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Hitler and Stalin : the tyrants and the Second World War / Laurence Rees.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York, NY : Public Affairs, 2021Copyright date: ©2021Edition: First US editionDescription: xxxviii, 488 pages, 24 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps, portraits ; 25 cmContent type:
  • text
  • still image
  • cartographic image
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9781610399647
  • 1610399641
Subject(s): Genre/Form:
Contents:
The pact -- Eliminating Poland -- Opposite fortunes -- Dreams and nightmares -- Hitler's war of annihilation -- Invasion -- Desperate days -- A World War -- Hunger -- Stalin's overreach -- Across the Steppe -- Struggle on the Volga -- Fighting on -- Fiction and reality -- Mass killing -- Collapse of the centre -- Dying days -- Victory and defeat -- Afterword.
Summary: The bestselling historian on the dramatic wartime relationship - and shocking similarities - between two tyrants. 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. Hitler's charismatic leadership may contrast with Stalin's regimented rule by fear; and his intransigence later in the war may contrast with Stalin's change in behaviour in response to events. But at a macro level, both were prepared to create undreamt of suffering, destroy individual liberty and twist facts in order to build the Utopia 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 Using previously unpublished, startling eyewitness testimony from soldiers of the Red Army and Wehrmacht, civilians who suffered during the conflict, and those who knew both men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 masterwork from one of our finest historians.
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction 940.5343 R328 Available 33111010467070
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

An award-winning historian plumbs the depths of Hitler and Stalin's vicious regimes, and shows the extent to which they brutalized the world around them.



Two 20th century tyrants stand apart from all the rest in terms of their ruthlessness and the degree to which they changed the world around them. Briefly allies during World War II, Adolph Hitler and Josef Stalin then tried to exterminate each other in sweeping campaigns unlike anything the modern world had ever seen, affecting soldiers and civilians alike. Millions of miles of Eastern Europe were ruined in their fight to the death, millions of lives sacrificed.



Laurence Rees has met more people who had direct experience of working for Hitler and Stalin than any other historian. Using their evidence he has pieced together a compelling comparative portrait of evil, in which idealism is polluted by bloody pragmatism, and human suffering is used casually as a political tool. It's a jaw-dropping description of two regimes stripped of moral anchors and doomed to destroy each other, and those caught up in the vicious magnetism of their leadership.

"Originally published in 2020 by Viking, part of the Penguin Random House group of companies."--Title page verso.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

The pact -- Eliminating Poland -- Opposite fortunes -- Dreams and nightmares -- Hitler's war of annihilation -- Invasion -- Desperate days -- A World War -- Hunger -- Stalin's overreach -- Across the Steppe -- Struggle on the Volga -- Fighting on -- Fiction and reality -- Mass killing -- Collapse of the centre -- Dying days -- Victory and defeat -- Afterword.

The bestselling historian on the dramatic wartime relationship - and shocking similarities - between two tyrants. 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. Hitler's charismatic leadership may contrast with Stalin's regimented rule by fear; and his intransigence later in the war may contrast with Stalin's change in behaviour in response to events. But at a macro level, both were prepared to create undreamt of suffering, destroy individual liberty and twist facts in order to build the Utopia 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 masterwork from one of our finest historians.

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