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Hitler and Stalin: The Tyrants and the Second World War

Hitler and Stalin: The Tyrants and the Second World War

by Laurence Rees

PublicAffairs ·2021 ·488 pages
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About This Book

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.


Reviews

"relatively concise and always compelling ..."

David Aaronovitch· The Times (UK) Read review ↗ Near the Top

"As this book brilliantly shows, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin were blood brothers."

Andrew Roberts· Times Literary Supplement Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Rees decisively interprets the thinking behind Hitler's actions, including the decision to invade the Soviet Union, yet tends to speculate when it comes to Stalin's strategies ..."

Publishers Weekly Read review ↗ Near the Top

"A dual biography of two of history's most notorious dictators from a master historian ..."

Kirkus Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"There are other fine, very long biographies of these dictators."

Roger Bishop· BookPage Read review ↗ Near the Top

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