Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin Paperback – April 26, 2022

I began reading this book as a tool for gaining a better understanding of what is going on in the Ukraine. There is no understanding of Ukraine's current situation without understanding the cultural, social and criminal history laid out in this groundbreaking book. The key to Bloodlands is that it is based upon STATISTICS. This book is not based upon he said she said third party accounts. That is all that German histories of the Holocaust can be since the key point is that 95% of "Holocaust" deaths did not occur in or near Germany. They occurred in Eastern Europe, and the Allies never even reached the places where the killing happened. The Nazis were meticulous record keepers and they also had plenty of help from the local populations of the countries they invaded. Timothy Snyder brings a wealth of statistical evidence to bear on the subject of Genocide.Ukrainians are begging us today to free them from the Holodomor denying Russians. I hate to admit this, but I did not even understand what the Holodomor was. The "History" books sold me on the lie that Stalin was just doing what he had to do to establish the Soviet state and the Kulaks were a resistance group who had to be "dealt with". And there is the bizarre conundrum that Stalin was right ... the Kulaks and other dissenters who were shipped to the Gulag saved the Soviets by establishing industry in Siberia. We know that Stalin's brutality saved Russia (barely) in World War 2. I have always thought that this indisputable fact justified whatever Stalin did. But I know now that Ukrainians can never forget the Holodomor genocide. And the Russians have made an inexcusable mistake in denying that the Holodomor occurred.It is crucial to understand the Historical facts presented here in light of the Ukrainian/Russian crisis.The Hitler vs. Stalin Genocide comparison quickly reveals that there was not one Holocaust, but many. The author's premise that you need to compare genocides statistically in order to understand their true nature is clearly demonstrated. I must say that the planned starvation of the Ukrainian Holodomor exceeds by far any evil that can be conceived of. Stalin's wife did the right thing in shooting herself in the heart as a response to what Stalin was doing to the Ukrainians. Bloodlands relies on statistics from documents made available since the fall of the Soviet empire to expose the reality of what actually happened. The statistical analysis is backed up by humanizing eyewitness accounts. The author reduced me to tears repeatedly with the sorrowful vignettes he selected to elucidate what the cold statistics meant.When I started reading Bloodlands I was attracted by some of the Horrific statements made in the Preface but it was not clear to me what Timothy Snyder meant when he said that in order to understand Genocide you need to compare one Genocide to other Genocides. But it very quickly became clear that the Hollywood version of the Nazi concentration camps was quite civilized compared to brutal Einsatzgruppen massacres like Babi Yar. 90% of Holocaust deaths involved the victims being rounded up, thrown in a pit and shot on the spot. It was just in your face DEATH with no death camps or sad family goodbyes. I have watched footage of the shootings and now understand why Jews were so passive and simply lay down in the pits to be slaughtered. They were completely dehumanized and facing atrocities on a scale where it was better to be shot and get it over with.Victims don't write history but Timothy Snyder has done an eloquent job of speaking for them.Anyone who wants to understand this book needs to watch the actual murder footage on the Internet. (Einsatzgruppen, Holodomor, WW2 etc, It's all out there. Sickening stuff, but inescapable.) There is no hiding behind propaganda and lies in today's world ... the footage that is out there confirms what Bloodlands says.An important aspect of Bloodlands is to bring the individuals who suffered such atrocities to life. In addition to being a great student of History Timothy Snyder is also a great writer. He has a keen sense of how spirtuality manifests itself in every day life. We clearly see the people who are being massacred in human terms. After looking at the stats we are presented with a heartbreaking story of a simple human being who was senselessly and needlessly slaughtered.Bloodlands makes it clear from the outset that the German accounts of the Holocaust represent an insignificant 2% of the victims. We are introduced to the other 98% along the way. And we are presented with many surreal scenarios that were commonplace. Eg. A Ukrainian man is captured by the invading Bolsheviks and serves in the Red Army. He runs away to join Nationalist Partisans, is captured by the Nazis and fights for them against the Bolsheviks. He is again captured by the Bolsheviks and is sent to Siberia. Seemingly bizarre examples demonstrate the ephemeral nature of survival in the Bloodlands.What is clear is that since the Bloodlands were occupied twice by the Bolsheviks and once by the Nazis the hapless victims had no chance of self determination whatsoever. And if they survived at all they were fortunate.In considering what the message of this book is, the author is clear in his intentions to avoid political intrigues and focus on the Bloodlands as a source of food that was essential for both the Nazis and the Bolsheviks. What is shown here is that when survival is on the line, there are no laws that can govern the atrocities people are forced to commit. Since we are approaching population levels where food is becoming scarce again we need to remember; Russians are not just posturing over the Ukraine, that is their breadbasket. We need to understand the history of this region and how dangerous Russian denial of Holodomor is. Ukrainians won't accept that any more than Israelis will accept Holocaust deniers.At least the Holocaust is recognized by most people. Holodomor is not. We cannot comprehend how the Ukrainians must feel.One of the greatest atrocities in history and it's not even recognized. This is what I learned from Bloodlands;The victims of these atrocities are still here with us. They are Ukrainians. World War 2 is not over.If Ukrainians feel the way I think they feel, then the current situation is a life/death struggle that cannot be settledpeacefully. Russian leaders need to learn a lesson from Pope John Paul II; he was the last person who needed to apologize for the massacre of Jews in Poland. Yet he did apologize because he recognized that it was a necessary step in the healing process.Timothy Snyder has big balls as a man in taking on this subject. It is clear to me why Historians simply want nothing to do with it. Reading the facts quite simply made me sick to my stomach. I can't imagine how the author remained immersed in this material for years. As readers we are indebted to him for providing an undeniable resource regarding the Genocides in Eastern Europe. By providing statistical analysis backed up by concrete examples he refutes those who seek to replace Historical fact with Nationalist Revisionist History. Bloodlands brings to mind the old axiom: Those who cannot learn from history are destined to repeat it.

“Without history, the memories become private, which today means national; and the numbers become public, which is to say an instrument in the international competition for martyrdom.”One such number is 33,761. That is the number of Jews shot at Babi Yar, near Kiev, in the Ukraine. On numerous occasions throughout this monumental and essential history, Timothy Snyder uses very precise figures such as 33,761. Admittedly, it rubbed me the wrong way, since in the world of much uncertainty, as Heisenberg and others have proclaimed, it is impossible to know such a number, with that type of certainty and precision. But on the very last page of his account, the author, a Yale historian, explained fully why it is so important to use the “odd” number. It is the humanity that is revealed in the “1”, which can be multiplied by a million or more. It is the fragments of the stories of individuals who once had a real name, that have been preserved in diaries, or the memories of others, or simply a departing sentence scratched on a wall.Snyder does also use “round” numbers, as in 14,000,000. That is his estimate of the number of CIVILIAN deaths in an area he defines as the “Bloodlands,” between 1933 and 1945. It is an area that stretches from St. Petersburg in the north, encompasses the entire eastern shore of the Baltic to Danzig, all of Poland, and on, down to the entire Crimea, and touching the Don River in the east. One of the many strengths of this book is the numerous excellent maps set within the narrative. His contributions to our understanding of what happened in that space and time are numerous. Central is his examination of the disparate motives behind these numerous deaths, and to present a “balanced” account, in a world of madness. Snyder starts in the Ukraine, with Stalin’s efforts to collectivize agriculture, which lead to the death, by starvation, of millions. Many others were deported to the “Gulag.” Next there was the “Terror,” in the late ‘30’s, in which Stalin purged many in the leadership ranks of the Soviet Union, with a particular focus on the Poles. In fact, the “Polish Military Organization” was simply invented for the purpose of justifying the terror. Though the Soviet Union promoted an image of their tolerance towards minorities, which many in the West, probably at one time including myself, accepted, with the “you can make an omelet without breaking a few eggs” rationalization, Snyder concludes otherwise, to a stark degree. Next there was the brief period that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were allies, which, in part, resulted in the partition of Poland between them, and the calculated decimation of the Polish leadership.What more can be said about the Holocaust and the Jews? Actually, quite a lot, I found. Once again, Snyder condemns best in measured, factual analysis. He deals with the “big picture,” and demonstrates how, after the German failure to take Moscow in 1941, that the destruction of European Jewry became a wartime German objective. He names numerous concentration camps I had never heard of, because they were taken by the Red Army. Prior to reading Snyder’s account I was under the impression that the gas chambers had to be constructed because there was some natural “limit” whereby soldiers could not be ordered to shoot and kill unarmed men, woman and children, and be expected to obey. The soldiers themselves would simply rebel and refuse to participate in these heinous crimes. Not so, apparently, as the author documents how so very many were simply shot, including all those at Babi Yar.Amos Oz, the Israeli novelist once proclaimed that “the dead of the Six Day War belong to all of us; the dead of the Lebanese War belong only to their mother’s.” Snyder posits a similar issue concerning a Soviet Ukrainian Jew who had once lived in an area considered to be Poland. She can be claimed by four different national entities; who does she belong to? And to what political purpose today will these entities use her death? And like Bernard Schlick’s principle character in The Reader, who is accused of war crimes, but asks the Judge: “What would you have done?” and receives no reply, Snyder cautions against assuming the identity of the victim, and raises the issue of what people who are just “trying to get by” will do in order to stay alive… including being Jewish policeman in the ghetto.My first efforts to obtain a different vantage point on the Second World War, other than the one I was brought up on, as an American, that is, Pearl Harbor and D-Day, was reading Alexander Werth’s Russia at War: 1941-1945, in the ‘60’s. William Shirer proclaimed it to be “the best book we probably shall ever have in English on Russia at war.” I found it strange therefore that in Snyder’s extensive 37 page bibliography, it is never mentioned. Of course, some of Werth’s information and opinions, as set forth in 1964, are outdated and have been superseded. For example, Werth had left it an open question as to who killed the Polish officers in the Katyn Forest, the Soviets or the Nazis. We now know for certain it was the former, and Snyder details this.I also compared accounts concerning the doomed Warsaw uprising of 1944. I found Snyder’s account less rigorous, with the implicit assumption that the Russians had simply stopped, for no particular reason, and allowed the Poles to be slaughter as a result. Werth seemed to be much more explicit and detailed, clearly condemning “…the awkward questions of the Moscow radio appeals at the end of July to the people of Warsaw to ‘rise’… and the Russian refusal to let supply planes from the West land on Soviet airfields.” Also, it was clearly in Stalin’s interest to allow the Polish elites again to be decimated. Nonetheless, Werth quotes the German general, Heinz Guderian on the inability of the Russians to take Warsaw, cites the failure to cross the Vistula in July, with a loss of 30 Russian tanks, and Werth concludes: “The only conclusion this author, at any rate, has been able to reach is that in August and September, 1944, the available Red Army forces in Poland were genuinely not able to capture Warsaw, which Hitler was determined to hold.” At a minimum, I think Snyder should have at least addressed this issue, and Werth’s knowledge of the matter.Despite the above one flaw, I consider this an essential historical work. 6-stars.