Book Review: Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin

Book Review:


"Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin"

- Timothy Snyder


A monumental feat of scholarship, meticulously researched, and marked by a deep understanding of the killing fields that comprised the Ukraine, Poland, and part of the Soviet Union, during 1933-1945, Snyder, a Yale historian, has carefully documented the unspeakable with a new perspective that staggers even the most macabre of imaginations.


Within the period covered by the book, and in what Snyder calls the Bloodlands, Nazi Germany murdered ten million people and Stalin another four million. These stupefying numbers (not including Western Europe or other parts of Europe) occurred because of some events that had gone as planned and some that had not. They occurred because of the personalities of two monstrous individuals, Hitler and Stalin, both of whom used their duplicity to rationalize their crimes to either consolidate their own power or to provide the justification for their acts.  Hitler saw the war going the wrong way in 1941 and shifted his idea of victory to make Europe Judenrein (free of Jews). Stalin, when collectivization and modernization failed, caused massive starvation in the 1930s, created the “Great Terror,” murdering his own people by the millions through starvation, gunshot, and deportation to the Gulags in order to win a "victory" against his perceived enemies and the enemies of his brand of Communism.


This is a unique version of the history we are used to seeing in the countless books that have been written about World War II and the Holocaust.


Stalin's plans for modernization in the early 30s, causing great famine and in 1937 and 1938, the Soviets identified kulaks (peasant farmers) as enemies of Soviet power also including minorities on his “enemies” list, instituting mass murder of his own people.


In 1939 Hitler and Stalin invaded Poland as allies. There followed a policy of “belligerent complicity,” involving the killing of women and children on both sides of a line drawn by the German foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop and his Soviet counterpart, Viacheslav Molotov. This line was drawn in the bloodlands, mostly the Ukraine and down the middle of Poland.


Stalin never suspected that Hitler would later double-cross him in 1941, ignoring many warnings from his ministers and foreign heads of intelligence.   This was followed by Hitler’s policy of General Plan Ost using the Western Soviet Union as a colony for Germany, wherein the local populace would be enslaved, murdered, deported or otherwise exterminated and then replaced with ethnic Germans. This plan had to be delayed, but when the Soviets were not conquered as quickly as Hitler expected, in 1941, Hitler then embarked on the Final Solution—the murder of all Jews he could touch. This would be his victory.


The two systems--Stalinism and Nazism, Snyder points out, created a symbiotic relationship, allowing each perversion to justify crimes committed at essentially the same time and place, an almost quantum mechanic of death.


This book is a must read for anyone who is interested in European history and the slaughter committed by civilized nations run by paranoid madmen--the nations of Goethe, Schiller, Beethoven, and Wagner and the other of Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky, and Rachmaninoff.

Country Estimated Pre-War Jewish population Estimated Jewish population killed Percent killed
Baltic countries 253,000 228,000 90
Belgium 65,000 40,000 60
Belorussian SSR 375,000 245,000 65
Bohemia 90,000 80,000 89
Moravia 90,000 80,000 89
Bulgaria 64,000 14,000 22
Denmark 8,000 120 2
Finland 2,000 ? ?
France 350,000 90,000 26
Germany 240,000 210,000 88
Austria 240,000 210,000 88
Greece 70,000 54,000 77
Hungary 650,000 450,000 70
Italy 40,000 8,000 20
Luxembourg 5,000 1,000 20
Netherlands 140,000 105,000 75
Norway 1,800 900 50
Poland 3,300,000 3,000,000 91
Romania 600,000 300,000 50
Russian SFSR 975,000 107,000 11
Slovakia 90,000 75,000 83
Ukrainian SSR 1,500,000 900,000 60
Yugoslavia 43,000 26,000 60
Total 8,861,800 5,933,900

Bloodlands do not include non Jews who were killed in the millions as well as the above figures.


USSR: Bloodlands


Human losses of the USSR in World War II (included in the above figures of total war dead)

Country Population Military deaths Civilian deaths due to military activity and crimes against humanity Civilian deaths due to war related famine and disease Total deaths Deaths as % of 1939 population
Soviet Union 168,500,000 8,700,000 to 13,850,000 4,000,000 to 9,000,000 6,000,000 18,000,000 to 24,000,000 13.6 to 14.2
Estonia 1,100,000 50,000 50,000 4.5
Latvia 1,900,000 190,000 40,000 230,000 11.6
Lithuania 2,500,000 275,000 75,000 350,000 14.5
Poland 11,500,000 2,000,000 2,000,000 17.2
Romania 3,700,000 300,000 300,000 8.1
Bessarabia 3,700,000 300,000 300,000 8.1
Bukovina 3,700,000 300,000 300,000 8.1
Less: population transfers ethnic Germans 1939-1941 400,000
Growth of population 1939–mid-1941 7,900,000
Approx. Totals(borders 1946-1991) 196,700,000 8,700,000 to 13,850,000 7,000,000 to 12,000,000 6,000,000 21,800,000 to 28,000,000 11.0 to 14.2

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