List Price: $22.99 Details

Save: $2.50 (11%)

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime & FREE Returns

FREE delivery: Tuesday, Aug 17 on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon. Details

Fastest delivery: Monday, Aug 16
Order within 15 hrs and 32 mins Details

In Stock.
As an alternative, the Kindle eBook is available now and can be read on any device with the free Kindle app. Want to listen? Try Audible.

$$20.49 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Secure transaction

Ships from	Amazon.com
Sold by	Amazon.com

Details

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Return policy: Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement

Add a gift receipt for easy returns

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime

FREE delivery: Sep 12 - 14 on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon. Details

Used: Good | Details

Sold by Bluechipz

Fulfilled by Amazon

Share <Embed>

Other Sellers on Amazon

$20.98
& FREE Shipping

Sold by: TheWorldShop - Ships from Overseas

$22.18
& FREE Shipping

Sold by: Publisher Direct

$18.44
+ $3.99 shipping

Sold by: Emin Bookstrore

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 6 images

Follow the Author

Timothy Snyder

Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin Paperback – October 2, 2012

by Timothy Snyder (Author)

1,275 ratings

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$15.99

—

Audible Audiobook, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$0.00

Free with your Audible trial

Hardcover

"Please retry"

$37.90

$25.00

$6.66

Paperback

"Please retry"

$20.43

$12.78

$11.94

Paperback, October 2, 2012

$20.49

$17.01

$10.00

Audio CD, Audiobook, CD, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$42.60

$35.55

$29.78

Great on Kindle

Great Experience. Great Value.

Enjoy a great reading experience when you buy the Kindle edition of this book. Learn more about Great on Kindle, available in select categories.

View Kindle Edition

From the bestselling author of On Tyranny comes the definitive history of Hitler's and Stalin's wars against the civilians of Europe in World War II.

Americans call the Second World War "The Good War."But before it even began, America's wartime ally Josef Stalin had killed millions of his own citizens--and kept killing them during and after the war. Before Hitler was finally defeated, he had murdered six million Jews and nearly as many other Europeans. At war's end, both the German and the Soviet killing sites fell behind the iron curtain, leaving the history of mass killing in darkness.

Bloodlands is a new kind of European history, presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of a single history, in the time and place where they occurred: between Germany and Russia, when Hitler and Stalin both held power. Assiduously researched, deeply humane, and utterly definitive, Bloodlands will be required reading for anyone seeking to understand the central tragedy of modern history.

Bloodlands won twelve awards including the Emerson Prize in the Humanities, a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Leipzig Award for European Understanding, and the Hannah Arendt Prize in Political Thought. It has been translated into more than thirty languages, was named to twelve book-of-the-year lists, and was a bestseller in six countries.

Print length

560 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Basic Books
Publication date

October 2, 2012
Grade level

8 and up
Reading age

13 years and up
Dimensions

6.2 x 1.65 x 9.35 inches
ISBN-10

0465031471
ISBN-13

978-0465031474
See all details

Frequently bought together

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

Timothy Snyder
16,633
Paperback
124 offers from $1.50
Timothy Snyder
464
Paperback
57 offers from $5.45
Timothy Snyder
1,335
Paperback
88 offers from $3.11
Anne Applebaum
732
Paperback
50 offers from $8.58
Timothy Snyder
915
Paperback
56 offers from $2.54
Anne Applebaum
837
Paperback
76 offers from $4.99

Customers who bought this item also bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

Timothy Snyder
464
Paperback
57 offers from $5.45
Timothy Snyder
1,335
Paperback
88 offers from $3.11
Anne Applebaum
732
Paperback
50 offers from $8.58
Timothy Snyder
16,633
Paperback
124 offers from $1.50
Anne Applebaum
837
Paperback
76 offers from $4.99
Anne Applebaum
779
Paperback
70 offers from $4.34

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A startling new interpretation of the period ... a stunning book."―David Denby, New Yorker

"A superb and harrowing history."―Financial Times

"Genuinely shattering.... I have never seen a book like it."―Istvan Deak, New Republic

"A brave and original history of mass killing in the twentieth century."―Anne Applebaum, New York Review of Books

"A magisterial work.... Snyder's account in engaging, encyclopedic."―Foreign Affairs

"Gripping and comprehensive.... Mr. Snyder's book is revisionist history of the best kind: in spare, closely argued prose, with meticulous use of statistics, he makes the reader rethink some of the best-known episodes in Europe's modern history."―Economist

"Snyder...compels us to look squarely at the full range of destruction committed first by Stalin's regime and then by Hitler's Reich.... A comprehensive and eloquent account."―New York Times Book Revew

"A superb work of scholarship, full of revealing detail, cleverly compiled...and in places beautifully written.... Snyder does justice to the horror of his subject through the power of storytelling."―The Sunday Times (London)

About the Author

Timothy Snyder is the Housum Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. He received his doctorate from the University of Oxford in 1997, where he was a British Marshall Scholar. Before joining the faculty at Yale in 2001, he held fellowships in Paris, Vienna, and Warsaw, and an Academy Scholarship at Harvard.

He has spent some ten years in Europe, and speaks five and reads ten European languages. Among his publications are several award-winning books, all of which have been translated: Nationalism, Marxism, and Modern Central Europe: A Biography of Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz; The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999; Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist's Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine; The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke; On Tyranny; and The Road to Unfreedom. He has written for publications including the New York Review of Books, the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, the Times Literary Supplement, Nation, the New Republic, the International Herald Tribune, and the Wall Street Journal.

Start reading Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin on your Kindle in under a minute.

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Basic Books; 1st Edition (October 2, 2012)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 560 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0465031471
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0465031474
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 13 years and up
Grade level ‏ : ‎ 8 and up
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.3 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.2 x 1.65 x 9.35 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #21,940 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #25 in European Politics Books
- #37 in German History (Books)
- #57 in Jewish Holocaust History

Customer Reviews:
1,275 ratings

Customer reviews

5 star		77%
4 star		16%
3 star		3%
2 star		2%
1 star		2%

How are ratings calculated?

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Marc L. Tavasci

A horror story of immense proportions, but a magnificent book

Reviewed in the United States on July 10, 2017

Verified Purchase

Having read hundreds of books on World War II, it's pretty rare to come across a book which covers a topic I'm not very familiar with. However, the subject of the Holocaust is one which I've avoided mostly because it's just too damn depressing, and while this book covers a broader topic it's probably one I would have skipped in the past. I'm glad I didn't skip this one.

The author defines the Bloodlands as the lands between pre-war Nazi Germany and the western edge of the Russian Republic, predominantly Poland, Belarus, the Baltic States and Ukraine. I was unaware this book would not focus on the military action(s) and instead focus on the ordinary citizens in these areas as I had not read any reviews prior to starting this book. I have to say, this is one of the best books I've read in quite some time, and the fact it covers a subject I've avoided has opened my mind to wanting to learn more.

The author recounts how first Stalin and then Hitler undertook various programs/campaigns against the Polish, Belorussian, Ukrainian and Baltic populaces, as well as against those of the Jewish faith. In a combined campaign of extermination, over 14 million people were killed essentially because of where they lived, what religion they practiced, or if for some reason they were viewed as a threat. Along the way, author Snyder does a really good job of explaining the rationale behind the murderous schemes of Stalin and Hitler and how they fit into the grand plans/ideals of the Nazis and the Soviet Union. Along the way, the reader will encounter multiple personal vignettes about those who there, many of whom did not survive. The story is truly horrifying and the sheer numbers staggering, yet Snyder has woven together an excellent narrative which doesn't get bogged down in either horror or numbers. I'd recommend this book to anyone who wants to know more the events in the Bloodlands from the late 1920's through the early 1950's--it truly is an excellent read.

176 people found this helpful

Helpful

Oldtimer

History can teach us many lessons

Reviewed in the United States on November 6, 2016

Verified Purchase

Perhaps it is because I am in my 90th year, but I cannot believe many Americans have any idea how gigantic was the slaughter of innocent men, women, and children (yes, even babies) under the Stalin and Hitler regimes. This book tells all, with gory details galore. I have visited several of the Nazi death camps. Nevertheless I had no idea (until I read this book) how awful was the carnage between 1920 and 1945 in Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Germany, and other places.

91 people found this helpful

Helpful

Henry L. Chang

com rating system means "I love it". I can't say that I loved reading ...

Reviewed in the United States on May 23, 2018

Verified Purchase

5 stars, according to the amazon.com rating system means "I love it". I can't say that I loved reading this book because it details, in a strikingly straightforward manner, the most horrifically immense instances of mass murder in all of history.

There number of civilians who perished in the events leading up to and during WW2 are well known to be incredibly large. The great majority of the historical literature chronicling the events in Easter Europe tend to focus on the military strategies and events of this period. This book is different - it casts its exhaustively researched eye upon why and how the power players in this cataclysm murdered the civilians.

This is essential reading for anyone who wishes to gain greater understanding of these monumental events. Could this book have been better organized and made more readable? Probably. Could it do so and still convey the essential nature of what transpired without veering off into the realms of incompleteness or conjecture? Maybe, but not easily. There is simply too much information to convey.

I have been consuming books on the Eastern Front off and on for 45 years. This book stands alone. I cannot recommend it more strongly.

47 people found this helpful

Helpful

“Only a history of mass killing can unite the numbers and the memories”…

Reviewed in the United States on November 2, 2015

Verified Purchase

“Without history, the memories become private, which today means national; and the numbers become public, which is to say an instrument in the international competition for martyrdom.”

One such number is 33,761. That is the number of Jews shot at Babi Yar, near Kiev, in the Ukraine. On numerous occasions throughout this monumental and essential history, Timothy Snyder uses very precise figures such as 33,761. Admittedly, it rubbed me the wrong way, since in the world of much uncertainty, as Heisenberg and others have proclaimed, it is impossible to know such a number, with that type of certainty and precision. But on the very last page of his account, the author, a Yale historian, explained fully why it is so important to use the “odd” number. It is the humanity that is revealed in the “1”, which can be multiplied by a million or more. It is the fragments of the stories of individuals who once had a real name, that have been preserved in diaries, or the memories of others, or simply a departing sentence scratched on a wall.

Snyder does also use “round” numbers, as in 14,000,000. That is his estimate of the number of CIVILIAN deaths in an area he defines as the “Bloodlands,” between 1933 and 1945. It is an area that stretches from St. Petersburg in the north, encompasses the entire eastern shore of the Baltic to Danzig, all of Poland, and on, down to the entire Crimea, and touching the Don River in the east. One of the many strengths of this book is the numerous excellent maps set within the narrative. His contributions to our understanding of what happened in that space and time are numerous. Central is his examination of the disparate motives behind these numerous deaths, and to present a “balanced” account, in a world of madness. Snyder starts in the Ukraine, with Stalin’s efforts to collectivize agriculture, which lead to the death, by starvation, of millions. Many others were deported to the “Gulag.” Next there was the “Terror,” in the late ‘30’s, in which Stalin purged many in the leadership ranks of the Soviet Union, with a particular focus on the Poles. In fact, the “Polish Military Organization” was simply invented for the purpose of justifying the terror. Though the Soviet Union promoted an image of their tolerance towards minorities, which many in the West, probably at one time including myself, accepted, with the “you can make an omelet without breaking a few eggs” rationalization, Snyder concludes otherwise, to a stark degree. Next there was the brief period that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were allies, which, in part, resulted in the partition of Poland between them, and the calculated decimation of the Polish leadership.

What more can be said about the Holocaust and the Jews? Actually, quite a lot, I found. Once again, Snyder condemns best in measured, factual analysis. He deals with the “big picture,” and demonstrates how, after the German failure to take Moscow in 1941, that the destruction of European Jewry became a wartime German objective. He names numerous concentration camps I had never heard of, because they were taken by the Red Army. Prior to reading Snyder’s account I was under the impression that the gas chambers had to be constructed because there was some natural “limit” whereby soldiers could not be ordered to shoot and kill unarmed men, woman and children, and be expected to obey. The soldiers themselves would simply rebel and refuse to participate in these heinous crimes. Not so, apparently, as the author documents how so very many were simply shot, including all those at Babi Yar.

Amos Oz, the Israeli novelist once proclaimed that “the dead of the Six Day War belong to all of us; the dead of the Lebanese War belong only to their mother’s.” Snyder posits a similar issue concerning a Soviet Ukrainian Jew who had once lived in an area considered to be Poland. She can be claimed by four different national entities; who does she belong to? And to what political purpose today will these entities use her death? And like Bernard Schlick’s principle character in The Reader , who is accused of war crimes, but asks the Judge: “What would you have done?” and receives no reply, Snyder cautions against assuming the identity of the victim, and raises the issue of what people who are just “trying to get by” will do in order to stay alive… including being Jewish policeman in the ghetto.

My first efforts to obtain a different vantage point on the Second World War, other than the one I was brought up on, as an American, that is, Pearl Harbor and D-Day, was reading Alexander Werth’s Russia at War: 1941-1945 , in the ‘60’s. William Shirer proclaimed it to be “the best book we probably shall ever have in English on Russia at war.” I found it strange therefore that in Snyder’s extensive 37 page bibliography, it is never mentioned. Of course, some of Werth’s information and opinions, as set forth in 1964, are outdated and have been superseded. For example, Werth had left it an open question as to who killed the Polish officers in the Katyn Forest, the Soviets or the Nazis. We now know for certain it was the former, and Snyder details this.

I also compared accounts concerning the doomed Warsaw uprising of 1944. I found Snyder’s account less rigorous, with the implicit assumption that the Russians had simply stopped, for no particular reason, and allowed the Poles to be slaughter as a result. Werth seemed to be much more explicit and detailed, clearly condemning “…the awkward questions of the Moscow radio appeals at the end of July to the people of Warsaw to ‘rise’… and the Russian refusal to let supply planes from the West land on Soviet airfields.” Also, it was clearly in Stalin’s interest to allow the Polish elites again to be decimated. Nonetheless, Werth quotes the German general, Heinz Guderian on the inability of the Russians to take Warsaw, cites the failure to cross the Vistula in July, with a loss of 30 Russian tanks, and Werth concludes: “The only conclusion this author, at any rate, has been able to reach is that in August and September, 1944, the available Red Army forces in Poland were genuinely not able to capture Warsaw, which Hitler was determined to hold.” At a minimum, I think Snyder should have at least addressed this issue, and Werth’s knowledge of the matter.

Despite the above one flaw, I consider this an essential historical work. 6-stars.

113 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Tarrel

Blend of “big picture” history and personal stories makes this a compelling if harrowing read.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 29, 2018

Verified Purchase

This is a very well researched, highly detailed piece of work on the history of Central Europe from the end of the First World War till after the second. Mr Snyder illustrates in harrowing detail how virtually every ethnic group suffered some sort of persecution during this period, and also how so many came out with blood on their hands. As someone whose family heritage lies in this part of the world I found the book fascinating but also saddening.

Page after page, the author reels off statistics of deaths in the hundreds of thousands and millions. If I had a criticism, it’s that this becomes relentless after a while. However I suppose it only reflects the relentless nature of the killing that took place.

This book is a wake-up call and stark reminder of the ability of normal people to do evil when certain conditions come together. It shows that, under the thin veneer of civilisation, we are tribal at heart.

Having been educated in the UK, I studied the first and second world wars at school, inevitably from a British perspective. This book presents those conflicts from a Central European (and particularly Polish) perspective. One discovers, for example, that rather than the First World War “ending in 1918”, the border wars that secured the inter-war Polish borders raged until 1922.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in that period of history in that part of the world. But be warned; it is not a “light read” and is not for the squeamish!

31 people found this helpful

Prf Joao Pina Cabral

Accounting for death in critical but humane terms

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 11, 2018

Verified Purchase

I find that Snyder manages to pull off an exceptional feat: to account for some of the greatest horrors in human history both in general, abstract terms and in specific, human ways. His critical humanism can only be an inspiration to us all in a world where the killing has not stopped, where to remain simply an observer is to be complicit.

17 people found this helpful

The Outsider

Truth in Numbers

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 23, 2014

Verified Purchase

Truth in Numbers

Having admired Timothy Snyder's reviews in NYRB, I looked forward to reading Bloodlands. I knew most of what would be in the book (MA thesis on the subject), but I was unprepared for his startlingly original analysis, which had me reading uninterrupted, huge chunks of this book in a sitting. It all comes down to the numbers - no one has ever related the numbers killed by the Germans and the Russians so intently to reveal the truth about the murder of 14 million people - not in combat, but in a specific part of Eastern Europe.
Snyder unearths data and human stories which reveal the uncanny similarities between Stalin and Hitler, and some uncomfortable truths. It was Stalin who set the killing machine going in the Ukrainian collectivization in the 1930's, starving over 3 millions, then moving on to the Great Terror, shooting over 700,000. Stalin killed his 'own' people in peace time, Hitler killed 'lower races' in wartime. Then, after the war, Stalin took up murder again, albeit on a smaller scale. That the two were partners between September 1939 and June 1941 and split the Bloodlands between themselves for a brief period - no relief to the locals, of course, is well known, but even in the episode, the revelations come thick and fast, particularly over Poland. When Hitler starts killing, his numbers went over 10 million - 5.7 million Jews, millions of Poles and so many others.
Stalin killed to control the vast Soviet Union, mainly minorities who might object to his forced collectivization and industrial push. Hitler killed to expand his empire, and the Jews were his favourite victims. Hitler planned to kill over 40 million people in push east, but had to change tack in 1941 when it became clear that he would not defeat the Soviet Union - as early as November, 1941. Then the Final Solution for the Jews became annihilation.
Snyder is in control of a vast body of material, writes sparingly and well, and his anecdotes always add colour and humanity. But it is his command of the big picture which makes this a great history book, one that changes perspectives - the more you learn, the more you feel you didn't know before. Snyder is at his best when he shows how nations use numbers to justify policies, past and present, to write and re-write history. After the war, Stalin had to distance himself from the Jewish suffering, as Russian suffering had to be his focus - Russians were the victims and the winners - no room for the Jews in the Great Patriotic War.
This is a great, purposeful work that others will be studying for many years to come. The madness of Stalin and Hitler is not discussed in great detail - it is their behaviour and its consequences that fill these pages. Top drawer for historians.

43 people found this helpful

Kindle Customer

Chilling, thought-provoking.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 3, 2019

Verified Purchase

This is a difficult read. The subject material is brutal. Our senses are anesthetized by the scale of the bloodshed. There is no hiding from the numbers and the consequential destruction.
It is a subject that needs airing and discussing. Whose tragedy is it? The victims or more broadly humanities. Who counts the numbers, how are they counted by race/religion/country/class? Why are the numbers hidden or alternatively publicised for political purposes?
The author deals expertly, calmly and without preaching. His book is well written and researched. It deserves to be widely read and understood.

4 people found this helpful

MAC

A Sobering & Balanced History That Needs to Be Read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 31, 2021

Verified Purchase

It is somewhat obvious that since the Berlin Wall came down and the West has been able to access Soviet records of what the so-called communists under Stalin got up to domestically as well as what the Red Army found on their march to Berlin in WWII. New facts and new perspectives on the horrors of it all would emerge.

And why not?

What better way for the victims to be recognised and remembered? The innocents who have suffered because of the inbuilt ignorance and prejudice of the state proponents of hate. They deserve to have their story told and Snyder's naming of the some of the victims is more than just a sentimental literary device - it is a form of justice of which he should be proud and of which the reader should be mindful.

And what better person to evaluate it all than a non-European such as Timothy Snyder? His gaze is unrelenting, his conclusions comprehensive as well as humane. Snyder's national objectivity is put to good use and is fair in its conclusions as he turns over the historical record.

The sheer scale of human suffering - firstly explored under Stalin and then under Hitler from the years 1933 to 1945 - is simply staggering to the point of overwhelming. The people caught in the lands between Berlin and Moscow were subjected to what a can only be described as the ideological sausage machines dominating the West and East at the time.

I have always been pro European but understood that Europe itself (Western to central Europe and right up to the Russian border) can be seen as one mass graveyard of human beings, of nations even. This is what has made the EU so important to me - I'd rather Europe be a place of fields of plenty for all (food) rather than killing fields as history points out to us it has been far too many times previously.

It is also clear that the Europe before WWII was a place of inter-woven peoples that almost made the notion of statehood look somewhat ridiculous, even superfluous, artificial even. German speaking Czechs and Poles, Polish speaking Germans or Ukrainians - the sheer mixture of peoples and ethnicities (diversity) is staggering and thought provoking.

It is nationalism itself that Snyder tells us is the culprit - nationalism is the unnatural, inhuman law at work here make no mistake about it. People will live where they can live - not where so-called leaders put imaginary lines on maps. They will speak the language they need to speak, till the good land that they can find and work with their neighbours to survive and worship their God as they see fit. To live and be happy.

And then there are the Jews. Today Poland is seen as a Roman Catholic country but I had no idea that before WWII Poland was a major Jewish settlement - a centre for Jewry in Europe. Incredible to think when you look at it now. And as for Poland - it needs and deserves a thorough account of what happened during these times caught between these two titanic forces - Nazism and Soviet style cod communism.

And now as others have noted (Keith Lowe in 'The Fear & the Freedom' or E.M Douglas 'Orderly and Humane' for example) we actually have less ethnic diversity (heterogeneity) in Europe and more homogeneous populations that seem ripe and easy prey for excessive and dangerous nationalism in countries that are now under pressure from migrants from Africa and the near East.

It's a heady brew - basically both Hitler and Stalin somehow live on in Europe in the scars created by the nations left behind by their polices after the conflict subsided.

Did it ever really end? Perhaps not - perhaps we Europeans even now are walking with tigers? But how well do we understand this?

Snyder is philosophical about this and sets an example of what we should be thinking when confronted with evaluating the likes of Hitler and Stalin. He repudiates revenge and an eye for an eye and says instead (p. 400):

'To yield to this temptation, to find other people to be inhuman, is to take a step toward not away from, the Nazi position. To find other people incomprehensible is to abandon the search for understanding, and thus to abandon history.'

Indeed. That is where we need to start with the most basic and simple question when confronted by potentially destructive ideology: Why?

Highly recommended without reservation.

See all reviews