Europe Between Hitler and Stalin - Book Report/Review Example

The three phases also give the book a flowing structure whereby the reader understands how the regions of Eastern Europe were trapped between parallel totalitarian objectives. The writer concentrates on the area that turned into a horrific experimental site to establish competing political utopias that were founded on race or class wars. Stalin’s version was to control the peasantry, which was the Soviet Union’s prevalent social group. For Hitler, it meant creating racial supremacy and executing the politically active, clergy and educated among the Polish Jews.

            In a uniquely fresh manner, the writer presents a reading that goes against the conventional simplistic version of perceiving the Soviets as the “good” and the Nazis as the “bad”. The book also does not conform to other literature that portrays the deaths of the two regimes as having taken place in World War II. An account of the Holocaust, which many Americans unfamiliar with the beginning of World War II might not be aware of, is recounted in the book. The writer claims that the best interpretation of the Holocaust is as a consequence of the Soviet and Nazi regimes’ interaction in the geographical region he refers to as the “Bloodlands” (Snyder 380). However, this claim can be criticized because the geographical region, even the name, comes through as forced and the writer disregards the aspects that do not fit in to make his case. Although the writer has listed incidents of killings that took place in the “Bloodlands”, he does not explicitly itemize how there were any interactions between Stalin’s and Hitler’s regimes. Furthermore, apart from the ideology of the agrarian utopia, the writer disregards all other Nazi ideologies and the executions of Western-Europe Jews, and the so-called “euthanasia program” that was related to the Holocaust.

            In conclusion, the book generally provides a basic and comprehensible summary for readers with little understanding of Soviet history and the Holocaust. Many reviews have commented that the book adds new understanding to the Holocaust with examples like people were not killed in concentration camps but rather, Eastern Europe; that the Soviet Union also bears responsibility for mass murders; and the Wehrmacht is suspected of complicity in the Holocaust. However, and unfortunately, these are all well-known facts that have been written before and appeared in scholarly materials. Therefore, although the writer exhibits an eloquent and comprehensive writing style, the book cannot claim 100 percent originality on the facts that, ironically, seem to have given it its name.