This still ranks as one of the greatest works of scholarship I have ever read. ( )

1-2024
Cuando se habla de los muertos en la segunda guerra mundial, siempre pensamos en los campos de concentración alemanes. Siempre pensé que era donde más seres humanos habían muerto. Pero no, he estado equivocada durante años.

Las "tierras de sangre" son todas aquellas zonas, países o parte de países, entre Alemania y la URSS, donde Stalin y Hitler decidieron que les sobraban gente. Regaron de sangre esas tierras, desde mucho antes de empezar la guerra y mucho después de terminar.

Mucho antes de empezar la 2° guerra mundial, por 1931 Stalin empezó sus "matanzas". Su idea de modernizar el país pasaba por hacer desaparecer a los trabajadores del campo y en especial a los ucranianos. Pero no únicamente a ellos, polacos y rusos también cayeron con el hambre que provocó. Recogió las cosechas y el grano que se usaba para la siembra siguiente. Dejo que murieran de hambre sin ningún cargo de conciencia. Todo con vistas, o la escusa, de una industrialización del país.

Y así empieza el libro, en ese año y contándote las políticas de ambos líderes políticos.

Cuando más leo sobre este periodo de la historia, más me doy cuenta de lo que desconozco.

Lo recomiendo a todo aquel que disfrute de este periodo de la historia y quiera conocer un poco más.

Lo que hicieron con Polonia y con Ucrania me parece demencial. Y ya no solo por Stalin y Hitler, me refiero al resto del mundo, miro hacia otro lado y los dejaron hacer. Tan criminal fue la acción de asesinar a tantos seres humanos, como la inacción por parte del resto.

Saber, más o menos, la cantidad de personas que murieron en esta zona, durante esos años (y después de 1945), que superan con mucho los asesinados en los campos de concentración, más los militares que murieron luchando de todos los países, indica que son cifras inimaginables.

Tanto Hitler, como Stalin ñ, tenían fijación con eliminar a los judíos. Pero no asesinaron judíos. Estás tierras regadas con tanta sangre, eran de civiles masacrados por ambos bandos y en muchas ocasiones, ayudados por vecinos de las víctimas.

Muy interesante, nada pesado. ( )

A surprisingly brutal history of what I already knew was a brutal history. The purposefulness is shocking. The amount of pain suffered in Poland is being all comprehension. The plan to starve the ENTIRE population of the Soviet Union by Germany is so fantastically heinous…. Wow. “The human capacity for subjective victimhood is apparently limitless, and people who believe that they are victims can be motivated to perform acts of great violence” pp399/400 the conclusion of this book is brilliant. The first 400 pages are so hard to read (took me a year!) but to get to the conclusion one must consider the mountains of the dead.

There are so many different excerpts from this book that it would take pages and pages to fill out everything I find interesting or important. He is such a good writer that he can take something like this, which is widely written about, and make it interesting, shocking and at times brutal. There was only 1 very small part of a certain chapter that I got lost in the academia jargon but it seemed no other way to make it more simplistic. Almost the entire book is written for people who may not have vast knowledge of the Soviet and Nazi regimes in their peak of power. The Nazi brutality is more recognized and in popular literature/culture and it has to do with several things, mainly that they were a part of the "good guys" and fought alongside the British, American, French, ect. troops. Without the Soviet Union making a stand at the gates of Moscow and turning the tide to drive the Germans back westward, the outcome or length of the war would have been drastically different. The number of troop, and sadly civilians, who died in the Eastern Front is staggering and not easy to wrap your head around. I believe it's at the very top of any war for the amount of casualties in just the Eastern Front. So while Germanys war crimes and atrocities are more known in the West, I still knew the Soviets were ruthless killers too, but I misunderstood the severity and the destructiveness that the Soviets not only brought to the Germans but against their own people in the satellite soviet states and even Soviet Russia as well. Not just covering the time of WW2 between the 2 regimes, but it goes back and covers the Holomodor in mainly Ukraine between 1932-1933 that was a famine mainly Stalin-made and not naturally occuring. It breaks down their policies in a cold and straightforward way and can be a chilling read from start to finish. The amount of data and facts (numbers, locations of exact, or as close to it as they can get, numbers of people who died, including their nationalities and the particular way they ended up dying since there were several means of mass killing. Incredible book, if you haven't already picked that up by reading this far of my summary. ( )

There are so many different excerpts from this book that it would take pages and pages to fill out everything I find interesting or important. He is such a good writer that he can take something like this, which is widely written about, and make it interesting, shocking and at times brutal. There was only 1 very small part of a certain chapter that I got lost in the academia jargon but it seemed no other way to make it more simplistic. Almost the entire book is written for people who may not have vast knowledge of the Soviet and Nazi regimes in their peak of power. The Nazi brutality is more recognized and in popular literature/culture and it has to do with several things, mainly that they were a part of the "good guys" and fought alongside the British, American, French, ect. troops. Without the Soviet Union making a stand at the gates of Moscow and turning the tide to drive the Germans back westward, the outcome or length of the war would have been drastically different. The number of troop, and sadly civilians, who died in the Eastern Front is staggering and not easy to wrap your head around. I believe it's at the very top of any war for the amount of casualties in just the Eastern Front. So while Germanys war crimes and atrocities are more known in the West, I still knew the Soviets were ruthless killers too, but I misunderstood the severity and the destructiveness that the Soviets not only brought to the Germans but against their own people in the satellite soviet states and even Soviet Russia as well. Not just covering the time of WW2 between the 2 regimes, but it goes back and covers the Holomodor in mainly Ukraine between 1932-1933 that was a famine mainly Stalin-made and not naturally occuring. It breaks down their policies in a cold and straightforward way and can be a chilling read from start to finish. The amount of data and facts (numbers, locations of exact, or as close to it as they can get, numbers of people who died, including their nationalities and the particular way they ended up dying since there were several means of mass killing. Incredible book, if you haven't already picked that up by reading this far of my summary. ( )