Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe

The book split

The Central thesis of Robert Gellately's work "Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe", is that the advent of Lenin and the Bolshevik Party to power in Russia in 1917 directly led to the nightmare societies of Germany and the Soviet Union in the 1920s, '30s, and beyond. Gellately expertly makes the case that Stalin was the logical successor to Lenin, and dismisses the notion that Lenin's ideas, while flawed, were noble and ultimately corrupted by Stalin. It was Lenin who created the atmosphere of paranoia and fear in the Soviet State, it was Lenin who created the concentration camp system, it was Lenin who created the secret police- all in the name of protecting the Revolution. Stalin's excesses in the 1930s only built upon those of his predecessor. Hitler's National Socialist movement in Germany was a mirror image of the Soviet Union and also followed Lenin's example in creating a hardened police state. Gellately's thesis is bold and stands as a winning testament against many who still hold to the view that Lenin was simply a naive idealist who let the Revolution get out of his control. This book is must reading for any student of Modern European History.

I've read a few histories on Nazism and Soviet Communism, and this was one of the best. It is a complicated, multi-faceted book; at times depressingly negative, but it answered a least two very difficult questions that I, and many others, often ask: 1) What were some of the major reasons why Hitler particularly hated the Jews? What did he have against them, other than mere xenophobia (fear of difference/strangers)? 2) How did the German people allow such a monster to get into power in the first place? Another, less well-known but very important question may be asked: 3) What role did Soviet Communism play in the rise and decline of Nazism, and to European history in general in the first half of the 20th century? To find answers to the first question one needs to understand Germany's situation after WW1. In Hitler's, and many other German's minds, Germany in the 1920s was being destroyed by both internationally exploitative capitalism (eg war reparations), and subversive, perverted, communist- Bolshevism. In Hitler's mind, both were designed, and orchestrated by,' international Jewry', ultimately for world domination. The German (Communist) Revolution of 1918-19, which Hitler witnessed, and, as he said, swore an oath to destroy, was a major formative factor in Hitler's mind. (And the underlying reason for his war against Russia 22 years later). He saw the great enemy of Germany, as subversive Bolshevism, which he also saw as run by Jews, as a race, which in his mind, were always attempting to undermine a nation's strength through conspiracies such as communism; therefore, in his mind, they had to be totally destroyed as a race; women and children and men together. Auschwitz therefore, was a direct result of this perverted thinking, largely formed upon witnessing communist subversions in Munich in 1918-19, and strengthened through the 1920s by Germanys economic woes as a result of the hated Treaty of Versailles (whom he also blamed on Jews). Stalingrad, was the other result. Lebensraum (living space for Germans) was a minor reason for Stalingrad, (but a major reason for the invasion/occupation of Poland, Check Republic, etc). The threat of communism destroying German national identity was a major reason for WW2, at least in Hitler's mind, and also Auschwitz, because in Hitler's mind the Jews designed Bolshevism to destroy German (and European) identity, and were also supposedly pulling all the strings in both Britain and the USA later on in WW2, specifically to destroy Germany (an example of `lumping paranoia'-every negatively perceived issue/force is blamed on a single entity). Hitler kept repeating these kinds of words right up until the end of WW2. The second question (how did Hitler get into power in the first place) may be summed up thus: many ordinary German people saw the Nazi party as the only real bulwark against the hated and feared, extremely subversive, Soviet-controlled, Bolshevic-communist movement. The Nazi party also brou

I have read many books about the history of 1920-1945 period but Gellately's book provided me with additional insights. Several people have singled out the negative portrait of Lenin as a major contribution of the book and the author certainty makes a good case for this portrayal. The book is also remarkable by the parallel narrative of the events in the Soviet and Germany. The book is divided in ten parts whose (sometimes abbreviated) titles are: Lenin's Communist Dictatorship - The Rise of German National Socialism - Stalin Triumphs - German Make a Pact with Hitler - Stalin's Reign on Terror - Hitler's War against Democracy - Stalin and Hitler - Hitler's War on "Jewish Bolshevism" - Hitler's Defeat and Stalin's Agenda - Final Struggle. This kind of treatment brings out how each dictatorship fed on the other to consolidate its power. It is well known that Hitler made maximum use of the fear of the Bolsheviks by many Germans but Stalin also made use of the fear of foreign spies to impose his reign of terror. The uneasy alliance between Stalin and the West is also discussed in depth as well as the fears of each side that the other may conclude a separate peace with Hitler and how such fears affected post war events. Overall the focus is on political history and the behind the scenes machinations of those in power rather than the details of the military campaigns and other overt events. If you have already some familiarity with the history of the period you are going to appreciate the book even more. The book also brings forth the fact that both Stalin and Hitler had many eager followers that often exceeded their orders in imposing terror and killing people. While this phenomenon does not absolve the evil dictators of their crimes it is also points out the darker sides of human nature that often come into play and, maybe, we should pay more attention to the latter forces than to whoever happens to be their leader. The modern parallel seems to be the excessive focus on bin-Ladden rather than the factors that make certain people flock to his cause. There are several little known stories that are presented in the book and there is no space to mention all of them so I pick only two, both on page 290, that struck me the most. One is a statement by Admiral Raeder about Hitler "... In my opinion he was a great and talented politician in the first years, whose national and social aims were already known for years, and which found an echo in the armed forces as well as among the German people." Keep in mind that the "aims" included extreme anti-Semitism. The second story on the same page is that of the enthusiastic support of the Nazis by the young lieutenant von Stauffenberg who gained fame later by his attempted assassination of Hitler in July 1944. The story gives further credence to the argument that the conspiracy against Hitler was motivated not by principled opposition to his aims, but mainly by disappointment that his leadership was causing Germa

This book wanders over well-tilled ground. How many books have there been on Hitler and the Nazis, on the October Revolution and the Bolsheviks, on Lenin and Stalin? Yet it does bring the old facts into new light. The Germans made Lenin, because they ferried him and his compères from Zürich to Petrograd in 1917, as a way to cause a Revolution and end the war in the Western Front. Bolshevik barbarism, begun by Lenin and ably furthered by Stalin, briefly emulated by followers in Austria, Germany, Hungary and elsewhere, terrified the Germans, a nation of property-owners. Thus, when the Great Depression struck and millions of Germans found themselves unemployed after hyperinflation in 1923 had destroyed their savings, and the Communists tried several times to overthrow the Government, many bürgers were only too happy to give their vote to the Nazis. Nazi terror was totally different from the Bolshevik variety. Practically anyone could be victimized in Lenin and Stalin's Soviet Union, even old-time Communists: Stalin killed most of them in his successive Terrors. Not in Hitler's Germany: there, only unpopular outsider groups were reppressed, like Communists (whom even the Socialists were happy to see in concentration camps), gypsies, homosexuals and of course Jews. Only in its final winter did Nazism really exhibit its nihilistic face in Germany itself, as portrayed in Eric Johnson's "Nazi Terror: The Gestapo, Jews and Ordinary Germans". However, once the Germans started to carve their empire they began to show what they had in store for the rest of humanity: First in Austria (where many of the most brutal SS officers came, like Adolf Eichmann or Odilo Globocknick), then in the Sudeten, next in Czechia, in Poland, in Yugoslavia and Greece, and finally the Soviet Union, each time behaving more brutally. The dead are prominent characters in Gellately's book, as Lenin, Stalin and Hitler blithely consigned to banishment or horrible death ten thousand here, fifty thousand there, for page upon page upon page of this long book. The cumulative effect is sickening. But Gellately also has a keen eye for the memorable detail. Here a few notable tidbits: - Hitler never received funds from big business until after he was in power. - Colonel Stauffenberg, who in 1944 tried to kill the Führer with a bomb, in 1933, as young lieutenant, was so overcome with joy when Hitler became Chancellor that he led an impromptu celebration march in Bamberg. When he was executed as a traitor, a relative was shocked, since the Colonel was the only real Nazi in the family. - The German law that legalized sterilization (the 1933 Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases) was cribbed from the California sterilization act of 1909. - When in 1939 Germany and its ally the Soviet Union invaded Poland, the Soviets killed or drove to their deaths 3 or 4 times as many people as the Nazis, even though the territory they occupied only held a popula

In Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, Robert Gellately, the Earl Ray Professor of History at Florida State University, has written a sobering and chilling account of the unspeakable terror visited upon Europe, and indeed upon the entire world, during the first half of the 20th century. The years between 1914 and 1945 witnessed World War I, the Russian revolution and the triumph of Bolshevism, the Great Depression, the dictatorships of the Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler, World War II, the genocide of the Holocaust, and the construction of the Gulag. While the brutalities of Stalin and Hitler are well known, Gellately points out that a key figure is often neglected or minimized in the chronicle of European barbarism: Vladimir Illych Ulyanov, a.k.a. Lenin. In his famous speech in 1956, which renounced the atrocities of Stalin and signaled a "thaw" in the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev claimed that "the bad Stalin" had corrupted "the good Lenin." "Khrushchev trotted out the myth of Lenin the noble and good," writes Gellately, "to save the 'inner truths' of Communism from association with what were belatedly recognized as 'Stalinist evils." This myth of the noble and good Lenin, claims Gellately, no longer convinces. Documents from the newly opened Russian archives make abundantly clear that Lenin was the most extreme of the radicals, the leader who pressed for terror as much as, and probably more, than anyone. Far from perverting or undermining Lenin's legacy, as is sometimes assumed, Stalin was Lenin's logical heir. Gellately began this work as a study of the conflicting ideologies of Communism and Nazism and the murderous rivalries of Stalin and Hitler. At first, he didn't include Lenin as a major figure. As he conducted his research, however, and tried to reconstruct the events leading up to World War II, he began to see that much of what he wanted to say was inexorably leading back to Lenin and the beginnings of the Soviet dictatorship. "My book deviates from the standard appraisal," he writes, "by giving significant attention to Lenin and by putting the story in proper chronological sequence." Lenin was, says Gellately, "a heartless and ambitious individual who was self-righteous in claiming to know what was good for 'humanity,' brutal in his attempt to subject his own people to radical social transformation, and convinced he held the key to the eventual overthrow of global capitalism and the establishment of world Communism." Lenin and Stalin were not alone in their utopian visions which turned Europe into a dystopia. Adolf Hitler offered his followers a "Social Darwinism," a pseudo-scientific philosophy emphasizing a brutal will to power, He preached that the historical mission of the "Aryan master race" (Germanic peoples) was to exterminate "inferior races," which he referred to as "sub-humans," "parasites," "vermin," and "trash." The brunt of Hitler's wrath was directed against the Jews, who, he ranted, were responsible for the cowardly "