Jochen Hellbeck

Stalingrado fue la batalla más feroz y letal en la historia de la humanidad, con una cifra de muertos estimada en más de un millón en apenas seis meses. Su trascendencia fue inmediatamente percibida por las autoridades sovieticas, que decidieron enviar una delegacion de historiadores moscovitas con el fin de registrar para la posteridad las voces de los defensores de Stalingrado. Mientras se libraba la batalla ningun corresponsal extranjero obtuvo permiso para viajar a Stalingrado. Este hecho, junto a la imposibilidad de acceder hasta fechas muy recientes a los archivos rusos, provoco que los numerosos estudios sobre la batalla de Stalingrado la presentaran a traves de los ojos de los alemanes que quedaron atrapados en la ciudad. Con la publicacion por primera vez de las entrevistas recogidas en Stalingrado, que habian estado sepultadas hasta ahora en los archivos, este libro supone una gran aportacion a la literatura sobre la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Y permite a los lectores imaginar a los soldados del Ejercito Rojo y otros defensores de la ciudad como personas que piensan y sienten. Sus testimonios acercan al lector a la batalla y ofrecen una vivida descripcion de las acciones, pensamientos y sentimientos de los participantes sovieticos que no es comparable a la de ninguna o

[An] arresting and deeply researched new bookThe New YorkerEssential reading . . . Hellbeck masterfully explains what made World War II on the Eastern front so destructive and why this matters today. A tour de force Paul Hanebrink, author of A Specter Haunting EuropeIn the Nazi imagination, the USSR was the most powerful Jewish organization in the world. They called it World Enemy No. 1.The shocking number of Soviet citizens who lost their lives between 1941 and 1945 26 million, more than any other country is widely known. But the faces and the voices of these victims of Nazism are conspicuously absent. In a pathbreaking new work of history, Jochen Hellbeck restores the USSR to its proper place in the history of the Second World War, arguing that to truly understand the conflict, we must set its axis firmly in Soviet territory.It was not the Western powers but Communist Russia that Nazi Germany viewed as the greatest threat to its existence. The German crusade against Judeo-Bolshevism was the driving force of the Nazis most extreme violence, and Soviet territory became ground zero for systematic extermination. Only later was this shocking regime of killing extended to all Jews, igniting the Holocaust.Using newly declassified archives, testimonies, diaries and dispatches from soldiers and civilians both Soviet and German, Hellbeck reveals the sheer, untold breadth of terror the Nazis inflicted. This eye-opening masterwork is an astonishing new reading both of the Second World War and of how its history has been told.

A finalist for the 75th National Jewish Book Award in nonfictionA major new history that transforms our understanding of World War IItracing the conflict and its most infamous crime, the Holocaust, to Germanys implacable hostility toward Soviet RussiaIn the West, World War II is commonly understood as the Allies struggle against Nazism. Often elided, if not simply forgotten, is the Soviet Unions 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 threatin 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, Hitlers cardinal obsession. While Europes 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 sourcestestimonies, diaries, and dispatches from soldiers and civilians, Soviet and Germanto 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 peoples 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 Wests persistent disregard of the Soviet Unions incalculable contribution to winning the warand its sacrifice of twenty-six million citizensas anti-communism and the Cold War turned erstwhile allies into mortal enemies.Hellbecks eye-opening work is an astonishing new reading of both the Second World War and how its history has been told.