The Dictators: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia - Hardcover

The Dictators is not the first parallel study of the twentieth century's great dictatorships by any means- Richard Overy's work initially reminds one inevitably of Allan Bullock's magisterial Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives, that traced how closely the lives of Hitler and Stalin intertwined. Overy can safely claim however to have written a worthy successor to that tome- this is a very readable, intricately detailed and superbly crafted study of the exercise, acquisition, and terrible abuse of power in the modern era. Overy's focus is on the question of how the dictatorships differed- different in terms of the Utopias they promised their peoples and how these goals were to be reached, how the dictators themselves gained and exercised power in pursuit of this, what moral world they lived in and constructed around them for their close circles and the masses beneath them, and of course, how and why did they destroyed so many lives in the process? Of note are Overy's dissections of the strange mutual relationship, often indirect, between rulers and ruled- a collusion of sorts in the pursuit of a new age promised by both dictators to their peoples, the importance of scientific imperatives behind the visions of the dictators themselves, and the illusions created to project the 'message' to the public. At the heart of this book is the study of the fundamental difference between the two dictatorships. This was the huge gulf between their ideological goals- the very fuel of the leaders themselves, for all the similarities in their moral language, their use of science to support their vision of how society and the world should be ordered, their rejection of liberal politics, ostentatious national rebuilding, mass propaganda, and brutal suppression of 'enemies.' Both systems were born out of European wide crisis and rejection, 'both were sustained by similar political strategies and common patterns of authority, participation and popular response.' But ultimately Hitler believed he was fighting for a great idealized racial empire, Stalin pursued his vision of a worldwide socialist revolutionary triumph. As Overy notes: 'What united the two systems was the unresolved and permanent gap between ideal and reality, and the common instruments exploited by each system to mask the distortions of the truth.' Though we are now in the twenty first century the question of how these two men came to exercise so much power and create so much suffering within two major European states is still a major question of modern times, which deserves to be told again. Overy deserves his place at the forefront of British historians of the modern period and the Second World War. --Kirkus UK

Half a century after their deaths, the dictatorships of Stalin and Hitler still cast a long and terrible shadow over the modern world. They were the most destructive and lethal regimes in history, murdering millions. Yet millions of Germans and Russians enthusiastically supported them and the values they stood for.