Hitler and Stalin: The Tyrants and the Second World War

The bestselling historian on the dramatic wartime relationship - and shocking similarities - between two tyrants 'Laurence  Rees brilliantly combines powerful eye-witness testimony, vivid  narrative and compelling analysis in this superb account of how two  terrible dictators led their countries in the most destructive and  inhumane war in history' Professor Sir Ian Kershaw, author of Hitler - Hubris and Hitler - Nemesis This  compelling book on Hitler and Stalin - the culmination of thirty years'  work - examines the two tyrants during the Second World War, when  Germany and the Soviet Union fought the biggest and bloodiest war in  history. Yet despite the fact they were bitter opponents, Laurence Rees  shows that Hitler and Stalin were, to a large extent, different sides of  the same coin. Hitler's charismatic leadership may contrast with  Stalin's regimented rule by fear; and his intransigence later in the  war may contrast with Stalin's change in behaviour in response to  events. But at a macro level, both were prepared to create undreamt-of  suffering, destroy individual liberty and twist facts in order to build  the utopias they wanted, and while Hitler's creation of the Holocaust  remains a singular crime, Rees shows why we must not forget that Stalin  committed a series of atrocities at the same time. Using  previously unpublished, startling eyewitness testimony from soldiers of  the Red Army and Wehrmacht, civilians who suffered during the conflict  and those who knew both men personally, bestselling historian Laurence  Rees - probably the only person alive who has met Germans who worked for  Hitler and Russians who worked for Stalin - challenges long-held  popular misconceptions about two of the most important figures in  history. This is a master work from one of our finest historians.