📖 peek insideBloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
by Timothy Snyder
Timothy Snyder offers a harrowing and meticulously researched account of the mass killings committed by the Nazi and Soviet regimes in the territory between Germany and Russia. From 1933 to 1945, millions of civilians were murdered not in combat, but as a matter of policy. Snyder re-centers the history of the Holocaust and Stalinist terror, revealing how these two powers collaborated and competed in a shared space of destruction. It is an essential, sobering read for understanding modern European history.
A well-known book with a dedicated readership.
Notable Quotes
"It is easy to sanctify policies or identities by the deaths of victims. It is less appealing, but morally more urgent, to understand the actions of the perpetrators. The moral danger, after all, is never that one might become a victim but that one might be a perpetrator or a bystander."
"It is less appealing, but morally more urgent, to understand the actions of the perpetrators. The moral danger, after all, is never that one might become a victim but that one might be a perpetrator or a bystander. It is tempting to say that a Nazi murderer is beyond the pale of understanding. ...Yet to deny a human being his human character is to render ethics impossible. To yield to this temptation, to find other people inhuman, is to take a step toward, not away from, the Nazi position. To find other people incomprehensible is to abandon the search for understanding, and thus to abandon history."
"When meaning is drawn from killing, the risk is that more killing would bring more meaning."
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