Lenin stalin und hitler biography
Lenin, Stalin and Hitler
One aim of this work is to dispel the so-called "myth" of Lenin as a benevolent "true communist" who wasn't "as bad" as Stalin. gellately does a great job shooting this down, but Orlando Figes already exposed it as a sham in his epic history of the Russian Revolution. Far from perverting or undermining Lenin's legacy, Stalin was his logical heir. Heck, even Molotov though that Lenin was more "severe" than Stalin.
Remarkably ambitious, Gellately's book does a fine job in meeting its own goals. All the major aspects of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union are covered in fair to exhaustive detail.
Gellately examines these leaders' differing definitions of socialism. He also details their use of terror as a political weapon. In fact, Stalin's terror is comparable to the Holocaust since it eventually targeted entire ethnicities.
Nazi terror was quite different from the Bolshevik variety. Pretty much anyone could be victimized in Lenin and Stalin's Soviet Union, even old-time Communists: Stalin killed most of them in his successive purges. Not in Hitler's Germany: there, only unpopular outsider groups were persecuted, like Communists (whom even the Socialists were happy to see in concentration camps), gypsies, homosexuals and of course Jews. Only in its final winter did Nazism really exhibit its nihilistic face in Germany itself. However, once the Germans started to carve their Reich they began to show what they had in store for the rest of humanity: First in Austria (where many of the most brutal SS officers came, like Eichmann or Globocknick), then in the Sudeten, next in Czechia, in Poland, in Yugoslavia and Greece,
Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler
A bold new accounting of the great social and political upheavals that enveloped Europe between 1914 and 1945 - from the Russian Revolution through the Second World War.
In Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, acclaimed historian Robert Gellately focuses on the dominant powers of the time, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, but also analyzes the catastrophe of those years in an effort to uncover its political and ideological nature. Arguing that the tragedies endured by Europe were inextricably linked through the dictatorships of Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, Gellately explains how the pursuit of their "utopian" ideals turned into dystopian nightmares. Dismantling the myth of Lenin as a relatively benevolent precursor to Hitler and Stalin and contrasting the divergent ways that Hitler and Stalin achieved their calamitous goals, Gellately creates in Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler a vital analysis of a critical period in modern history.
©2007 Robert Gellately (P)2021 TantorMortal enemies in life, Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin are forever linked in death. Under their leadership, Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Communist Soviet Union engaged in a war of annihilation and genocide, introducing to the world a level of state-sanctioned barbarism that is unrivaled in human history.
A new book by Florida State University historian Robert Gellately shows how another murderous dictator of the early 20th century—one who, until now, has largely escaped the condemnation of history—was in fact the creator of many of the brutal methods later perfected by those who came after him. Vladimir Lenin, Stalin’s predecessor as head of the Soviet state, gets a critical new look in “Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe.” The book has just been published by Alfred A. Knopf Inc.
“This book began as a study of the conflicting ideologies of Communism and Nazism and the murderous rivalries of Stalin and Hitler,” said Gellately, FSU’s Earl Ray Beck Professor of History. “I did not initially include Lenin as a major figure. However, as I conducted the research for the book and tried to reconstruct the events leading up to the Second World War, I began to see that much of what I wanted to say was leading me back, over and over, to Lenin and the beginnings of the Soviet dictatorship.”
In analyzing the 31-year period between 1914 and 1945, Gellately documents a time of almost continuous upheaval in which society was buffeted by two world wars, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Holocaust, and the rise and fall of the Third Reich. (Gellately refers to the period as the “Age of Catastrophe” for its ruinous effects on societies throughout the world.) Having availed himself of recently opened Russian and German archives in researching the book, the author also shows how these social and political catastrophes created the conditions that enabled Lenin, then Stalin and Hitler
Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe
A bold new accounting of the great social and political upheavals that enveloped Europe between 1914 and 1945—from the Russian Revolution through the Second World War.
In Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, acclaimed historian Robert Gellately focuses on the dominant powers of the time, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, but also analyzes the catastrophe of those years in an effort to uncover its political and ideological nature. Arguing that the tragedies endured by Europe were inextricably linked through the dictatorships of Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, Gellately explains how the pursuit of their “utopian” ideals turned into dystopian nightmares. Dismantling the myth of Lenin as a relatively benevolent precursor to Hitler and Stalin and contrasting the divergent ways that Hitler and Stalin achieved their calamitous goals, Gellately creates in Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler a vital analysis of a critical period in modern history.