Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe (Vintage) | 
 enlarge | Author: Robert Gellately
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $18.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 348884
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 752
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.3 x 1.6
ISBN: 140003213X
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.5
EAN: 9781400032136
ASIN: 140003213X
Publication Date: August 12, 2008
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Condition: Serving Book Lovers Since 1980. Brand New!
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Product Description
A bold new accounting of the great social and political upheavals that enveloped Europe between 1914 and 1945—from the Russian Revolution through the Second World War.
In Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, acclaimed historian Robert Gellately focuses on the dominant powers of the time, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, but also analyzes the catastrophe of those years in an effort to uncover its political and ideological nature. Arguing that the tragedies endured by Europe were inextricably linked through the dictatorships of Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, Gellately explains how the pursuit of their “utopian” ideals turned into dystopian nightmares. Dismantling the myth of Lenin as a relatively benevolent precursor to Hitler and Stalin and contrasting the divergent ways that Hitler and Stalin achieved their calamitous goals, Gellately creates in Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler a vital analysis of a critical period in modern history.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 7 more reviews...
Stuffed full of historical facts November 3, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Few would deny that the twentieth century was an especially bloody one. And most would agree that Stalin and Hitler were a great source of the destruction that tints the century. How much of the atrocity can be traced back to Lenin? How much a part did he play to make Stalin the leader he was? And how much of Hitler's misery perpetuation was directly related to what was going on in the USSR?
In Lenin, Stalin and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe, author Robert Gellately contends that Lenin, who introduced Soviet Communism, played a great part in the making of Stalin and the Bolshevism they so highly magnified, and which Hitler desired to wipe out. Not only did these men terrorize within their borders to cleanse their own public, they took it upon themselves to "spread the wealth," the Soviets (who were Bolsheviks) by spreading communism, the Nazis by purifying the world of the non-Aryan race--particularly Jewish Bolshevism.
This book is thorough and detailed from the First World War to the end of the Second. The author delves into the lives of Lenin, Stalin and Hitler and his perception of what made them into the men that they became. He wrote of the interplay between the parties and the catastrophe that they caused.
This is a cleanly written, but not particularly compelling tome. As many non-fiction history books these days read almost like a novel, this reads more like a text. Part of the problem, I'm sure, is the huge cast of characters, span of time, differing philosophies, etc.
I don't think the average Joe that enjoys WWII history will want to tackle this one. It is full of information, but I suspect that many will get bogged down in the details. So though I think it is well written and well researched, it probably has far more information than many history dabblers want to know.
Armchair Interviews says: Not for everyone, but if you love to delve into history's characters, this is for you.
 Nothing new April 12, 2008
2 out of 6 found this review helpful
As a few others have mentioned there is nothing really 'new' in this book about either the early Soviet Union or Nazi Germany. The author rehashes many arguments that have already been made in a plethora of other literature. I'm somewhat skeptical of the arguments made against Lenin as the source he uses as a basis for these arguments has been criticized, but you never know (so do some of your own research if you like).
As also mentioned, if you're new to this time period and these three 'leaders' then this book might be a good start. It covers a lot of important events and details without giving the type of information which many will probably forget the second they are done reading. Don't expect to find out anything you didn't know before if you are already familiar with this time period and these three men though.
 A Well Written and Endlessly Interesting and Insightful Work! February 22, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is a well written and endlessly interesting and insightful work!
This book records the evils perpetuated by both Soviet Communism and German Nationalist Socialism and how the two systems, both separately and together, brought such misery and destruction to the world. It focuses on Lenin, Stalin and Hitler as the three vilest despots of the first half of the twentieth century.
Author Gellately compares Lenin and Stalin's dictatorship of the vanguard Communist Party with Hitler's consensus dictatorship in Nazi German.
Gellately argues that many scholars in the past, both Soviet and Western, placed Lenin above history and shielded him from the criticism he deserves. The author notes that historians have to avoid slipping into the role of apologist for Soviet leaders.
Although there is little here that is really new, this book is a great synthesis of the latest works and a very good read indeed!
The murderous 3 Stooges of 20th century idealism... February 11, 2008
5 out of 8 found this review helpful
Here they are, the evil triumvirate who definitively proved how there's no one more dangerous than someone determined to save the world. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler--they all had a vision of utopia and it was going to take a long, tortuous climb up a mountain of corpses to reach it. Unfortunately, they weren't deterred.
For the attentive reader, that is the ultimate lesson to be gleaned from the "age of social catastrophe" as summed up in this excellent book. Robert Gellately corrects a long-standing omission by including Lenin among history's most prolific mass killers. For as the theoretician of idealistic murder, Lenin made Stalin possible; indeed, Stalin was Lenin writ large. Disgustingly, because of the post-Stalin communist-sympathizers who continue to march under their idealistic Marxist banner, Lenin and his crimes have long been given an ethical pass, but as Gellately amply illustrates, that's a mistake: Lenin was every bit as intolerant, dictatorial, and murderous as his totalitarian bedfellows.
Thoreau once said that if he knew that someone was coming to visit with the express intention of doing him some good, he'd run off as far as possible in the opposite direction. The wisdom of that maxim is proven in this history of Communism and Fascism, both ideologies that sought to bring about their own version of heaven on earth, which is always hell for someone else. There is, perhaps, no more overlooked, or more chilling a realization to be gleaned from this catastrophic chapter in human history and yet people continue to overlook it. Hitler, Stalin, and Lenin weren't "evil" incarnate. They didn't set out to intentionally do evil, and, in their own estimation, and in the estimation of their legions of followers, they didn't do anything evil when all was said and done. Just the opposite. Each of them thought they were saving the world from itself, each of them thought they were *purging* it of evil, of injustice, of misery.
Ha, ha, right?
The story Gellately tells is chilling. The sheer number of murders, executions, battlefield causalities is jaw-dropping, inconceivable, eventually numbing. One can't help but feel guilty realizing there's a vicarious pleasure to be had from reading just how unprecedently horrible it all was--it's the same thrill one gets watching a horror film from the safety of one's armchair, except here the victims, reduced to mere numbers on a page, were all too real.
*Lenin, Stalin, Hitler* is an incredible book--massive, seemingly well-researched, and surprisingly readable. It has a page-turning narrative force that makes it difficult to put down--and it's dramatis personae are, of course, of seeming endless fascination; their now dark charisma still draws us even after more than a half century and the relentless, unquestioned demonization they've undergone following their deaths. Gellately covers a lot of history, crosses a lot of areas of expertise, and deals with three titanic figures who've each generated whole libraries of studies, and yet he manages to bring all this information together into a coherent and perfectly balanced synthesis.
In the end, *Lenin, Stalin, Hitler* sounds a cautionary alarm, but not likely the one that most readers will hear--or even the one the author necessarily intended. For it is not the return of Lenin, Stalin, or Hitler we need to fear in the 21st century--we'd recognize them a mile away--but the new face idealism will wear when it arrives on the world-stage determined to save us from ourselves even if it has to slaughter, imprison, or impoverish us to do it. One ought to remember that such "saviors" come from both ends of the political spectrum--as Hitler from the right, and Stalin/Lenin from the left proved. Perhaps the best way to spot trouble is, as Thoreau said, behind the mask of someone come hell or high water to do you good.
Run, then. The other way. Remember this is life. Idealism has no place here.
God save us from the do-gooders!
 Superficial January 26, 2008
2 out of 8 found this review helpful
I was disappointed in this book and could not finish it. It lacked depth and insights into these three tyrants, and offered nothing that I could see representing anything new about them. So Lenin, too, was a monster; this is not a scholarly breakthrough; so, lots of Germans adored Hitler, also not a revelation; Stalin was a mass murderer, well-known. This book is at best an introduction. If you are at all familiar with the period represented by these men you may find this as superficial as I did.
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