Knowing my strange fondness for reading about the USSR, my son gave me this book for Christmas (maybe he wants to borrow it now?). The book linked Leninism, Stalinism and Nazism in a way I have not seen it before. Rather than residing in my mind as disparate pieces of history, I saw how Nazi Germany and the newly formed USSR worked together until the initial attacks on Russia. It interested me to see how the enemies (USSR and Germany in WWII), worked together in exterminating the Jews. It was fascinating to see how philosophically closer to each other they were than I had previously thought: the racism (fascism) of the Nazis was not so far from the intolerance executed in the USSR by both Lenin and Stalin. It is the only book where I have found focused attention on the importance of Lenin, both his craft (state and otherwise) and his personal ideology. For history buffs, enjoyable! For me, highly enlightening and thought-provoking. ( )

Very good and very informative. I highly recommend this book. the only flaw i saw is that the author's writing style is a bit dry.Nevertheless, this book contains good pictures and good analysis of that period. ( )

Knowing my strange fondness for reading about the USSR, my son gave me this book for Christmas (maybe he wants to borrow it now?). The book linked Leninism, Stalinism and Nazism in a way I have not seen it before. Rather than residing in my mind as disparate pieces of history, I saw how Nazi Germany and the newly formed USSR worked together until the initial attacks on Russia. It interested me to see how the “enemies” (USSR and Germany in WWII), worked together in exterminating the Jews. It was fascinating to see how philosophically closer to each other they were than I had previously thought: the racism (fascism) of the Nazis was not so far from the intolerance executed in the USSR by both Lenin and Stalin. It is the only book where I have found focused attention on the importance of Lenin, both his craft (state and otherwise) and his personal ideology. For history buffs, enjoyable! For me, highly enlightening and thought-provoking. ( )

A well written book that held my interest for 600 pages. Sometimes it read like a history book with lots of "dry" facts and figures, but then I remembered that the facts and figures were millions of people murdered. ( )