There is certainly no shortages of histories and biographies of Stalin, one of the greatest mass murderers in history. His crimes, his murders were taken unlike his contemporary, Hitler, against for the most part, his own people. He did not have a policy of racial superiority or any underlying moral rationale for his crimes; his sole purpose was to achieve and maintain his power and in this, he is unique among the “big three” of mass murderers: Mao, Hitler, and Stalin.

Robert Conquest, perhaps the top historian of the Soviet Union has in this short book (just over three hundred pages), an excellent overview of Stalin’s drive, achievement, and maintenance of power. Although not as detailed as his other excellent histories which go deeper into the Stalin regime (The Harvest of Sorrow, The Great Terror: A Reassessment, Inside Stalin’s Secret Police: NKVD Politics 1936-39, etc.), Conquest along with Robert C. Tucker and Orlando Figes (and others) has provided a comprehensive analysis of the man and his times.

Conquest as always, manages to provide a certain analytical approach that can bring the reader up short: in this case, it is his comparison of the followers of Nazism and Communism. He quotes Hugh Seton-Watson’s comments that:

“Hitler’s Nazis were ‘fanatics with an ersatz religion,’ who rejected not only Christianity but also traditional morality as such. Nazism’s central feature was ‘moral nihilism’…. (it) is not only the central feature of National Socialism, but also the common factor between it and Bolshevism.” 

This statement is backed up by a review of leading Nazis, including Hitler, Goebbels, Mussolini, the dreaded Gauleiter of the Ukraine, Koch, and others who all started out as Socialist and ended up as either Fascists or Nazis. And it was not unusual after the war for die hard Nazi’s to reverse their coat and be taken into the Soviet camp. On one hand, the Nazis use race, the Communist used social origin as the determining factor for life or death; both were (are) based on “moral nihilism.”

Conquest is an outstanding historian, but for the amateur historian, his writing may be a bit too intellectual. He has a firm grounding in the Russian mindset and his analysis of Stalin’s legacy on modern day Russians is excellent. His works not only encompass history, as he has had published a collection of poetry, verse translation, fiction, and criticism so to read Conquest is to be exposed to a man of great intellect. A faster read but no less excellent Soviet historian is Orlando Figes brings a more human touch to his histories.

As one learns Conquest’s style, one is drawn increasingly to it and like a favorite composer, one eagerly looks forward to the next work of his that one shall read.

Re-reading Barbara Tuchman’s The March of Folly from Troy to Vietnam (originally published in 1984) and reviewing the foolish foreign policy decisions around the world since then, seems to give proof to the statement by John Adams that government, “is little better practiced now than three or four thousand years ago.”  Policy makers seem to delight in flying in the face of common sense, logic, and facts in pursuit of their policies. A wiser man than most, Jordan Peterson once said that when he makes a major decision, he does not look at the best possible outcome, but the downside cost if he is wrong. Too bad that statement is not hammered onto the desktop of every government policy wonk as a warning against their hopes and dreams.

In her book, Tuchman studies the times, forces and choices made by the Greeks who were given a horse, the Renaissance Popes, the British lost of the colonies and American leaders regarding our experience in Viet Nam. Of course, trying to separate fact from fable in the story of Troy is the most difficult, in part because the very ideas that a hollow wooden horse filled with one’s enemies willingly being brought into the city of Troy defies logic. Yet Tuchman does an excellent job of examining the tales from several sides and trying to understand how the leaders of Troy ignored legends, omens, and warnings. The result is well known and should serve as a warning against acting on the basis on ego and hubris.

In the period from just before the First World War until the early 1940s, Stefan Zweig, an Austrian born in the Hapsburg Empire, was one of Europe’s leading authors. His books cover biographies, poems set to music, novels, hundreds of articles, reviews, and more. Yet, in 1942 he and his wife committed suicide in South America over their distress of the state of the world and their view of the future.

Zweig believed that each generation would experience one trying movement, be it war, plague, inflation, or social disruption. But he believed that his generation which was raised in the structured, secure world of the late Hapsburg Empire was doomed to experience each of those trials, one after another which put it to a test seldom seen in history. That does not mean that he viewed all change as negative, for he saw the emancipation of women from their corsets and their entry into politics as positive; so too was the easy mingling of the sexes in sports, social events without chaperones, and the greater freedom of people to choose the direction of their lives. Yet he did not see or connect that that same freedom blended with youthful idealism and ignorance of the world could lead to dangerous movements such as Communism, Fascism and Nazism.

When Japan decided to go to war with the United States in 1941, it went with the realization that it could not win in a war of attrition. The average Japanese soldier (marine, aviator, etc.) had about four pounds of logistical support behind him (weapons, fuel, munitions, food, shipping, etc.) while the same fighter for the U.S. had over four thousand pounds. Admiral Yamamoto was correct when he said that Japan had awoken a sleeping giant.

The results of this disparity were shown early in the war, when after suffering a naval setback, Japan left over 150,000 troops stranded in New Guinea with the advice to live off the land. Unfortunately, New Guinea was not Western Europe or the Ukraine; instead, it is a hard land with little farmable land, but many high mountains, extreme heat, and humidity, covered in thick jungle with few roads. The result was that only about 10,000 Japanese military personnel survived the campaign. The stranded troops were left, as were so many other Japanese on dozens of isolated islands, to fend for themselves. The result was widespread examples of cannibalism.

James Badley in his book, Fly Boys, details the lives, capture and execution of several American flyers who were shot down over the island of Chichi Jima, a small island some 240 km. north of Iwo Jima. The aviators were all executed by the Japanese either by beheading or bayoneting and sections of their bodies were cut off and served, knowingly to Japanese officers in keeping with a belief that such action would strengthen the fighting spirits of the diners. For several decades after the war, the exact details of those actions were kept secret even though several of the Japanese officers were tried and either executed or imprisoned for their actions. The author, spend years and conducted many interviews with survivors, including Japanese veterans and surviving relatives of the executed Americans to build out the story.

Martin Amis wrote, “The chief demerit of the Marxist program was its point-by-point defiance of human nature”. Yuri Slezkine creates a solid argument that Marxism was a change of faith and that it was a cult, filled with dogmas that defied logic and human history.  Could a parallel be drawn between Marxism and the early Church?  Both were fueled by dogmas, their gospel was spread by zealous “preachers” who devoted their lives to their new religion; they both had martyrs, a hierarchy of disciples and believed that they were able to create a new and better world.  Marxism went one step further in that it’s view of human nature was entirely against the course of history, but their dogma answered “history” in that the nature of man had been corrupted by all societies throughout history.  Thus, while claiming to be founded on “science”, the dogma of Marxism discounted all known evidence.  With that dogma, they unlike the Church, claimed that they were able to create a “new man”, freed from the chains of the past, of the “artificial” realities of the world, able to create a world filled with happy, satisfied, productive individuals.

Of course, no one believed that true Marxism could be achieved overnight, and so there had to be a period of the dictatorship of the proletariat.  During that time, priests, aristocrats, kulaks, capitalist, the majority of academics and others needed to be purged. The bourgeois institution of marriage was also to be amended so that women would not be oppressed.  The failure of the Soviet experiment of easy divorce quickly created a problem so the need for the family was recognized (at least until the children could be raised almost entirely by the State).  And, this helped to eventually be a major problem for the longevity of Communism, for parental influence could not be entirely countered.

History can be the best of subjects or the worse depending on your individual mindset, for any event in history can be a huge puzzle that can and does cause debate years and years after any given event. History is not as bad as the saying about economics (ask four economist a question as to what will happen and you will receive five opinions), for at least with history there are certain proven facts, records, confessions, etc.

In this historical novel, the author pulls on diaries, interviews, memoirs, and other sources to provide the reader with an excellent overview of numerous personalities (Churchill, Halifax, Goebbels, Goring, Beaverbrook, and others), their strategies, fears, personalities, and so on and how by interacting with one another, they created the saga of the Battle of Britain. How close to defeat was England at that time and how great the burden on the shoulders of men like Churchill, Beaverbrook, and others as they had to hold together and create a national will against not only the forces of Hitler, but also against those within their own country and even cabinet who wished to take a different course. How easy it would have been to simply make some sort of deal with Hitler in the vain hope that he, who had broken every agreement, could be trusted.

Over the decades, I have read many books, transcripts, interviews, done personal interviews, etc. regarding the killing squads and death camps of the Nazi regime. “How” I wondered, “could a cultured nation like Germany march so easily into the brutal murder of millions of individuals who the deemed as sub-human?”  This is certainly not a new question as it has been debated for decades, by those who like Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil” theory to those who felt that there was some sort of missing component to the German soul. Perhaps there were two types of killers, especially in the SS; the bureaucrats such as Eichman and the officers who stood at the receiving dock at Auschwitz, and those who murdered by executing men, women, and children in the killing pits of Ukraine, Poland, and the rest of Europe. Could they have been indoctrinated by their SS training to believe that they were doing good, freeing the world of vermin to create a better world? But, what about the Police battalions? They were made up of ordinary police officers, men trained up uphold the law, yet they were able to overcome their training and became killers as deadly as the SS Eizengruppen. There were also sadists such as the hardened criminals and perverts of the Kaminski Brigade and the 36^th SS division under the command of Oskar Dirlewanger, but even they were viewed with distain by the regular SS divisions. It was a question that is still debated today by historians, psychologists, and others; was it due to their training, beliefs, or a mass psychosis. Somehow another group of men, who were under strict military control managed to become even worse that the groups I have mentioned; that group is the officers and enlisted men of the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy

What makes a civilization decline?  Is a decline caused by economic or moral faults or do they simply grow old and cannot face the challenges of younger, stronger forces which challenge them?  For Britain after World War I, this topic was discussed at various levels of society.  Having entered the first world war as a great Empire, within four years the average Brit could see the Anglo colonies of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa clamor for more independence while the crown of the jewel, India, began to make small steps towards independence.  What were the causes and could such a decline in power be stopped?

Richard Overy, whose outstanding analysis of World War II, Why the Allied Won has once again created a history that is overwhelming in detail and argument.  Beginning shortly after the end of World War I, numerous books, pamphlets and debates centered on the decline of Western civilization.  These debates were not shallow exercises, but serious discussions as to causes and possible remedies.  Going back to Nietzsche who felt that history was cyclical, was civilization, “merely the current expression of man’s futile efforts to fight the reality of decay with the weapons of illusory order.”?  If progress was illusional, then the certainties of the 19^th century were null and void.  Civilizations, according to Nietzsche come and go, rise and fall, are born and die so there was not a great moral lesson to be learned from the decline of the West.  Nietzsche’s thesis became the starting point for Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West which was hugely popular especially in Germany after the war.  Unlike Hegel who saw a progression of history, Spengler’s saw civilizations almost like plants, which rise and fall as part of a great cycle.  Spengler listed eight ‘ripe’ cultures, “…from the Chinese through the Indian, antique, Arabian and Western” and that each had a cycle of about 1000 years from birth to death.

Bloodlands, Timothy Snyder’s monumental work has been complimented by Black Earth, The Holocaust as History and Warning. I must admit that I was initially put from this book due to numerous reviews which seemed to focus on one small portion of this work, that of trying to link the lessons of the Holocaust to climate change.  Such a premise held no interest to me as the horrors documented in Bloodlands was the result of conscious decisions by political systems which denied the basic humanity of mankind, whereas the arguments re: climate change are open to sloppy science at the worse as well as subject to hyperbole (we only have twelve years left) which undercut the actual science.

Given the reviews, rather than purchase the book as I would do with any Snyder book, I found it during a cruise in the ship’s library. I was wonderfully surprised that ninety-eight percent of the book was an excellent historical work which consolidated and exposed many forgotten historical facts as well as providing a key analysis between the goals and policies of Hitler’s Germany, Poland and the Soviet Union not only leading up to the Holocaust but also the misconceptions of those three powers and how they impacted the course of history.

For years, Hitler’s Germany attempted to woo Poland into an alliance which would result in a joint German-Polish invasion of the Soviet Union; the goal was the fulfillment of Hitler’s dream of Lebensraum but also (as the Poles realized) making Poland a client state of Germany.  For Stalin, the eliminate of Poland was key, in large part due to the Soviet’s defeat by the Poles in 1921 and Stalin’s part in the defeat, and to create a bigger buffer against Germany.  For the Poles, caught between two more powerful neighbors, the key was to play one off against the other by having non-aggression pacts with both Germany and the Soviet Union.

For nearly twenty year, Kim Philby was the premier Soviet spy, rising through the ranks of the British Secret Service, acting as the head of Soviet counterintelligence for the British (he was charged to chase himself), and worked closely with both the CIA and the FBI (under Hoover).  This book starts out with an excellent introduction by Phillip Knightley who studied Philby for thirty years, and an exciting foreword by Graham Greene who not only knew Philby, but even visited him in Moscow after Philby fled the U.K.  From there however, the book fails to meet the promise.

Philby, in his position, was able to pass literally mountains of secrets to the Soviets and was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of anti-Soviet agents across Europe.  He was a true believer; he did not betray his country for money, but he did believe in the goal of Communism.  Even though he knew the true scope of Stalin’s crimes against his own people, he kept the faith based on a belief (as modern-day apologists proclaim) that it was not the “system”, but it was rather the wrong person at the top.  Yet he like today’s apologists never face the question of what kind of system is it that allows a murderer like Stalin to take control and exist for so long.