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Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning
A brilliant, haunting, and profoundly original portrait of the defining tragedy of our time.
In this epic history of extermination and survival, Timothy Snyder presents a new explanation of the great atrocity of the twentieth century, and reveals the risks that we face in the twenty-first. Based on new sources from eastern Europe and forgotten testimonies from Jewish survivors, Black Earth recounts the mass murder of the Jews as an event that is still close to us, more comprehensible than we would like to think, and thus all the more terrifying.
The Holocaust began in a dark but accessible place, in Hitler's mind, with the thought that the elimination of Jews would restore balance to the planet and allow Germans to win the resources they desperately needed. Such a worldview could be realized only if Germany destroyed other states, so Hitler's aim was a colonial war in Europe itself. In the zones of statelessness, almost all Jews died. A few people, the righteous few, aided them, without support from institutions. Much of the new research in this book is devoted to understanding these extraordinary individuals. The almost insurmountable difficulties they faced only confirm the dangers of state destruction and ecological panic. These men and women should be emulated, but in similar circumstances few of us would do so.
By overlooking the lessons of the Holocaust, Snyder concludes, we have misunderstood modernity and endangered the future. The early twenty-first century is coming to resemble the early twentieth, as growing preoccupations with food and water accompany ideological challenges to global order. Our world is closer to Hitler's than we like to admit, and saving it requires us to see the Holocaust as it was -- and ourselves as we are. Groundbreaking, authoritative, and utterly absorbing, Black Earth reveals a Holocaust that is not only history but warning.
In this epic history of extermination and survival, Timothy Snyder presents a new explanation of the great atrocity of the twentieth century, and reveals the risks that we face in the twenty-first. Based on new sources from eastern Europe and forgotten testimonies from Jewish survivors, Black Earth recounts the mass murder of the Jews as an event that is still close to us, more comprehensible than we would like to think, and thus all the more terrifying.
The Holocaust began in a dark but accessible place, in Hitler's mind, with the thought that the elimination of Jews would restore balance to the planet and allow Germans to win the resources they desperately needed. Such a worldview could be realized only if Germany destroyed other states, so Hitler's aim was a colonial war in Europe itself. In the zones of statelessness, almost all Jews died. A few people, the righteous few, aided them, without support from institutions. Much of the new research in this book is devoted to understanding these extraordinary individuals. The almost insurmountable difficulties they faced only confirm the dangers of state destruction and ecological panic. These men and women should be emulated, but in similar circumstances few of us would do so.
By overlooking the lessons of the Holocaust, Snyder concludes, we have misunderstood modernity and endangered the future. The early twenty-first century is coming to resemble the early twentieth, as growing preoccupations with food and water accompany ideological challenges to global order. Our world is closer to Hitler's than we like to admit, and saving it requires us to see the Holocaust as it was -- and ourselves as we are. Groundbreaking, authoritative, and utterly absorbing, Black Earth reveals a Holocaust that is not only history but warning.
462 pages, Hardcover
First published September 8, 2015
About the author
Timothy Snyder
63 books4,039 followersTimothy Snyder is Housum Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences. He received his doctorate from the University of Oxford in 1997, where he was a British Marshall Scholar. He has held fellowships in Paris, Vienna, and Warsaw, and an Academy Scholarship at Harvard.
His most recent book is Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning, published in September 2015 by Crown Books. He is author also of Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2010), a history of Nazi and Soviet mass killing on the lands between Berlin and Moscow. A New York Times bestseller and a book of the year according to The Atlantic, The Independent, The Financial Times, the Telegraph, and the New Statesman, it has won twelve awards including the Emerson Prize in the Humanities, a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Leipzig Award for European Understanding, and the Hannah Arendt Prize in Political Thought.
His other award-winning publications include Nationalism, Marxism, and Modern Central Europe: A Biography of Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz (1998); The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999 (2003); Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist's Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine (2005); The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of A Habsburg Archduke (2008), and Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2010).
Snyder helped Tony Judt to compose a thematic history of political ideas and intellectuals in politics, Thinking the Twentieth Century (2012). He is also the co-editor of Stalin and Europe: Terror, War, Domination and Wall Around the West: State Power and Immigration Controls in Europe and North America (2001).
Snyder was the recipient of an inaugural Andrew Carnegie Fellowship in 2015. He is a member of the Committee on Conscience of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and sits on the advisory council of the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research Research.
He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in modern East European political history.
His most recent book is Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning, published in September 2015 by Crown Books. He is author also of Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2010), a history of Nazi and Soviet mass killing on the lands between Berlin and Moscow. A New York Times bestseller and a book of the year according to The Atlantic, The Independent, The Financial Times, the Telegraph, and the New Statesman, it has won twelve awards including the Emerson Prize in the Humanities, a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Leipzig Award for European Understanding, and the Hannah Arendt Prize in Political Thought.
His other award-winning publications include Nationalism, Marxism, and Modern Central Europe: A Biography of Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz (1998); The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999 (2003); Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist's Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine (2005); The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of A Habsburg Archduke (2008), and Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2010).
Snyder helped Tony Judt to compose a thematic history of political ideas and intellectuals in politics, Thinking the Twentieth Century (2012). He is also the co-editor of Stalin and Europe: Terror, War, Domination and Wall Around the West: State Power and Immigration Controls in Europe and North America (2001).
Snyder was the recipient of an inaugural Andrew Carnegie Fellowship in 2015. He is a member of the Committee on Conscience of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and sits on the advisory council of the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research Research.
He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in modern East European political history.
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May 21, 2019
The Continuing Struggle Against Civilisation
Black Earth is a remarkable re-interpretation of the Holocaust. Snyder goes beyond the statistical and sociological facts of mass murder in order to understand the underlying evil of the disaster. And he succeeds. His acute insights and narrative skills in the introductory chapter alone are worth the entire price of admission.
According to Snyder, Hitler's attempt to annihilate the Jews was not racially motivated nor was it concerned with religion as such. Hitler's intention was ecological and intellectual - to reverse the growing disequilibrium introduced to the planet by Jews as the carriers not of defective genetic material but of corrupt ideas.
To restore this ecological equilibrium, it was necessary to rid the world of the corrupting influence of Jewish ideas. The most important of these ideas is the distinction made by Jews between nature and morality. Morality is an invention of the Jewish mind which contradicts the laws of nature by limiting the strong through the collective power of the weak. Morality in all its insidious variants must be identified and rooted out.
Authentic politics, for example, must conform with the demands of nature, according to the chief political philosopher of the Reich, Carl Schmitt. Schmitt reasons that political power must be exercised only by the strong in their own interests (see for more on Schmitt: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... also the addendum below). Both Capitalist and Communist politics are divorced from nature because they have been conceived from Jewish distortions of natural law. The only authentic politics is one of persecution.
Nature is also political so that science is the study of how best to conform to the reality of nature. Reality is a world in which competition for survival - among nations not with nature - provides the only test of scientific or any other truth. Any scientific concepts which do not advance this competition are unnatural and, by definition, Jewish.
According to this view, therefore, Hitler was not irrationally or un-pragmatically hateful of Jews. He had a very clear rationality that was based on very reasonable presumptions and clear criteria of success, namely that it was indeed Jewish thinkers who had made the moral break with nature as attested in the Bible and other sacred scriptures.
Further, since it had been the self-confessed mission of the Jews, considered by them to be divinely mandated, to maintain this distinction between nature and morality, that is between the world and its creator, and to pass it down from generation to generation forever, the historical link to these ideas must be eliminated. QED: Jews must be destroyed.
Snyder's somewhat startling message is that Hitler viewed the Jews not as corrupters of civilisation but as the creators of civilisation. Civilisation itself, in its recognition of ideals like mutual respect and peace; in its encouragement of virtues like compassion and intellectual ambition, is the problem that the Third Reich was intended to solve. Jews in other words were not racially inferior; they had no race. Hence the term 'mongrels' which referred to the fundamentally un-natural position of Jews in the world. It was the absence of Jewish racial conscience and racial competitiveness that was their sin.
Whether or not you are persuaded by Snyder's rhetoric (as I am), you will not be able to forget its logic nor the challenge of its conclusions. The reason for continuing anti-Semitism, especially in the United States and in Europe, is precisely because of the continuing war against civilisation, the principles and aims of which are still those articulated by Hitler.
The implications for how one sees recent elections in the US and Europe are staggering. Trump, for example, is clearly pursuing the programme for the destruction of civilised society outlined by Hitler. Trusting in the robustness of American institutions to withstand this assault may be as pointless as it was in Germany in 1933.
Postscript
Another GR reader (see comments) alerted me to the similarity between the Nazi thesis about nature and that of the early 19th century Catholic philosopher, Joseph de Maistre. De Maistre's vision of life is certainly as bloody as that of the leaders of the Third Reich as summarised in this excerpt from his Soirees de Saint Petersbourg:
Schmitt was a self-confessed admirer of de Maistre as a 'political realist', by which he meant one who knew how to distinguish between friends and enemies. Schmitt is de Maistre's equal in dismissing the 'sentimentality' of liberal ideas of human nature. Where he differs from de Maistre is his rejection (by silence) of providential action in the world. De Maistre considered the French Revolution a punishment by God for a European sinfulness for example.
Schmitt rejects this sort of theological meddling as unnatural. Schmitt had a new Darwinian foundation that was unavailable to de Maistre, and he made the most of it to justify the separation of politics and ethics. Or rather to create an ethic closer to the divine and, incidentally of course, supportive of genocide. It was God after all, operating through the laws of natural selection, who demanded the natural ascendancy of the strong. God has established the rule of survival of the fittest. It was man who broke that rule. Even God had been subtly naturalised by Schmitt. De Maistre had shown the way.
With Natural Law, you pick your desired outcome, and then work backwards to suitable premisses. Paul of Tarsus did it. Thomas Aquinas did it. De Maistre did it. And Schmitt did it. None of them liked the Jews very much. Seems like a pattern. See, for more on the perils of Natural Law: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show.... And for more on how it affects recent philosophical thinking see: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....
Black Earth is a remarkable re-interpretation of the Holocaust. Snyder goes beyond the statistical and sociological facts of mass murder in order to understand the underlying evil of the disaster. And he succeeds. His acute insights and narrative skills in the introductory chapter alone are worth the entire price of admission.
According to Snyder, Hitler's attempt to annihilate the Jews was not racially motivated nor was it concerned with religion as such. Hitler's intention was ecological and intellectual - to reverse the growing disequilibrium introduced to the planet by Jews as the carriers not of defective genetic material but of corrupt ideas.
To restore this ecological equilibrium, it was necessary to rid the world of the corrupting influence of Jewish ideas. The most important of these ideas is the distinction made by Jews between nature and morality. Morality is an invention of the Jewish mind which contradicts the laws of nature by limiting the strong through the collective power of the weak. Morality in all its insidious variants must be identified and rooted out.
Authentic politics, for example, must conform with the demands of nature, according to the chief political philosopher of the Reich, Carl Schmitt. Schmitt reasons that political power must be exercised only by the strong in their own interests (see for more on Schmitt: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... also the addendum below). Both Capitalist and Communist politics are divorced from nature because they have been conceived from Jewish distortions of natural law. The only authentic politics is one of persecution.
Nature is also political so that science is the study of how best to conform to the reality of nature. Reality is a world in which competition for survival - among nations not with nature - provides the only test of scientific or any other truth. Any scientific concepts which do not advance this competition are unnatural and, by definition, Jewish.
According to this view, therefore, Hitler was not irrationally or un-pragmatically hateful of Jews. He had a very clear rationality that was based on very reasonable presumptions and clear criteria of success, namely that it was indeed Jewish thinkers who had made the moral break with nature as attested in the Bible and other sacred scriptures.
Further, since it had been the self-confessed mission of the Jews, considered by them to be divinely mandated, to maintain this distinction between nature and morality, that is between the world and its creator, and to pass it down from generation to generation forever, the historical link to these ideas must be eliminated. QED: Jews must be destroyed.
Snyder's somewhat startling message is that Hitler viewed the Jews not as corrupters of civilisation but as the creators of civilisation. Civilisation itself, in its recognition of ideals like mutual respect and peace; in its encouragement of virtues like compassion and intellectual ambition, is the problem that the Third Reich was intended to solve. Jews in other words were not racially inferior; they had no race. Hence the term 'mongrels' which referred to the fundamentally un-natural position of Jews in the world. It was the absence of Jewish racial conscience and racial competitiveness that was their sin.
Whether or not you are persuaded by Snyder's rhetoric (as I am), you will not be able to forget its logic nor the challenge of its conclusions. The reason for continuing anti-Semitism, especially in the United States and in Europe, is precisely because of the continuing war against civilisation, the principles and aims of which are still those articulated by Hitler.
The implications for how one sees recent elections in the US and Europe are staggering. Trump, for example, is clearly pursuing the programme for the destruction of civilised society outlined by Hitler. Trusting in the robustness of American institutions to withstand this assault may be as pointless as it was in Germany in 1933.
Postscript
Another GR reader (see comments) alerted me to the similarity between the Nazi thesis about nature and that of the early 19th century Catholic philosopher, Joseph de Maistre. De Maistre's vision of life is certainly as bloody as that of the leaders of the Third Reich as summarised in this excerpt from his Soirees de Saint Petersbourg:
In the whole vast dome of living nature there reigns an open violence, a kind of prescriptive fury which arms all the creatures to their common doom: as soon as you leave the inanimate kingdom you find the decree of violent death inscribed on the very frontiers of life. You feel it already in the vegetable kingdom: from the great catalpa to the humblest herb, how many plants die and how many are killed! but, from the moment you enter the animal kingdom, this law is suddenly in the most dreadful evidence. A power, a violence, at once hidden and palpable, has in each species appointed a certain number of animals to devour the others: thus there are insects of prey, reptiles of prey, birds of prey, fishes of prey, quadrupeds of prey. There is no instant of time when one creature is not being devoured by another. Over all these numerous races of animals man is placed, and his destructive hand spares nothing that lives. He kills to obtain food and he kills to clothe himself; he kills to adorn himself; he kills in order to attack and he kills to defend himself; he kills to instruct himself and he kills to amuse himself; he kills to kill. Proud and terrible king, he wants everything and nothing resists him…from the lamb he tears its guts to make his harp resound… from the wolf his most deadly tooth to polish his pretty works of art; from the elephant his skin to make a whip for his child—his table is covered with corpses…. And who [in this general carnage] exterminates him who will exterminate all the others? Himself. It is man who is charged with the slaughter of man…. So is accomplished…the great law of the violent destruction of living creatures. The whole earth, perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but a vast altar upon which all that is living must be sacrificed without end, without measure, without pause, until the consummation of things, until evil is extinct, until the death of death.
Schmitt was a self-confessed admirer of de Maistre as a 'political realist', by which he meant one who knew how to distinguish between friends and enemies. Schmitt is de Maistre's equal in dismissing the 'sentimentality' of liberal ideas of human nature. Where he differs from de Maistre is his rejection (by silence) of providential action in the world. De Maistre considered the French Revolution a punishment by God for a European sinfulness for example.
Schmitt rejects this sort of theological meddling as unnatural. Schmitt had a new Darwinian foundation that was unavailable to de Maistre, and he made the most of it to justify the separation of politics and ethics. Or rather to create an ethic closer to the divine and, incidentally of course, supportive of genocide. It was God after all, operating through the laws of natural selection, who demanded the natural ascendancy of the strong. God has established the rule of survival of the fittest. It was man who broke that rule. Even God had been subtly naturalised by Schmitt. De Maistre had shown the way.
With Natural Law, you pick your desired outcome, and then work backwards to suitable premisses. Paul of Tarsus did it. Thomas Aquinas did it. De Maistre did it. And Schmitt did it. None of them liked the Jews very much. Seems like a pattern. See, for more on the perils of Natural Law: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show.... And for more on how it affects recent philosophical thinking see: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....
March 21, 2022
UPDATE : PUTIN AND THE INVASION OF UKRAINE
In October 2015 I reviewed this book very favourably except for the last chapter, in which the author makes some astonishingly harsh comments on the leaders of China and Russia. You just don't expect this viciousness in a scholarly book. There is a tirade about Putin. In my review I said that Timothy Snyder “goes off the rails” and I concluded “it does his book no credit at all and causes it to end on a distastefully catchpenny note.”
GR friend Heather just posed the question how this final chapter reads now, in the light of the invasion of Ukraine. It’s a great question.
Here’s what he says (p332):
In a new Russian colonialism that began in 2013, Russian leaders and propagandists imagined neighbouring Ukrainians out of existence or presented them as sub-Russians. In characterisations that recall what Hitler said about Ukrainians, Russian leaders described Ukraine as an artificial entity with no history, culture and language, backed by some global agglomeration of Jews, gays, Europeans and Americans.
…President Putin of Russia developed a foreign policy doctrine of ethnic war. This argument from language to invasion, whether pressed in Czechoslovakia by Hitler or in Ukraine by Putin, undoes the logics of sovereignty and rights and prepares the ground for the destruction of states…. Putin also placed himself at the head of populist, fascist and neo-Nazi forces in Europe.
This seemed to me to border on hysteria. I confess to being unalarmed by the annexation of Crimea in 2014 – well, I said, it was part of Russia, then in 1954 Khruschev assigned it to the Ukrainian SSR by administrative fiat, now Russia has grabbed it back. It didn’t see it as the start of something big.
Timothy Snyder sounded like a Russophobe to me. Now – not so much.
Looking at the above quote, we see immediately that Putin has changed his preferred bogeymen from “Jews and gays” to “neo-Nazis”, who, he says, have captured the Ukrainian state. So wearily we note the irony involved in that rhetorical sleight of hand – Timothy Snyder talks of “Russian support of the European Far Right” but it turns out Putin invaded Ukraine to de-Nazify it.
I thought this was a badly written yet brilliant book with a terrible concluding chapter. Now this last chapter seems like eerie accurate prophecy. I was wrong.
*****
The original unedited review :
Turgid, tiresome, tedious and inelegant, hammering metronomically away at three fundamental ideas, this book nevertheless gives the patient reader (you have to be very patient) some great perspectives on the Holocaust.
BIOLOGICAL ANARCHY
Prof Snyder kicks off with maybe the best part of the whole dense book which is an analysis of Mein Kampf and Hitler’s mental universe. Hitler was “a warmongering biological anarchist” and it’s a great mistake to think he was a German nationalist. He was way beyond what you might have thought he was. AH believed that all races on Earth must contend for its limited resources in ceaseless struggle. Ceaseless means ceaseless. If the Aryan race succeeds in colonising the vast lands occupied by Slavic subhumans to the East, then so be it. If they fail, as they did, then so be that too. (In the bunker in 1945 Hitler acknowledged Russian superiority and washed his hands of the rubbishy Germans before committing suicide.) Snyder presents Hitler as an apocalyptic radical. I never read an account of Hitler like this. Fantastic stuff.
EMPTY TERRITORY
After that comes the trudge east, through Poland, Ukraine, the Baltic states and into the USSR. The murder of Jews is hardly mentioned for entire chapters. The intricate politics of Poland, a mouse between two ravening tigers, and their deep involvement in the attempts to forge a Jewish state in Palestine are now our subject. It was Polish Jews – Irgun and Stern’s more violent group – who were bringing the argument to the British, who were controlling Palestine at the time.
You see the complexities of it right here – the British declared war on Germany in support of Polish independence. Poland was supporting Jewish terrorists in Palestine against the British because if there was a Jewish state, Poland could ship its three million Jews off there. The British were fighting these Polish Jews because they wanted Arab support in North Africa. The snake eats its own tail.
Other Holocaust histories begin in Germany with the Nazi state beginning to crush the Jews – excluding them from professions, expropriating their property, making them change their names to Abraham and Sarah, etc. The picture is one of ever-tightening screws applied by the State.
Snyder’s big idea which he beats the reader over the head with all through the book was that it was the LACK of a state which killed Jews. Jews were killed where states had been destroyed.
This is why the second section is all about how the Nazis destroyed the states of Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia. (In order to destroy the state of Poland the first mass killings were of 60,000 educated Polish elite.)
According to Nazi logic, there was no occupation, but rather a colonisation of legally ‘empty’ territory.
The Jews there were rendered stateless. Only at that point could the Nazis do what they wanted with them. He says that throughout the war, Jews with British or American passports were not killed. If that is true, it is a very remarkable thing which I have not read elsewhere.
THE HOLOCAUST BEGAN IN LITHUANIA
In these countries, the Nazi propaganda machine informed the people that they had been liberated from the evil of communism, that communism was a Jewish conspiracy and the USSR was a Jewish empire, and that it was now time for payback. Killing units were formed, which would travel in a bus from village to village, killing Jews and other undesirables like communists, Gypsies and disabled people.
The commanders of these units had to improvise. They had to
persuade their own men to kill women and children; and they had to find ways to generate local collaboration as the job became too large and difficult
But it turned out this wasn’t too difficult. Because one of the ways you could prove you weren’t a communist was to kill Jews.
The whole point of anti-Jewish violence, from a Lithuanian perspective, was to demonstrate loyalty before the Germans had time to figure out who had actually collaborated with the Soviets.
The make-up of these Einsatzgruppen units was interesting – the majority were in the age range 16 to 21. So this means 16 and 17 year old boys were driving from village to village killing men, women and children day after day for months.
This first phase of the Holocaust can be compared with the slaughter of the Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994.
Here’s a sour comment from our author
In other words, Ukrainians who spent the first two years of the war helping the local Soviet NKVD commander (who was Jewish) deport Poles, Jews and Ukrainians shifted to helping the SS kill Jews, Ukrainians and Poles whom they – actual Soviet collaborators – denounced as Soviet collaborators.
HOLOCAUST SECOND PHASE : AUSCHWITZ
Snyder finally crystallised a series of thoughts which had been nagging at my mind for a very long time. I think – and he thinks – that the looming symbol of ultimate awfulness which is Auschwitz is used, unwittingly, to conveniently block out a lot of what happened, to consign the first phase of the Holocaust to a footnote. I don’t mean that Auschwitz blocks out the knowledge of the hundreds of other concentration camps, but of the non-camp killing, which was in fact the greater part of the Holocaust.
Auschwitz has been a relatively manageable symbol for Germany after the Second World War, significantly reducing the actual scale of the evil done. The conflation of Auschwitz with the Holocaust made plausible the grotesque claim that Germans did not know about the mass murder of European Jews while it was taking place. It is possible that some Germans did not know exactly what happened at Auschwitz. It is not possible that many Germans did not know about the mass murder of Jews… which was known and discussed in Germany, at least among families and friends, long before Auschwitz became a death facility.
So if Auschwitz is a convenient symbol for post-war Germany, it was also convenient for the USSR:
Auschwitz was one of the few parts of the Holocaust to which Soviet citizens did not contribute
Auschwitz is useful for us all – it confines the evil behind the famous gates; we never have to open those gates if we do not wish. We can say well, the Nazis kept it all secret, maybe no one else knew. There would be rumours but no real knowledge. Auschwitz – bitterly ironically – helps us to keep the evil of the Holocaust mentally manageable.
TWO RANDOM THOUGHTS
How many eager participants in the slaughter of Jews were regular churchgoers? Given that almost no one in that time would have described himself as an atheist, we must assume that the murderers could reconcile their murders with their Christianity.
Also : the massive theft of Jewish property in all these various countries would have been a guilty fact for decades after the war. Thousands of people must have ended up living in houses formerly owned by now dead Jews. What did they think of that?
THE HOLOCAUST AS A WARNING
In the last chapter Prof Snyder goes off the rails – he thinks the looming ecocatastrophe of global warming and shrinking resources might ignite Hitlerian lebensraum-style lunacy in the minds of some – and he fingers the Chinese and the Russians under Putin as ones to watch. It does his book no credit at all and causes it to end on a distastefully catchpenny note.
In October 2015 I reviewed this book very favourably except for the last chapter, in which the author makes some astonishingly harsh comments on the leaders of China and Russia. You just don't expect this viciousness in a scholarly book. There is a tirade about Putin. In my review I said that Timothy Snyder “goes off the rails” and I concluded “it does his book no credit at all and causes it to end on a distastefully catchpenny note.”
GR friend Heather just posed the question how this final chapter reads now, in the light of the invasion of Ukraine. It’s a great question.
Here’s what he says (p332):
In a new Russian colonialism that began in 2013, Russian leaders and propagandists imagined neighbouring Ukrainians out of existence or presented them as sub-Russians. In characterisations that recall what Hitler said about Ukrainians, Russian leaders described Ukraine as an artificial entity with no history, culture and language, backed by some global agglomeration of Jews, gays, Europeans and Americans.
…President Putin of Russia developed a foreign policy doctrine of ethnic war. This argument from language to invasion, whether pressed in Czechoslovakia by Hitler or in Ukraine by Putin, undoes the logics of sovereignty and rights and prepares the ground for the destruction of states…. Putin also placed himself at the head of populist, fascist and neo-Nazi forces in Europe.
This seemed to me to border on hysteria. I confess to being unalarmed by the annexation of Crimea in 2014 – well, I said, it was part of Russia, then in 1954 Khruschev assigned it to the Ukrainian SSR by administrative fiat, now Russia has grabbed it back. It didn’t see it as the start of something big.
Timothy Snyder sounded like a Russophobe to me. Now – not so much.
Looking at the above quote, we see immediately that Putin has changed his preferred bogeymen from “Jews and gays” to “neo-Nazis”, who, he says, have captured the Ukrainian state. So wearily we note the irony involved in that rhetorical sleight of hand – Timothy Snyder talks of “Russian support of the European Far Right” but it turns out Putin invaded Ukraine to de-Nazify it.
I thought this was a badly written yet brilliant book with a terrible concluding chapter. Now this last chapter seems like eerie accurate prophecy. I was wrong.
*****
The original unedited review :
Turgid, tiresome, tedious and inelegant, hammering metronomically away at three fundamental ideas, this book nevertheless gives the patient reader (you have to be very patient) some great perspectives on the Holocaust.
BIOLOGICAL ANARCHY
Prof Snyder kicks off with maybe the best part of the whole dense book which is an analysis of Mein Kampf and Hitler’s mental universe. Hitler was “a warmongering biological anarchist” and it’s a great mistake to think he was a German nationalist. He was way beyond what you might have thought he was. AH believed that all races on Earth must contend for its limited resources in ceaseless struggle. Ceaseless means ceaseless. If the Aryan race succeeds in colonising the vast lands occupied by Slavic subhumans to the East, then so be it. If they fail, as they did, then so be that too. (In the bunker in 1945 Hitler acknowledged Russian superiority and washed his hands of the rubbishy Germans before committing suicide.) Snyder presents Hitler as an apocalyptic radical. I never read an account of Hitler like this. Fantastic stuff.
EMPTY TERRITORY
After that comes the trudge east, through Poland, Ukraine, the Baltic states and into the USSR. The murder of Jews is hardly mentioned for entire chapters. The intricate politics of Poland, a mouse between two ravening tigers, and their deep involvement in the attempts to forge a Jewish state in Palestine are now our subject. It was Polish Jews – Irgun and Stern’s more violent group – who were bringing the argument to the British, who were controlling Palestine at the time.
You see the complexities of it right here – the British declared war on Germany in support of Polish independence. Poland was supporting Jewish terrorists in Palestine against the British because if there was a Jewish state, Poland could ship its three million Jews off there. The British were fighting these Polish Jews because they wanted Arab support in North Africa. The snake eats its own tail.
Other Holocaust histories begin in Germany with the Nazi state beginning to crush the Jews – excluding them from professions, expropriating their property, making them change their names to Abraham and Sarah, etc. The picture is one of ever-tightening screws applied by the State.
Snyder’s big idea which he beats the reader over the head with all through the book was that it was the LACK of a state which killed Jews. Jews were killed where states had been destroyed.
This is why the second section is all about how the Nazis destroyed the states of Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia. (In order to destroy the state of Poland the first mass killings were of 60,000 educated Polish elite.)
According to Nazi logic, there was no occupation, but rather a colonisation of legally ‘empty’ territory.
The Jews there were rendered stateless. Only at that point could the Nazis do what they wanted with them. He says that throughout the war, Jews with British or American passports were not killed. If that is true, it is a very remarkable thing which I have not read elsewhere.
THE HOLOCAUST BEGAN IN LITHUANIA
In these countries, the Nazi propaganda machine informed the people that they had been liberated from the evil of communism, that communism was a Jewish conspiracy and the USSR was a Jewish empire, and that it was now time for payback. Killing units were formed, which would travel in a bus from village to village, killing Jews and other undesirables like communists, Gypsies and disabled people.
The commanders of these units had to improvise. They had to
persuade their own men to kill women and children; and they had to find ways to generate local collaboration as the job became too large and difficult
But it turned out this wasn’t too difficult. Because one of the ways you could prove you weren’t a communist was to kill Jews.
The whole point of anti-Jewish violence, from a Lithuanian perspective, was to demonstrate loyalty before the Germans had time to figure out who had actually collaborated with the Soviets.
The make-up of these Einsatzgruppen units was interesting – the majority were in the age range 16 to 21. So this means 16 and 17 year old boys were driving from village to village killing men, women and children day after day for months.
This first phase of the Holocaust can be compared with the slaughter of the Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994.
Here’s a sour comment from our author
In other words, Ukrainians who spent the first two years of the war helping the local Soviet NKVD commander (who was Jewish) deport Poles, Jews and Ukrainians shifted to helping the SS kill Jews, Ukrainians and Poles whom they – actual Soviet collaborators – denounced as Soviet collaborators.
HOLOCAUST SECOND PHASE : AUSCHWITZ
Snyder finally crystallised a series of thoughts which had been nagging at my mind for a very long time. I think – and he thinks – that the looming symbol of ultimate awfulness which is Auschwitz is used, unwittingly, to conveniently block out a lot of what happened, to consign the first phase of the Holocaust to a footnote. I don’t mean that Auschwitz blocks out the knowledge of the hundreds of other concentration camps, but of the non-camp killing, which was in fact the greater part of the Holocaust.
Auschwitz has been a relatively manageable symbol for Germany after the Second World War, significantly reducing the actual scale of the evil done. The conflation of Auschwitz with the Holocaust made plausible the grotesque claim that Germans did not know about the mass murder of European Jews while it was taking place. It is possible that some Germans did not know exactly what happened at Auschwitz. It is not possible that many Germans did not know about the mass murder of Jews… which was known and discussed in Germany, at least among families and friends, long before Auschwitz became a death facility.
So if Auschwitz is a convenient symbol for post-war Germany, it was also convenient for the USSR:
Auschwitz was one of the few parts of the Holocaust to which Soviet citizens did not contribute
Auschwitz is useful for us all – it confines the evil behind the famous gates; we never have to open those gates if we do not wish. We can say well, the Nazis kept it all secret, maybe no one else knew. There would be rumours but no real knowledge. Auschwitz – bitterly ironically – helps us to keep the evil of the Holocaust mentally manageable.
TWO RANDOM THOUGHTS
How many eager participants in the slaughter of Jews were regular churchgoers? Given that almost no one in that time would have described himself as an atheist, we must assume that the murderers could reconcile their murders with their Christianity.
Also : the massive theft of Jewish property in all these various countries would have been a guilty fact for decades after the war. Thousands of people must have ended up living in houses formerly owned by now dead Jews. What did they think of that?
THE HOLOCAUST AS A WARNING
In the last chapter Prof Snyder goes off the rails – he thinks the looming ecocatastrophe of global warming and shrinking resources might ignite Hitlerian lebensraum-style lunacy in the minds of some – and he fingers the Chinese and the Russians under Putin as ones to watch. It does his book no credit at all and causes it to end on a distastefully catchpenny note.
October 20, 2015
I picked this book because in the sixth grade I had one of the most amazing teacher that I can remember. She spent 9 weeks teaching us the history of the Holocaust. My son is in the sixth grade so I thought I would brush up with the history of that tragedy with this book.
This book is almost over my head. It did not work for what I had intended it for.
But does that mean it's a bad book? Of course not.
Snyder gives a detailed. (Sometimes almost mind numbingly so) recounting of Hitler's maniacal rise and then he makes you stop and think...Could something similar happen now?
Don't shake your head no so fast, buster.
He uses other for instances but it's my little review space and I tend to ramble so I'm using one that I know of recently..
My state Six Flags featured a day for each of several religions. I know that they had "Christian Day" and several other "special days" featured. Then they had "Muslim Day". People flipped their lids. Social media blew up with hate and ramblings and honestly? If I had been Muslim there is no way in heck that I would attend that event that day. Because what was being posted scared me.
Hate festers and spreads.
Then Snyder talks about world climate and how if food sources were in short supply, what would happen? Would people turn against a group of people with the whole survival of the fittest in mind?
Most of the reviews on Goodreads and everywhere else I looked have this book as a highly rated book. And it's good. But, to me the author talks over most people's head on a subject that needs to be talked about and remembered. I just wish that it had been a tad bit more understandable.
Booksource: Blogging for books in exchange for review.
Of course, everyone has differing opinions of books and their meanings. I adore my friend Elyse's review and wish that I had gotten as much from the book as she had.
This book is almost over my head. It did not work for what I had intended it for.
But does that mean it's a bad book? Of course not.
Snyder gives a detailed. (Sometimes almost mind numbingly so) recounting of Hitler's maniacal rise and then he makes you stop and think...Could something similar happen now?
Don't shake your head no so fast, buster.
He uses other for instances but it's my little review space and I tend to ramble so I'm using one that I know of recently..
My state Six Flags featured a day for each of several religions. I know that they had "Christian Day" and several other "special days" featured. Then they had "Muslim Day". People flipped their lids. Social media blew up with hate and ramblings and honestly? If I had been Muslim there is no way in heck that I would attend that event that day. Because what was being posted scared me.
Hate festers and spreads.
Then Snyder talks about world climate and how if food sources were in short supply, what would happen? Would people turn against a group of people with the whole survival of the fittest in mind?
Most of the reviews on Goodreads and everywhere else I looked have this book as a highly rated book. And it's good. But, to me the author talks over most people's head on a subject that needs to be talked about and remembered. I just wish that it had been a tad bit more understandable.
Booksource: Blogging for books in exchange for review.
Of course, everyone has differing opinions of books and their meanings. I adore my friend Elyse's review and wish that I had gotten as much from the book as she had.
April 28, 2024
“It was an era when to be good meant not only the avoidance of evil but a total determination to act on behalf of a stranger, on a planet where hell, not heaven, was the reward for goodness.”
The book, as the title suggests, relates a history of the Holocaust. To understand a historical event we need to trace its main causes and restore the concatenation of specific conditions that made it possible. Thе author intends to do this with the tragedy of the Holocaust. He identifies several factors responsible for it.
The destruction of states by Nazi Germany created zones of statelessness “where the entire Holocaust took place.” It should be noted that the other major Nazi mass crimes, such as the starvation of prisoners of war and the murder of civilians, also occurred mostly within those stateless zones.
Snyder’s argument is convincing, but the reader should not overlook the fact that while statelessness enabled the mass killings, the main reason, nevertheless, must have been the existence of a totalitarian militaristic state profoundly transformed by racial ideas.
Snyder, of course, probes into this but this could have been developed in more detail, in my opinion.
The author emphasizes that where the state ceased to exist and the previous order and institutions went away, atrocities started to happen. To illustrate his argument, he first refers to Austria when, after the Anschluss, its Jewish citizens were excluded, partly or entirely, from the rights of citizenship. Then came Czechoslovakia, Poland, the Baltic states, and the Soviet Union. At first, Hitler expected Poland to become an ally in his ideological war against the Soviets. To his astonishment, Warsaw refused to help Nazi Germany. As Snyder notes, “with Poland as an adversary, the entire calculus was altered.”
Interestingly, Polish authorities had supported a mass Jewish emigration to Palestine and the creation of a Jewish state. Those policies were not in agreement with the interests of Britain, Poland’s ally.
The author explains that what he calls ecological panic justified in the eyes of Hitler and his cohort the struggle for a limited supply of resources. The black earth of Soviet Ukraine, its fertile soil, was regarded as an integral part of Hilter’s concept of ‘living space’ (Lebensraum).
For certain territories, such as eastern Poland and the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), this was the double occupation. First they were invaded by Soviet power, then by Nazi Germany. Those two kinds of occupation came in quick succession and left local people caught between the two ruthless empires in an extremely difficult position. Now they needed to prove to the new German masters their loyalty. The Nazis with their Judeobolshvik myth provided them with an opportunity to display loyalty and to be forgiven for prior collaboration with the Soviets.
The book tries to identify the complex motivations of those who collaborated with the Nazis.
According to the author, the more severe the Soviet assault on prior political and social order, the greater the political resource and the easier for the Germans to employ local collaborators.
For many, this was a question of survival.
Many seem to have been keen to show loyalty to preserve their status. People who had carried out Soviet policies may have needed protection in the new order.
Mass deportations and repressions against local elites and intelligentsia in eastern Poland and the Baltic States carried out by the Soviets quite naturally engendered in many sentiments of hatred against communism.
Collaboration with the Nazis was not driven by local anti-Semitism. Snyder refers to Polish policemen who in independent Poland had prevented anti-Jewish pogroms and now, in a new reality, aided the Nazis in eliminating Jews.
The Holocaust was about triumphing of deranged racial ideas that, under specific circumstances, were transformed into a politics of mass killings.
As Snyder points out, the Holocaust did not happen and could not have happened in Germany of the 1930s. It happened when German power went beyond the boundaries of pre-war Germany with the intention of destroying other states and generating chaos.
Snyder argues that the Holocaust could not be explained by nations, ethnic anti-semitism, or even strong state. It mostly happened in deliberately created zones of statelessness where the previous order was dismantled and even its existence in the past was denied by the conquerors. The Nazis practiced a colonial approach in Poland and the Soviet Union claiming that they never were states.
In France and the Netherlands, the situation was different and many parts of the previous order remained there in place. However, the pattern was similar for those Jews who were excluded from state protection. Before being killed, people were to be deprived of their citizenship, lose their connection with state, and be deported into zones of statelessness.
Snyder compares Estonia and Denmark - two countries that during WW2 were under German occupation and both were subject to the Final Solution.
Estonia and Danemark had many things in common when the war started. Yet a history of the Holocaust was very different in each country.
Why such a difference? This fact, Snyder suggests, demonstrates the significance of the political factor.
The author discards simplistic and mostly erroneous explanations. All in all, the population of Estonia was not more antisemitic than the Danes. Certain indications even point to the contrary.
The Soviet occupation of Estonia, which started in 1940, resulted in the destruction of the Estonian ruling class, upper administration, and political elite.
“As in Lithuania and Latvia, the Soviet occupation of Estonia had forced thousands of people to flee the country, many to Berlin.”
This created abundant human and political resources for Nazi Germany to exploit. Double occupation sometimes compelled double collaboration. Local people who had collaborated with the Soviets now needed to clear their names, so to speak. They had a strong incentive to conform.
None of these applied to Denmark. The German occupation of Denmark was relatively mild. Moreover, the Germans declared that they “did not aim at disturbing the territorial integrity or the political independence of the Kingdom of Denmark.”
Modern scholarship tends to assert that mass killings are often not associated with strong states but rather with failing states. Party states can be exceptions (the USSR, China, and Cambodia).
Snyder explains that Nazi Germany was a party state which deliberately destroyed other states and in doing so created anarchic settings in which most of the victims of the Holocaust were murdered.
Auschwitz was not a major killing facility until the final stage. The Holocaust started and proceeded with mass shootings.
Snyder notes that Hitler’s concept of Lebensraum was not only about land but also about the standard of living. This somehow created a context in which it was ‘normal’ to accept that millions of people had to starve in order for Germans to live well.
There were courageous people who rescued Jews. Some expected to be paid for their help, some were selfless. Most of the rescuers knew that their life was at stake if their activity was discovered. Such were the laws established by the Nazis in the East. When all structures are all against you and your own life is at stake rescuing others becomes an exceptional deed.
Diplomats, whose position embodied state sovereignty and who had certain authorization to confer state protection, were able to help.
In the epilogue, the author provides a warning. It can be summed up as: Humanity should be worried about the present and near future.
In light of current events, the warning seems to be relevant, even if some aspects the author touches on may be slightly controversial.
One of the lessons we may draw from the book is that ethnic cleansings are often connected to state collapse. I cannot help but think that the lesson looks double-edged and the argument might be exploited in various ways. Modern dictators might use this observation to their advantage.
Although the account is scientifically dry, it left me emotionally drained. It was so sad to read how people were trapped because of their ethnicity and geography. No one chooses where and when to be born.
The book, as the title suggests, relates a history of the Holocaust. To understand a historical event we need to trace its main causes and restore the concatenation of specific conditions that made it possible. Thе author intends to do this with the tragedy of the Holocaust. He identifies several factors responsible for it.
The destruction of states by Nazi Germany created zones of statelessness “where the entire Holocaust took place.” It should be noted that the other major Nazi mass crimes, such as the starvation of prisoners of war and the murder of civilians, also occurred mostly within those stateless zones.
Statelessness opened a window of opportunity for those who were ready for violence and theft.
Snyder’s argument is convincing, but the reader should not overlook the fact that while statelessness enabled the mass killings, the main reason, nevertheless, must have been the existence of a totalitarian militaristic state profoundly transformed by racial ideas.
Snyder, of course, probes into this but this could have been developed in more detail, in my opinion.
The author emphasizes that where the state ceased to exist and the previous order and institutions went away, atrocities started to happen. To illustrate his argument, he first refers to Austria when, after the Anschluss, its Jewish citizens were excluded, partly or entirely, from the rights of citizenship. Then came Czechoslovakia, Poland, the Baltic states, and the Soviet Union. At first, Hitler expected Poland to become an ally in his ideological war against the Soviets. To his astonishment, Warsaw refused to help Nazi Germany. As Snyder notes, “with Poland as an adversary, the entire calculus was altered.”
Interestingly, Polish authorities had supported a mass Jewish emigration to Palestine and the creation of a Jewish state. Those policies were not in agreement with the interests of Britain, Poland’s ally.
The author explains that what he calls ecological panic justified in the eyes of Hitler and his cohort the struggle for a limited supply of resources. The black earth of Soviet Ukraine, its fertile soil, was regarded as an integral part of Hilter’s concept of ‘living space’ (Lebensraum).
For certain territories, such as eastern Poland and the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), this was the double occupation. First they were invaded by Soviet power, then by Nazi Germany. Those two kinds of occupation came in quick succession and left local people caught between the two ruthless empires in an extremely difficult position. Now they needed to prove to the new German masters their loyalty. The Nazis with their Judeobolshvik myth provided them with an opportunity to display loyalty and to be forgiven for prior collaboration with the Soviets.
The book tries to identify the complex motivations of those who collaborated with the Nazis.
According to the author, the more severe the Soviet assault on prior political and social order, the greater the political resource and the easier for the Germans to employ local collaborators.
For many, this was a question of survival.
Many seem to have been keen to show loyalty to preserve their status. People who had carried out Soviet policies may have needed protection in the new order.
Mass deportations and repressions against local elites and intelligentsia in eastern Poland and the Baltic States carried out by the Soviets quite naturally engendered in many sentiments of hatred against communism.
Former employees of the Soviet NKVD were especially significant in the mass murder of Jews in Estonia.
Collaboration with the Nazis was not driven by local anti-Semitism. Snyder refers to Polish policemen who in independent Poland had prevented anti-Jewish pogroms and now, in a new reality, aided the Nazis in eliminating Jews.
The Holocaust was about triumphing of deranged racial ideas that, under specific circumstances, were transformed into a politics of mass killings.
As Snyder points out, the Holocaust did not happen and could not have happened in Germany of the 1930s. It happened when German power went beyond the boundaries of pre-war Germany with the intention of destroying other states and generating chaos.
Snyder argues that the Holocaust could not be explained by nations, ethnic anti-semitism, or even strong state. It mostly happened in deliberately created zones of statelessness where the previous order was dismantled and even its existence in the past was denied by the conquerors. The Nazis practiced a colonial approach in Poland and the Soviet Union claiming that they never were states.
In France and the Netherlands, the situation was different and many parts of the previous order remained there in place. However, the pattern was similar for those Jews who were excluded from state protection. Before being killed, people were to be deprived of their citizenship, lose their connection with state, and be deported into zones of statelessness.
Snyder compares Estonia and Denmark - two countries that during WW2 were under German occupation and both were subject to the Final Solution.
Estonia and Danemark had many things in common when the war started. Yet a history of the Holocaust was very different in each country.
In Estonia, about 99 percent of the Jews who were present when German forces arrived were killed.
In Denmark, about 99 percent of Jews who had Danish citizenship survived.
Why such a difference? This fact, Snyder suggests, demonstrates the significance of the political factor.
The author discards simplistic and mostly erroneous explanations. All in all, the population of Estonia was not more antisemitic than the Danes. Certain indications even point to the contrary.
The Soviet occupation of Estonia, which started in 1940, resulted in the destruction of the Estonian ruling class, upper administration, and political elite.
“As in Lithuania and Latvia, the Soviet occupation of Estonia had forced thousands of people to flee the country, many to Berlin.”
This created abundant human and political resources for Nazi Germany to exploit. Double occupation sometimes compelled double collaboration. Local people who had collaborated with the Soviets now needed to clear their names, so to speak. They had a strong incentive to conform.
None of these applied to Denmark. The German occupation of Denmark was relatively mild. Moreover, the Germans declared that they “did not aim at disturbing the territorial integrity or the political independence of the Kingdom of Denmark.”
Modern scholarship tends to assert that mass killings are often not associated with strong states but rather with failing states. Party states can be exceptions (the USSR, China, and Cambodia).
Snyder explains that Nazi Germany was a party state which deliberately destroyed other states and in doing so created anarchic settings in which most of the victims of the Holocaust were murdered.
Auschwitz was not a major killing facility until the final stage. The Holocaust started and proceeded with mass shootings.
Snyder notes that Hitler’s concept of Lebensraum was not only about land but also about the standard of living. This somehow created a context in which it was ‘normal’ to accept that millions of people had to starve in order for Germans to live well.
There were courageous people who rescued Jews. Some expected to be paid for their help, some were selfless. Most of the rescuers knew that their life was at stake if their activity was discovered. Such were the laws established by the Nazis in the East. When all structures are all against you and your own life is at stake rescuing others becomes an exceptional deed.
Diplomats, whose position embodied state sovereignty and who had certain authorization to confer state protection, were able to help.
A diplomat could grant to a Jew a passport or at least a travel document - an invitation to return to the world of human reciprocity, in which a person must be treated as a person because he is represented by a state.
In the epilogue, the author provides a warning. It can be summed up as: Humanity should be worried about the present and near future.
In light of current events, the warning seems to be relevant, even if some aspects the author touches on may be slightly controversial.
One of the lessons we may draw from the book is that ethnic cleansings are often connected to state collapse. I cannot help but think that the lesson looks double-edged and the argument might be exploited in various ways. Modern dictators might use this observation to their advantage.
Although the account is scientifically dry, it left me emotionally drained. It was so sad to read how people were trapped because of their ethnicity and geography. No one chooses where and when to be born.
July 16, 2015
This is a challenging book to comprehend entirely.
"Black Earth" is much-in part-about the mass murder of Jews during the Holocaust. The author explains how in Hitler's mind, the thought of elimination of Jews – – all of them – – would restore balance in our world. Germany would then be able to have the resources they needed.
The author also says it was the National States- soviets and Nazis-Who took the protection away from people, leaving millions to die.
Timothy Synder also talks about the fact that there are important lessons we still have not learned ... which is 'the warning' for our future. For example, with environmental challenges that we have today, if not careful, we could be facing another war.
For some reason-- I was reminded of another book: "Water Knife", by Paolo Bacigalupi. - with
the possibility of the drought becoming permanent drying up most of our water in certain states. With despair and corruption... fighting over water rights. In that book we saw violence and betrayal and humans doing nasty things to each other. In some ways the violence and murdering in 'Water Knife', came to my thoughts when the author in this book talks about us not learning our lesson from history: Same purpose: – eliminating large groups of people...killing them off.
So?? I wondered is this 'somewhat' what Timothy Synder is saying 'really' could happen? Not just 'speculative fiction'. Looks that way to me.
The second half of this book is where things begin to feel really scary - too realistic.
It's not that far of a stretch to see that the the same thinking that Hitler expressed in the 1920s could happen again in our future.
Ecological panic and ideology of murder might not be so distant.
"Tens of millions of people died in Hitler's war not so Germans could live, but so that Germans could pursue the American dream in a globalized world. "
"In a scenario of mass killing that resemble the Holocaust, leaders of a developed country might follow or induced panic about future shortages and act preemptively, specifying a human group as the source of an ecological problem, destroying other states by design or by accident."
The planet is changing. Climate change is unpredictable. Coasts are likely to flood that when and where is impossible to say.
"As Hitler demonstrated during the Great Depression, humans are able to portray a looming crises in such a way as to justify drastic measures in the present".
The more I continue to read - toward the last half of this book.., considering all the countries involved: China, Africa, Russia, etc etc ... with each one's contribution to climate change
and conflicts... It's not that difficult to see the future dangers of destruction.
"All forms of counterglobal thinking create the possibility that particular groups can be blamed for planetary phenomena."
Powerful book... Thought-provoking....a little scary.... Challenging to read... extremely important that I did. I'll be suggesting that our Jewish book club reads it.
My Rabbi, ( I know her well), will definitely read this book.
Thank You to Crown Publishing, Netgalley, and Timothy Synder for the opportunity given me.
"Black Earth" is much-in part-about the mass murder of Jews during the Holocaust. The author explains how in Hitler's mind, the thought of elimination of Jews – – all of them – – would restore balance in our world. Germany would then be able to have the resources they needed.
The author also says it was the National States- soviets and Nazis-Who took the protection away from people, leaving millions to die.
Timothy Synder also talks about the fact that there are important lessons we still have not learned ... which is 'the warning' for our future. For example, with environmental challenges that we have today, if not careful, we could be facing another war.
For some reason-- I was reminded of another book: "Water Knife", by Paolo Bacigalupi. - with
the possibility of the drought becoming permanent drying up most of our water in certain states. With despair and corruption... fighting over water rights. In that book we saw violence and betrayal and humans doing nasty things to each other. In some ways the violence and murdering in 'Water Knife', came to my thoughts when the author in this book talks about us not learning our lesson from history: Same purpose: – eliminating large groups of people...killing them off.
So?? I wondered is this 'somewhat' what Timothy Synder is saying 'really' could happen? Not just 'speculative fiction'. Looks that way to me.
The second half of this book is where things begin to feel really scary - too realistic.
It's not that far of a stretch to see that the the same thinking that Hitler expressed in the 1920s could happen again in our future.
Ecological panic and ideology of murder might not be so distant.
"Tens of millions of people died in Hitler's war not so Germans could live, but so that Germans could pursue the American dream in a globalized world. "
"In a scenario of mass killing that resemble the Holocaust, leaders of a developed country might follow or induced panic about future shortages and act preemptively, specifying a human group as the source of an ecological problem, destroying other states by design or by accident."
The planet is changing. Climate change is unpredictable. Coasts are likely to flood that when and where is impossible to say.
"As Hitler demonstrated during the Great Depression, humans are able to portray a looming crises in such a way as to justify drastic measures in the present".
The more I continue to read - toward the last half of this book.., considering all the countries involved: China, Africa, Russia, etc etc ... with each one's contribution to climate change
and conflicts... It's not that difficult to see the future dangers of destruction.
"All forms of counterglobal thinking create the possibility that particular groups can be blamed for planetary phenomena."
Powerful book... Thought-provoking....a little scary.... Challenging to read... extremely important that I did. I'll be suggesting that our Jewish book club reads it.
My Rabbi, ( I know her well), will definitely read this book.
Thank You to Crown Publishing, Netgalley, and Timothy Synder for the opportunity given me.
September 4, 2017
In the end, then, the working farm was a sort of institution, both economic and moral, in which Jewish children could find a place. Like the bond between mothers and children, or fathers and children, or nannies and children, a farmstead provided a relationship where some Jewish children could fit. Like marriage, the prospect of marriage, or sexual desire, labor could generate an image of the present or the future where someone was missing, where someone was needed, where someone could be added. That someone, sometimes, could be a Jew.
January 25, 2016
Starts very promisingly, with some fascinating insights into Hitler's worldview and philosophy, as well as a novel (to me) holistic approach to European international relations that enables Snyder to explain why the Holocaust took the precise shape that it did, a shape that we tend to think of as fully formed from the beginning but which in fact appears to have occurred the way it did because of numerous errors of judgement, policymaking on the fly, and developments on the ground. Snyder's process of unfolding the narrative works well for the first two-thirds of the book but devolves into anecdote towards the end, with an eye to justifying his conclusion, the lesson we need to learn from the Holocaust, which seems to be that it was statelessness that made the mass murder of Europe's Jews possible, rather than the existence of totalitarian, authoritarian, militaristic states intent on carving up the continent in pursuit of their own interests. Snyder does not hide his indebtedness to Hannah Arendt's philosophy, and pretty much appears to repeat her views. How this constitutes a new lesson to be learned is unclear, then. It just seems to be Arendt redux.
June 7, 2024
This was an outstanding book that really had me reconsidering my assumptions about the Holocaust. The circuitous trail that led me to this book started when I watched PBS's American Experience documentary, “America and the Holocaust.” Timothy Snyder had some amazing insights that I had never heard before. He shared entirely new thinking based on an intimate understanding of Eastern Europe & Russia’s role in the Holocaust.
The Holocaust cliché that I learned as a child was that Germany set out to destroy the Jews during WW2. Snyder's book reveals that this overly simplistic history belies a far more complex story that encompasses all of Eastern Europe. Snyder is an eastern European historian and he methodically shows how the travesties of the Holocaust were a dance of many countries, and many cultures that enthusiastically joined in the genocide.
Sure, Hitler and the SS set up an industrial machine to murder people, but that system would never of been possible without the state destruction initiated by the Russians and other eastern European governments. Once the bureaucrats were gone, murdering Jews became exponentially easier. Conquered countries with functioning bureaucracies (like France) were far more successful at protecting their Jewish populations.
The German’s most effective genocide strategy was not directly killing Jews. Their most fiendishly effective strategy was motivating local inhabitants to do it for them. The Germans were often the puppet masters who tapped the disturbingly pervasive anti-semitism that lived in the hearts of average people throughout Eastern Europe.
Images of the Holocaust are typically accompanied by railroad cars of people arriving at mass death camps such as Auschwitz and Treblinka. But the surprising truth is that most of the killing was local, primarily instigated by local police and local citizens who took it upon themselves to shoot Jews in their own communities. Most of the murders were instigated through the many countries and the local towns of Eastern Europe. Most of the time, it was done with a bullet to the head, not a gas chamber.
Many times these murders were motivated by simple greed, situations such as when a neighbor covets a Jewish family's home. Official policy gave them carte blanche to simply massacre that family and move into a spacious new apartment completely unchallenged.
I also had no idea just how huge a role Russia played in the Holocaust. In the beginning, the Russians and the Germans were allies in the killing. Russia’s goal wasn’t the extermination of the Jews, it was decapitating the leadership of the existing states it annexed. Kill all the leaders and revolt becomes far less likely.
It was a one-two punch. The Russians killed or imprisoned all of the intellectuals, soldiers and public officials. This created a lord-of-the-flies world where average people were forced to do terrible things just to survive.
When the Germans overran the Russian front lines in Eastern Europe during 1941-42, former Soviet collaborators were rounded up. All of them were desperate to save their own skins. The German’s provided them with a clear loyalty test - if they truly supported Germany, they must prove it by wiping out the Jews in their own community. It was a win-win. The local murderers proved their loyalty to their new German overlords and these local people also acquired a bounty of the possessions from their victims. In a time of war, a secure place to live and food to eat was often the difference between life and death.
The insights of this book have me rethinking my beliefs on the Holocaust. Snyder has done outstanding research that uncovers a whole new chapter of this tragedy I never knew.
That being said, this book was tough to get through. It is DENSE, filled with an often mind-numbing avalanche of information. Storytelling is rudimentary at best, and the author has a maddening tendency to repeat himself. Still, I give it a five-star rating simply for its revelational information.
The Holocaust cliché that I learned as a child was that Germany set out to destroy the Jews during WW2. Snyder's book reveals that this overly simplistic history belies a far more complex story that encompasses all of Eastern Europe. Snyder is an eastern European historian and he methodically shows how the travesties of the Holocaust were a dance of many countries, and many cultures that enthusiastically joined in the genocide.
Sure, Hitler and the SS set up an industrial machine to murder people, but that system would never of been possible without the state destruction initiated by the Russians and other eastern European governments. Once the bureaucrats were gone, murdering Jews became exponentially easier. Conquered countries with functioning bureaucracies (like France) were far more successful at protecting their Jewish populations.
The German’s most effective genocide strategy was not directly killing Jews. Their most fiendishly effective strategy was motivating local inhabitants to do it for them. The Germans were often the puppet masters who tapped the disturbingly pervasive anti-semitism that lived in the hearts of average people throughout Eastern Europe.
Images of the Holocaust are typically accompanied by railroad cars of people arriving at mass death camps such as Auschwitz and Treblinka. But the surprising truth is that most of the killing was local, primarily instigated by local police and local citizens who took it upon themselves to shoot Jews in their own communities. Most of the murders were instigated through the many countries and the local towns of Eastern Europe. Most of the time, it was done with a bullet to the head, not a gas chamber.
Many times these murders were motivated by simple greed, situations such as when a neighbor covets a Jewish family's home. Official policy gave them carte blanche to simply massacre that family and move into a spacious new apartment completely unchallenged.
I also had no idea just how huge a role Russia played in the Holocaust. In the beginning, the Russians and the Germans were allies in the killing. Russia’s goal wasn’t the extermination of the Jews, it was decapitating the leadership of the existing states it annexed. Kill all the leaders and revolt becomes far less likely.
It was a one-two punch. The Russians killed or imprisoned all of the intellectuals, soldiers and public officials. This created a lord-of-the-flies world where average people were forced to do terrible things just to survive.
When the Germans overran the Russian front lines in Eastern Europe during 1941-42, former Soviet collaborators were rounded up. All of them were desperate to save their own skins. The German’s provided them with a clear loyalty test - if they truly supported Germany, they must prove it by wiping out the Jews in their own community. It was a win-win. The local murderers proved their loyalty to their new German overlords and these local people also acquired a bounty of the possessions from their victims. In a time of war, a secure place to live and food to eat was often the difference between life and death.
The insights of this book have me rethinking my beliefs on the Holocaust. Snyder has done outstanding research that uncovers a whole new chapter of this tragedy I never knew.
That being said, this book was tough to get through. It is DENSE, filled with an often mind-numbing avalanche of information. Storytelling is rudimentary at best, and the author has a maddening tendency to repeat himself. Still, I give it a five-star rating simply for its revelational information.
May 31, 2017
I decided to read this one because Timothy Snyder, a history professor at Yale, has been making a lot of high-profile, baleful predictions about Trumpian autocracy. I kind of wanted to see how sensationalist he was in one of his books, and I'm always eager to try to use history as a way to understand the present.
The thesis of the book comes most succinctly in its final pages:
Snyder focuses his attention for most of the book on elucidating the Nazi/Soviet destruction of the states that buffered them, and how this immiserated the majority of world Jewry scattered amongst them. The findings are really quite shocking; in addition to the barbarity that is never forgotten yet freshly sickening upon each renewed encounter, the differences in treatment between Jewish citizens of Denmark vs. Estonia, and those of France vs. those of Greece, are truly astounding. Snyder makes a really strong case for the idea, certainly not new, that Jews and other atomized, conspicuous minorities have only the bureaucracy and protection of the state when passions grow enflamed and institutions and customs break down.
Perhaps this is why he is so choleric about the Trump presidency. While I agree that our mores are in complete shambles, and the heralded destruction of government gives me pause, I think (hope) that the Trump administration's incompetency and lack of coherent ideology will be enough to stave off the horrors of Nazi and Soviet atrocities, and anything resembling them in form if not size.
But it's still so sad for our country. And really, the United States (and Britain, as it turns out) should stop applauding itself for intervening to stop the Holocaust. As Snyder mentions: by the time the doughboys landed at Normandy, most of the worst of it was over. Bureaucratic interposers are the unlikely heroes of this book, with diplomats from China, Japan, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and other less congratulated nations issuing sham passports that saved tens of thousands of lives. Meanwhile, in an America demonstrating its tendency toward miserliness and apathy to the travails of "others," our Jewish refugee policy was contemptible in the extreme. To wit:
"Between July 1942 and June 1943, only 4,705 Jews were admitted to the United States. Fewer than the number of Warsaw Jews who were killed on a given day in Treblinka in the Summer of 1942."
Perhaps if we spent less time congratulating ourselves we would understand our humane obligations better? Maybe if we understood how short we've fallen in past times of need, we would be more charitable, neighborly citizens of the world.
The thesis of the book comes most succinctly in its final pages:
Gustaw Herling-Grudzinski, . . . wrote that 'a man can be human only under human conditions.' The purpose of the state is to preserve these conditions, so that its citizens need not see personal survival as their only goal. The state is for the recognition, endorsement, and protection of rights, which means creating the conditions under which rights can be recognized, endorsed, and protected. The state endures to create a sense of durability.
Snyder focuses his attention for most of the book on elucidating the Nazi/Soviet destruction of the states that buffered them, and how this immiserated the majority of world Jewry scattered amongst them. The findings are really quite shocking; in addition to the barbarity that is never forgotten yet freshly sickening upon each renewed encounter, the differences in treatment between Jewish citizens of Denmark vs. Estonia, and those of France vs. those of Greece, are truly astounding. Snyder makes a really strong case for the idea, certainly not new, that Jews and other atomized, conspicuous minorities have only the bureaucracy and protection of the state when passions grow enflamed and institutions and customs break down.
Perhaps this is why he is so choleric about the Trump presidency. While I agree that our mores are in complete shambles, and the heralded destruction of government gives me pause, I think (hope) that the Trump administration's incompetency and lack of coherent ideology will be enough to stave off the horrors of Nazi and Soviet atrocities, and anything resembling them in form if not size.
But it's still so sad for our country. And really, the United States (and Britain, as it turns out) should stop applauding itself for intervening to stop the Holocaust. As Snyder mentions: by the time the doughboys landed at Normandy, most of the worst of it was over. Bureaucratic interposers are the unlikely heroes of this book, with diplomats from China, Japan, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and other less congratulated nations issuing sham passports that saved tens of thousands of lives. Meanwhile, in an America demonstrating its tendency toward miserliness and apathy to the travails of "others," our Jewish refugee policy was contemptible in the extreme. To wit:
"Between July 1942 and June 1943, only 4,705 Jews were admitted to the United States. Fewer than the number of Warsaw Jews who were killed on a given day in Treblinka in the Summer of 1942."
Perhaps if we spent less time congratulating ourselves we would understand our humane obligations better? Maybe if we understood how short we've fallen in past times of need, we would be more charitable, neighborly citizens of the world.
November 28, 2016
Greatest book I've read this year
The conclusion, which purports to give the 'warning' of the title, is probably the weakest part. I don't want to focus on that now. Frankly I don't much want to attempt an intellectual evaluation at all. Black Earth leaves me very nearly speechless. More than an impressive piece of scholarship, truly a work of art. Utterly devastating. Aside from a few old favorites I revisited, the greatest book I've read so far this year.
*
No one knows more about this subject than Timothy Snyder, and he thinks there's some merit to the comparison http://www.slate.com/articles/news_an...
The conclusion, which purports to give the 'warning' of the title, is probably the weakest part. I don't want to focus on that now. Frankly I don't much want to attempt an intellectual evaluation at all. Black Earth leaves me very nearly speechless. More than an impressive piece of scholarship, truly a work of art. Utterly devastating. Aside from a few old favorites I revisited, the greatest book I've read so far this year.
*
No one knows more about this subject than Timothy Snyder, and he thinks there's some merit to the comparison http://www.slate.com/articles/news_an...
October 2, 2015
This may well be one of the single most impressive books that I have ever read about the Holocaust. Snyder approaches the subject from multiple angles and completely reinvents how we think about this period of history. Unlike many Holocaust books, Black Earth does not focus directly on mass murder, but instead on the political and institutional ideologies that made it possible.
Snyder examines Hitler in his earliest political form in order to understand his thinking and rational so that it is possible to better follow his train of thought in later events. This means that the reader is not simply presented with a stack of information without context, but rather has context built up in order to build an understanding of the causality.
Much of the book deals with Hitler's methodology specifically the erasing of states such as Poland and the Ukraine. This goes beyond simple destruction to the complete removal from history, which in practice removes the existence of the state and the protections it provides to its citizens. The removale of citizenship allowed Hitler to commit mass murder without the objection of the states in which he performed it. In this way the conquered peoples, especially Jews suffered greatly as they were seen as non-humans without state legal protection meaningful they were completely vulnerable. As a result of this Jews who lost their state were at a fa greater risk that Jews living in Germany proper. These people had no protection and were unforgivingly massacred by Nazis and Soviets alike.
In addition to the process of state removal Snyder demonstrates that responsibility for the killings rests not only at the feet of German leaders,but at the feet of the German people as well. He shows that in many cases the German people were not only complacent, but directly involved in the process of mass murder as a way of financial or material gain or simply as a way of avenging a perceived wrong.
Snyder concludes his text by demonstrating that the ideologies and process that allowed the Holocaust to happen are far from being extinct, they Re in fact very much alive and can be seen in events such as African tribal genocide, and the current situation in Russia where leadership has created a world wide conspiracy of homosexuality that closely resembles the Judeobolshevik plot that Hitler so readily blamed for everything. Ecologic and climate factors are also zheading in a direction where another such event may occur. And Snyder skillfully shows that we are not immune from the horrors of the past.
I highly recommended this book to anyone interested in 20th century history.
Snyder examines Hitler in his earliest political form in order to understand his thinking and rational so that it is possible to better follow his train of thought in later events. This means that the reader is not simply presented with a stack of information without context, but rather has context built up in order to build an understanding of the causality.
Much of the book deals with Hitler's methodology specifically the erasing of states such as Poland and the Ukraine. This goes beyond simple destruction to the complete removal from history, which in practice removes the existence of the state and the protections it provides to its citizens. The removale of citizenship allowed Hitler to commit mass murder without the objection of the states in which he performed it. In this way the conquered peoples, especially Jews suffered greatly as they were seen as non-humans without state legal protection meaningful they were completely vulnerable. As a result of this Jews who lost their state were at a fa greater risk that Jews living in Germany proper. These people had no protection and were unforgivingly massacred by Nazis and Soviets alike.
In addition to the process of state removal Snyder demonstrates that responsibility for the killings rests not only at the feet of German leaders,but at the feet of the German people as well. He shows that in many cases the German people were not only complacent, but directly involved in the process of mass murder as a way of financial or material gain or simply as a way of avenging a perceived wrong.
Snyder concludes his text by demonstrating that the ideologies and process that allowed the Holocaust to happen are far from being extinct, they Re in fact very much alive and can be seen in events such as African tribal genocide, and the current situation in Russia where leadership has created a world wide conspiracy of homosexuality that closely resembles the Judeobolshevik plot that Hitler so readily blamed for everything. Ecologic and climate factors are also zheading in a direction where another such event may occur. And Snyder skillfully shows that we are not immune from the horrors of the past.
I highly recommended this book to anyone interested in 20th century history.
October 3, 2016
You can think of this as a kind of sequel to Snyder's 2010 book Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. He continues the story of how misemphases of parts of the Holocaust have led us to place the camps as the primary locales of death (they weren't, most of the killing was done outside of them) and German borders as the ones our imaginations take us to, when very little killing, in relative terms, was actually done inside those borders. Snyder has shifted the Holocaust east. He has also emphasized the nature of the double occupation: how those areas where first the Soviets, and then the Germans, terrorized populations, removed civil law, and engaged in mass killing, were the locales of supreme danger and horror. He stresses the risks of statelessness; losing one's citizenship made it many times more likely that one would die.
Snyder roots Hitler's political aims in a twisted planetary ecology, and in a slightly strange epilogue which veers outside the normal historian's purview, ties the Holocaust predictively to current and future threats of climate change, severe political disruption, and mass death.
It must be said that the cover of Black Earth is pleasing, with a delicious debossed black sans-serif font over what looks like magnified marble.
September 23, 2020
some timely quotes from this book....
“Most of us would like to think that we possess a “moral instinct.” Perhaps we imagine that we would be rescuers in some future catastrophe. Yet if states were destroyed, local institutions corrupted, and economic incentives directed towards murder, few of us would behave well. There is little reason to think that we are ethically superior to the Europeans of the 1930s and 1940s, or for that matter less vulnerable to the kind of ideas that Hitler so successfully promulgated and realized.”
“When we lack a sense of past and future, the present feels like a shaky platform, an uncertain basis for action.”
“We are in the presence,” said Winston Churchill, “of a crime without a name.” Its perpetrators were human beings, operating with initiative and creativity in political circumstances of their own making. State destruction did not alter politics, but rather created a new form of politics, which enabled a new kind of crime."
==============
Excellent new documentary. About 95% of the photos and film footage were new to me.
https://www.ricksteves.com/watch-read...
“Most of us would like to think that we possess a “moral instinct.” Perhaps we imagine that we would be rescuers in some future catastrophe. Yet if states were destroyed, local institutions corrupted, and economic incentives directed towards murder, few of us would behave well. There is little reason to think that we are ethically superior to the Europeans of the 1930s and 1940s, or for that matter less vulnerable to the kind of ideas that Hitler so successfully promulgated and realized.”
“When we lack a sense of past and future, the present feels like a shaky platform, an uncertain basis for action.”
“We are in the presence,” said Winston Churchill, “of a crime without a name.” Its perpetrators were human beings, operating with initiative and creativity in political circumstances of their own making. State destruction did not alter politics, but rather created a new form of politics, which enabled a new kind of crime."
==============
Excellent new documentary. About 95% of the photos and film footage were new to me.
https://www.ricksteves.com/watch-read...
September 28, 2015
Black Earth – A Warning from History
Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning is the latest book from the excellent historian Timothy Snyder, which we should sit up and take notice of. Like the famous statement that if we fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, is never more apt than now with the current situation in the middle east. The lessons from this book can be used time and time again especially when we allow civilisations to collapse.
In what has to be one of the best introductions on the subject Snyder examines Hitler’s beliefs that drove his politics and actions such as, nature, struggle, Jews, race, murder, sex and religion, He is also asking the questions of Why neighbour turned on neighbour? How strangers can kill others? His reading of the primary sources as well as secondary sources is second to none, and those sources are excellent.
Snyder is able to show that Hilter believed that history was a perpetual struggle for survival of the fittest race and that morality, secular ethics stood in the way of that supreme drive. That he was able in his mind reduced all humans to a state of nature, ignoring modern science, and that interfering in nature was right.
Snyder also notes that race replaced the state as the supreme element of human society. This he believed would allow for anarchy, a stateless society where no laws, ethics or rules exist in order for the Nazi’s to carry out what they needed for the improvement of the ‘Aryan’ race. It must also be understood that is was why the Holocaust succeeded so well in Eastern Poland, Ukraine and other Eastern European countries.
By the time the concentration extermination camps opened it must be understood that around three million Jews had already been murdered in Eastern Europe. This had been made easier by the Nazi’s early Soviet allies when they invaded Poland and removed many layers of society, just as they had in Ukraine, leaving behind an anarchic state, a lawless wild east, where neighbour had been turned against neighbour. There had been anti-Semitic actions prior to the war in the east, and many of the German Jews had left Germany before the war, the seed of hatred had already been planted. The war created the ‘prefect’ storm for Hitler’s race wars to begin, when states were swept aside, the rule of law no longer applicable.
Snyder also points out that Hitler was no German nationalist as has been portrayed in many accounts, but in the ecological world of races united and survival of the fittest. Whereas Slavs were an inferior race of European grounding who needed to be destroyed, but Jews fell in to a far different category. Jews were not a regional, European enemy but a global one that needed to be wiped of the map as they were a ‘non-race’ who were not part of the laws of nature.
What we learn is that statelessness decided the scale of the murdering, especially when comparing Estonia with Denmark, as one killed all their Jews while the other protected them, as one retained its state structures while the others had been destroyed. Saying that, statelessness of individuals within the countries that were able to retain its structures, were more likely to face round ups and death.
Black History’s overriding argument that if conditions are right then another Holocaust is possible, especially when we make people stateless, remove their human rights and try and keep them in camps.
Black History is an excellent review of the Holocaust and the conditions that led so easily for over six million Jews to be murdered systematically. It also points out the lessons that we need to learn and understand if we do not wish to repeat them with such dire affects.
Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning is the latest book from the excellent historian Timothy Snyder, which we should sit up and take notice of. Like the famous statement that if we fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, is never more apt than now with the current situation in the middle east. The lessons from this book can be used time and time again especially when we allow civilisations to collapse.
In what has to be one of the best introductions on the subject Snyder examines Hitler’s beliefs that drove his politics and actions such as, nature, struggle, Jews, race, murder, sex and religion, He is also asking the questions of Why neighbour turned on neighbour? How strangers can kill others? His reading of the primary sources as well as secondary sources is second to none, and those sources are excellent.
Snyder is able to show that Hilter believed that history was a perpetual struggle for survival of the fittest race and that morality, secular ethics stood in the way of that supreme drive. That he was able in his mind reduced all humans to a state of nature, ignoring modern science, and that interfering in nature was right.
Snyder also notes that race replaced the state as the supreme element of human society. This he believed would allow for anarchy, a stateless society where no laws, ethics or rules exist in order for the Nazi’s to carry out what they needed for the improvement of the ‘Aryan’ race. It must also be understood that is was why the Holocaust succeeded so well in Eastern Poland, Ukraine and other Eastern European countries.
By the time the concentration extermination camps opened it must be understood that around three million Jews had already been murdered in Eastern Europe. This had been made easier by the Nazi’s early Soviet allies when they invaded Poland and removed many layers of society, just as they had in Ukraine, leaving behind an anarchic state, a lawless wild east, where neighbour had been turned against neighbour. There had been anti-Semitic actions prior to the war in the east, and many of the German Jews had left Germany before the war, the seed of hatred had already been planted. The war created the ‘prefect’ storm for Hitler’s race wars to begin, when states were swept aside, the rule of law no longer applicable.
Snyder also points out that Hitler was no German nationalist as has been portrayed in many accounts, but in the ecological world of races united and survival of the fittest. Whereas Slavs were an inferior race of European grounding who needed to be destroyed, but Jews fell in to a far different category. Jews were not a regional, European enemy but a global one that needed to be wiped of the map as they were a ‘non-race’ who were not part of the laws of nature.
What we learn is that statelessness decided the scale of the murdering, especially when comparing Estonia with Denmark, as one killed all their Jews while the other protected them, as one retained its state structures while the others had been destroyed. Saying that, statelessness of individuals within the countries that were able to retain its structures, were more likely to face round ups and death.
Black History’s overriding argument that if conditions are right then another Holocaust is possible, especially when we make people stateless, remove their human rights and try and keep them in camps.
Black History is an excellent review of the Holocaust and the conditions that led so easily for over six million Jews to be murdered systematically. It also points out the lessons that we need to learn and understand if we do not wish to repeat them with such dire affects.
September 11, 2019
A holokausztot többféleképpen lehet interpretálni. Lehet úgy, hogy listaszerűen felsoroljuk a borzalmakat, különösebb kommentár nélkül, hisz azok úgyis magukért beszélnek: csupaszon is a zsigerbe hatolnak. Ennek a megközelítésnek a veszélye, hogy a lista majd az esemény extremitására helyezi a hangsúlyt – vagyis a befogadóban azt az érzést kelti, hogy a holokauszt különleges, tehát egyszeri és megismételhetetlen. Snyder nem ezt az utat választja. Tényszerűen kevés borzalmat ír le – ehelyett megmutatja nekünk, hogy milyen, az adott pillanatban racionálisnak tűnő döntések sorozata vezetett el a népirtásig, hogy miért akkor és miért ott történt meg minden, amikor és ahol. És hogy ez az „akkor és ott” mennyire nem nyugtathat meg minket.
A Fekete föld alighanem az utóbbi idők legkeményebb és legprovokatívabb olvasmánya, épp azért, mert Snyder olvasatában tulajdonképpen minden logikusan k��vetkezett abból a korhangulatból, ami Hitlert a csúcsra emelte. Mert nem Hitler volt a lényeg – idióták mindenütt vannak, a kérdés, hogy a hatalomba kerülnek-e, vagy a periférián maradnak. A kulcsmomentum pedig nem az volt, amikor a vonatok elindultak a haláltáborokba (addigra már Kelet-Európa zsidó lakosságának nagy része halott volt), hanem az az ismerős pillanat, amikor egy többségi társadalom elhatározta, hogy elidegenít magától egy csoportot: bűnbaknak jelöli ki a globális problémákért. Vagy ahogy Snyder megfogalmazza: „A véres faji küzdelem planetáris vízióját, amely többnyire nem volt valami eleve vonzó dolog az emberek többsége számára, sikerült olyan fogalmakra és képekre lefordítani, amelyek képesek voltak politikai támogatást generálni.” (198. oldal) Mert ha ezzel megvagyunk, már minden flottul megy – szinte magától. Az utolsó adalék pedig, amitől berobban az egész, az állam intézményeinek felszámolása – nemcsak a nácik, de a szovjetek segítségével –, ez hozza létre azt a légüres teret, ahol az ember egyedül marad, és csak a puszta jószerencsében bízhat. De többnyire abban sem. Külön zseniális, hogy miután az író leszögezte, miért rettenetesen valószerű, hogy az adott körülmények népirtáshoz vezetnek, megmutatja az embermentőket is, akik mindennek ellenére küzdöttek a zsidók életéért. És ebből az összevetésből az is kiderül, hogy az adott környezetben utóbbiak mennyire irracionálisan cselekedtek – mert van, amikor az emberség az irracionalitás.
Miközben kiidézgettem ebből a könyvből passzusokat, azon kaptam magam, hogy bár azok önmagukban is értékkel bírnak, mégis: az egész könyv kontextusában van igazi értelmük. Snyder ugyanis (aki a kelet-közép-európai régió abszolút szakértője) olyan koherens, organikus teóriát épít, ahol minden mindennel összefügg és nincsen egyetlen ok – pont ettől olyan bonyolult, és egyben olyan valószerű a víziója. Támaszkodik gyakorlatilag az összes határtudomány eredményeire, a hideg leírás helyett a láttatás, az érzékeltetés eszközéhez nyúl. A kötet egyik kulcsa mindazonáltal az utolsó fejezet, ami megteremti az átkötéseket a hitleri vízió és a jelen között, olyan riasztó analógiákra mutatva rá, amiktől engem a hányinger kerülgetett. Nyilvánvaló, hogy ezekkel a párhuzamokkal lehet vitatkozni – de pont ez a lényeg: hogy vitatkozzunk róluk. Legyenek a közbeszéd tárgyai, szivárogjanak bele minél több ember fejébe – mert nagyjából a történelem ismerete az egyetlen, ami megmenthet minket a történelem megismétlődésétől.
(Egy ilyen fantasztikus, megrázó munka amúgy igazán megérdemelte volna, hogy rendesen korrektúrázzák… Nem mondom, hogy érthetetlen volt, messze nem, de meglehetős számú mondattani értelmetlenség maradt benne a szövegben.)
A Fekete föld alighanem az utóbbi idők legkeményebb és legprovokatívabb olvasmánya, épp azért, mert Snyder olvasatában tulajdonképpen minden logikusan k��vetkezett abból a korhangulatból, ami Hitlert a csúcsra emelte. Mert nem Hitler volt a lényeg – idióták mindenütt vannak, a kérdés, hogy a hatalomba kerülnek-e, vagy a periférián maradnak. A kulcsmomentum pedig nem az volt, amikor a vonatok elindultak a haláltáborokba (addigra már Kelet-Európa zsidó lakosságának nagy része halott volt), hanem az az ismerős pillanat, amikor egy többségi társadalom elhatározta, hogy elidegenít magától egy csoportot: bűnbaknak jelöli ki a globális problémákért. Vagy ahogy Snyder megfogalmazza: „A véres faji küzdelem planetáris vízióját, amely többnyire nem volt valami eleve vonzó dolog az emberek többsége számára, sikerült olyan fogalmakra és képekre lefordítani, amelyek képesek voltak politikai támogatást generálni.” (198. oldal) Mert ha ezzel megvagyunk, már minden flottul megy – szinte magától. Az utolsó adalék pedig, amitől berobban az egész, az állam intézményeinek felszámolása – nemcsak a nácik, de a szovjetek segítségével –, ez hozza létre azt a légüres teret, ahol az ember egyedül marad, és csak a puszta jószerencsében bízhat. De többnyire abban sem. Külön zseniális, hogy miután az író leszögezte, miért rettenetesen valószerű, hogy az adott körülmények népirtáshoz vezetnek, megmutatja az embermentőket is, akik mindennek ellenére küzdöttek a zsidók életéért. És ebből az összevetésből az is kiderül, hogy az adott környezetben utóbbiak mennyire irracionálisan cselekedtek – mert van, amikor az emberség az irracionalitás.
Miközben kiidézgettem ebből a könyvből passzusokat, azon kaptam magam, hogy bár azok önmagukban is értékkel bírnak, mégis: az egész könyv kontextusában van igazi értelmük. Snyder ugyanis (aki a kelet-közép-európai régió abszolút szakértője) olyan koherens, organikus teóriát épít, ahol minden mindennel összefügg és nincsen egyetlen ok – pont ettől olyan bonyolult, és egyben olyan valószerű a víziója. Támaszkodik gyakorlatilag az összes határtudomány eredményeire, a hideg leírás helyett a láttatás, az érzékeltetés eszközéhez nyúl. A kötet egyik kulcsa mindazonáltal az utolsó fejezet, ami megteremti az átkötéseket a hitleri vízió és a jelen között, olyan riasztó analógiákra mutatva rá, amiktől engem a hányinger kerülgetett. Nyilvánvaló, hogy ezekkel a párhuzamokkal lehet vitatkozni – de pont ez a lényeg: hogy vitatkozzunk róluk. Legyenek a közbeszéd tárgyai, szivárogjanak bele minél több ember fejébe – mert nagyjából a történelem ismerete az egyetlen, ami megmenthet minket a történelem megismétlődésétől.
(Egy ilyen fantasztikus, megrázó munka amúgy igazán megérdemelte volna, hogy rendesen korrektúrázzák… Nem mondom, hogy érthetetlen volt, messze nem, de meglehetős számú mondattani értelmetlenség maradt benne a szövegben.)
June 12, 2021
This is perhaps the best book I have ever read on the holocaust which is not to say it was enjoyable in any sense of the word. This book doesn't focus on the nuts and bolts of the issue, but instead on the how and why of it. This is different from every other book I have read on the subject. Instead of focusing on the numbers, this book focuses on how the Germans were able to start mass killing where and when they did. It also looks at where Jews were nearly whipped out and where they were allowed to survive in greater numbers and what caused the difference in these numbers. It was surprising to me to find out that more French Jews were to survive the war than Dutch Jews. When the author goes over the reasoning for this it becomes clear and understandable.
He also goes over why the Nazi Leadership kept on killing Jews and killing them at a more prodigious rate as the war turned against them. Interestingly enough this explanation seems to make the actions of Hitler more understandable if no less horrific.
I feel that this should be required reading.
He also goes over why the Nazi Leadership kept on killing Jews and killing them at a more prodigious rate as the war turned against them. Interestingly enough this explanation seems to make the actions of Hitler more understandable if no less horrific.
I feel that this should be required reading.
June 20, 2022
A depressing account of how the Nazis first scapegoated then murdered Jews in WW2. It does make some very interesting points about the differential treatment of Jews in various parts of Nazi Europe.
The worst affected places were the doubly occupied zones between the Germans and Russians where states were destroyed and local collaborators had something to prove. Contrast that with Denmark where local society held together and most Jews were saved.
Harrowing and erudite. In some ways the scariest chapter was the final one where the author highlights the dangers involved in climate change and its inevitable impact on countries - raising political tension within and between countries.
The worst affected places were the doubly occupied zones between the Germans and Russians where states were destroyed and local collaborators had something to prove. Contrast that with Denmark where local society held together and most Jews were saved.
Harrowing and erudite. In some ways the scariest chapter was the final one where the author highlights the dangers involved in climate change and its inevitable impact on countries - raising political tension within and between countries.
March 21, 2021
Rarely do I give any book having to do with the Holocaust more than three or four stars, as I usually feel like the information has just been recycled. This book, however, deserves all five stars.
Whether you are an historian or simply have an interest in this subject, 'Black Earth' will be very eye opening. In this detailed account, the author offers a broader look at the events leading up to the more commonly discussed and recounted Holocaust.
Instead of starting at the height of the Nazi regime and continuing forward, Timothy Snyder gives his readers a basis of information to help them understand how one event led to another and ultimately changed the face of history.
This is an extremely well-researched, very organised book that will answer your questions and leave you feeling more knowledgeable for having read it. I was greatly impressed by the depth of information available here and the way it was presented.
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who wants to know more of the story of the Holocaust and the people affected by it. Very provoking, very interesting.
This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher and provided through Netgalley. All opinions are my own.
Whether you are an historian or simply have an interest in this subject, 'Black Earth' will be very eye opening. In this detailed account, the author offers a broader look at the events leading up to the more commonly discussed and recounted Holocaust.
Instead of starting at the height of the Nazi regime and continuing forward, Timothy Snyder gives his readers a basis of information to help them understand how one event led to another and ultimately changed the face of history.
This is an extremely well-researched, very organised book that will answer your questions and leave you feeling more knowledgeable for having read it. I was greatly impressed by the depth of information available here and the way it was presented.
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who wants to know more of the story of the Holocaust and the people affected by it. Very provoking, very interesting.
This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher and provided through Netgalley. All opinions are my own.
December 8, 2015
Not an easy book to read but an incredibly interesting one. Focusing on Hitlers attempted extermination of the Jews and the fact that it represented the political climate at the time and there are signs we are in the middle of a resurgence. A real eye opener that drags you kicking and screaming into the shit that is currently happening in this world of ours.
February 15, 2021
When states are absent, rights — by any definition — are impossible to sustain.
Black Earth by Timothy Snyder
Snyder needs little introduction as he is the author of many best selling books about totalitarianism. He is clearly an expert.
In this book, Snyder’s big picture conclusions are spot on - but these views are mostly laid out in the intro and conclusion. The pages in between contain a number of holocaust events in surrounding countries not known to most lay people including myself. But it was largely the process that was discussed and how easy it was for the Nazi’s to use the invaded countries systems to separate the Jews from everyone else. These are the nuggets in a sometimes tedious history. With the extensive maps and countries covered it really has the feel of a military battle history as the Nazi’s swept into various countries.
In short I needed more personal and in depth stories from the victims. And having read so many more emotionally powerful books about the Holocaust this read just fell flat.
3.5 stars. His message that something like the Holocaust could happen again was very powerful and cogent but Snyder’s also preaching to the choir here. I didn’t need so much substantiation.
Black Earth by Timothy Snyder
Snyder needs little introduction as he is the author of many best selling books about totalitarianism. He is clearly an expert.
In this book, Snyder’s big picture conclusions are spot on - but these views are mostly laid out in the intro and conclusion. The pages in between contain a number of holocaust events in surrounding countries not known to most lay people including myself. But it was largely the process that was discussed and how easy it was for the Nazi’s to use the invaded countries systems to separate the Jews from everyone else. These are the nuggets in a sometimes tedious history. With the extensive maps and countries covered it really has the feel of a military battle history as the Nazi’s swept into various countries.
In short I needed more personal and in depth stories from the victims. And having read so many more emotionally powerful books about the Holocaust this read just fell flat.
3.5 stars. His message that something like the Holocaust could happen again was very powerful and cogent but Snyder’s also preaching to the choir here. I didn’t need so much substantiation.
Read
June 30, 2015Not an easy book, by any stretch, but a compelling and important one. I don't know if I *enjoyed* it, per se, but I'm very glad that I stuck with it.
November 17, 2019
原本是因為課題作業中有關於生態恐慌的內容於是買下進行閱讀，實際上Readmoo的簡介與書本內容有較大偏差。本書約90%內容均��進行二戰大屠殺的詳細描述與分析，內容幾乎可以說是面面俱到——從宏觀歷史到在後世看來如故事一般的細節。而作者的點評與總結可以以絕妙來形容，辛辣、一語中的、悲傷以及警示。
關於我最開始想要找到答案的問題在最後以今日世界為論題的一章中也有明確描述，其中對於人群心理層面的分析很有幫助。
希望以後在對二戰史有更深入了解之可以回來重讀這本書。
關於我最開始想要找到答案的問題在最後以今日世界為論題的一章中也有明確描述，其中對於人群心理層面的分析很有幫助。
希望以後在對二戰史有更深入了解之可以回來重讀這本書。
October 29, 2021
O analiza a originilor intelectuale ale Holocaustului si un raspuns la intrebarea "cum a fost posibil?".
October 15, 2016
In this epic history of extermination and survival, Timothy Snyder presents a new explanation of the great atrocity of the twentieth century, and reveals the risks that we face in the twenty-first. Based on new sources from eastern Europe and forgotten testimonies from Jewish survivors, Black Earth recounts the mass murder of the Jews as an event that is still close to us, more comprehensible than we would like to think, and thus all the more terrifying.
The Holocaust began in a dark but accessible place, in Hitler's mind, with the thought that the elimination of Jews would restore balance to the planet and allow Germans to win the resources they desperately needed. Such a worldview could be realized only if Germany destroyed other states, so Hitler's aim was a colonial war in Europe itself. In the zones of statelessness, almost all Jews died. A few people, the righteous few, aided them, without support from institutions. Much of the new research in this book is devoted to understanding these extraordinary individuals. The almost insurmountable difficulties they faced only confirm the dangers of state destruction and ecological panic. These men and women should be emulated, but in similar circumstances few of us would do so.
By overlooking the lessons of the Holocaust, Snyder concludes, we have misunderstood modernity and endangered the future. The early twenty-first century is coming to resemble the early twentieth, as growing preoccupations with food and water accompany ideological challenges to global order. Our world is closer to Hitler's than we like to admit, and saving it requires us to see the Holocaust as it was -- and ourselves as we are. Groundbreaking, authoritative, and utterly absorbing, Black Earth reveals a Holocaust that is not only history but warning.
I read a lot of non-fiction books about WWII and the Holocaust; this is the first one that actually seemed to analyze some of the aspects of the Holocaust and the Nazi agenda in such detail. The book begins by giving a fairly detailed account of Hitler's rise to power and the ideology that he created by manipulating ideas of the Christian faith for his own agenda. The author also explains how Hitler began to see all humans as animals and therefore different species (taken from Darwin's works) and why some were stronger and some were weaker. This is something that I have read briefly about in the past, but most of the books I have read focus on the horrific events of the Holocaust and not on Hitler's rise to power. The author also breaks down why some countries remained intact after the war, even after invasion and why some collapsed.
This book is very heavy with information and it took me a while to read as I absorbed all the information presented by the author. I am not going to break down the entire book in this review because that would take quite a while. This book presents a lot of information that I previously was not very knowledgeable about. By the end of the book, the authors attempts to interpret the Holocaust as a teaching lesson in history, a warning even, to the future of humanity and some of the problems we currently face.
Thank you to the publisher for sending me a review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
The Holocaust began in a dark but accessible place, in Hitler's mind, with the thought that the elimination of Jews would restore balance to the planet and allow Germans to win the resources they desperately needed. Such a worldview could be realized only if Germany destroyed other states, so Hitler's aim was a colonial war in Europe itself. In the zones of statelessness, almost all Jews died. A few people, the righteous few, aided them, without support from institutions. Much of the new research in this book is devoted to understanding these extraordinary individuals. The almost insurmountable difficulties they faced only confirm the dangers of state destruction and ecological panic. These men and women should be emulated, but in similar circumstances few of us would do so.
By overlooking the lessons of the Holocaust, Snyder concludes, we have misunderstood modernity and endangered the future. The early twenty-first century is coming to resemble the early twentieth, as growing preoccupations with food and water accompany ideological challenges to global order. Our world is closer to Hitler's than we like to admit, and saving it requires us to see the Holocaust as it was -- and ourselves as we are. Groundbreaking, authoritative, and utterly absorbing, Black Earth reveals a Holocaust that is not only history but warning.
I read a lot of non-fiction books about WWII and the Holocaust; this is the first one that actually seemed to analyze some of the aspects of the Holocaust and the Nazi agenda in such detail. The book begins by giving a fairly detailed account of Hitler's rise to power and the ideology that he created by manipulating ideas of the Christian faith for his own agenda. The author also explains how Hitler began to see all humans as animals and therefore different species (taken from Darwin's works) and why some were stronger and some were weaker. This is something that I have read briefly about in the past, but most of the books I have read focus on the horrific events of the Holocaust and not on Hitler's rise to power. The author also breaks down why some countries remained intact after the war, even after invasion and why some collapsed.
This book is very heavy with information and it took me a while to read as I absorbed all the information presented by the author. I am not going to break down the entire book in this review because that would take quite a while. This book presents a lot of information that I previously was not very knowledgeable about. By the end of the book, the authors attempts to interpret the Holocaust as a teaching lesson in history, a warning even, to the future of humanity and some of the problems we currently face.
Thank you to the publisher for sending me a review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
July 18, 2015
Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning by Timothy Snyder
The author has created a small masterpiece in this cogent examination of one of the world’s greatest sorrows. The book is, chapter-upon-chapter, eminently valuable in its handling of the multiple perspectives required to find the “logic” and “reason” within Adolf Hitler’s determination to create the Holocaust. The book is deftly written, boldly negating long-held beliefs by offering simple, clear solutions based on facts, many of them recently come to light. It is a harsh reality that National Socialism was a blight upon the world and the author of Black Earth systematically provides the reasons why it came to be, how it sustained itself as long as it did, and why we hear disturbing echoes of it today. Following the significant, well-known events along Hitler’s road to war and genocide, the author provides critical details on socio-economic, religious, tribal, and cultural factors which the Nazis cajoled, threatened, or smashed in their quest for Lebensraum (“living room”). Of the catastrophic events in eastern Europe, Mr. Snyder has composed as superb a rendering of accounts as I have ever read on the subject. Black Earth is highly recommended!
The author has created a small masterpiece in this cogent examination of one of the world’s greatest sorrows. The book is, chapter-upon-chapter, eminently valuable in its handling of the multiple perspectives required to find the “logic” and “reason” within Adolf Hitler’s determination to create the Holocaust. The book is deftly written, boldly negating long-held beliefs by offering simple, clear solutions based on facts, many of them recently come to light. It is a harsh reality that National Socialism was a blight upon the world and the author of Black Earth systematically provides the reasons why it came to be, how it sustained itself as long as it did, and why we hear disturbing echoes of it today. Following the significant, well-known events along Hitler’s road to war and genocide, the author provides critical details on socio-economic, religious, tribal, and cultural factors which the Nazis cajoled, threatened, or smashed in their quest for Lebensraum (“living room”). Of the catastrophic events in eastern Europe, Mr. Snyder has composed as superb a rendering of accounts as I have ever read on the subject. Black Earth is highly recommended!
March 27, 2017
Написала тут розлого про укр.видання "Чорної землі".
my link text
Англійською читала ще минулого року, але цього разу було декілька свіжих вражень (усе-таки електронні книжки читаю інакше, ніж паперові; сам процес сприйняття для мене завжди відрізняється, не кажучи про те, що від мови теж багато залежить).
"Криваві землі", як на мене, однозачно сильніші, але за "Чорну землю", не вагаючись, також ставлю "5": за актуальність; за вміння говорити одним текстом одночасно до кількох аудиторій (професійної і ширшої); і просто за класний стиль (далеко не кожен письменник уміє так добре писати).
my link text
Англійською читала ще минулого року, але цього разу було декілька свіжих вражень (усе-таки електронні книжки читаю інакше, ніж паперові; сам процес сприйняття для мене завжди відрізняється, не кажучи про те, що від мови теж багато залежить).
"Криваві землі", як на мене, однозачно сильніші, але за "Чорну землю", не вагаючись, також ставлю "5": за актуальність; за вміння говорити одним текстом одночасно до кількох аудиторій (професійної і ширшої); і просто за класний стиль (далеко не кожен письменник уміє так добре писати).
December 12, 2016
Staggering and stunning. I want to give the conclusion alone a standing ovation. Everyone should be reading this book (and all of Timothy Snyder's essays) right now.
June 25, 2018
The money quote: "The people who killed people, killed people." Timothy Snyder argues that the people in the "doubly-occupied lands" (those that were invaded by the Soviet Union and then by the Germans) shot not only Jews, but the disabled, Gypsies, communists, collaborators, partisans, prisoners of war, Poles, or anyone the currently occupying power viewed as an enemy. Snyder argues that antisemitism was NOT the reason that almost all the Jews in central and eastern Europe were killed. It was the lack of state institutions and bureaucracy that set up the conditions for mass death.
It went like this: The Soviet Union invaded. They captured and killed or deported as many people from the ruling and intellectual classes as they could. They did this with the help of local communists as well as the local police who offered their services to the new regime. (After all, that was their job.) Civilians with an axe to grind, or as a way to prove their loyalty to the new regime and prevent their own capture and deportation, denounced their neighbors and took their property. Then Germany invaded. Those who collaborated with the Soviets then turned around and collaborated with the Germans for the same reasons that they had collaborated with the Soviets.
The case of Lithuania, which Snyder names as origin of the Holocaust, is illustrative of the process that took place in all the doubly-occupied lands. For example, killing the Jews gave people social mobility:
And blaming the Jews for communism"cleansed" them of all responsibility for collaborating with the Soviets in the first place:
Snyder's particular intellectual bubble shows when he warns against history repeating itself "when humans portray a looming crisis in such a way as to justify drastic measures in the present" and then does EXACTLY THAT in his discussion of global warming.
All in all, this was a fascinating read - well written, well documented, and well argued. I would recommend it to everyone who believes that the Germans and antisemites were the only ones who perpetrated the holocaust. They were not. We were.
It went like this: The Soviet Union invaded. They captured and killed or deported as many people from the ruling and intellectual classes as they could. They did this with the help of local communists as well as the local police who offered their services to the new regime. (After all, that was their job.) Civilians with an axe to grind, or as a way to prove their loyalty to the new regime and prevent their own capture and deportation, denounced their neighbors and took their property. Then Germany invaded. Those who collaborated with the Soviets then turned around and collaborated with the Germans for the same reasons that they had collaborated with the Soviets.
The case of Lithuania, which Snyder names as origin of the Holocaust, is illustrative of the process that took place in all the doubly-occupied lands. For example, killing the Jews gave people social mobility:
If communism could be limited to Jews, an exoneration was gifted to Lithuanians and all the other non-Jews who had collaborated with Soviet authorities. Germans did not understand, though Lithuanians did, that Soviet rule had already brought about the expropriation of Lithuanian Jews. Of the 1,593 businesses that the Soviets had nationalized in Lithuania in autumn 1940, Jews had owned 1,327, or 83 percent. ... Lithuanians quickly grasped that the Judeobolshevik myth amounted to a mass political amnesty for prior collaboration with the Soviets, as well as the general possibility to claim all of the businesses that the Soviets had taken from the Jews. p. 163
And blaming the Jews for communism"cleansed" them of all responsibility for collaborating with the Soviets in the first place:
If the Jews were to blame for communism, then the Lithuanians could not have been. Individual Lithuanians who killed Jews were undoing their individual past under the Soviet regime. Lithuanians as a collectivity were erasing the humiliating, shameful past in which they had allowed their own sovereignty to be destroyed by the Soviet Union. The killing created a psychological plausibility with which it was difficult to negotiate: Since Jews had been killed they must have been guilty, and since Lithuanians had killed they must have had a righteous cause. p. 164
Snyder's particular intellectual bubble shows when he warns against history repeating itself "when humans portray a looming crisis in such a way as to justify drastic measures in the present" and then does EXACTLY THAT in his discussion of global warming.
All in all, this was a fascinating read - well written, well documented, and well argued. I would recommend it to everyone who believes that the Germans and antisemites were the only ones who perpetrated the holocaust. They were not. We were.
August 17, 2015
Does it ever feel like the right time to read a book about the history of the Holocaust? I mean, unless you are taking a class or writing a paper, this is some pretty serious leisure reading. When it came in the mail I was like, "Yay, I won a free book from Goodreads....oh." I entered to win this?
But having just finished the last page I must say it's one of the best books I've read this year, and turned out to be so much more than just gazing into an abyss of suffering and violence for the sake of feeling depressed and confused. Timothy Snyder, who has a long list of academic credentials that make him more than qualified to be writing on this topic, weaves political history and personal narratives into a compelling argument for how we ought to interpret the Holocaust, and how it remains of vital importance to our future that we do so.
In a nutshell, Snyder argues that through intentionally weakening and destroying state structures, the Nazis were able to create conditions under which tens of thousands of citizens participated in a mass murder of epic proportion. Men, women, soldiers, farmers, neighbors, people of every nationality: the guilty are not limited to an elite few, but to an appalling many. The evidence is hard to avoid, and the fact that so few aided those in need out of pure humanitarian kindness (though Snyder does devote attention to "the righteous few") brings us face to face with the uncomfortable reality that people very much like us participated in great evil. In the final conclusion Snyder summarizes: "Perhaps we imagine that we would be rescuers in some future catastrophe. Yet if states were destroyed, local institutions corrupted, and economic incentives directed towards murder, few of us would behave well (p. 320)."
But alongside this rather bleak picture of human nature, Snyder is able to make the case for why the state is such a foundational institution. While conditions of statelessness created the most dangerous and murderous zones of the Holocaust, places where the state retained functionality allowed millions to survive where Hitler's dystopian policies could not reach them. And individuals responsible for savings the most Jewish lives were overwhelmingly the ones in positions allowing them to extend state protection- bureaucrats who could give the gift of life in the form of travel documentation and passports. Snyder crafts a very compelling case for the modern state to be seen as the very structure that allows humanity to be human. "States are not structures to be taken for granted, exploited, or discarded, but are fruits of long and quiet effort (p. 340)."
Alongside a concise and comprehensive history of such a complex event as the Holocaust, Snyder gives great food for thought, and his argument deserves attention and consideration not just by academics, but normal laypeople who are in so many ways just like the citizenry of World War II Europe.
*Quick note, I am also required to disclose that I received a free advance copy of this book through Goodreads Giveaways.
But having just finished the last page I must say it's one of the best books I've read this year, and turned out to be so much more than just gazing into an abyss of suffering and violence for the sake of feeling depressed and confused. Timothy Snyder, who has a long list of academic credentials that make him more than qualified to be writing on this topic, weaves political history and personal narratives into a compelling argument for how we ought to interpret the Holocaust, and how it remains of vital importance to our future that we do so.
In a nutshell, Snyder argues that through intentionally weakening and destroying state structures, the Nazis were able to create conditions under which tens of thousands of citizens participated in a mass murder of epic proportion. Men, women, soldiers, farmers, neighbors, people of every nationality: the guilty are not limited to an elite few, but to an appalling many. The evidence is hard to avoid, and the fact that so few aided those in need out of pure humanitarian kindness (though Snyder does devote attention to "the righteous few") brings us face to face with the uncomfortable reality that people very much like us participated in great evil. In the final conclusion Snyder summarizes: "Perhaps we imagine that we would be rescuers in some future catastrophe. Yet if states were destroyed, local institutions corrupted, and economic incentives directed towards murder, few of us would behave well (p. 320)."
But alongside this rather bleak picture of human nature, Snyder is able to make the case for why the state is such a foundational institution. While conditions of statelessness created the most dangerous and murderous zones of the Holocaust, places where the state retained functionality allowed millions to survive where Hitler's dystopian policies could not reach them. And individuals responsible for savings the most Jewish lives were overwhelmingly the ones in positions allowing them to extend state protection- bureaucrats who could give the gift of life in the form of travel documentation and passports. Snyder crafts a very compelling case for the modern state to be seen as the very structure that allows humanity to be human. "States are not structures to be taken for granted, exploited, or discarded, but are fruits of long and quiet effort (p. 340)."
Alongside a concise and comprehensive history of such a complex event as the Holocaust, Snyder gives great food for thought, and his argument deserves attention and consideration not just by academics, but normal laypeople who are in so many ways just like the citizenry of World War II Europe.
*Quick note, I am also required to disclose that I received a free advance copy of this book through Goodreads Giveaways.
May 13, 2016
Snyder is at the cutting edge of Holocaust historiography today for good reason. Snyder has presented possibly the first coherent causal explanation of the Holocaust. Laurence Rees told us the Holocaust can only be a warning from history, and not a lesson about how to prevent it. But Snyder is extracting the lessons with a powerful new analysis of how the Holocaust was implemented as a process of innovation, stage by stage, contingency by contingency.
Most importantly Snyder teaches us an entirely applicable lesson: the bureaucratic truth that passports stop bullets. Having a nationality is the difference between life and death - and in the Holocaust, even having a German nationality could provide that difference. A nationality was the key to life.
The Holocaust could only be conducted in the absence of the state, to stateless people. A person who is stateless doesn't legally exist. They can therefore be killed because there's no legal entity to kill. Only once the state was obliterated was there a vacuum of bureaucracy which made genocide possible, and even inevitable. Hence the Nazis could kill all the Jews in the totally destroyed areas of Ukraine, Belarus and Poland, because Ukraine, Belarus and Poland had ceased to exist as entities, and there were no such nationalities in the minds of the occupiers. Almost all the Jews in those countries were murdered.
The Nazis were obstructed from doing the same to the Jews in Germany because it is legally more difficult to kill a person who has a nationality. Compared to the destruction of nearly all the Jews in the east, about half of the Jews of Germany were murdered. An enormous amount, certainly, but where the state was destroyed, there was no obstacle and so more or less all were doomed.
State destruction enabled the decimation of the non Jewish population in addition to facilitating targeted genocide. In addition to their mass murder of the vast majority of Europe's Jews, the Nazis also killed a third of the Poles, a quarter of the Ukrainians and a fifth of the Belarussians because there was no state, no civil institutions, no institutions of law or religion. Just the occupiers, the underground, and massive terror.
As a former 'smash the state' anarchist, this is a difficult lesson for me to learn...
Most importantly Snyder teaches us an entirely applicable lesson: the bureaucratic truth that passports stop bullets. Having a nationality is the difference between life and death - and in the Holocaust, even having a German nationality could provide that difference. A nationality was the key to life.
The Holocaust could only be conducted in the absence of the state, to stateless people. A person who is stateless doesn't legally exist. They can therefore be killed because there's no legal entity to kill. Only once the state was obliterated was there a vacuum of bureaucracy which made genocide possible, and even inevitable. Hence the Nazis could kill all the Jews in the totally destroyed areas of Ukraine, Belarus and Poland, because Ukraine, Belarus and Poland had ceased to exist as entities, and there were no such nationalities in the minds of the occupiers. Almost all the Jews in those countries were murdered.
The Nazis were obstructed from doing the same to the Jews in Germany because it is legally more difficult to kill a person who has a nationality. Compared to the destruction of nearly all the Jews in the east, about half of the Jews of Germany were murdered. An enormous amount, certainly, but where the state was destroyed, there was no obstacle and so more or less all were doomed.
State destruction enabled the decimation of the non Jewish population in addition to facilitating targeted genocide. In addition to their mass murder of the vast majority of Europe's Jews, the Nazis also killed a third of the Poles, a quarter of the Ukrainians and a fifth of the Belarussians because there was no state, no civil institutions, no institutions of law or religion. Just the occupiers, the underground, and massive terror.
As a former 'smash the state' anarchist, this is a difficult lesson for me to learn...
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