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''Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin'' is a 2010 book by
Yale Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and one of the nine colonial colleges ch ...
historian
Timothy Snyder Timothy David Snyder (born August 18, 1969) is an American historian specializing in the history of Central Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the Holocaust. He is on leave from his position as the Richard C. Levin, Richar ...
. It is about
mass murder Mass murder is the violent crime of murder, killing a number of people, typically simultaneously or over a relatively short period of time and in close geographic proximity. A mass murder typically occurs in a single location where one or more ...
s committed before and during
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
in territories controlled by
Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...
and the
Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
. In this book, Snyder examines the political, cultural, and ideological context tied to a specific region of Central and
Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the Europe, European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural and socio-economic connotations. Its eastern boundary is marked by the Ural Mountain ...
, where
Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...
's Soviet Union and
Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...
's Nazi Germany committed mass murders of an estimated 14 million noncombatants between 1933 and 1945, the majority outside the death camps of
the Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...
. Snyder's thesis delineates the "bloodlands" as a region that now comprises
Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...
,
Belarus Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Belarus spans an a ...
,
Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...
, the
Baltic states The Baltic states or the Baltic countries is a geopolitical term encompassing Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. All three countries are members of NATO, the European Union, the Eurozone, and the OECD. The three sovereign states on the eastern co ...
(
Estonia Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and to the east by Ru ...
,
Latvia Latvia, officially the Republic of Latvia, is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is one of the three Baltic states, along with Estonia to the north and Lithuania to the south. It borders Russia to the east and Belarus to t ...
, and
Lithuania Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, P ...
), northeastern
Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...
, and the westernmost fringes of
Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...
; in this region, Stalin and Hitler's regimes, despite their conflicting goals, interacted to increase suffering and bloodshed beyond what each regime would have inflicted independently. Snyder draws similarities between the two
totalitarian Totalitarianism is a political system and a form of government that prohibits opposition from political parties, disregards and outlaws the political claims of individual and group opposition to the state, and completely controls the public sph ...
regimes and the enabling interactions that reinforced the destruction and suffering that they inflicted upon noncombatants. According to Anne Applebaum, "Snyder's book has a lot of information that people who know these subjects know very well. But what it does that is different and wholly original is show the ways that Hitler and Stalin echoed one another, at times working together and other times fighting one another. The way in which they egged each other on, acting as two facets of what was really the same phenomenon." According to Snyder, "the Germans deliberately killed about 11 million noncombatants, a figure that rises to more than 12 million if foreseeable deaths from deportation, hunger, and sentences in concentration camps are included. For the Soviets during the Stalin period, the analogous figures are approximately 6 million and 9 million." The book was awarded numerous prizes, including the 2013 Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought, and stirred up a great deal of debate among historians. Reviews ranged from highly critical to "rapturous".


Synopsis

The Central and
Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the Europe, European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural and socio-economic connotations. Its eastern boundary is marked by the Ural Mountain ...
an regions that Snyder terms "the bloodlands" is the area where Hitler's vision of racial supremacy and ''
Lebensraum (, ) is a German concept of expansionism and Völkisch movement, ''Völkisch'' nationalism, the philosophy and policies of which were common to German politics from the 1890s to the 1940s. First popularized around 1901, '' lso in:' beca ...
,'' resulting in the
Final Solution The Final Solution or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question was a plan orchestrated by Nazi Germany during World War II for the genocide of individuals they defined as Jews. The "Final Solution to the Jewish question" was the official ...
and other Nazi atrocities, met, sometimes in conflict, sometimes in cooperation, with Stalin's vision of a communist ideology that resulted in the deliberate starvation, imprisonment, and murder of innocent men, women and children in
Gulag The Gulag was a system of Labor camp, forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. The word ''Gulag'' originally referred only to the division of the Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies, Soviet secret police that was in charge of runnin ...
s and elsewhere. The combined efforts of the two regimes resulted in the deaths of an estimated 14 million noncombatants in the Eastern European "Bloodlands"; Snyder documents that Nazi Germany was responsible for about two thirds of the total number of deaths. At least 5.4 million died in what has become known as
the Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...
, but many more died in more obscure circumstances. Snyder seeks to show that interaction between the Nazi and Soviet regimes is crucial to telling the story of this bloodshed. He posits that early Soviet support for the
Warsaw Uprising The Warsaw Uprising (; ), sometimes referred to as the August Uprising (), or the Battle of Warsaw, was a major World War II operation by the Polish resistance movement in World War II, Polish underground resistance to liberate Warsaw from ...
against the Nazi occupation was followed by an unwillingness to aid the uprising because the Soviets were willing to have the Nazis eliminate potential sources of resistance to a later Soviet occupation. Snyder states that this is an example of interaction that may have led to many more deaths than might have been the case if each regime had been acting independently. According to Jacob Mikanowski, one of the book's overarching goals is to argue that "it's wrong to focus on the camps when so much of the Holocaust was committed out in the open." To this end, Snyder documents that many Jews were killed by
mass shootings A mass shooting is a violent crime in which one or more attackers use a firearm to Gun violence, kill or injure multiple individuals in rapid succession. There is no widely accepted specific definition, and different organizations tracking su ...
in villages or the countryside, in addition to those deaths suffered in the death camps. As commented by Anne Applebaum, " e vast majority of Hitler's victims, Jewish and otherwise, never saw a concentration camp." Similarly, all of the Soviet victims discussed were killed outside the
Gulag The Gulag was a system of Labor camp, forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. The word ''Gulag'' originally referred only to the division of the Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies, Soviet secret police that was in charge of runnin ...
concentration camp system; within those camps, an estimated million people died. More Soviet prisoners of war died every day in Nazi camps during the autumn of 1941 than the total number of Western Allied POWs in the entire war; over three million Soviet POWs died in the Nazi camps. The fate of the
German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union Approximately three million German prisoners of war were captured by the Soviet Union during World War II, most of them during the great advances of the Red Army in the last year of the war. The POWs were employed as forced labor in the Soviet ...
was little better, as more than half a million died in the terrible conditions of the Soviet camps. Snyder focuses on three periods, summarized by
Richard Rhodes Richard Lee Rhodes (born July 4, 1937) is an American historian, journalist, and author of both fiction and nonfiction, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning '' The Making of the Atomic Bomb'' (1986), and most recently, ''Energy: A Human History ...
as "deliberate mass starvation and shootings in the Soviet Union in the period from 1933 to 1938; mass shootings in occupied Poland more or less equally by Soviet and German killers in 1939 to 1941; deliberate starvation of 3.1 million Soviet prisoners of war and mass shooting and gassing of more than 5 million Jews by the Germans between 1941 and 1945."Rhhodes, Richard (16 December 2010)
Review of Timothy Snyder's "Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin"
''The Washington Post''. Retrieved 17 December 2010.
He re-examines numerous points of the war and postwar years such as the
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, officially the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and also known as the Hitler–Stalin Pact and the Nazi–Soviet Pact, was a non-aggression pact between Nazi Ge ...
of 1939, the
rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust Polish Jews were the primary victims of the Nazi Germany-organized The Holocaust in Poland, Holocaust in Poland. Throughout the German occupation of Poland (1939–1945), occupation of Poland, Jews were rescued from the Holocaust by Polish ...
, and the Soviet persecution of the
Polish Underground State The Polish Underground State (, also known as the Polish Secret State) was a single political and military entity formed by the union of resistance organizations in occupied Poland that were loyal to the Government of the Republic of Poland ...
, cursed soldiers, and their own prisoners of war after the war. The chapter covering the early 1930s famine in Ukraine under the Soviet Union (often termed the
Holodomor The Holodomor, also known as the Ukrainian Famine, was a mass famine in Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians. The Holodomor was part of the wider Soviet famine of 1930–193 ...
, a term Snyder avoids) goes into considerable detail. Snyder recounts that in an unofficial orphanage in a village in the
Kharkiv Kharkiv, also known as Kharkov, is the second-largest List of cities in Ukraine, city in Ukraine.
region, the children were so hungry they resorted to
cannibalism Cannibalism is the act of consuming another individual of the same species as food. Cannibalism is a common ecological interaction in the animal kingdom and has been recorded in more than 1,500 species. Human cannibalism is also well document ...
. One child ate parts of himself while he was being cannibalised. 3.3 millions died during the Ukrainian starvation of 1933. Under his
Hunger Plan The Hunger Plan () was a partially implemented plan developed by Nazi Germany, Nazi bureaucrats during World War II to seize food from the Soviet Union and give it to German soldiers and civilians. The plan entailed the genocide by Starvation (cri ...
, Hitler starved 4.2 million persons in the
Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
, mostly Ukrainians, Belarusians and Russians. The book highlights the similarities between the two regimes, with Snyder stating: "Hitler and Stalin thus shared a certain politics of tyranny: they brought about catastrophes, blamed the enemy of their choice, and then used the death of millions to make the case that their policies were necessary or desirable. Each of them had a transformative Utopia, a group to be blamed when its realisation proved impossible, and then a policy of mass murder that could be proclaimed as a kind of ersatz victory." Snyder also describes how the two regimes often collaborated and aided one another before the 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union, such as the Gestapo–NKVD Conferences. They collaborated extensively in the killings of
Poles Pole or poles may refer to: People *Poles (people), another term for Polish people, from the country of Poland * Pole (surname), including a list of people with the name * Pole (musician) (Stefan Betke, born 1967), German electronic music artist ...
such as Nazi crimes against ethnic Poles and Soviet repressions of Polish citizens (1939–1946); between the two of them, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union killed about 200,000 Polish citizens in the period 1939–1941. About this, Applebaum wrote: "The Nazi and Soviet regimes were sometimes allies, as in the joint occupation of Poland rom 1939–1941 They sometimes held compatible goals as foes: as when Stalin chose not to aid the rebels in Warsaw in 1944 uring the Warsaw uprising thereby allowing the Germans to kill people who would later have resisted communist rule ... . Often the Germans and the Soviets goaded each other into escalations that cost more lives than the policies of either state by itself would have." Snyder stated that after the
Western Allies Western Allies was a political and geographic grouping among the Allied Powers of the Second World War. It primarily refers to the leading Anglo-American Allied powers, namely the United States and the United Kingdom, although the term has also be ...
had allied themselves with Stalin against Hitler, they did not have the will to fight the second totalitarian regime when the war ended. As American and British soldiers never entered Eastern Europe, the tragedy of those lands did not become well known to the American or British populace and led to the view of Western betrayal.


Number of victims

Snyder put the total death toll in the "Bloodlands" at 14 million victims of both Stalin and Hitler, including Jewish civilians transported to
German camps in occupied Poland during World War II The German camps in occupied Poland during World War II were built by the Nazis between 1939 and 1945 throughout the territory of the Polish Republic, both in the areas annexed in 1939, and in the General Government formed by Nazi Germany in ...
, Polish intelligentsia killed in war crimes such as in the
Katyn massacre The Katyn massacre was a series of mass killings under Communist regimes, mass executions of nearly 22,000 Polish people, Polish military officer, military and police officers, border guards, and intelligentsia prisoners of war carried out by t ...
, disarmed military personnel in occupied countries and
prisoners of war A prisoner of war (POW) is a person held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610. Belligerents hold prisoners of war for a ...
. Snyder pointed out that "I am not counting soldiers who died on the fields of battle", saying that this "is not a complete reckoning of all the death that Soviet and German power brought to the region." Snyder identifies those victims killed as a result of "deliberate policies of mass murder" by governments, such as executions, deliberate famine and death camps. Snyder said that he "generally excludes from the count" deaths due to exertion, disease, or malnutrition in concentration camps; deportations, forced labor, evacuations; people who died of hunger as a result of wartime shortfalls, and civilians killed by bombings or other acts of war. The geographic area covered by the "Bloodlands" is limited to Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic states, and western Russian regions occupied by Germany. Regarding the figures, Snyder stated that his reckoning is "on the conservative side."Snyder, Timothy (2010). ''Bloodlands''. Basic Books. pp. 410–412. Snyder provided a summary of the 14 million victims as follows: * 3.3 million victims of "the Soviet Famines", using the term for the famines in which the victims were "mostly Ukrainians", as he does not use the term "
Holodomor The Holodomor, also known as the Ukrainian Famine, was a mass famine in Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians. The Holodomor was part of the wider Soviet famine of 1930–193 ...
"; according to Snyder, Stalin wanted to exterminate by famine those Ukrainians and ethnic Poles who resisted
collectivization in the Soviet Union The Soviet Union introduced collectivization () of its agricultural sector between 1928 and 1940. It began during and was part of the first five-year plan. The policy aimed to integrate individual landholdings and labour into nominally co ...
. * 300,000 victims in the
Great Purge The Great Purge, or the Great Terror (), also known as the Year of '37 () and the Yezhovshchina ( , ), was a political purge in the Soviet Union that took place from 1936 to 1938. After the Assassination of Sergei Kirov, assassination of ...
in the Soviet Union from 1937–1938, using the term "national terror", which targeted "mostly
Poles Pole or poles may refer to: People *Poles (people), another term for Polish people, from the country of Poland * Pole (surname), including a list of people with the name * Pole (musician) (Stefan Betke, born 1967), German electronic music artist ...
and Ukrainians", killed because of their ethnic origins (the figure does not include an additional 400,000 Great Purge deaths in areas outside the "Bloodlands"). According to Snyder, Stalin considered ethnic Poles in the western Soviet Union as a potential agents of the
Second Polish Republic The Second Polish Republic, at the time officially known as the Republic of Poland, was a country in Central and Eastern Europe that existed between 7 October 1918 and 6 October 1939. The state was established in the final stage of World War I ...
; Ukrainian
kulak Kulak ( ; rus, кула́к, r=kulák, p=kʊˈɫak, a=Ru-кулак.ogg; plural: кулаки́, ''kulakí'', 'fist' or 'tight-fisted'), also kurkul () or golchomag (, plural: ), was the term which was used to describe peasants who owned over ...
s who survived the famine of 1933 were also considered to be potentially hostile to the Soviet regime in a future conflict. * 200,000 Poles were killed between 1939 and 1941 in
occupied Poland ' (Norwegian language, Norwegian: ') is a Norwegian political thriller TV series that premiered on TV 2 (Norway), TV2 on 5 October 2015. Based on an original idea by Jo Nesbø, the series is co-created with Karianne Lund and Erik Skjoldbjærg. ...
, with each regime responsible for about half of those deaths. The deaths included civilians and military prisoners of war killed in the Katyn massacre. Most of the victims were the intellectual and political elite of Poland. According to Snyder, both Stalin and Hitler worked to eliminate the leadership of the Polish nation. * 4.2 million victims of the German
Hunger Plan The Hunger Plan () was a partially implemented plan developed by Nazi Germany, Nazi bureaucrats during World War II to seize food from the Soviet Union and give it to German soldiers and civilians. The plan entailed the genocide by Starvation (cri ...
in the
Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
, "largely Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians"; Snyder does not include famine deaths outside the Soviet Union. According to Snyder, Hitler intended eventually to exterminate up to 45 million Poles, Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Czechs by planned famine as part of
Generalplan Ost The (; ), abbreviated GPO, was Nazi Germany's plan for the settlement and "Germanization" of captured territory in Eastern Europe, involving the genocide, extermination and large-scale ethnic cleansing of Slavs, Eastern European Jews, and o ...
. * 5.4 million Jewish victims in the Holocaust (does not include an additional 300,000 deaths outside the ''Bloodlands''). * 700,000 civilians, "mostly Belarusians and Poles", shot by the Germans "in reprisals" during the
occupation of Belarus by Nazi Germany The German invasion of the Soviet Union started on 22 June 1941 and led to a German military occupation of Byelorussia until it was fully liberated in August 1944 as a result of Operation Bagration. The western parts of Byelorussia became part ...
and the
Warsaw Uprising The Warsaw Uprising (; ), sometimes referred to as the August Uprising (), or the Battle of Warsaw, was a major World War II operation by the Polish resistance movement in World War II, Polish underground resistance to liberate Warsaw from ...
of 1944. In February 2011, the ''
Ottawa Citizen The ''Ottawa Citizen'' is an English-language daily newspaper owned by Postmedia Network in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. History Established as the Bytown ''Packet'' in 1845 by William Harris (journalist), William Harris, it was renamed the ''Ci ...
'' summarized the number of victims, stating that ''Bloodlands'' is "a chilling and instructive story of how 14 million unarmed men, women and children were murdered. The death toll includes two familiar victim groups – 5.7 million Jews in the Holocaust and 3.3 million Ukrainians during the 1932–1933 famine engineered by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin – along with lesser-known victims that include three million Soviet prisoners of war who were deliberately starved to death."O'Neill, Peter (27 February 2011)
"Eastern Europe's bloodbath"
''
Ottawa Citizen The ''Ottawa Citizen'' is an English-language daily newspaper owned by Postmedia Network in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. History Established as the Bytown ''Packet'' in 1845 by William Harris (journalist), William Harris, it was renamed the ''Ci ...
''. Retrieved 4 August 2021 – via PressReader.
In November 2012, historian
Dariusz Stola Dariusz Stola is a professor of history at the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
wrote: "His restrictive definition of murderous policies raises doubts. His estimate of fourteen million dead only takes into account people killed within the framework of deliberate policies of mass murder. As a consequence, he is excluding, among others, all those who died as a result of abuse, of diseases or of malnutrition in concentration camps or during the deportations, or even while fleeing from the armies (even when these armies were deliberately pushing people into having to flee)."


Reception

''Bloodlands'' stirred up a great deal of debate among historians, with reviews ranging from highly critical to "rapturous". In assessing these reviews,
Jacques Sémelin Jacques Sémelin is a French historian and political scientist. He is a professor at Sciences Po, Sciences Po Paris and senior researcher at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS (Center for International Studies). His main fields ...
wrote: "While observers on the whole all join in paying tribute to Snyder's ''tour de force'', they nevertheless don't hold back from subjecting him to several incisive criticisms." Sémelin stated that several historians have criticized the chronological construction of events, the arbitrary geographical delimitation, Snyder's numbers on victims and violence, and a lack of focus on interactions between different actors. Despite these points, Sémelin stated that ''Bloodlands'' is one of those books that "change the way we look at a period in history." The book received favourable reviews in popular press outlets like ''
BBC History ''BBC History'' is a British magazine devoted to both British and world history, and aimed at readers of all levels of knowledge and interest. There are thirteen issues a year, one each month and a Christmas special. The magazine is published, ...
'', ''
The Seattle Times ''The Seattle Times'' is an American daily newspaper based in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1891, ''The Seattle Times'' has the largest circulation of any newspaper in the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region. The Seattle Time ...
'', and ''
The New York Observer ''The New York Observer'' was a weekly newspaper established in 1987. In 2016, it ceased print publication and became the online-only newspaper ''Observer''. The media site focuses on culture, real estate, media, politics and the entertainment ...
'', and has been described as "an impeccably researched history of mass killings in the eastern part of mid-20th-century Europe" by Robert Gerwarth in the ''
Irish Times ''The Irish Times'' is an Irish daily broadsheet newspaper and online digital publication. It was launched on 29 March 1859. The editor is Ruadhán Mac Cormaic. It is published every day except Sundays. ''The Irish Times'' is Ireland's leading n ...
''.


Academic reviews

The book received praise from an array of experts in the field.
Tony Judt Tony Robert Judt ( ; 2 January 1948 – 6 August 2010) was an English historian, essayist and university professor who specialised in European history. Judt moved to New York and served as the Erich Maria Remarque Professor in European Studies ...
called ''Bloodlands'' "the most important book to appear on this subject for decades." Other positive reviews include those from Wendy Lower, who wrote that it was a "masterful synthesis", John Connelly, who called it "morally informed scholarship of the highest calibre", and
Christopher Browning Christopher Robert Browning (born May 22, 1944) is an American historian and is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). A specialist on the Holocaust, Browning is known for his work documenting the ...
, who described it as "stunning", while
Dennis Showalter Dennis Edwin Showalter (February 12, 1942 – December 30, 2019) was a professor emeritus of history at Colorado College. Showalter specialized in German military history. He was president of the American Society for Military History from 1997 to ...
stated that "Snyder has written several first-rate books ... And ''Bloodlands'' takes his work to a new level." Mark Roseman wrote that "the book's core achievement is ... to tell the story of Nazi and Soviet violence in a way that renders that savage chapter anew, and enduringly changes what we see." ''Bloodlands'' also received harsh criticism from other historians of the period, and specialists on
Nazism Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During Hitler's rise to power, it was fre ...
and
Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...
's Soviet Union. In a "blistering review" on 4 November 2010 for the ''
London Review of Books The ''London Review of Books'' (''LRB'') is a British literary magazine published bimonthly that features articles and essays on fiction and non-fiction subjects, which are usually structured as book reviews. History The ''London Review of Book ...
'', Richard J. Evans wrote that because of a lack of causal argument, "Snyder's book is of no use." Evans wrote that " seems to me that he is simply equating Nazi genocide with the mass murders carried out in the Soviet Union under Stalin. ... There is nothing wrong with comparing. It's the equation that I find highly troubling." Evans later conceded that Snyder's own critical review of Evans' '' The Third Reich at War,'' published the year before in ''
The New York Review of Books ''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of ...
'', was "one of the many reasons Snyder's book made imso cross." For Snyder's review of Evans' book, see In a summer 2011 article for the ''
Slavic Review The ''Slavic Review'' is a major peer-reviewed academic journal publishing scholarly studies, book and film reviews, and review essays in all disciplines concerned with "Eastern Europe, Russia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia, past and present". ...
'',
Omer Bartov Omer Bartov ( ; born 1954) is an Israeli-American historian. He is the Dean's Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University, where he has taught since 2000. Bartov is a historian of the Holocaust and is considered a leading au ...
wrote that while ''Bloodlands'' presents an "admirable synthesis", it nonetheless "presents no new evidence and makes no new arguments", and stating that the book is "permeated by a consistent pro-Polish bias", eliding darker aspects of Polish–Jewish relations, and that Snyder's emphasis on German and Soviet occupation policies glosses over interethnic violence, commenting: "By equating partisans and occupiers, Soviet and Nazi occupation, Wehrmacht and Red Army criminality, and evading interethnic violence, Snyder drains the war of much of its moral content and inadvertently adopts the apologists' argument that where everyone is a criminal no one can be blamed." In a January 2012 review in the '' Sarmatian Review'', Raymond Gawronski described ''Bloodlands'' as "a book that must be read and digested, a very significant book that knits together what otherwise are discordant chunks of history, many of which are totally unknown in our culture", adding that "Snyder's sensitivity to the various peoples involved, their own motivations, situations, histories, relations, is remarkable and highly praiseworthy. His reflections on subsequent inflation of numbers by nationalist groups is sober and needed." For Gawronski, "Snyder walks a tightrope of deepening concern for the Jewish Holocaust and a most moving presentation while situating it within the suffering of other surrounding communities: I believe he accomplishes this very difficult task well." ''
Contemporary European History ''Contemporary European History'' is an international peer-reviewed academic history journal founded in 1992 and published quarterly by Cambridge University Press. The journal covers the history of Europe from 1914 onwards and publishes three mai ...
'' published a special forum on the book in May 2012, featuring reviews by Jörg Baberowski, Dan Diner, Thomas Kühne, and Mark Mazower as well as an introduction and response by Snyder. Kühne stated that "Snyder is not the first to think about what Hitler and Stalin had in common and how their murderous politics related to each other. The more provocative historians were in doing so and the more they thereby questioned the uniqueness, or the peculiarity, of the Holocaust, the more their work was met with resistance or even disgust, most prominently and controversially the German Ernst Nolte in the 1980s. Snyder's move to link Soviet and Nazi crimes is as politically tricky today as it was then." Kühne added: In the same special issue, Mazower rejected the idea of reducing Snyder's argument to that of Nolte, stating: Baberowski, a leading contemporary proponent of Nolte's views on the Holocaust, criticized Snyder for not going far enough to connect the genocide of European Jews to "the excesses of Stalin's dictatorship." Diner expressed regret that Snyder did not discuss the legacy of Polish–Russian hostility and of the
Polish–Soviet War The Polish–Soviet War (14 February 1919 – 18 March 1921) was fought primarily between the Second Polish Republic and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, following World War I and the Russian Revolution. After the collapse ...
, which would have given context for Soviet crimes in Katyn and Stalin's decision not to intervene during the Warsaw Uprising against the German occupier in 1944. In the ''New Directions in the History of the Jews in the Polish Lands'' (2018), Dan Michman wrote: Earlier in 2012, Michman wrote that "''Bloodlands'' has not convinced me that there was a territory of 'bloodlands' which provides a historical explanation for murder, least of all for the Holocaust."


Popular press reviews

In a September–October 2010 public debate in ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'',
Efraim Zuroff Efraim Zuroff (; born August 5, 1948) is an American-born Israeli historian and Nazi hunter who has played a key role in bringing Nazi and fascist war criminals to trial. Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center office in Jerusalem, is th ...
criticized what he described as the book's suggestion of a moral equivalence between Soviet mass murders and the Nazi Holocaust, and accused Snyder of providing a scholarly basis for the double genocide theory by emphasizing the
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, officially the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and also known as the Hitler–Stalin Pact and the Nazi–Soviet Pact, was a non-aggression pact between Nazi Ge ...
. Dovid Katz commented that Snyder, while a "truly great historian", had stumbled into "a meticulously laid trap" set up by Baltic nationalists –– appearing to provide fodder for their excuse-making surrounding local participation in the Holocaust –– but that he had also included "almost as if by a higher inspired intuition, the key to unlock the very trap he may on a rare occasion be failing to avoid." Snyder responded that "I coincide with Zuroff and Katz on the centrality of the Holocaust, but we must not overlook how Stalin enabled Hitler's crimes." Writing for ''The Guardian'' in October 2010,
Neal Ascherson Charles Neal Ascherson (born 5 October 1932) is a Scottish journalist and writer. In his youth he fought for the British in the Malayan Emergency. He has been described by Radio Prague as "one of Britain's leading experts on central and easte ...
said: Writing in the ''
Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and also published digitally that focuses on business and economic Current affairs (news format), current affairs. Based in London, the paper is owned by a Jap ...
'' in November 2010, Guy Walters stated that he found the book disturbing, commenting: "Some may find Snyder's staking-out of the area of the bloodlands too arbitrary for their tastes, and might accuse him of creating a questionable geographical delineation. Agree with it or not, in a sense it does not matter, because Snyder presents material that is undeniably fresh – what's more, it comes from sources in languages with which very few western academics are familiar. The success of ''Bloodlands'' really lies in its effective presentation of cold, hard scholarship, which is in abundance." Writing for ''
The New York Review of Books ''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of ...
'' in November 2010, Anne Applebaum commented: Writing for ''
Jacobin The Society of the Friends of the Constitution (), renamed the Society of the Jacobins, Friends of Freedom and Equality () after 1792 and commonly known as the Jacobin Club () or simply the Jacobins (; ), was the most influential political cl ...
'' in September 2014, Daniel Lazare described Snyder's ''Bloodlands'' as simplistic shoehorning of mass death in Eastern Europe into the crimes of Hitler and Stalin plus side-effects, and stated that the interactive one-upmanship of Nazi–Soviet crimes proposed by Snyder has the whiff of Ernst Nolte. Lazare also called attention to Snyder's suggestion that it was the
Home Army The Home Army (, ; abbreviated AK) was the dominant resistance movement in German-occupied Poland during World War II. The Home Army was formed in February 1942 from the earlier Związek Walki Zbrojnej (Armed Resistance) established in the ...
's fear of communism that made it hesitant to help the Jewish Combat Organization, which also included communists, in the
Warsaw Ghetto The Warsaw Ghetto (, officially , ; ) was the largest of the Nazi ghettos during World War II and the Holocaust. It was established in November 1940 by the Nazi Germany, German authorities within the new General Government territory of Occupat ...
.


Awards

''Bloodlands'' won a number of awards, including the
Cundill Prize The Cundill History Prize is an annual Canadian book prize for "the best history writing in English". It was established in 2008 by Peter Cundill and is administered by McGill University. The prize encourages "informed public debate through the wi ...
Recognition of Excellence, Le Prix du livre d'Histoire de l'Europe 2013, Moczarski Prize in History, Literature Award, American Academy of Arts and Letters, Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding,
Phi Beta Kappa Society The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States. It was founded in 1776 at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal arts and sciences, ...
Emerson Book Award, Gustav Ranis International History Prize, Prakhina Foundation International Book Prize (honorable mention), Jean-Charles Velge Prize, Tadeusz Walendowski Book Prize, and Wacław Jędrzejewicz History Medal, and was shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize, the Wayne S. Vucinich Prize (ASEEES), the Austrian Scholarly Book of the Year, the NDR Kultur Sachbuchpreis 2011, and the Jury commendation Bristol Festival of Ideas. The book was also awarded the 2013 Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought. ''Bloodlands'' was named a book of the year for 2010 by ''
The Atlantic ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher based in Washington, D.C. It features articles on politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 185 ...
'', ''
The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a British daily broadsheet conservative newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed in the United Kingdom and internationally. It was found ...
'', ''
The Economist ''The Economist'' is a British newspaper published weekly in printed magazine format and daily on Electronic publishing, digital platforms. It publishes stories on topics that include economics, business, geopolitics, technology and culture. M ...
'', the ''Financial Times'', ''
The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...
'', ''
The Jewish Daily Forward ''The Forward'' (), formerly known as ''The Jewish Daily Forward'', is an American news media organization for a Jewish American audience. Founded in 1897 as a Yiddish-language daily socialist newspaper, ''The New York Times'' reported that Set ...
'', ''
The New Republic ''The New Republic'' (often abbreviated as ''TNR'') is an American magazine focused on domestic politics, news, culture, and the arts from a left-wing perspective. It publishes ten print magazines a year and a daily online platform. ''The New Y ...
'', ''
New Statesman ''The New Statesman'' (known from 1931 to 1964 as the ''New Statesman and Nation'') is a British political and cultural news magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first c ...
'', ''
Reason Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing valid conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, religion, scien ...
'', and ''The Seattle Times''.


See also

* '' Between Hitler and Stalin'' *
Bibliography of The Holocaust This is a selected bibliography and other resources for The Holocaust, including prominent primary sources, historical studies, notable survivor accounts and autobiographies, as well as other documentation and further hypotheses help to establish ...
* Bibliography of Stalinism and the Soviet Union *
Comparison of Nazism and Stalinism Various historians and other authors have carried out a comparison of Nazism and Stalinism, with particular consideration to the similarities and differences between the two ideologies and political systems, the relationship between the two re ...
* Double genocide theory *
List of books by or about Adolf Hitler This bibliography of Adolf Hitler is a thematic list of some non-fiction texts in English written about and by him. Thousands of books and other texts have been written about him, so this is far from an all-inclusive list: Writing in 2006, Ben ...
** '' The German War'' ** '' The Storm of War'' ** '' The Third Reich Trilogy'' ** '' The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich'' * Mass killings under communist regimes *
Nazi crime Nazi crime or Hitlerite crime ( or ) is a legal concept used in the Polish legal system, referring to an action which was carried out, inspired, or tolerated by public functionaries of Nazi Germany (1933–1945) that is also classified as a crime ...
* '' Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine'' * '' Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941'' *
World War II casualties World War II was the deadliest military conflict in history. An estimated total of 70–85 million deaths were caused by the conflict, representing about 3% of the estimated global population of 2.3 billion in 1940. Deaths directly caused by t ...
** World War II casualties of Poland **
World War II casualties of the Soviet Union World War II losses of the Soviet Union were about 27 million both civilian and military from all war-related causes, although exact figures are disputed. A figure of 20 million was considered official during the Soviet era. The post-Sovi ...


References


External links


Interview with Timothy Snyder about Bloodlands (audio)
by the New Books in Eastern European Studies
Timothy Snyder interview
with Albert Mohler
Transcript for Snyder interview
with ''
Bayerischer Rundfunk (; "Bavarian Broadcasting"), shortened to BR (), is a public broadcasting, public-service radio and television broadcaster, based in Munich, capital city of the Bavaria, Free State of Bavaria in Germany. BR is a member organization of the ARD (b ...
''
"The Origins of Mass Killing: the bloodlands hypothesis"
lecture by Visiting Professor Timothy Snyder and Q&A at the
London School of Economics The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), established in 1895, is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the University of London. The school specialises in the social sciences. Founded ...
in January 2014
Presentation by Snyder on ''Bloodlands''
in November 2010 {{Authority control 2010 non-fiction books 21st-century history books Basic Books books History books about Europe History books about Nazi Germany History books about the Soviet Union Intermarium Non-fiction books about genocide Non-fiction books about the Holodomor Works about Stalinism Books by Timothy Snyder Works about mass murder Books about Joseph Stalin