Socraticgadfly's Reviews > Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning

BADLY needs an editor; arguably needs a different author, too

Having read Bloodlands and found it pretty stimulating, and quite insightful, but, at the same time, having seen a few advance reviews of this book, I wasn't sure what to expect.

Result? While it does contain some stimulating analysis, per my header, it's problematic in a lot of ways.

Start with Snyder's thesis, that "Lebensraum" was driven by Hitler having a quasi-Malthusian focus on food supply.

Problem? He offers little supporting evidence. (He actually offers more in interviews about the book, but why isn't that IN the book?)

Snyder could have asked how Hitler was personally affected by the British extension of the World War I blockade until Germany signed the Treaty of Versailles. He could have asked, per his "Green Revolution" comments near the end of the book, if Hitler had tried, or not, to familiarize himself with Haber and his invention of synthetic fertilizer. But, he didn't.

And, per his epilogue, if he's that worried about global warming, and thinks it could trigger a new Holocaust? Fine; let him write an environmentalism book.

Second, is Snyder's claim fairly early in the book that Poles, and Lithuanians, even more, didn't kill Jews as much as he alleges Soviet propaganda claims. Which he then contradicts later in the book, unless, especially with Lithuanians (and Latvians) he thinks the killing he actually mentions "isn't that much."

This gets to some of the review critique of Snyder: that he's doing some apple polishing of the current Ukrainian government, at the expense of Russia today and the USSR yesterday. (Surprised that he didn't go back to the Third Partition of Poland in 1795 or something.) The current Ukrainian government may not be as rightist-laden as some claim, but it's not as innocent as Snyder seems to hint.

Besides, per my comment above about the book he should have written? If he wanted to write a book on modern political science, fine; but a book on the Holocaust isn't that book.

In these two areas, this is where the book didn't just badly need an editor, but at least as much, needed a different author to work with the raw materials Snyder had in hand.

From here, showing the need for an editor? Both at the spot where he first discusses Ribbentrop-Molotov, and in his epilogue, he discusses American dispensationalists' attitude toward the pack, then ties this to the U.S. religious right's relation with today's nation of Israel.

Again, this isn't supposed to be a political science book.

There are other things in here that are just "howlers."

First, claiming that Hitler grasped the details of war better than most of his generals? This almost got the book pushed to one-star level. But, knowing that Holocaust deniers and others would be among one-starrers of a book like this, I was loath to do that.

Second, the idea that Warsaw is, or was, the most important Jewish city in Europe? Maybe not quite a howler; but I think most scholars of Ashkenazy history would point to Vilnius, not Warsaw. As of the early 1930s, Vilnius was about 1/3 Jewish. That's at least as high a percentage as Warsaw, and Ashkenazy scholarship was centered around Vilnius and northern Belarus just to its south.

Other things were just irritants, whether due more to Snyder or his editor(s), I'm not sure.

Like having endnotes at the end of the book, but not actually having numeric references to them on the pages to which they refer.

Given all of the above, even with noting Snyder has some good ideas, I doubt I'll read another book by him.