Review of Hitler and Stalin: The Tyrants and the Second World War – Laurence Rees

This compelling book on Hitler and Stalin – the culmination of thirty years’ work – examines the two tyrants during the Second World War, when Germany and the Soviet Union fought the biggest and bloodiest war in history. Yet despite the fact they were bitter opponents, Laurence Rees shows that Hitler and Stalin were, to a large extent, different sides of the same coin. Both were prepared to create undreamt-of suffering, destroy individual liberty and twist facts in order to build the utopias they wanted, and while Hitler’s creation of the Holocaust remains a singular crime, Rees shows why we must not forget that Stalin committed a series of atrocities at the same time.

Using previously unpublished, startling eyewitness testimony from soldiers of the Red Army and Wehrmacht, civilians who suffered during the conflict and those who knew both men personally, bestselling historian Laurence Rees – probably the only person alive who has met Germans who worked for Hitler and Russians who worked for Stalin – challenges long-held popular misconceptions about two of the most important figures in history. This is a master work from one of our finest historians.

Hitler and Stalin: The Tyrants and the Second World War

Laurence Rees

Viking

Supplied by Penguin Random House New Zealand

Reviewed by Steve Litten

Once again, Laurence Rees has delivered a ripper of a World War Two history, but this time his focus is biographical. He compares and contrasts the leadership styles (and personalities) of perhaps the two most famous villains of twentieth century politics, Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin.

Hitler and Stalin had quite different leadership styles and personalities, and I saw echoes of these in some current politicians. I won’t give the game away by naming names. The main crucible that these two different styles expressed themselves was World War Two. Hitler was certainly more of a gambler, frequently adopting a strategy of going the bank. This served well at the beginning but as most know, this is usually a losing strategy long term. Stalin was much more methodical. And we all know how WW2 ended.

Rees is a good writer. Here his focus is on Hitler and Stalin, not the outrages they caused to be perpetrated. It’s not that the outrages don’t matter, but rather how they were communicated and how those that actually committed them were co-opted. And this ability to get buy in to commit outrages is also explored.

Hitler and Stalin is a good read. There are a plethora of end notes, the majority from primary sources: this is not a synthesis of other people’s work. I liked it, but then I’ve several other books by Rees. These two leaders were among the most important politicians of the twentieth century, so understanding how they achieved their toxic legacy matters.

Read it.

Review of The Holocaust – Laurence Rees

This landmark work answers two fundamental questions – how, and why, did the Holocaust happen?

Laurence Rees has spent twenty-five years meeting and interviewing survivors and perpetrators of the Holocaust. Now he combines this largely unpublished testimony with the latest academic research to create the first accessible and authoritative account of the Holocaust in over three decades.

Through a chronological, intensely readable narrative, featuring the latest historical research and compelling eyewitness testimony, this is the story of the worst crime in history.

The Holocaust

Laurence Rees

Viking

Supplied by Penguin Random House New Zealand

Reviewed by Steve

Lawrence Rees asks two important questions: how, and why, did the Holocaust happen? By this, he does not limit himself to the treatment of the Jews, but all those subjected to the destructive genetic practices of the Nazis. Anti-Semitism, racial hygiene and a hierarchy of races were ideas that had been floating about since before World War One. The Nazis, under Hitler’s direction, took this to the (il)logical extreme: not only were they to be excluded from the Nazi society, they were to be removed from society and by death if necessary.

Rees plots the development of the Holocaust in 18 chapters, over 430 pages plus prologue, epilogue and endnotes. He follows a chronological sequence, examining the development of the various strands of the Holocaust as the Nazi party and then the Nazi state adopted and then promulgated its racial agenda. Rees also follows the two main strands of the Holocaust’s implementation: exclusion, and elimination, from society.

These two actions, exclusion and elimination, slowly developed in the Nazi state, even though they had been heavily foreshadowed in Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Rees explores why this was, and why certain eugenics programmes were pushed harder than others. He also explores the reaction to these programmes, both in the Third Reich, its conquered and allied territories and the wider world. And why some of these programmes continued even in the face of Nazi Germany’s imminent defeat

Lawrence Rees is a respected historian with a considerable corpus of work, much of it devoted to WW2 studies. This is another fine volume from him: well written, well researched and well presented on a subject that fascinates as much as it horrifies. Buy it. Read it.

I thank Penguin Random House New Zealand for the review copy and apologise for the lateness of this review.