Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
(I know we have a book thread but since we have many people who like history, I thought that some of the C-D history forum participants would be able to recommend good books on the leaders of Nazi Germany and of the USSR).
I first read and learned much from John Toland's Adolf Hitler and later Allan Bullock Hitler and Stalin Parallel Lives
There is a new book by Dr. Weber on Hitler's service in the First World War which reconsiders his status. Available inexpensively form the Military Book Club.
All three should be at a good public or university library.
Ian Kershaw's two-volume biography on Hitler is excellent: Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis
As for Stalin, I find him even more interesting than Hitler but I don't think there is as definitive a work as Kershaw's survey of Hitler. Edvard Radzinskii's biography was entertaining, though filled with fantastical claims that put the whole work in serious doubt, to put it mildly. Simon Montefiore's Stalin: In the Court of the Red Tsar was a much more serious and interesting work.
William Taubman's Khruschev: The Man and His Era was an excellent work that I would put on par with Kershaw's study of Hitler and aside from being very interesting for its subject, it contains much tangential information on Stalin, who by the late 1920s included Khruschev in his inner circle.
I liked Richard Overy's The Dictators, which is a fairly recent comparative study. The Bullock book mentioned above is stronger on the Hitler side than the Stalin one.
Taubman's book, also mentioned, is a good one, but Stalin is not its main focus obviously.
Ian Kershaw's two-volume biography on Hitler is excellent: Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis
As for Stalin, I find him even more interesting than Hitler but I don't think there is as definitive a work as Kershaw's survey of Hitler. Edvard Radzinskii's biography was entertaining, though filled with fantastical claims that put the whole work in serious doubt, to put it mildly. Simon Montefiore's Stalin: In the Court of the Red Tsar was a much more serious and interesting work.
William Taubman's Khruschev: The Man and His Era was an excellent work that I would put on par with Kershaw's study of Hitler and aside from being very interesting for its subject, it contains much tangential information on Stalin, who by the late 1920s included Khruschev in his inner circle.
I agree, Radzinski's book was a bit over the top, but I really enjoyed Montefiore's. What a drunken, paranoid, cruel , brute Stalin was. Reading about his last hours, and how his terrified minions couldn't decide what to do, if anything, was priceless. The only one of that loathsome crew that may have been worse was another Georgian, the pervert and sadist, Beria. What's in the water down there??
If you want to know about Hitler, read Hitler's book, Mein Kampf.
.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
