Hitler and Stalin: The Tyrants and the Second World War

Historian Rees (The Holocaust) draws on eyewitness testimony to identify “key differences” between Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler in this informative yet somewhat skewed account. Stodgy bureaucrat Stalin was deeply committed to the Communist Party, according to Rees, while Hitler was a charismatic leader who regarded the National Socialist German Workers’ Party as “disposable.” Both leaders tried to build utopian societies (racist ideology shaped Hitler’s vision; Stalin’s was influenced by Marxism), yet Hitler’s tendency to self-deceive blinded him to crippling military losses, and Stalin’s growing paranoia sabotaged the Red Army, forcing 400,000 Russian soldiers into penal units and another 160,000 to their deaths as enemies of the state. 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, concluding that it is “hard, if not impossible” to understand why Stalin proposed a military alliance with Britain and France, and offering “likely” reasons for why he miscalculated the 1939 invasion of Finland, which resulted in a humiliating loss for the Red Army. Despite the lack of balance, this richly detailed history powerfully documents “the destruction that tyrants with utopian visions can inflict upon the world.” (Feb.)