Stalin, Hitler and the Temptations of Totalitarianism

Reading this NYT article ,exposes the myth of homo sapiens (wise man) as THE characteristic description of the human species. In the time period from(approximately) the last of the 19th century to the first decade of the 21st century .........between 185 million to 235 million people have been killed in the world.......due to some sort of "political decision" ! The majority of deaths ......due to implementation or defense of totalitarian ideologies or regimes. The most astounding factor ,not considered, in these studies of seemingly perpetual human atrocity .....is that ONLY A FEW DOZEN narcissistic psychopaths and a small group of their enabler- followers .........are responsible for leading their followers ....to carry them out !!! Would a better name for the human species be EASILY MISLED MAN(homo facilius mobilis ) ???

It's troubling to hear a historian reducing Hitler's motivation to just social darwinism and some ideas attributed to Nietzsche. The whole Aryan race and 'blood & soil' obsession had developed quite apart from Nietzsche or Social Darwinism, over the course of the 19th century in Germany and Austria. The race ideals were related to a very religious-sounding concept of spirituality that was rooted in the German landscape itself, and a whole fantasy-genesis of the Aryan race & its destiny grew from it. According to the historian George Moss, for one:fundamentally, the Nazis seem to have believed that if ethnic Germans could return to their ancient Germanic roots both genetically and culturally, that everything would fall into place and their society would become superior to any other because perfectly aligned with the forces of the universe. Or something like that. As for Hitler himself, does Talbott really believe either that Hitler was motivated by his ideology more than by his lust for power and status -- or even more implausibly, that Stalin was essentially motivated by Marxism? That he simply burned with the longing to have his people own the means of production etc, and that's why he became an absolute dictator and mass-terrorizer, -torturer and -murderer? One can't help asking oneself if he ever gave a damn about his people, or Marxism. Or if the Bolsheviks were simply a convenient route to absolute power over millions.

Talbot rightly says that Hitler’s motivations for invading Russia are widely debated, and presumably Bullock’s answer to that question are more nuanced than his earlier assertion that “invaded Russia for the simple but sufficient reason that he had always meant to establish the foundations of his thousand-year Reich by the annexation of the territory between the Vistula and the Urals.” As Snyder (one of the scholars who got a good look at the NKVD records) set out in detail in Bloodlands, the nationwide food shortages inflicted by the British naval blockade in WWI led to a widespread belief that Germany would never defeat the British Navy, and as a result any stable domination of Europe would require the control of the Ukraine. And that “Hunger Plan” became not only Nazi dogma, but a point that the man on the street could understand. And as Snyder notes, the not insignificant detail that the plan required the elimination or removal to Siberia of tens of millions of competing Slavs came as war approached became an inevitable corollary to the central premise, control of the Ukraine was required to feed the German people. Not unlike Putin’s push for Russian expansion of its sphere of domination. For one people to expand, the calculus assumes that another must contract.

While there are commonalities among the three men featured (two historical and the other's unfolding in real time) the immediate concern is what we can learn from the past to bend the course of events. An example of what we face is how the previously innocuous greeting, "Merry Christmas" was raised by POTUS with mock hesitancy at the Value's Voters conclave, with the sly "Is it too soon?" In the same breath he proclaimed the existence of a "War against Christmas (read Christians) that he had lead to victory against the unfaithful. All religions contain the germ of hatred of unbelievers, that while usually dormant, can be become a spark, then a wildfire that consumes countries and civilizations. Trumps egomania blinds him to the danger of the game he is playing and the damage he has already done.

Also suggest reading Snyder's longer books, Black Earth and Bloodlands. We live in disturbing times.

Instead of reading a modern historians extensive examinations on the "high priests of totalitarianism" I have found it much more intriguing, and often less reassuring, to read first hand unvarnished contemporary accounts of life, human behavior, oppression, and survival under the mentioned dictatorial regimes. An unmatched 1000 page record is "I Will Bear Witness" by Victor Klemperer, an illegal diary kept in Dresden and Bavaria from the day Hitler took power to the end of WW2. Over 13 years he relates day by day war events, the lies and disinformation in Nazi speeches broadcast live in every public venue, and the perplexing reactions to victory and disaster by the German public, which he relates in detail. Digital copy is at the Internet Archive. Also, "Under Two Dictators", by Margarete Buber-Neumann. She was imprisoned by both Stalin and Hitler. She skillfully relates the situations and people who she meets under Soviet and Nazi administrations, and in their death dealing prison camps.

I think the key lesson is what can happen if the center collapses. Hopefully the book covers more about who the subjects killed. Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin killed socialists and democrats who disagreed with them, as well as czarists. They even used gas weapons left over from the war to exterminate the peasants of the Tambov rebellion. Hitler and his armies killed some 20 million atheists. Perhaps because, like Franco and Mussolini, he was Roman Catholic, a fact almost always dodged in the U.S.A. after the war ended.

The America First Committee (1940-1941) was not an "ignoble movement" of "some American isolationists and Nazi admirers." Its claimed membership of 800,000 included Democratic and Republican senators Burton K. Wheeler (D-MT), David I. Walsh (D-MA) and Gerald P. Nye (R-ND), actress Lillian Gish, architect Frank Lloyd Wright and publishers Robert R. McCormick (Chicago Tribune) and Joseph M. Patterson (NY Daily News). It was organized at Yale; student members included future president Gerald Ford and future justice Potter Stuart. It is best described as non-interventionist rather than isolationist and certainly not Nazi; but the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration responded to its opposition to his policies by unfairly branding committee spokesman Charles Lindbergh as a Nazi.

Correction to the Title: "Stalin, Hitler and the Temptations of Totalitarianism in the Age of Trump, Xi and Putin"

The US aversion to Russia goes back to at least 1917 when we invaded to overthrow the Bolsheviks. We were sort of pals during WW2 when we teamed up with the USSR to defeat Hitler. The Russians did most of the fighting and dying. They occupied fascist countries and generated a protective cordon against the voracious pro capitalist west and its Cold War. US imperial rule and regime change tactics created a bipolar and dangerous world. Perhaps now, with the Trump Project , the US empire will collapse. And perhaps the major powers will get along.

It was a thoughtful article, up until the (I guess obligatory) attempts at the end to link Trump (of course) to Nazism and totalitarianism. Trump saying "I am your voice" or "I alone can fix it" at a convention seems to me among the most cliched and hackneyed things a politician could say; but for the author, its proof of a budding authoritarian. (When Obama said cryptic things like, "We are the ones we've been waiting for" were they similarly interpreted as ominously?) It's unfortunate to just throw around words like Nazi and totalitarian like they have no meaning, or that they're just terms you can use to partisan advantage.

They were both outsiders ... Both ... were narcissists. Both insisted on cults of personality ... Both were homicidal paranoiacs ... OK, so maybe not the last element, but the rest are eerily familiar.

Stalingrad was not located in the Urals.

Mr. Talbott remains a cold warrior to the core. As a result he obscures two central facts: 1. The Holocaust stands alone as the worst crime of all human history because it was not a garden-variety elimination of political opponents, but rather a nearly successful attempt to exterminate all the men, women and children of a despised minority singled out by an immutable characteristic, what the Nazis viewed inborn. Kulaks merely had to switch sides; Jews could not escape by renouncing Judaism. Stalin was a dictator seeking to consolidate power, like many before him, and, I suspect, some more to come. Hitler was a genocidal maniac in possession of the facilities for industrialized mass murder. 2. Stalin could have cut a deal with Hitler rather than fight after Hitler occupied most of European Russia, in the same manner the French did. Instead, four out of five of all the casualties the Nazi armies suffered were inflicted by the Red Army.

Hitler and Stalin were both from socialist parties. Socialism always leads to totalitarianism and oppression.

I'd like an explanation of this "sealed train" trope. It is normal for the conductors to close the doors on moving trains. Even local subways and trams tend to be sealed. What's the big deal here? It almost looks as though somebody wrote it once, and then all the other historians looked at it and said to themselves "that looks portertious," so they went on repeating it. Mindlessly. Is that what it is? Strobe? Or does it really mean something? Are we maybe supposed to believe that the Germans were afraid Lenin would chicken out and leap off the train in the Polish outback to go into farming instead? So they put locks on the doors from the outside to make sure he got there? If so, how did they get the keys to Saint Petersburg to have somebody let him out?

I never forget that while Hitler and Stalin were infinitely more evil, they would never have had the opportunity to impose that evil on the world if well-meaning, or cynical, or pragmatic, or corrupt, or just plain dumb, or confused - in other words, normal - politicians had made the all-time catastrophic decision to enter World War 1 for no good reason, then to allow the unregulated financial system to run into wonderland and crash into oblivion in the 20's-30's. While there will always be crazies, most people will turn away from evil if they feel like they're needs are recognized in at least a limited way. Our ruling elites - for we really do have them - are the ones who most need to remember these lessons. In the late 19th century, when the German socialist parties were surging, Bismarck and conservatives responded by passing universal health insurance and other labor-friendly laws. In the late 30's, those same economic conservatives gave Hitler their tacit support, and in many cases even funding, because they saw him as a bulwark against Communism and the far left. Which response worked out better for the world?

Is Trump bright enough to take full control of America's power? Does he have a plan to use that power to take over the world? I would say no. Are Trump supporters ignorant enough to be used to destroy democracy, without a doubt.

Fascinating review of two important books that outline the history and the potential future dangers from totalitarianism. I can't help wonder to what degree our public education system has utterly failed us in terms of providing clear and instructive ciivic history education. First, why are so many people seemingly unable to critically discern real information from outright lies and gross misrepresentations? We can blame facebook and other social media platforms for their disintermediary effect in bringing "fake news" directly to our doorsteps. And, talok show pundints and others spouting lies and spreading hate and fear. But at what point do we ask ourselves, is their not a process that we all can learn to critically evaluate important information in an age where such information travels in bits at the near speed of light. Second, civic lessons in middle and high school students (at the least) that reinforces strongly the important lessons from recent history (20th century in particular) about democracy and other forms of government. Somehow, if a large proportion of millennials today are willing to accept authoritarianism, can we not conclude as a democratic nation that we have profoundly failed our citizenry? A five year old knows what a liar is and not to believe one. Up to 40% of our current electorate appear to lack even that most basic skill. The inability to distinguish fact from fiction, mental stability from instability, is at the crux of what ails our nation.

As far as this lay reader can tell, the two totalitarian dictators were similar, but were also very different. Vicious state sponsored scapegoating to avenge the the perceived humiliation of losing the First World War, versus the pursuit of an unbending Marxist vision by any means necessary. Each regime was responsible for mind boggling atrocities, and the numbers for the loss of life are meticulously catalogued in the book’s appendix.

the first half of the 20th century was the most interesting time in the history of the world. The world wars started with a pistol shot and ended 31 years later with the atom bomb. These leaders, evil though they were, harassed their subjects into tremendous technical achievements made for military purposes. FDR did the same of course with more altruistic ends. Churchill too..even Mussolini tried to rally Italians who are not so disposed. Change, Mao and Tojo all qualify as tyrants but harnessed their people for war or defense. Without these tyrants we would probably be back in the mid 80s now as far as technological advances go. Even the Civil War changed us greatly. with railroads, weapons, medicine and even observation balloons. I hope we have no more wars but these are the facts

As touched in this excellent review, the methodology of both Hitler and Stalin involved the "suppression of all dissent," critical to the path of tyranny. I read the dual biography in it's entirety years ago, and it remains in my top 10 list of critical modern historical works that I would want anyone to read who desires to understand our present world. Naturally, one may only alternately shiver and chuckle at the current buffoon, whose childish attempts at the same suppression show the same sociopathic character yet none of the evil genius.

Good article, suggesting that if we allow our current vulgar bully in office to get his tyrannical tendencies, we'll have only ourselves to blame, as enablers of his misrule, and supporters of his cabinet of nitwitted plutokleptocrats. We are witnessing now a suffering democracy, trampled by an ignominious megalomaniac seeking applause each time he uses his wrecking ball (certainly when this racist keeps destroying perfectly useful Obama's accomplishments). Trump cannot be trusted, not even by his own handpicked accomplices, by now utterly confused by his wishi-washy temperament.

Good writing, but far too much of it was an undergraduate-level history lesson, Too little was comparison.

The Talbot/Bullock/Snyder proposition is essentially this: revolution and counterrevolution are the same, because they sometimes use similar tactics. In periods of violent class conflict, is that really so surprising? Reasoning by analogy and specious or superficial comparison are the tools used to buttress this dubious thesis. Note: Stalingrad is not in the Urals, the Bolsheviks were not a faction of the Communist Party, they were a faction of the Russian Social Democratic Party which declared itself the Communist Party only after taking power, etc. etc. etc.

I read this years ago in my 20's, but never finished. The presentation seemed way too dry and academic to get through at the time. I look forward to revisiting this colossal work.

1. Communism is an economic system, albeit an impractical one. It is not in and of itself totalitarian - except, of course, for free-market fundamentalists. 2. Totalitarianism did not begin with Communism.

Yeah, and the glory of the US Constitution is that it asserts that individuals have natural rights superior to that of any claim of the government. Sorry that "progressives" have tried to erode that understanding in favor of more government power over individuals.

I had always thought that Nazism was a German sickness, and that Stalin emerged due to the lack of mature democracy in Russia. It is eye-opening to see the Donald rise in the US, where it obviously isn't Germany and there is a "most mature" democracy. It then feels important to understand afresh the rise of Hitler and Stalin, given that they weren't just unique products of that time and place. It also reminds me that a healthy democracy, like life, needs constant upkeep. "They" clearly aren't all the same. Nice review and important books, thanks.

There are a lot factual mistakes in this review. One is tremendous. What was the battle on Urals? Can I believe any further conclusions?

With what is happening in America, you can now observe how people like Hitler and Stalin get into power. When the people support leaders who ignore the law and are dismissive of the norms of political discourse, those leaders become emboldened and, eventually, make the law what they choose it to be. You can see how Trump's base, no matter what lame-brained or destructive or vindictive idea or tweet he broadcasts, remains totally loyal. That empowers him to grab for more power. Sadly, congress has, so far, done nothing substantial to stop this. The only hope is at the ballot box, and if we fail next November, things will get even worse. Yes, that is possible.

For all its domestic evil, and it was abundant, Stalin's Soviet Russia was the keystone in defeating Nazi Germany when, for a time, Soviet Russia fought alone while its western "allies" only gave token resistance in a war that killed scores of millions of Russian citizens. Russian sacrifices were rewarded by American leaders imposing a "cold war" against that prostrate and broken country just as the "west" looted a shattered Russia after the fall of totalitarian communism. Who, post war, was more despicable, the tyrant Stalin, or or the hypocrite leaders of the US and UK who posed smiling with Stalin as the three of them carved up the victim nations of the war?

Excellent article. I read “On Tyranny” earlier this year. While the reality of it it frightened me, it made me want to continue the good fight. The fight for true freedom from those who would use fear or authoritarian means to have power and to take this country back a century. It also made me realize that we ALL need to speak up for ourselves, our beliefs, and our candidates. While I did say, “Never Trump” last year, I never said, “But instead Hillary or Bernie or ______.” Democrats and other third-party candidates need our support financially and voluntarily. Our cities, our states, and our country need us to do our homework on each candidate and then they need us to go to the polls every...single...time.

I like a lot about this. But I'm not willing to agree that these totalitarians were primarily the work of two men. Them, and their whole societies. One man cannot turn millions into a killing machine.