well-meaning but foolish citizens turn to deceptive and attractive-seeming regimes that know exactly what to promise in order to gain power.
One aim of this work is to dispel the so-called "myth" of Lenin as a benevolent "true communist" who wasn't "as bad" as Stalin. gellately does a great job shooting this down, but Orlando Figes already exposed it as a sham in his epic history of the Russian Revolution. Far from perverting or undermining Lenin's legacy, Stalin was his logical heir. Heck, even Molotov though that Lenin was more "severe" than Stalin.
Remarkably ambitious, Gellately's book does a fine job in meeting its own goals. All the major aspects of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union are covered in fair to exhaustive detail.
Gellately examines these leaders' differing definitions of socialism. He also details their use of terror as a political weapon. In fact, Stalin's terror is comparable to the Holocaust since it eventually targeted entire ethnicities.
Nazi terror was quite different from the Bolshevik variety. Pretty much anyone could be victimized in Lenin and Stalin's Soviet Union, even old-time Communists: Stalin killed most of them in his successive purges. Not in Hitler's Germany: there, only unpopular outsider groups were persecuted, like Communists (whom even the Socialists were happy to see in concentration camps), gypsies, homosexuals and of course Jews. Only in its final winter did Nazism really exhibit its nihilistic face in Germany itself. However, once the Germans started to carve their Reich they began to show what they had in store for the rest of humanity: First in Austria (where many of the most brutal SS officers came, like Eichmann or Globocknick), then in the Sudeten, next in Czechia, in Poland, in Yugoslavia and Greece, and finally the Soviet Union, each time behaving more brutally. The dead are prominent characters in Gellately's book, as Lenin, Stalin and Hitler blithely consigned to banishment or horrible death ten thousand here, fifty thousand there, for page upon page upon page of this long book. The cumulative effect is gruesome.
Another interesting angle that Gellately explores is Hitler's hatred of communism. While everyone else saw communism and capitalism as opposites or enemies, Hitler viewed both as a form of "internationalism." Thus, he reasoned, since the Jews had no homeland, their real interests lay in communism or capitalism. So Hitler's anti-Semitism was rooted in his radical German nationalism, and his anti-Communism was an extension of his anti-Semitism. Thus, Hitler's anti-Semitism was NOT a reaction to Soviet communism.
The great social upheaval of this time period also highlight the dangers of political and national instability. When moderate representative governments do not seem to "work", well-meaning but foolish citizens turn to deceptive and attractive-seeming regimes that know exactly what to promise in order to gain power.
June 12, 2013
This is a most remarkable book linking these 3 dictators to the social upheavals and catastrophes of the first half of the twentieth century.
They are all portrayed as being utopian dictators who tried to make a world into their own image.
By believing the teachings of Marx both Lenin and Stalin remade and reconstructed the Soviet Union into a vicious totalitarian regime where the inhabitants were violently uprooted to achieve obscure Marxist doctrines. To reform agriculture hundreds of thousands of kulaks were killed, uprooted or imprisoned. This led to famine for countless thousands of others. What a “kulak” was varied at the whim of the secret police. To be a citizen of the Soviet Union was to be constantly on edge – anyone could be detained, imprisoned, killed on the basis of protocol.
Mr. Gellately is much more interesting on the Soviet system. I believe much of background on Hitler and Germany has been covered before. However he does well to link the rise of Communism in Russia and its resonance in Central Europe, to the rise of Nazism as a counterpoint.
The author brings out the similarities of Lenin and Stalin as both wanting to be ruthless dictators and bring about the communist paradise. The expressions “dictatorship of the proletariat” and “class struggle” are not mere words. As Mr. Gellately succinctly states the emphasis was on “dictatorship” and the “struggle” became mass violence perpetrated by the state.
The Soviet government internally killed more of its own people than any modern state – with the possible exception of Mao in China. The Nazi State, while admittedly killing off some of its opponents was far less ruthless until war broke out. For example, Stalin in 1938 killed thousands in the officer corps because he feared they were “revisionists” who may have threatened his power.
Nazism by contrast was a dictatorship brought on by the popular demand of its own people. And what was to come was stated over and over by Hitler since 1920. The cruelty of the Nazi regime once the war years started is beyond question, as they stopped at nothing to create their utopian view of the world (by mass murder of the Jewish population and all others deemed sub-human – communists, gypsies, Poles, Slavs…)
The cataclysms set off by these two contorted visions of the world are aptly described in this book. “Ethnic Cleansing” became a constant and normal state of affairs in these two ideologies.
They are all portrayed as being utopian dictators who tried to make a world into their own image.
By believing the teachings of Marx both Lenin and Stalin remade and reconstructed the Soviet Union into a vicious totalitarian regime where the inhabitants were violently uprooted to achieve obscure Marxist doctrines. To reform agriculture hundreds of thousands of kulaks were killed, uprooted or imprisoned. This led to famine for countless thousands of others. What a “kulak” was varied at the whim of the secret police. To be a citizen of the Soviet Union was to be constantly on edge – anyone could be detained, imprisoned, killed on the basis of protocol.
Mr. Gellately is much more interesting on the Soviet system. I believe much of background on Hitler and Germany has been covered before. However he does well to link the rise of Communism in Russia and its resonance in Central Europe, to the rise of Nazism as a counterpoint.
The author brings out the similarities of Lenin and Stalin as both wanting to be ruthless dictators and bring about the communist paradise. The expressions “dictatorship of the proletariat” and “class struggle” are not mere words. As Mr. Gellately succinctly states the emphasis was on “dictatorship” and the “struggle” became mass violence perpetrated by the state.
The Soviet government internally killed more of its own people than any modern state – with the possible exception of Mao in China. The Nazi State, while admittedly killing off some of its opponents was far less ruthless until war broke out. For example, Stalin in 1938 killed thousands in the officer corps because he feared they were “revisionists” who may have threatened his power.
Nazism by contrast was a dictatorship brought on by the popular demand of its own people. And what was to come was stated over and over by Hitler since 1920. The cruelty of the Nazi regime once the war years started is beyond question, as they stopped at nothing to create their utopian view of the world (by mass murder of the Jewish population and all others deemed sub-human – communists, gypsies, Poles, Slavs…)
The cataclysms set off by these two contorted visions of the world are aptly described in this book. “Ethnic Cleansing” became a constant and normal state of affairs in these two ideologies.
October 9, 2009
Haunting. The situations surrounding the rise of Lenin, Stalin and Hitler are so similar to our social and economic climate right now it is really quite eerie.
April 19, 2019
Quite possibly the best book ever read about World War 2. Expertly written and laid out. Thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and look forward to reading more from Mr. Gellately.
August 3, 2016
Okay, so first of all this book isn't just for anyone who is interested in Auschwitz or any of the Holocaust buzz words that one gathers around after watching a couple of Hollywood films. The reason I picked this book was the sole reason of a writer claiming to have interconnected analysis of the three most horrific monsters of modern world. Admit it, we don't see much of Gulag or Serbia prisons' details in the movies and we know of Lenin mostly in the context of George Orwell's satirical masterpiece Animal Farm. Of Holocaust we know a lot, a lot that is shown in Schindler's List and the kin.
Gellately takes a different turn here, he not takes us back into the streets of Nazi Berlin or the roads of Red Army's Moscow but also takes us into the very meeting rooms and offices where death warrants of millions were signed upon everyday. The author has done a brilliant job in the sense that it explains why a certain sect of people was targeted in particular and how the European and Russian authorities were in line with whatever horrors came forward for these targets.
Should I say this book is a page turner, an informative read or a detailed account of history - Not really. You might feel on reading this that you are absorbing a lot but the brutal truth is the author makes no effort in giving out the details in a better manner where in you can imbibe the horrors. In the beginning you might jolt upright on seeing the atrocities and number of deaths but towards the end the author makes you believe at least every page has a death toll of thousand or more if averaged out, and sadly you start losing the sympathy you once had for the victims of history. And neither are the details really detailed, all you get to see are glimpses which becomes a little hard to connect. But I am not saying the book is bad at all, a book can never be bad, it can only be liked or the reader fails to understand it's true meaning.
The huge disappointment that I faced was by just a mere one page account of Auschwitz, that was ironic because in a book containing the words "Hitler" and "Social Catastrophe" one expects at least a full chapter on the death camp. The book tries to take you in every chamber of the Reichstag or the Moscow Govt. houses but fails miserably at making you realise the pain felt by the victims of these crimes.
Inspite of these shortcomings the book does deserves a huge applause on the chronology of the events, the author plays extremely well with time. It's a tiring journey through time and through the geographies. For an avid reader the book can work in either of the two ways: giving him so much to read further in his life or to aggregate all he has read in his lifetime. Either way you cannot but be grateful to Robert Gellately to house and pack the atrocities of the time under a single volume, the world shouldn't forget the age that was truly the age of a social catastrophe.
Gellately takes a different turn here, he not takes us back into the streets of Nazi Berlin or the roads of Red Army's Moscow but also takes us into the very meeting rooms and offices where death warrants of millions were signed upon everyday. The author has done a brilliant job in the sense that it explains why a certain sect of people was targeted in particular and how the European and Russian authorities were in line with whatever horrors came forward for these targets.
Should I say this book is a page turner, an informative read or a detailed account of history - Not really. You might feel on reading this that you are absorbing a lot but the brutal truth is the author makes no effort in giving out the details in a better manner where in you can imbibe the horrors. In the beginning you might jolt upright on seeing the atrocities and number of deaths but towards the end the author makes you believe at least every page has a death toll of thousand or more if averaged out, and sadly you start losing the sympathy you once had for the victims of history. And neither are the details really detailed, all you get to see are glimpses which becomes a little hard to connect. But I am not saying the book is bad at all, a book can never be bad, it can only be liked or the reader fails to understand it's true meaning.
The huge disappointment that I faced was by just a mere one page account of Auschwitz, that was ironic because in a book containing the words "Hitler" and "Social Catastrophe" one expects at least a full chapter on the death camp. The book tries to take you in every chamber of the Reichstag or the Moscow Govt. houses but fails miserably at making you realise the pain felt by the victims of these crimes.
Inspite of these shortcomings the book does deserves a huge applause on the chronology of the events, the author plays extremely well with time. It's a tiring journey through time and through the geographies. For an avid reader the book can work in either of the two ways: giving him so much to read further in his life or to aggregate all he has read in his lifetime. Either way you cannot but be grateful to Robert Gellately to house and pack the atrocities of the time under a single volume, the world shouldn't forget the age that was truly the age of a social catastrophe.
May 26, 2012
Disappointing. Gellately fails to advance any central thesis, instead simply spending more than 500 pages chronicling the atrocities of Hitler's Nazi party and Third Reich, and Leninist and Stalinist Soviet rule. I am in no way saying that these acts of repression, oppression, and genocide deserve extensive attention, but simply listing crime after crime does nothing to the reader beyond benumbing them. Gellately fails to provide analysis of these acts, and it is not until Operation Barbarossa, when Hitler betrays Stalin, that any greater context takes shape. Perhaps this is because Gellately's whole book is predicated on the notion that the three rulers were intertwined in what he terms "the age of social catastrophe," but it is only when Stalin and Hitler are engaged in war against one another that the violence and violations actually begin to tell a fully rounded story. The problem is that by then the reader has slogged through more than four hundred pages, and is left ruing the fact that the author had not been able to make the narrative come alive earlier.
February 18, 2011
Knowing my strange fondness for reading about the USSR, my son gave me this book for Christmas (maybe he wants to borrow it now?). The book linked Leninism, Stalinism and Nazism in a way I have not seen it before. Rather than residing in my mind as disparate pieces of history, I saw how Nazi Germany and the newly formed USSR worked together until the initial attacks on Russia. It interested me to see how the enemies (USSR and Germany in WWII), worked together in exterminating the Jews. It was fascinating to see how philosophically closer to each other they were than I had previously thought: the racism (fascism) of the Nazis was not so far from the intolerance executed in the USSR by both Lenin and Stalin. It is the only book where I have found focused attention on the importance of Lenin, both his craft (state and otherwise) and his personal ideology. For history buffs, enjoyable! For me, highly enlightening and thought-provoking.
November 24, 2008
Gellately serves as an amazing social historian, documenting and tying together the rise of Leninism, Stalinism, and Nazism. He does an amazing job contrasting the narrow racism of the Nazis with the brutal universalism of the Soviets, all the while accounting for the terrible consequences of their respective rises. Interestingly, the importance of Lenin's ideology and brutal statesmanship (often overlooked in historiography) on both Hitler and Stalin receives great attention. Gellately's only shortcoming is his poor skill as a military historian. While such a topic necessarily culminates in the brutal war on the eastern front 1941-45, he gives short shrift to how these rival ideologies so violently interacted when they actually confronted one another.
February 2, 2016
I am finding it very hard to rate this book as this for me was almost textbook like but with a better organization and narrative structure. It is naturally surprising to see Lenin being part of the duo that changed the entire socio-economic structure of Europe - repercussions of which is still visible.
Its a lot of content starting from 1904 and going all the till end of world war 2. Requires patience and lot of research on the side as the professor assumes you are aware of the already existing social and political unrest in Europe.
Its a lot of content starting from 1904 and going all the till end of world war 2. Requires patience and lot of research on the side as the professor assumes you are aware of the already existing social and political unrest in Europe.
July 8, 2025
It's a long time since I read Bullock's excellent Parallel Lives which seemed the last word on how Stalin and Hitler shaped the catastrophes of the 20th Century. This book throws Lenin into the mix as a brutal tyrant on the same level, who paved the way for the worst of the Soviet atrocities. It seems difficult to mount a counterargument.
Although a hefty tome, this rattles through large swathes of history and one is left wanting a bit more detail. Nevertheless, this is a disturbing, yet readable romp through the evils of that age.
Although a hefty tome, this rattles through large swathes of history and one is left wanting a bit more detail. Nevertheless, this is a disturbing, yet readable romp through the evils of that age.
June 9, 2010
This book pulls off the almost-impossible feat of being simultaneously narrow-minded and unfocused. The general information on the the titular figures and their respective regimes is broad to a fault, limited to only the most cursory of overviews, neglecting any real analysis beyond a textbook definition. The application of this information suffers in turn from this indistinct background, pigeonholing communism and socialism into the exact same mold, while ignoring any substantive differences between the two. The premise is marginally useful, though hardly novel, but the execution felt rushed and imbalanced. A waste of time.
August 28, 2008
So far, so good. I hate to admit how little I learned about these dictators in school. I'm only about 100 pages in but I already understand far more about what these men's lives were like at a young age and why they followed the paths they did....
June 11, 2011
Excellent book for those who want to see the scale of atrocity committed by two evil ideologies--especially on the Communist side.
July 9, 2016
Lots of interesting documentary evidence to wade through. And wade you must because it is very poorly written. Reads like a high school history essay that never ends.
July 19, 2020
An excellently researched book detailing the rise of the
three men and the unimaginable suffering they
brought to the world from 1917-1953.
In particular Gellately uses primary sources and information
gained through interviews to covers the political movements
that were Soviet Communism and National Socialism.
He compares and contrasts Hitler's rise through what
he dubs "Consensus Dictatorship" to Lenin/Stalins'
violent seizure of Russia. Gellately notably takes aim at
Lenin apologists who claim that Stalin's "excesses"
were not in kind with Lenin's original ideology.
Gellately then tracks Hitler and Stalin through ww2
detailing their reactions to the events of the war and
their decisions as leaders of nations. He details the
cult of personality around each figure and notes their
popularity among their countrymen in each year and
the descent of their movements into cruel unrelenting
and often arbitrary mass murder.
An important thing to note is that this book is mostly about
these men and their political movements and little detail is given to
catch the reader up on details such as the military tech.
of ww2, the belligerents, key areas etc. Not recommended as
an intro to ww2 book
three men and the unimaginable suffering they
brought to the world from 1917-1953.
In particular Gellately uses primary sources and information
gained through interviews to covers the political movements
that were Soviet Communism and National Socialism.
He compares and contrasts Hitler's rise through what
he dubs "Consensus Dictatorship" to Lenin/Stalins'
violent seizure of Russia. Gellately notably takes aim at
Lenin apologists who claim that Stalin's "excesses"
were not in kind with Lenin's original ideology.
Gellately then tracks Hitler and Stalin through ww2
detailing their reactions to the events of the war and
their decisions as leaders of nations. He details the
cult of personality around each figure and notes their
popularity among their countrymen in each year and
the descent of their movements into cruel unrelenting
and often arbitrary mass murder.
An important thing to note is that this book is mostly about
these men and their political movements and little detail is given to
catch the reader up on details such as the military tech.
of ww2, the belligerents, key areas etc. Not recommended as
an intro to ww2 book
November 28, 2023
hitler's entire personality revolves around the jews. why is germany in shambles? the jews. but it doesn't stop there, communism is also a jewish plot to destroy everyone else so naturally we must invade russia (as one does). hitler portrays it as a struggle for the very existence of their nation, and so does stalin. yet their "struggles" are very different.
hitler's biggest asset was his oratory skills and his ability to convince people that others were inferior. it's obvious that he knew what he was doing considering he framed the murder of disabled children as "mercy killings" for their own good. he got the idea from a father who wanted his son euthanized because the child was "retarded" as the book puts it. ah yes, because having mental issues is clearly a chronic suffering deserving of immediate death. stalin just piggy backed off of lenin to seem like he was carrying on his legacy as his own image alone wouldn't have been strong enough. I think that is an important distinction that shows how both of them were in tune with what their nation needed to hear at the time.
overall good book, although kinda long. the book is mainly about stalin and hitler, but touches on lenin a bit just because it would be hard to discuss stalin without lenin.
hitler's biggest asset was his oratory skills and his ability to convince people that others were inferior. it's obvious that he knew what he was doing considering he framed the murder of disabled children as "mercy killings" for their own good. he got the idea from a father who wanted his son euthanized because the child was "retarded" as the book puts it. ah yes, because having mental issues is clearly a chronic suffering deserving of immediate death. stalin just piggy backed off of lenin to seem like he was carrying on his legacy as his own image alone wouldn't have been strong enough. I think that is an important distinction that shows how both of them were in tune with what their nation needed to hear at the time.
overall good book, although kinda long. the book is mainly about stalin and hitler, but touches on lenin a bit just because it would be hard to discuss stalin without lenin.
July 15, 2023
This book is very informative and well written. The author does a great job of explaining and showing how all three of these men came to power in their respective countries and began inflicting unspeakable horrors. The only issue I have with this book is there seems to be no real aim or argument here. There is a mountain of historical information to absorb from the book; however, I do not see the author answering the important questions of any historical work. Namely: 1) Why is this work important in its historiographical field? 2) What new argument, evidence, or approach is the historian making here?
Overall, I would recommend it for anyone interested in the lives of Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler and wants to learn more about the conditions which these men rose to power, the horrors they committed, and the lessons we can learn as a society to ensure we do not allow men like this to take over again.
Overall, I would recommend it for anyone interested in the lives of Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler and wants to learn more about the conditions which these men rose to power, the horrors they committed, and the lessons we can learn as a society to ensure we do not allow men like this to take over again.
November 28, 2023
This book puts forward a detailed study of three of the most evil persons of the 20th Century and poses a side-by-side comparison of two of the most horrific ideologies ever visited upon mankind. Reading back and forth about the similarities and differences, the methodologies and motivations, and finally the results of these people and their movements, it is hard to discern which is the greater evil. Communism with its mass terror and murder of an entire nation, or Nazism with its racial and genocidal mania, both with the goal of implementing their socio-economic systems on their respective peoples.
I must admit that I came away from this book awestruck with the level of depravity that these individuals and their followers were capable of. I think it is an important book to read because we must recognize the signs of these types of terrors so as not to repeat them.
I must admit that I came away from this book awestruck with the level of depravity that these individuals and their followers were capable of. I think it is an important book to read because we must recognize the signs of these types of terrors so as not to repeat them.
October 10, 2024
A good portion of this book is dedicated to the chronicling of tedious battle strategies for which I am not the target audience. I'm more interested in the psychology and sociology of how the f shit like this happens, and how the f history so blatantly plagiarizes itself. For instance, Adolf Hitler did some time in prison for treason due to orchestrating a weak attempted government insurrection. Once released from prison, he then built the Nazi party from the ground up, garnering support through rallies largely held in rural/Protestant areas. The party was funded by the poor through sales of rally tickets and random party branded products such as cigarettes. The central theme of these rally speeches was that immigration and communism were to blame for all of Germany's problems, exploiting a failing economy through the scapegoating of the Jews. It all sounds so recently familiar. 🤷🏻♂️
January 13, 2020
I loved it. Basically, it's a peculiar but engaging comparative examination of the rise of the Communists in the Soviet Union and the rise of Hitler in Deutschland. The millions of people killed by both philosophies made this hard reading, but it just retains knowledge in your head. This book truly explains the life and journey of each of the evil triumvirate who definitively proved how there's no one more dangerous than someone determined to save the world. Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler-they all had a vision of paradise for their country and this book shows that it was going to take a long, tortuous climb up a mountain of corpses to reach it. Perfect for anyone interested in history, politics, and philosophy.
May 5, 2020
Of all the books I have read about these 3, this is the only one that forgives them for all their crimes, portrays them as reasonable and refuses to ever portray their horrors as bad in any way.
This ridiculous apologist book leads you to accept every bit of Nazi propaganda as genuine, and he never exposes any of their lies. There is a surreal absence of critical thinking and a blind acceptance of surface claims by the Nazis that any serious researcher would be able to see through and critique.
So that it doesn't seem like he's a Nazi apologist, he is just as keen and willing to whitewash Stalin and everything he does. It downplays the Terror, making it seem like a pretty reasonable thing to do.
Let me be clear, it still acknowledges bad things they did, but it spends a lot of time rationalizing and explaining them.
Beware of falling into his perspective! You need to keep in mind your core values when you read this!
This ridiculous apologist book leads you to accept every bit of Nazi propaganda as genuine, and he never exposes any of their lies. There is a surreal absence of critical thinking and a blind acceptance of surface claims by the Nazis that any serious researcher would be able to see through and critique.
So that it doesn't seem like he's a Nazi apologist, he is just as keen and willing to whitewash Stalin and everything he does. It downplays the Terror, making it seem like a pretty reasonable thing to do.
Let me be clear, it still acknowledges bad things they did, but it spends a lot of time rationalizing and explaining them.
Beware of falling into his perspective! You need to keep in mind your core values when you read this!
August 19, 2021
The book records the evils perpetrated by both Soviet Communism and German Nazism, how things came to pass as they did - separately and together, how the two systems brought such misery and destruction to the world. While it is common knowledge that Stalin and Hitler were truly vile despots in the first half of the 20th century, the author also includes Lenin along with these two and systematically chronicles Lenin’s role in establishing the so-called ‘dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasants’ and how some of actions attributed to Stalin were actually introduced by Lenin. This last bit - apart from the detailed account of the goings-on in Europe between the war years and Second World War were new insights for me as compared to what I had read and known of those years.
August 10, 2019
If you are sanguine about the achievements of the 20th century and the apparent rise of a golden age, read this book to understand sanguinity and the janus-like face of prosperity and progress. These three (Lenin, Stalin, Hitler) should be considered together, and the butcher's bill for the courageous and monomaniacal pursuit of social perfections will instruct those who consider themselves liberators but are actually tyrants.
It is baffling that the blood of so many quickly soaks into the forgetful humus of the collective soil. We should be frightened of 'humanity'. We should love our neighbor.
It is baffling that the blood of so many quickly soaks into the forgetful humus of the collective soil. We should be frightened of 'humanity'. We should love our neighbor.
February 17, 2023
Rock solid, straightforward history. Gellately makes the critical connection between Lenin & the Bolsheviks and Hitler. The deliberate ignoring or eliding of that connection marks probably the root failure of 20th-21st century intellectual discussions. They are the same thing; they are what socialism represents. It's not that "it hasn't been done right," it's that this - Lenin, Hitler & Stalin - *is* the real thing (you could add Mao, Pol Pot, Mugabe, Castro, the Shining Path...).
That said, it's not as elegantly written history as, say, Pipes' searing look at similar topics.
Nevertheless, much of "Lenin, Stalin and Hitler" should be required reading.
That said, it's not as elegantly written history as, say, Pipes' searing look at similar topics.
Nevertheless, much of "Lenin, Stalin and Hitler" should be required reading.
December 10, 2023
Not sure if it’s because I haven’t had the chance to really study history or if this book was just not for me, but this book took me MONTHS to read. It was incredibly tough for me following what was going on through the authors attempt to track the momentous social catastrophes of this time. It was just like reading a history textbook, really dry, but horrifying at the same time absolutely horrifying. I would not recommend unless you really have the time to reflect and focus. Really well researched and referenced. 5/10
July 12, 2013
This book wanders over well-tilled ground. How many books have there been on Hitler and the Nazis, on the October Revolution and the Bolsheviks, on Lenin and Stalin? Yet it does bring the old facts into new light. The Germans made Lenin, because they ferried him and his compères from Zürich to Petrograd in 1917, as a way to cause a Revolution and end the war in the Western Front. Bolshevik barbarism, begun by Lenin and ably furthered by Stalin, briefly emulated by followers in Austria, Germany, Hungary and elsewhere, terrified the Germans, a nation of property-owners. Thus, when the Great Depression struck and millions of Germans found themselves unemployed after hyperinflation in 1923 had destroyed their savings, and the Communists tried several times to overthrow the Government, many bürgers were only too happy to give their vote to the Nazis.
Nazi terror was totally different from the Bolshevik variety. Practically anyone could be victimized in Lenin and Stalin's Soviet Union, even old-time Communists: Stalin killed most of them in his successive Terrors. Not in Hitler's Germany: there, only unpopular outsider groups were reppressed, like Communists (whom even the Socialists were happy to see in concentration camps), gypsies, homosexuals and of course Jews. Only in its final winter did Nazism really exhibit its nihilistic face in Germany itself, as portrayed in Eric Johnson's "Nazi Terror: The Gestapo, Jews and Ordinary Germans". However, once the Germans started to carve their empire they began to show what they had in store for the rest of humanity: First in Austria (where many of the most brutal SS officers came, like Adolf Eichmann or Odilo Globocknick), then in the Sudeten, next in Czechia, in Poland, in Yugoslavia and Greece, and finally the Soviet Union, each time behaving more brutally. The dead are prominent characters in Gellately's book, as Lenin, Stalin and Hitler blithely consigned to banishment or horrible death ten thousand here, fifty thousand there, for page upon page upon page of this long book. The cumulative effect is sickening.
But Gellately also has a keen eye for the memorable detail. Here a few notable tidbits:
- Hitler never received funds from big business until after he was in power.
- Colonel Stauffenberg, who in 1944 tried to kill the Führer with a bomb, in 1933, as young lieutenant, was so overcome with joy when Hitler became Chancellor that he led an impromptu celebration march in Bamberg. When he was executed as a traitor, a relative was shocked, since the Colonel was the only real Nazi in the family.
- The German law that legalized sterilization (the 1933 Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases) was cribbed from the California sterilization act of 1909.
- When in 1939 Germany and its ally the Soviet Union invaded Poland, the Soviets killed or drove to their deaths 3 or 4 times as many people as the Nazis, even though the territory they occupied only held a population half the size of the Germans'.
- Here is a chilling phrase from Stalin, indicating the fate of the Baltic upper classes after the Soviet invasion in 1939: "Comrade Beria will take care of the accommodations of our Baltic Guests".
- Hitler's favorite photographer, Hoffman, apparently knew of German military plans, since from 1940 onwards he showed photographs of the countries the Nazis intended to invade before the invasions happened. I thought: that's amazing.
- Perhaps the most horrible image in the book to this reader is narrated by a woman in Saint Petersburg during the 900-day siege, when people where so hungry they would eat anything. In April 1942 she saw a corpse with a backpack huddled against a lamppost. She saw it for several weeks, as first the backpack, then the clothes, then the underclothes disappeared, and eventually the flesh and entrails of the corpse, skeletonized.
- Himmler's 1943 operation to kill the Jews at the camp in Majdanek was named "Operation Harvest Festival".
- Hitler thought Mussolini was a pussy and that only Stalin and he were "World historical figures". Stalin apparently agreed.
- Harriman, Roosevelt's envoy to Moscow, thought Stalin was better informed than Roosevelt, more realistic than Churchill: he regarded him as the most inscrutable and contradictory character he ever met.
- The proposal that the Soviet Union keep the parts of Poland it occupied since September 1939 and that Poland be indemnified with parts of Germany was Churchill's. Stalin concurred.
- Beria was shocked when he heard, through telephone interception, that Roosevelt thought both Stalin and Churchill similarly untrustworthy.
- When the Red Army soldiers went into Germany, they couldn't understand why the Germans, so rich, had invaded them "what could they have wanted that we might have had", they asked. And so on, and so on.
Virtually every page is filled with similar juicy data. That is history as it ought to be written.
I've read many history books this year. The only one I enjoyed as much as this one is Tim Blanning's "The Pursuit of Glory", which is one of my top three history reads, along with McCullough's "Reformation" and Beevor's "Berlin". I have purchased Gellately's "Backing Hitler", which I hope to enjoy as much as "Lenin, Stalin and Hitler". I thank my stars that I didn't have to live in those countries, through those times, but am glad that Gellately is around to tell me what they were like.
Nazi terror was totally different from the Bolshevik variety. Practically anyone could be victimized in Lenin and Stalin's Soviet Union, even old-time Communists: Stalin killed most of them in his successive Terrors. Not in Hitler's Germany: there, only unpopular outsider groups were reppressed, like Communists (whom even the Socialists were happy to see in concentration camps), gypsies, homosexuals and of course Jews. Only in its final winter did Nazism really exhibit its nihilistic face in Germany itself, as portrayed in Eric Johnson's "Nazi Terror: The Gestapo, Jews and Ordinary Germans". However, once the Germans started to carve their empire they began to show what they had in store for the rest of humanity: First in Austria (where many of the most brutal SS officers came, like Adolf Eichmann or Odilo Globocknick), then in the Sudeten, next in Czechia, in Poland, in Yugoslavia and Greece, and finally the Soviet Union, each time behaving more brutally. The dead are prominent characters in Gellately's book, as Lenin, Stalin and Hitler blithely consigned to banishment or horrible death ten thousand here, fifty thousand there, for page upon page upon page of this long book. The cumulative effect is sickening.
But Gellately also has a keen eye for the memorable detail. Here a few notable tidbits:
- Hitler never received funds from big business until after he was in power.
- Colonel Stauffenberg, who in 1944 tried to kill the Führer with a bomb, in 1933, as young lieutenant, was so overcome with joy when Hitler became Chancellor that he led an impromptu celebration march in Bamberg. When he was executed as a traitor, a relative was shocked, since the Colonel was the only real Nazi in the family.
- The German law that legalized sterilization (the 1933 Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases) was cribbed from the California sterilization act of 1909.
- When in 1939 Germany and its ally the Soviet Union invaded Poland, the Soviets killed or drove to their deaths 3 or 4 times as many people as the Nazis, even though the territory they occupied only held a population half the size of the Germans'.
- Here is a chilling phrase from Stalin, indicating the fate of the Baltic upper classes after the Soviet invasion in 1939: "Comrade Beria will take care of the accommodations of our Baltic Guests".
- Hitler's favorite photographer, Hoffman, apparently knew of German military plans, since from 1940 onwards he showed photographs of the countries the Nazis intended to invade before the invasions happened. I thought: that's amazing.
- Perhaps the most horrible image in the book to this reader is narrated by a woman in Saint Petersburg during the 900-day siege, when people where so hungry they would eat anything. In April 1942 she saw a corpse with a backpack huddled against a lamppost. She saw it for several weeks, as first the backpack, then the clothes, then the underclothes disappeared, and eventually the flesh and entrails of the corpse, skeletonized.
- Himmler's 1943 operation to kill the Jews at the camp in Majdanek was named "Operation Harvest Festival".
- Hitler thought Mussolini was a pussy and that only Stalin and he were "World historical figures". Stalin apparently agreed.
- Harriman, Roosevelt's envoy to Moscow, thought Stalin was better informed than Roosevelt, more realistic than Churchill: he regarded him as the most inscrutable and contradictory character he ever met.
- The proposal that the Soviet Union keep the parts of Poland it occupied since September 1939 and that Poland be indemnified with parts of Germany was Churchill's. Stalin concurred.
- Beria was shocked when he heard, through telephone interception, that Roosevelt thought both Stalin and Churchill similarly untrustworthy.
- When the Red Army soldiers went into Germany, they couldn't understand why the Germans, so rich, had invaded them "what could they have wanted that we might have had", they asked. And so on, and so on.
Virtually every page is filled with similar juicy data. That is history as it ought to be written.
I've read many history books this year. The only one I enjoyed as much as this one is Tim Blanning's "The Pursuit of Glory", which is one of my top three history reads, along with McCullough's "Reformation" and Beevor's "Berlin". I have purchased Gellately's "Backing Hitler", which I hope to enjoy as much as "Lenin, Stalin and Hitler". I thank my stars that I didn't have to live in those countries, through those times, but am glad that Gellately is around to tell me what they were like.
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October 5, 2020 Uzun süredir kütüphanemde olan kitabı okumak kısmet oldu sonunda. Kitabın dili akıcı, olay örgüsü anlaşılır, çok geniş bir dönemi kapsamasına rağmen olaylar ve kronoloji akılda kalıyor.
Kitap Lenin ve stalin dönemlerini etraflıca inceleyerek ekim devrimi ve sonrasında Rusya'da yaşanan olayları etraflıca anlatıyor. Sadece; bu kitabı okuduktan sonra kömünist olma ihtimalim kesinlikle ortadan kalktı, bunu söyleyebilirim. Ayrıca İngilizce daha kapsamlı bir yorumu kısa sürede yazacağım.
Kitap Lenin ve stalin dönemlerini etraflıca inceleyerek ekim devrimi ve sonrasında Rusya'da yaşanan olayları etraflıca anlatıyor. Sadece; bu kitabı okuduktan sonra kömünist olma ihtimalim kesinlikle ortadan kalktı, bunu söyleyebilirim. Ayrıca İngilizce daha kapsamlı bir yorumu kısa sürede yazacağım.
June 29, 2024
I read this book when I was in 7th grade about 4 years ago. It was a great book, although challenging for me since I didn’t know what some of the things it referred was. It is a great historical book and kept me hooked the whole time. It is long, but not all the pages is park of the story. About 1/8 are notes.
January 18, 2021
Quite possibly the best compiling of both USSR and German history in the buildup to and during the Second World War. A great point of reference for anyone looking to gain an understanding of how powerful dictators come to be and the true cost of WWII
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