Reddit Reddit reviews Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin

We found 8 Reddit comments about Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

History
Books
European History
German History
Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
World War II history stressing the mass killings that occurred before, during and after, hardly a "good war".
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8 Reddit comments about Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin:

u/blackirishlad · 11 pointsr/Whatcouldgowrong

This book is pretty riveting stuff. Kind of a side by side comparison of Nazis and Communists during those years and makes it clear how much more efficient the Soviets were in contrast to the stereotype of German efficiency.

Like in Poland, where Nazis had a hard time actually killing the people they needed to kill and pretty much just grabbed anybody they could, especially the jews. Soviets collected information first and quietly executed soldiers, officers, intellectuals, and local leaders instead. They learned how to do it from years of experience doing the same domestically. They killed quite a few jews and non-Russians because, despite their ideology of bringing the world together, they were very nationalistic/paranoid when it came to key jobs and power.

u/[deleted] · 11 pointsr/AskReddit

Did you know that Stalin insisted on writing that definition that way to avoid culpability for the crimes that he had already committed?
I disagree with your take on this, at least from my readings in Bloodlands it was pretty clear that Stalin wanted to colonize the Ukrainian breadbasket and killing off large amounts of the population via starvation were a great way to help destroy the strong nationalist groups that existed in the Ukraine at the time. The wheat that you mention was largely in the Ukraine, and peasants were shot for even going near it, resulting in rampant cannibalism. If it was an accident, it was a happy accident for Stalin that his policy destabilized and destroyed a country that was mostly composed of farmers who would have resisted collectivization efforts of their farms. I'm sorry, it's just too advantageous and neatly convenient for Stalin for my liking. Ask the Poles if the Russians engaged in genocide.

u/Barnst · 6 pointsr/tuesday

I agree with your concerns for the future of the moderate left, especially when I see the likes of Sanders and Corbyn. But, honestly, the party’s are responding to the incentives given to them. The last generation of liberal politicians was the most moderate produced by either political system in a generation. And what did they have to show for it? Torn apart by both sides as out-of-touch elite technocrats, with the attack from the right feeling even more vicious for the party’s moderation.

A couple of decades of that also makes it pretty hard to muster the energy to say, “no, no, we should take the other side’s concerns seriously.”

Take Kevin Williamson. I honestly just don’t have much concern left for defending the author of this. Jonah Goldberg is another good example. I follow him on Twitter and like his dogs, but every time he says something about civility in discourse, this cover flashes through my head.

My grandparents emigrated from the bloodlands of Europe of world war 2. I was raised to be well aware of the horrors of totalitarianism from either side of the spectrum. Telling me that because I think government has a role in the solution to societal problems puts me on the slippery spectrum to Stalin and Hitler is both intellectually lazy and deeply personally infuriating. It’s better articulated and researched, but it strikes the same chord with me as old school John Birch Society crap. It’s exactly why the one point I reacted against in the first place was claiming that no one links liberalism and communism.

So what motivation do I have to come to the defense of thinkers who apparently are willing to lump my political preferences in the same camp as the 20th century’s worst monsters? Again, I understand that nothing I’m saying is particularly fair or constructive, and you could point to plenty of authors on the left guilty of similar rhetoric. But I also don’t see a groundswell of discussion insisting that those authors get a voice on Fox News or the National Review. I’m tired of being in the only camp (moderate liberals) apparently expected to take everyone’s views and preferences into account.

u/cassander · 5 pointsr/history

I link to wikipedia because it's on the web and thus easily available. There are hundreds of books documenting the atrocities committed by communists. I would suggest you read some of them, as I have.

u/pondering_a_monolith · 2 pointsr/history

Thanks for the link. Do you know who produced this? When?

The Eastern Front has gotten so little study in the West, although I'm looking forward to reading the new book Bloodlands.

u/Boredeidanmark · 2 pointsr/worldnews

Try this

It’s not about just the Bolsheviks, but this was a fascinating book on the vast murder that took place in Eastern Europe in the 30s and 40s. Wash it down with something happy, I made the mistake of reading it back-to-back with this and became pretty depressed for a few weeks.

u/sweetcommunist · 2 pointsr/todayilearned

I've been meaning to read this book about the land between Germany and Russia during that time. You are absolutely right about the tameness of the Western Front.

I have a minor correction to make about Auschwitz: it was actually a very large complex that included multiple camps, and Auschwitz I was the work camp. Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the largest of the camps, was a true extermination camp, like Sobibor, Treblinka, and others. Auschwitz III (Monowitz) was also a work camp, and it is where Elie Wiesel was imprisoned.

u/grond · 0 pointsr/AskHistorians

Broadly speaking, before the war the plans were something like this:
Conquer lands in the east (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Western USSR), de-populate them and colonise them with Germans. This eventually coalesced into the Hunger Plan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_Plan), which was a set of more specific proposals on how to do this, including forced removal of food to Germany, leading to death by starvation of somewhere in the region of fifty million people.
http://www.amazon.com/Bloodlands-Europe-Between-Hitler-Stalin/dp/0465002390/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1342617922&sr=8-1&keywords=bloodlands+europe+between+hitler+and+stalin+by+timothy+snyder

The war took unexpected turns for the Germans, so only small portions of the plan were ever implemented.