Massive yet intimate portrait of evil
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Hitler and Stalin - Parallel Lives, is an outstanding portrait of two of the twentieth century's most savage monsters; a century that unfortunately is not short of candidates for the title. Alan Bullock has undertaken a daunting assignment - a parallel biography of two widely discussed dictators - and has excelled in not only that task but a further one on top, an analysis of the organisations they created and how those bureaucracies functioned. Though this is a `great man' view of history, the terrible impact these two personalities had on their time cannot be underestimated and deserves special consideration.
Parallel Lives is structured with alternating chapters, Hitler then Stalin and as the narrative progresses into the ravaged end of the Second World War, as the two foes face each other on the bloodily redrawn map of Europe, Hitler and Stalin's stories become related paragraph by paragraph. This audacious intertwining on the part of Alan Bullock serves the narrative superbly. The organisation of such a wealth of material is simply outstanding; the big sweep of momentous forces is ably conveyed but Bullock can also interject individual meetings, of say Hitler and his generals, where vivid quotations and personal contemporaneous notes are used to convey the atmosphere: the bureaucratic rivalry and disorganisation in Hitler's case or the abject terror of Stalin's party officials.
Whilst avoiding cheap psychobiography, Bullock traces the sources and channels of Hitler's driving motivations, his hatred and anti-Semitism from his earliest documented speeches and writing, through to the literal acting out of his insane fantasies of the Holocaust and the drive for Lebensraum in the East. This `intentional' approach is contrasted with a `structural' approach - how the Nazi regime was a bureaucratic mess, that policy instructions from Hitler were proclaimed in broad generalisations and left for subordinates to turn into reality, "...in accordance with the Fuhrer's wishes" so that the actual conspiratorial planning for the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem becomes difficult to determine (though Bullock places the actual decision sometime in July 1941, accurately in this reviewer's opinion).
Stalin's driving force, according to Bullock, was broadly similar: both men saw themselves as agents of history. Stalin, however, unlike Hitler, was deeply mistrustful of all around him and not only had murdered or exiled all those that were closest to him politically but took his paranoia out on the whole of Soviet society, decimating the officer class of the armed forces, the managerial and industrial class, peasant society and eventually the party bureaucracy itself. Stalin's communist party was incredibly organised and structured, totally unlike the Nazi apparatus. The fear that Stalin generated, the insanity of the purges and show-trials, life in the gulags, all come within Bullock's grasp of history and mastery of detail.
Alan Bullock impressively conveys the personalities, the history, the party growth and organisational structure of the most impacting, monstrous individuals the twentieth century produced. His distillation of such a vast quantity of research, his presentation of evidence and weighing-up of judgements, are exemplary and should set a benchmark for any future historian looking to tackle the banality of evil. Hitler and Stalin - Parallel Lives, is a masterpiece; those looking for a history of the first half of the twentieth century and the monsters that shaped it, need look no further.
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Brilliant analysis, poor writing
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This is a brilliant analysis and a must read for anybody interested in the history of Europe in the 20th century. Too bad that the writing leaves to be desired, with poorly structured chapters and, at times, unnecessarily convoluted syntax. I found it irritating and reader-unfriendly to read, say, 'Hitler and Stalin had three points in common', without enunciating what they were, but launching into the first point with lots of (interesting) asides, going on for -- sometimes -- pages, keeping you wondering what the second point might be, and then springing that upon the reader, who has to figure out that this is indeed the second point referred to many paragraphs ago, and still no sign of what the third point might be. Also, too often, I read a sentence and didn't understand what it meant. So, I reread it, trying to figure out where the subject, the verb, and the object were, and mentally inserting missing commas and semi-colons. Sometimes that helped and sometimes I had to try again. Mostly that worked but sometimes I just gave up and moved on. As I said: brilliant content but a good editor could improve its readability -- and get rid of 200 pages in the process.
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A fascinating approach
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The first photo you see in this book is of the elementary school classes of both Hitler and Stalin. By one of those bizarre coincidences, the young Adolf and Josef are both standing in the back row, third from the left, and both are striking cocksure, even arrogant poses. It may have been a sign of things to come... Lord Bullock's treatment is fascinating, moving from one man to the other, one in Austria and then Germany, the other in Georgia and then Russia, both unknowing of each other, yet both moving inexorably towards the most mammoth collision in history. He shows how alike they are - and at the same time how different. Both were doctrinaire in their different ideologies, but in different ways, both exterminated enormous numbers of people, for quite different motives. Both are thoroughly evil, but in different ways, Hitler, secure in power, seeking to promulgate the bizarre idea of the Aryan nation, Stalin, seeking to consolidate his grip on power, destroying anything that looked even vaguely like a class enemy and therefore a potential threat, from the landed peasants to the Russian officer corps. A fascinating look at the two greatest monsters of resent history.
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Informative: It does what it is supposed to.
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This book is large. There's no denying it, so unless you're genuinely interested in History and particularly these two figures there is no point starting it as you won't finish it. But for those of you who feel the period and individuals are really worth knowing about, then this is the book for you. It cleverly combines the two characters so that they are discussed side by side rather than the more common, and if i may say so, more dreary approach of one after the other.
Parallel Lives runs through the entire lives of the two men whose names every child shall know until the end of human-kind. This book is a must read for an extensive background knowledge for the first half of the last century. Recommended.
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Tells the story the way you want to hear it..
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Lets cut to the chase, this book gets my highest possible recommendation. So similar, yet so different, arguably the two most negatively influential people of all time. Both brought forth unspeakable horrors but the way they did it and to whom they directed their wrath were very different. The scale unfortunately, was equally vast.
A paranoid and a megalomaniac, their lives intertwined, the only way to tell their stories is to intertwine them and thats what Bullock has done here.
A fascinating and eminantly readable account that will open your eyes to just what made these potent personalities tick.
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