BLOODLANDS - EUROPE BETWEEN HITLER AND STALIN by Timothy Snyder

I highly recommend this book. It's a history of political mass murder by Hitler and Stalin of 14 MILLION people who were murdered between 1933 and 1945 and were civilians, not soldiers. These killings took place in the area called the "Bloodlands" by the author - the areas of Poland, Belarus, the Baltic states, the Ukraine and western Soviet Union.

More than half of the victims died because they were denied food. The two largest mass killings after the Holocaust - Stalin's famines of the 1930's and Hitler's starvation of Soviet POW's involved this method of killing.

Many more were shot - the Jews killed in the Holocaust were about as likely to be shot as to be gassed. And pity the poor Poles - first occupied by the Soviet Union, then Germany, then the Soviet Union again.

 

yep, that seems to be good, but most of the killed were killed by their own leader Stalin! And thats a often forgotten fact! BTW, welcome to the forum padutchgal

 

Thank you, Gebirgsjaeger.

 

An interesting article on the matter...

Hitler vs. Stalin: Who Killed More? by Timothy Snyder | The New York Review of Books

It turns out that, with the exception of the war years, a very large majority of people who entered the Gulag left alive. Judging from the Soviet records we now have, the number of people who died in the Gulag between 1933 and 1945, while both Stalin and Hitler were in power, was on the order of a million, perhaps a bit more. The total figure for the entire Stalinist period is likely between two million and three million. The Great Terror and other shooting actions killed no more than a million people, probably a bit fewer. The largest human catastrophe of Stalinism was the famine of 1930–1933, in which more than five million people died

 

Hitler of Stalin; who was worse? Well that depended on what nation you lived in at the time. Hitler was much easier on his own people than Stalin for certain. NOw "the foreign power you would LEAST like to see in your neighborhood" would definitely have to go to the Hitlerites! Especially if you lived in a slavic country! Who was worse -- Stalin or Hitler? My country-the USA-looked at both dictators and decided that Hitler was more of a threat-and I think this judgement was correct!

 

Well, your country soon found out after the WW2 that this judgment was not correct...

 

Karjala!! How are you?! how have you been?! Still bashing Russia at every turn I see...

 

WRONG! Europe did not stay an Aryan slave state and the Panzers never made it to the Mississippi.
We-the USA- then went into a long Cold War with the Stalinists. This did not explode into horrendous destruction-fortunately for humanity.
JeffinMNUSA
PS. Heya Slon! This is probably a subject for another thread but I read somewhere once that Hitler's plan for the Aryan plantation system throughout the East was based on his readings on the American plantation system in the antebellum South. WHOAH! So probably in the back of the minds of the ardent NAZIs was the prospect their own little kingdoms of manual and sex slaves! That must have been something of a motivator for an army of overworked, sex starved young men!

 

I do believe NAZI had drawn up some long range plans to conquer the USA (but first they had to seize and absorb the riches of the East).
EUROPE AS A WHOLE NOT SUBJECTED TO NAZI TERROR!!?? I hope you are joking. The Western countries were not subjected to the unspeakable evils unleashed on the East but still-stealing the national treasures, killing whoever looked like a problem, and setting up a system of maximum extraction of resources can hardly be considered a friendly occupation. Ask the people of Greece about all this AND the famine that NAZI caused there!
JeffinMNUSA

 

Excellent points Jeff. If im not mistaken, the article posted was actually yours! I stole it (hope you dont mind).... lol

I also remember reading something about Hitler getting his ideas for the East from the West but I thought he modeled the system from the Native American expulsion from the Eastern U.S.?

 

Not sure I agree here greybeard (maybe im misreading?) While nothing compared to Nazi terror in the East occured in the West, the Western Nations under Nazi occupation could hardly be considered "terror free"...

Life in occupied Europe was no picnic.

 

Black slavery and the Indian displacement were both ideas Hitler borrowed and then expanded upon; and I also read something about him being a big fan of cheap Western novels. And it is interesting that James Fenimore Cooper and Henry Ford were also on Hitler's reading list. http://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Private-Library-Books-Shaped/dp/1400042046

 

Fine, thanks. Still alive and kicking. Are you still working hard...?

Well, I just want to balance the scales a bit. There has been enough Germany-bashing for decades, together with obvious white-washing/denial of the victors - especially the USSR. I don't have much to add to Germany-bashing, but quite a bit to the "bashing" (read: unpleasant truth) you mentioned.

Germany has done a lot in searching the truth of her past. I wish Russia - the official follower of the soviet dictatorship - would begin to do the same.

 

I would totally disagree that Russia has not advanced light years ahead of where she was during the Cold War. You had to know that the world had turned upside down when Sohzhenitsyn returned; An Interview with Alexander Solzhenitsyn As far as not dealing with the past? Well the American writer David Glantz (AN AMERICAN COLONEL in the old Soviet records!!!??? Who could have imagined that 25 years ago?) has at his disposal vast amounts of the old records and has said that it will take generations to go through and disseminate all that (paraphrase). I suppose it is easy for me to say a half a world away but I believe that historical grievances should have no part in these fantastic explorations of the formerly secret world of the USSR in WWII. I also think it rather silly to go blaming whole nations for the doings of any totalitarian regime past or present.

 

Whole Eastern Europe - including the USSR herself - stayed as soviet slave states for decades. The deep damage done is still affecting those countries even today. USA was saved - as she would have been if Germany had won. USA "only" had to spend enourmous amounts of money and resources for decades, as well as fight numerous wars and spill tankerloads of blood - both US and especially non-US blood - because of the soviet "victory".

 

No. But only the USSR had the ability to totally destroy the USA - as well as the rest of the world.

Half of Europe - and more, if you count the USSR as part of Europe - was subjected to soviet terror for decades. In addition one must count also the dozens of other countries all over the world which were drawn into bloody and lengthy wars because of communism and soviet imperialism.

 

Life (also) in Western Europe was indeed not a picnic during the German occupation. Still one must remember that the German occupation happened during the war situation. Many atrocities were done while trying to fight the partisans or resistance.

The soviet occupation was mostly at the time of "peace" - before, during and after the WW2. Still people were murdered, tortured, executed, harassed, suppressed and transported to Gulag in their millions.

 

Yes, I agree that Russia has done something in dealing her past concerning the soviet purges in the 30's. The soviet crimes against other countries is however another matter.

E.g. the official Russia doesn't admit that the Baltic states were forcefully occupied and annexed. She doesn't want to know anything about the war crimes of the partisans - which are well and totally documented (at least in Finland). She doesn't let her archives to be openly researched any more. She has made it illegal to make historical research which is against the national, politically correct "history". The list goes on and on and on...

When "blaming the nation" at least I naturally mean only her regime(s) - together with the individuals, who support that regime and its views.