Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

History As Intention and Response

History can be told in several ways: as a textbook-like sequence of events and dates; as a moral tale; as a story of the strong or of the weak; from the point of view of the victors or the vanquished; as an account of divine providence or satanic interference. Snyder has a particularly engaging method of narrating history: as intention and response to circumstances. According to his title one could conceive his subject as the history of a specific geographical region, namely Eastern Poland, Ukraine and Belarus. But this is merely the location of the action.

The real history in Bloodlands is stated in the subtitle, namely the personal intentions of Hitler and Stalin and how these intentions were formed and interacted. Events in Bloodlands are relevant only as they relate to these intentions. Dates are relevant primarily to distinguish action and response. The story is not one of conflict and victory or loss but of joint persecution by Hitler and Stalin of a victim-population of Poles, Slavs, Jews and other ethnic groups. It is this genre of purposeful historiography in which the centre of attention is the intended victims that makes the book highly readable and intellectually compelling.

According to Snyder, the fundamental aims of both National Socialism and Soviet Communism were the same: to control their own food supply. The Germans, by expanding eastward, to acquire the most productive agricultural acreage in Europe. The Russians, by expanding westward into Poland and collectivising Soviet agriculture, primarily to finance industrialisation through exports. It is these intentions, their mutual responses to the other, and the interpretations by their subordinates that determine the trajectory of events from the end of WWI through the conclusion of WWII.
 
The central 'show' according to this view was never in Western Europe or Southeast Asia but in precisely that area for which both powers contended for agricultural land, Snyder's Bloodlands. It is here as well, and only here, that the full horror of both fascist and communist regimes can be appreciated. The details of the military campaign, as well as the 'formal' atrocities of Nazi concentration camps and the Soviet Gulag are important but, in a sense, obscure the wider and ultimate intentions to murder or displace the entire existing population of the region. The millions who died and the millions more who suffered were not 'collateral damage' incidental to war, they were the point of the war on both sides.

Stalin's clear purpose in his agricultural policy of the early 1930's, for example, was not just to crush Ukrainian nationalism and to eliminate any residual Polish influence in the Western Soviet Union, but also to replace its indigenous population by Russians. German strategy was commensurate, that is, to liquidate or otherwise enslave the Slavic population of the same region, and encourage the emigration of German farmers. Stalin used starvation as his weapon of choice; Hitler his Einsatzgruppen. Both were strategic necessities not incidental aberrations. Both used substantial resources that appear wasted only if their strategic intent is ignored. 

Moreover, both leaders seriously risked their own positions to pursue these aims, an indication of their centrality. Ukrainian collectivisation was an obvious economic failure. It was nevertheless pursued by Stalin until de-population was largely achieved. The Einsatzgruppen which carried out the bulk of the Nazi liquidations in occupied countries were opposed by the regular army as a militarily useless collection of thugs and psychopaths. Yet they were given free rein in military areas by Hitler and received logistical priority, even in retreat. 

These sorts of actions can only be perceived as errors in judgement if their real intent is ignored. Neither man was as concerned so much about the outcome of any particular battle as about his ability to carry out his ultimate purpose. And this purpose remained constant. Every significant political and military act, even the most bizarre, can be traced to the need to eliminate opposition to the requirements of the overall purpose, no matter how politically inept or militarily inefficient.

Failure to appreciate these aims was also the root of misunderstanding by contemporaries who should have known better. Among journalists only the Welsh Gareth Jones could see beyond the fascist and communist propaganda to the ultimate aims. Walter Duranty, the Pulitzer Prize-winning bureau chief of the New York Times, simply refused to believe the overwhelming evidence of mass starvation. Even intellectuals like Arthur Koestler temporised about the most horrible events - including widespread cannibalism - by insisting on the ultimate beneficence of socialism. American foreign policy simply ignored the reality of German and Russian intentions for two decades.

Continuing failure to appreciate the impact of these tragedies is the 'take-away' from Snyder's analysis. For example, Stalin starved to death approximately 3 million Ukrainians in 1932-33, and killed approximately another 3 million whom he had already deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan. These people were murdered not because they refused to conform to his policies but because they were who they were. Can there be any doubt about the conviction of present-day Ukrainians to resist further assimilation by Russia?

The unreliability of the press in reporting the factual detail of events was matched by the ineptitude of the intelligence and ambassadorial services in analysing their own sources of information. In part, at least, this seems due to an inability to accept the degree of depravity that human beings can reach. By any standards Stalin and Hitler were mad. But were then also the millions of previously normal citizens who necessarily carried out and even supplemented their malicious commands also mad? One small unit of NKVD officers shot more than 20,000 people during the Great Terror in the Soviet Union. If these men were not mad, how could they not have become so, and their families, their acquaintances, their country with them?

An interview with a communist activist who was charged with enforcing Stalin's orders to take the seed grain from collective farms, thus condemning the peasants to death, could be the most important theme of the entire book. "As before", he says, "I believed because I wanted to believe." This certainly would have been the response of every Soviet commissar, Nazi SS officer, Treblinka or Gulag camp guard and general army officer. This realisation is even more depressing than the seemingly endless atrocities recounted by Snyder. Commitment, loyalty, passion to and for ideals, no matter what they are, or leaders who represent these ideals, no matter who they are, are not virtues but vices. 

It was these vices - the real evils of commitment, loyalty, and passion - that allowed Stalin and Hitler and their henchmen to carry out their work. These men were inspired by the conquest of the American West and the liquidation of its native population. These men created myths of foreign plots to undermine national sovereignty and used them to justify the closing of borders, the isolation of minority groups, and the necessity for murderous action against unarmed people. These men were consistent in their pronouncements about what they intended to do and why. And still each was able to manipulate the unique politics of his own system to maintain popular support through an appeal to purported 'virtue'. It is this virtue, not nationalism, or ideology per se which was the driving force of the evil committed.

Am I alone, therefore, in feeling apprehension watching American political rallies or evangelical religious meetings, or even corporate 'team-building' exercises? Am I alone in suspecting that men like Trump and Putin are capable of the most horrific crimes regardless of the institutional constraints imposed on them? Am I alone in considering that the cause for strength, whoever puts it forth, is a fundamental evil which has no inherent limits? Why are commitment, loyalty and passion valued most by the people who do most harm in the world? Is it I who am mad?

An addendum on Purpose and History

In the 1980's I attended a lecture by an economist whose name now escapes me (it could have been Paul Johnson). His topic was the history of agricultural policy in the United States. He pointed out that the two main components of this policy from the 1930's onwards had been 1) Rather substantial subsidies to farmers for not growing certain crops, and 2) Also rather large subsidies to industry and academia for research directed toward the increase in yields for the same crops that farmers were already paid not to grow.

Every year when these subsidies were brought before Congress, someone would point of the apparent contradiction. A debate would ensue. And a vote would endorse both sets of subsidy, usually with and increase. The presumption of irrationality in the political process was put forward as the only possible explanation.

Until it was pointed out, I believe to the Reagan administration, that this outcome only appeared irrational because no one was looking for the fundamental rational, the real purpose. According to the lecturer, this purpose wasn't obvious because it was never made explicit, but it nevertheless was there and it was politically compelling. The purpose of the apparently contradictory subsidies was quite straightforward: to maximise the value of U.S. farm land. In this light both subsidies made sense.

The importance of this insight was not merely intellectual. Having articulated the implicit purpose of historical agricultural policy, it was then possible to ask the question: Is the increased value of farm land a national priority? The answer was 'no'. Consequently, for the first time in several generations, both subsidies were reduced.

The implications for historical method are to me profound. The presumption of purpose is crucial in historical analysis. Without it, one is confronted with apparently random often irrational events. With it, one is forced to confront intentions that are only implicit and perhaps only shared by a very few with leadership positions. It is a presumption that is a self-fulfilling prophecy. But so is its negation. The example of U.S. agricultural policy is one proof of its superiority as a general method.

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