Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler : the age of social catastrophe
This ambitious book tells the story of the great social and political catastrophe that enveloped Europe between 1914 and 1945--a period of almost continuous upheaval, with two world wars, the Russian Revolution, the Holocaust, and the Third Reich. Historian Gellately argues that these tragedies are inextricably linked and that to consider them as discrete events is to misunderstand their genesis and character. Central to the catastrophe, of course, were Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, and this book makes use of recently opened sources to explain how these dictators' pursuit of utopian--and dreadfully flawed--ideals led only to dystopian nightmare. Gellately argues that most comparative studies of the Soviet and Nazi dictatorships are undermined by neglecting the key importance of Lenin. Rejecting the myth of the "good" Lenin, the book provides a convincing social-historical account of all three dictatorships.--From publisher description
Case studies
1 online resource
9780307537126, 0307537129
501195881
1: Lenin's communist dictatorship
The first world war and the Russian revolution
On the way to communist dictatorship
Civil wars in the Soviet Union
2: The rise of German national Socialism
Nazism and the threat of Bolshevism
First Nazi attempt to seize power
Hitler starts over
3: Stalin triumphs over political rivals
Battle for Communist Utopia
Lenin's passing, Stalin's victory
Stalin's new initiatives
Stalin solidifies his grip
4: Germans make a pact with Hitler
Nazi party as social movement
Nazism exploits economic distress
"All power" for Hitler
5: Stalin's reign of terror
Fight against the countryside
Terror as political practice
"Mass operations"
"Cleansing" the Soviet elite
6: Hitler's war against democracy
Winning over the nation
Dictatorship by consent
Persecution of the Jews in the prewar years
"Cleansing" the German body politic
7: Stalin and Hitler: into the social catastrophe
Rival visions of world conquest
German racial persecution begins in Poland
Hitler and Western Europe
The Society response
The war spreads
8: Hitler's war on "Jewish Bolshevism"
War of extermination as Nazi crusade
War against the Communists: operation Barbarossa
War against the Jews: death squads in the East
The "final solution" and death camps
9: Hitler's defeat and Stalin's agenda
Greatest crisis in Stalin's career
Between surrender and defiance
Soviets hold on, Hitler grows viscous
Ethnic cleansing in wartime Soviet Union
10: Final struggle
From Stalingrad to Berlin
Stalin takes the upper hand
End of the Third Reich