Book Reviews
Stalin Waiting for Hitler 1929-1941 by Stephen Kotkin. Penguin Press. 2017
Hitler by Peter Longerich. Oxford University Press. 2019.
The Stalin book is the second volume of a three volume set published by scholar Stephen Kotkin. Both the Kotkin book and the Hitler biography by Peter Longerich are the products of superb research. Both texts are over nine hundred pages and the footnotes and bibliography are very lengthy and impressive.
We live in an age where academic institutions have been corrupted by ideology. It is refreshing to see that there are real historians and scholars at work spending years compiling information and research to publish biographies of the two most notorious dictators of the twentieth century. Reexamining the totalitarian states of the twentieth century is of extreme importance in our day as free speech and independent thought have been challenged in both academia and much of the news media.
The Stalin book is a detailed recollection of the political rule and foreign and domestic policies of Joseph Stalin. There is a good deal of material on the great terror of the 1930’s. Stalin was the practitioner of a true totalitarian regime in which the control of the government over its citizenry was total. Under Stalin, no citizen was safe. Even ideological allies of the dictator were not safe and the leadership of the communist party, the red army, the NKVD (secret police) and the foreign ministry were subjected to purges which resulted in the mass murders of its leaders for no logical reason.
Stalin murdered most of his army officers. This would have serious consequences. Unbelievably, Stalin ignored warnings not only from the British and Americans that Hitler was planning an invasion of Russia, but he ignored warnings from his own spies that were working in Germany. Spies and Soviet diplomats in Germany warned the dictator that Germany would invade.
Even the gathering German troops near the Soviet border was not enough to convince Stalin that Hitler was planning an invasion. Military leaders and others thoroughly convinced the Nazis planned to invade had to choose their words carefully in trying to persuade Stalin that Germany was going to invade. Any wrong words could lead to that individuals death.
The Longerich biography of Hitler is one of the best. Not quite as good as the two volume biography by Ian Kershaw (which is still the best biography of Hitler) but it is excellent and thoroughly details Hitlers rise to power and the evolution of German domestic and foreign policies under Hitler. A superb piece of work.
Recent events have demonstrated the totalitarian mindset of political extremists within the United States. Academic institutions need to get out of the business of promoting “social change” and “diversity” and return to the business of educating students. The two aforementioned biographies are necessary reading for students in the social sciences.
These books are crucial to the study of history and how the ideologies which their subjects adhered to corrupted politics and destroyed their societies. These biographies are a reminder of the importance of moderation in politics and the need to reject all extremisms from the far left to the far right.