Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

by Tony Judt

sought and accepted help from any likely quarter, would translate into easier times after victory. In fact, the opposite happened. Before the war had even ended Stalin, as we have seen, was exiling whole nations to the east and doubtless harbored similar plans for the Jews. As in central Europe, so in the lands of the Soviet Union: even though Jews had lost more than anyone else, it was easy and familiar to blame those same Jews for everyone else’s sufferings. The wartime invocation of the banner of Russian nationalism brought Soviet rhetoric a lot closer to the Slav-exclusivist language of old-time Russian anti-Semites; this was certainly not to the regime’s disadvantage. For Stalin himself it represented a return to familiar territory, his own anti-Jewish instincts underscored by his observation of Hitler’s successful exploitation of popular anti-Semitism.