A major new history that transforms our understanding of World War II--tracing the conflict and its most infamous crime, the Holocaust, to Germany’s implacable hostility towards Soviet Russia In the West, World War II is commonly understood as the Allies’ struggle against Nazism. Often elided, if not simply forgotten, is the Soviet Union''s crucial role in that fight. With this book, acclaimed historian Jochen Hellbeck rectifies this omission by relocating the ideological core of the conflict. It was not the Western powers but Communist Russia that Nazi Germany viewed as an existential threat--“World Enemy No.1.” Jewish revolutionaries, the Nazis believed, had seized power in 1917 and were preparing the Soviet state to destroy Germany and the world. And so, on June 22, 1941, a German army of three million attacked the Soviet Union to exterminate “Judeo-Bolshevism,” Hitler’s cardinal obsession. While Europe’s Jews were expelled, exiled, and persecuted by the Nazis, Soviet Jews were immediately slated for destruction. The Soviet lands thus became “ground zero” for systematic extermination, which was only later extended to all Jews, igniting the Holocaust. Hellbeck plumbs newly declassified archives and previously undiscovered sources--testimonies, diaries, and dispatches from soldiers and civilians, both Soviet and German--to offer a unique double perspective. He reconstructs the years leading up to the war when “Europe against Bolshevism” was the Nazis’ most fervid rallying cry, a threat that mobilized Soviet citizens, even those opposed to their regime, to join a people’s war against the invading Germans. He tracks the hatred and desire for revenge that drove the Red Army on its path of reconquest, an advance that further inflamed the belief in a murderous “Bolshevik Jew,” stirring the stunned Germans to fight to the end. Recounted here in vivid detail are the events at Babi Yar, the Battle of Stalingrad, the liberation of the concentration camps, and the arrival of the Red Army in the Nazi capital. Finally, Hellbeck reckons with the West’s persistent disregard of the Soviet Union’s incalculable contribution to winning the war--and its sacrifice of 26 million citizens--as anti-communism and the Cold War turned erstwhile allies into mortal enemies. Hellbeck’s eye-opening work is an astonishing new reading of both the Second World War and how its history has been told....

Autorentext

Jochen Hellbeck is Distinguished Professor of History at Rutgers University, specializing in modem Russia, the Soviet Union, and the history of World War II. The recipient of fellowships from the New York Public Library Cullman Center, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the American Academy in Berlin, among others, he is the acclaimed author of Stalingrad: The City That Defeated the Third Reich, Revolution on My Mind: Writing a Diary under Stalin, and the online project Facing Stalingrad. He lives in Brooklyn.

Klappentext

A major new history that transforms our understanding of World War II—tracing the conflict and its most infamous crime, the Holocaust, to Germany’s implacable hostility toward Soviet Russia

In the West, World War II is commonly understood as the Allies’ struggle against Nazism. Often elided, if not simply forgotten, is the Soviet Union’s crucial role in that fight. With this book, acclaimed historian Jochen Hellbeck rectifies this omission by relocating the ideological core of the conflict. It was not the Western powers but Communist Russia that Nazi Germany viewed as an existential threat—in fact, “World Enemy No. 1.” Jewish revolutionaries, the Nazis believed, had seized power in 1917 and were preparing the Soviet state to destroy Germany and the world. And so, on June 22, 1941, a German army of three million attacked the Soviet Union to exterminate “Judeo-Bolshevism,” Hitler’s cardinal obsession. While Europe’s Jews were expelled, exiled, and persecuted by the Nazis, Soviet Jews were immediately slated for elimination. The Soviet lands thus became ground zero for systematic extermination, which was only later extended to all Jews, igniting the Holocaust.

Hellbeck plumbs newly declassified archives and previously undiscovered sources—testimonies, diaries, and dispatches from soldiers and civilians, Soviet and German—to offer a unique history that takes account of both sides. He reconstructs the years leading up to the war when “Europe against Bolshevism” was the Nazis’ most fervid rallying cry, and documents their annihilatory ambitions on the battlegrounds in the East. Widely disseminated accounts of German atrocities mobilized millions of Soviet citizens to join a people’s war against the hated invaders. Hellbeck tracks the desire for revenge that drove the Red Army on its path of reconquest, an advance that further inflamed the belief in a murderous “Bolshevik Jew,” stirring the Germans to fight to the bitter end. Recounted here in vivid detail are the events at Babi Yar, the Battle of Stalingrad, the liberation of the concentration camps, and the arrival of the Red Army in the Nazi capital. Finally, Hellbeck reckons with the West’s persistent disregard of the Soviet Union’s incalculable contribution to winning the war—and its sacrifice of twenty-six million citizens—as anti-communism and the Cold War turned erstwhile allies into mortal enemies.

Hellbeck’s eye-opening work is an astonishing new reading of both the Second World War and how its history has been told.

Leseprobe
CONTENTS

Note on Historical Place Names xxiii

Introduction 1

Chapter 1. A FRONT AGAINST BOLSHEVISM 21

Chapter 2. SWASTIKA AND SOVIET STAR 61

Chapter 3. CROSSING THE RUBICON 104

Chapter 4. A VIOLENCE SHAKING EUROPE 144

Chapter 5. JEWS AND BOLSHEVIKS, STEP FORWARD! 177

Chapter 6. MOSCOW STRIKES BACK 211

Chapter 7. ENSLAVEMENT 253

Chapter 8. LIBERATION 292

Chapter 9. “HERE SHE IS, ACCURSED GERMANY!” 329

Chapter 10. ERASURE 381

Chapter 1
A Front Against
Bolshevism
Five months after Hitler's party rose to power, Theodore Abel, a thirty-six-year-old sociologist teaching at Columbia University, arrived in Germany. Together with his wife and three children, he disembarked from a transatlantic steamer in Bremen, intending to pass through Berlin to visit his parents in Poznan, as the family did every summer. But for Abel, the trip across Germany proved more absorbing than the destination. "Nazi propaganda everywhere-radio, buses cruising with speeches and music, big placards on corners, flags and uniforms everywhere," he noted in his diary on June 30, 1933, while in Berlin. Abel spoke fluent German and struck up conversations with people on the street, and in cafés and restaurants. A few confided to him with horror how the Nazis were abusing Jews and persecuting their political opposition. Most others spoke about the new regime very differently. Ardently patriotic, they credited the government with unifying and strengthening their crisis-ridden country. Hitler had restored their hope for a better future. Abel chronicled what he saw as a historic moment: Germans' enthusiastic rejection of "liberalism, democracy, tolerance, and international cooperation," and their regression to a primitive state of "national egotism and intolerance." By the time Abel returned to the United States in early September, he knew he had to write about Nazism.

He devised an ingenious way to gather the sources necessary for his study: He planned a writing contest. Anyone, regardless of sex or age, who had identified with the Nazi movement prior to January 1933 would be invited to participate. Cash prize…