Americans call the Second World War The Good War.” But before it even began, America’s wartime ally Josef Stalin had killed millions of his own ci...
read full description
reviews
Dec 19, 2011
Moonbutterfly
rated it: 
The author explains how the regimes of Hitler and Stalin murdered of millions of civilians. The book starts off with the famines in Russia, and then moves to the bombing of Poland, then stalls at Holocaust, and ends with Russian ethnic cleansing. Readers will be familiar with the atrocities of Hitler, but the actions of Stalin might be new to general readers.
There has been controversy surrounding the book. Jewish critics claim the author equates Stalin with the Hitler’s and ends up More...
There has been controversy surrounding the book. Jewish critics claim the author equates Stalin with the Hitler’s and ends up More...
0 comments
like
(3 people liked it)
Oct 15, 2011
Lily
rated it:
Apparently there was a controversy surrounding this book because it spend enough time talking about the Holocaust. I think that is complete bullshit. There was another equally horrifying act of atrocity taking place on the Western Front during World War II, and why should a book not focus on that topic? Also, it's not like Timothy Snyder totally painted over the Holocaust. He dedicated two chapters to the subject, and he clearly wanted to focus on the "Bloodlands" of the title. Excl
More...
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Sep 30, 2011
Brendan
rated it: 
The Holocaust and World War II are probably two of the most freqently covered tropics in twenties century history, yet in Bloodlands Timothy Snyder brings a truly fresh and revealing perspective to what might otherwise seem an often covered topic. This is, quite simply, one of the best history books I have read.
Snyder looks at the mass killing campaigns of both Hitler and Stalin in the are between Germany and Russia, from 1930 to 1947. Thus, he starts with the manufactured famine i More...
Snyder looks at the mass killing campaigns of both Hitler and Stalin in the are between Germany and Russia, from 1930 to 1947. Thus, he starts with the manufactured famine i More...
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Sep 22, 2011
Benedettisj
rated it:
Snyder brings one of the two darkest periods of human history into clear focus with his excellent history of eastern Europe stuck between two megalomaniacs - Hitler and Stalin. Most of us are aware of Hitler's final resolution of his "Jewish" problem and the manner he went about extermination whole populations, but the writer brings even more information on the Nazi plan and its actions through previously unknown documents, histories and interviews.
The story of the events More...
The story of the events More...
Aug 12, 2011
Halper1n
rated it:
Snyder artfully navigates a dangerous landscape (one that is, unfortunately, viewed as a black and white subject matter for certain politically motivated individuals) to show us many shades of gray in the bloodstained lands of Central Europe. That said, it is disheartening to see a troika of old-line leftists (the always available Mr. Evans), Russian USSR apologists and "only me" holocaust extremists (the Wiesenthal Center with their warnings of "dangerous" theses) try to qu
More...
Aug 09, 2011
John
rated it:
If you think you’ve read all the fundamental books about the World War II era (at least the ones in English), you can think again if you haven’t devoured Timothy Snyder’s "Bloodlands." Many weighty tomes have chronicled the mass murders of both the Hitler and Stalin regimes, but few have done so more systematically, much less as memorably as Timothy Snyder does here. The Yale historian, quite correctly I believe, treats the two murderous regimes as a lethal continuum of deliberate a
More...
Jul 18, 2011
Michael
rated it:
Timothy Snyder’s “Bloodlands” observes the mass killings of 14 million Europeans in the Eastern European region between Stalin’s Soviet Union and Hitler’s Nazi Germany from 1933-1945. Snyder attempts to bring the histories of Eastern Europe together, both the Jewish histories of the Holocaust and that of the East Europeans, which he states are seen as separate; Snyder attempts to bring them together to create on history of a people who were slaughtered by policy. How do we explain the 14 million
More...
Feb 07, 2011
John
rated it:
A perceptive account of what the author identifies as the bloodlands, an area where Nazi and Soviet governmental policies deliberately mass murdered fourteen million of their own citizens from the years 1933 to 1945. Geographically the bloodlands stretched from central Poland to western Russia including Belarus, the Ukraine and the Baltic States. Shockingly, the count is of civilians, civilians who were the target of demented ideology and formal policy and who met their doom through starvation -
More...
0 comments
like
(3 people liked it)
Oct 18, 2010
The Economist:
IN THE middle of the 20th century Europe’s two totalitarian empires, Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union, killed 14m non-combatants, in peacetime and in war. The who, why, when, where and how of these mass murders is the subject of a gripping and comprehensive new book by Timothy Snyder of Yale University.
The term coined in the book’s title encapsulates the thesis. The “bloodlands” are the stretch of territory from the Baltic to the Black Sea where Europe’s most m More...
IN THE middle of the 20th century Europe’s two totalitarian empires, Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union, killed 14m non-combatants, in peacetime and in war. The who, why, when, where and how of these mass murders is the subject of a gripping and comprehensive new book by Timothy Snyder of Yale University.
The term coined in the book’s title encapsulates the thesis. The “bloodlands” are the stretch of territory from the Baltic to the Black Sea where Europe’s most m More...
0 comments
like
(7 people liked it)
May 15, 2011
Chris
rated it:
Is it just me or does it seem very strange that the Germans in WW II had an Operation Easter Bunny, which dealt with killing? My mind is blown and a more corherent review might come later.
This books is one of the those books that you like but don't like reading. It is about the area of Poland and other later parts of Eastern Europe during WW II and afterwards. Snyder focuses on Poland and the Urakine for the most part. He examines the high rate of death and the reasons behind it, More...
This books is one of the those books that you like but don't like reading. It is about the area of Poland and other later parts of Eastern Europe during WW II and afterwards. Snyder focuses on Poland and the Urakine for the most part. He examines the high rate of death and the reasons behind it, More...
Apr 12, 2011
David
rated it: 
Made it through half and skimmed the rest. This book was a beating.
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Jul 19, 2011
Jonathan
rated it:
The Bloodlands is a book that I first noticed in a review on Slate. At the time, the review noted several atrocities that the book includes in its pages. I read the review and determined that it made sense to get this book.
This book is not a book to be enjoyed. Not a book to be loved. Not a book to sit down and just "read". This is a book that you experience, slog through, and weep on. It destroys your belief in humanity, your optimism for human brotherhood, and causes you t More...
This book is not a book to be enjoyed. Not a book to be loved. Not a book to sit down and just "read". This is a book that you experience, slog through, and weep on. It destroys your belief in humanity, your optimism for human brotherhood, and causes you t More...
0 comments
like
(2 people liked it)
Feb 17, 2011
Ed
rated it:
Snyder attempts to take the much mythologized mass killings of the 1930s and 1940s and treat them hIstorically. To do this he focuses on the struggles between Stalin and Hitler in the Poland, Belarus and Ukraine. This a perspective on World War II and the Holocaust that allowed me to see many things differently. It is grim, even grisly reading, but well written. I won't try to summarize, only comment on one detail. Throughout the book he cites the numbers of people who died in one place or anot
More...
Mar 29, 2011
http://bookcents.blogspot.com/2011/03/bl...
"Each of the dead became a number. Between them, the Nazi and Stalinist regimes murdered more than fourteen million people in the bloodlands. The killing began with a political famine that Stalin directed at Soviet Ukraine, which claimed more than three million lives. It continued with Stalin's Great Terror of 1937 and 1938, in which some seven hundred thousand people were shot, most of them peasants or members of national minorities. Th More...
"Each of the dead became a number. Between them, the Nazi and Stalinist regimes murdered more than fourteen million people in the bloodlands. The killing began with a political famine that Stalin directed at Soviet Ukraine, which claimed more than three million lives. It continued with Stalin's Great Terror of 1937 and 1938, in which some seven hundred thousand people were shot, most of them peasants or members of national minorities. Th More...
May 25, 2011
Elaine
rated it:
Intense and disturbing look at eastern Europe 1933-1946: "I wish to test the proposition that deliberate and direct mass murder by these two regimes in the bloodlands is a distinct phenomenon worthy of separate treatment" - by "the bloodlands", referring a region encompassing pre-1939 Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus, along with the Baltic states and parts of western Russia. A somewhat different approach, looking at the commonalities of these areas and the waves of killing, start
More...
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Sep 07, 2011
Mieczyslaw
rated it:
I was raised amongst survivors of the great horror that was the War in Eastern Europe. My mother endured forced labour under the Soviets in 1940 and slave labour under the Nazis after 1941. She saw some of her family being deported by the Soviets to almost certain death in Kazakhstan and discovered the rest in a mass grave, shot by the Nazis. Her best friend survived Auschwitz. My Godfather was a partizan in the forests around Lwow, fighting both Nazis and Soviets. My Godmother lived through the
More...
3 comments
like
(4 people liked it)
Aug 22, 2011
Jim
rated it:
I thought I knew this history better, but the stories and numbers are just shocking. Poles, Ukrainians and and Belorussians, both Jewish and Gentile, suffered in ways that are impossible to imagine. The book has one story that is the worst thing that I've ever heard. I didn't know that more civilians died in the Warsaw uprising than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. I didn't understand the importance of calories and food as a natural and essential resource to the German reich, that the hu
More...
Jan 17, 2012
John
rated it:
It is really too bad, but the eras of history that we least want to dwell on actually turn out to be the eras that are probably most important to study. This book made me think about what life must be like as a Holocaust Studies professor, or a specialist in the Nazi or Stalinist eras in general. We need historians to subject themselves to these horrors; it is of vital importance that we try to understand what happened in Eastern Europe in the 30s and 40s. But damn...I cannot imagine devoting al
More...
Feb 13, 2012
Sharon
rated it: 
I thought this book contained unlocked secrets of Russia between WW1 and WW2.I was wrong.The entire book is this:Together, Stalin and Hitler between 1933-1945 murdered 14 million citizens.Mr.Snyder's argument? is that this did not happen in Germany or Russia but in Poland(the bloodlands)we already knew that.This book is based on facts that have existed for 67 years,there is nothing new here.It is a mass confusion of numbers and is redundant at that.Several times throughout the book,he states tha
More...
May 06, 2011
Howard
rated it:
a great idea: write a book about the areas in Central and Eastern Europe that suffered first under the fist of Stalinist Russia, then Hitler's Germany, and then Stalin again. Snyder starts with the Ukraine Famine and then moves on to one grim atrocity after another. The scale of the death and destruction that Snyder documents is truly mind-boggling. The book does provide a definitive answer to the question, who was worse, Stalin or Hitler? The answer has to be Hitler. While Stalin might have kil
More...
Apr 04, 2011
Brian
rated it:
The Bloodlands are a region of Eastern Europe that suffered more in the 20th century than anywhere else on Earth. These lands were conquered by Stalin, then Hitler, and then Stalin again. Snyder compares and contrasts the atrocities committed by these infamous world leaders who were very different in their tactics even if their desired outcomes were the same.
Within the Bloodlands Ukrainians suffered more than any other population. Details are shared in this book about their plight t More...
Within the Bloodlands Ukrainians suffered more than any other population. Details are shared in this book about their plight t More...
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Feb 11, 2011
Clif
rated it: 
This is history that deserves to be read, if for no other reason, to acknowledge the individual lives of so many innocent people deliberately murdered. We’re not talking war casualties or so-called collateral wartime deaths. We’re talking civilians sentenced to death by deliberate national policy. Sometimes they were targeted because of national, political, or ethnic reasons. Sometimes they were targeted for no particular discernible reason.
The author does a good job of balancin More...
The author does a good job of balancin More...
Aug 02, 2011
Riet
rated it:
Dit boek gaat niet zozeer over de 2de wereldoorlog op zichzelf, maar over de enorme hoeveelheid moorden, die er voor, tijdens en ook nog na die oorlog zijn gepleegd in opdracht van Stalin en Hitler. het begint met de bewust aangerichte hongersnood in de Oekraine en de deportaties van hele bevolkingsgroepen naar Siberie en Kazakstan. Het gaat dan verder met de 2de wereldoorlog, waarbij Hitler en Stalin in het begin het Poolse grondgebied verdelen, later neemt Hitler alles in en weer later wordt d
More...
Sep 26, 2011
Jo Ann
rated it:
I have just started this and the prologue had much information I was not aware of, 14 million starved and murdered in 12 years???? Why didn't I learn this in my advanced history class!
I think this book has to be read slowly, with breaks otherwise it is overwhelming.
I think this book has to be read slowly, with breaks otherwise it is overwhelming.
Jan 30, 2012
John
rated it:
This work of history focuses on the region the author calls Europe's "Bloodlands," defined as Poland, the Baltic States, Ukraine, Belarus, and western Russia. From 1933-1945, the region suffered Stalinism (1933-38), joint German-Soviet occupation (1939-41), and World War II (1941-45). Over the period, some 14 million civilians died, including the millions killed in the Holocaust. The author, a historian at Yale, attempts to explain the complexity of the events and violence that unfolde
More...
Apr 05, 2011
Robert
rated it:
A superlative scholarly achievement, this is a important contribution to the history of the World War II. It is perhaps the definite account to date, and certainly the most comprehensive, of the atrocities committed against civilians in Eastern Europe in the period from the end of the first World War through the population transfers that followed the second. During this time, fourteen million non-combatants were murdered in the area Snyder calls the "Bloodlands" - the region between
More...
Apr 04, 2011
Kelly
rated it:
This is a superb history written in the best academic and scholarly traditions. Timothy Snyder has a clear methodology buttressed by sharply delineated geographic, temporal and conceptual boundaries; he has wisely limited his study to mass killings (as a consequence of deliberate policy) in a roughly 10 year period in the area he coins "the Bloodlands". In doing so, the 14 million mortal casualties of such actions are made evermore intellectually comprehensible. Snyder has, at long
More...
Jun 08, 2011
Ilya
rated it:
Between 1932 and 1945, the countries east of Germany and west of Russia were a killing field, a European Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. We now know the history of this period and this region accurately, and have the numbers. It began with the 1932-1933 Ukrainian famine, which the book says killed 3.3 million, an estimate greater than most others I've seen; the book's story of a Potemkin village presented to French politician Édouard Herriot by Kiev Communist Party officials strains my credulity
More...
Dec 13, 2010
Wanda
rated it:
I am not a historian, but a reader who is trying to learn more about the history of one of the most seminal event of the century – World War II. So, I am writing from a point of view of an informed reader, but not a scholar of history. I learned an enormous amount from Snyder’s book and highly recommend it to those who want to learn about a history that has been avoided in the prevailing narratives of World War II.
This chilling, blood-curdling book is a tour de force. Employing a vast n More...
This chilling, blood-curdling book is a tour de force. Employing a vast n More...
10 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Oct 26, 2010
Pete
rated it:
It's shocking to realize I've grown up with a half-blind view of the Holocaust. After the eastern killing grounds swallowed up by a Soviet regime with its own mass-murders to hide, we were left with witnesses and evidence from only Western Europe.
Over the last few decades, scholars have unearthed all the threads of the story Snyder tells, but his contribution is to lay it out as a clear and unified narrative. It's easy to be numbed by the scale of the evil, but he keeps reminding us th More...
Over the last few decades, scholars have unearthed all the threads of the story Snyder tells, but his contribution is to lay it out as a clear and unified narrative. It's easy to be numbed by the scale of the evil, but he keeps reminding us th More...
0 comments
like
(2 people liked it)
