BLACK EARTH: The Holocaust as History and Warning

I have read "about" Dr. Snyder views on Holocaust and got curious. I ordered the "Bloodlands" and "Black Earth" from my local library and I read it from the first page to the last... Than I ordered "Black Earth" from Amazon: I want to have my own copy. First comment is on available editions: I don't know quality of eBook version, but I won't recommend first paperback edition (it what is now, the following editions may be better). Reason: "Black Earth" contains maps (many maps). Paperback edition made pocket-size on non-whitened paper of poor quality in very small font. Even I can read the text, maps become non-intelligible to me (I'm moderately near-sited and read small font without glasses). And maps is important part of the book. I ordered hard-cover edition used in near new condition and I received it in a new condition (not even traces of any use). try your luck like me or pay a bit more for a new hard-cover edition (IMHO, paperback edition should be recalled as defective product, but I never heard about such things in book publishing). Dr. Henry Kissinger on the back cover stated "Part history, part political theory..." and he's absolutely right. Book is indeed groundbreaking on both of those points. I see some number of very interesting comments on the merit and accuracy of some details in the book, but the big picture is what I'm talking about. I'm not a learned historian of any kind, I just leaved my life in this history (I'm not eye witness of Holocaust, thanks Haven, I was born almost 20 years later, but my family, my growing-up in the shadow of it...). It was my life-long straggle to understand how it happen, why, and why it happen to "my people". I have read with interest the very extensive academic-level comments and won't go into those details. I just want to say that "Black Earth" is a very hard and slow read (it was for me). Much more so than "Boodlands". I have a very few points that I would like to have clarification from Dr. Snyder and will try to contact him through the publisher (or Amazon). I would point that "Bloodlands" is much more "conventional" read (with and without quotes) and I will write the separate comments on it. And the last: "Black Earth" is - technically - about events of 70+ year old history, but it has very explicit implications on today's World (and Dr. Snyder touching it in afterwords). You don't need to have PHD in History or Social or Political Since to read this book, but don't expect any enjoyment from reading other than better understanding of the World around you. And yes, read it. It worth the trouble doing it.

An extraordinary work. I found many parts of Bloodlands difficult to read, not because of any lack of narrative art or power by the author, but because of his unsparing, vivid and ultimately unforgettable descriptions of the horrors wrought on the lands of central Europe by the Soviet Union and Germany in the mid twentieth century; horrors ordered by leaders of both countries and carried out by thousands and tens of thousands of their citizens and those of the occupied territories. It seemed unlikely that there was more to say on the subject, but apparently there was. As difficult as Bloodlands was to read, the Black Earth was more difficult to put down. This is a different narrative; the story which traces the mechanisms by which Hitlers ideas and worldview, came to dominate the German people and then much of Europe and how these ideas interacting with the events before and during the war lead to a circumstance in which the murder of millions of Jews and others seemed necessary and appropriate to the murderers. Snyder is unsparing and readers of all nations including the USA will find themselves uncomfortable, reading some sections. But this is not a book of political philosophy, but a fascinating story. I found for example, the historyt of the relationship of the Irgun, the Stern Gang, and the far right wing of the Zionist movement with the Polish state and secret service a revelation. The final chapter is the warning alluded to in the title. His argument here is convincing, specific and very frightening. Read this as a fascinating narrative of European history, as a study of the limits of human good and evil, or as a response to other explanations of the holocaust.

A marvelous book and worth reading, but one that I believe was written to a purpose. Apparently Snyder came under some criticism for regarding the Holocaust as insufficiently significant in his earlier work; so he wrote this book as a kind of atonement. His masterwork remains Bloodlands, which considers the comprehensive history of genocide in the territory between Germany and Russia during the war years. I do not mean to imply in any way that Black Earth is a lesser book. Snyder is a polymath, competent in several languages, a deeply meticulous researcher, and above all a truly good writer – someone who can write to a standard now sadly vanishing from the world. I recommend Black Earth, but I revere Bloodlands. Both are true monuments in the history of genocide, and will equip the diligent reader with a perspective that is not (at least to my knowledge) to be found anywhere else. Snyder deserves a wider audience, and that audience should include you.

Virtually everyone I know who thinks, and who has any interest in understanding our world and the Holocaust , should read “Black Earth”. Prof. Snyder had written the definitive single volume that can enable someone who understands “what” happened in the Holocaust to form some very good ideas—in an understandable vehicle—about “how” and “why” it happened. “Black Earth” disabuses the reader of many of our misconceptions about where the Holocaust happened and who the victims were (e.g., only 3% of Holocaust victims even spoke German)—and that there were clearly discernible “good and bad guys” living in the areas where it happened at the time. For me , this is a great service to European history of the 20th (and, arguably, 21st Century) as I view the Holocaust as the “axial” event of the former, to use his term. (A clever play on the “Axis” powers, whether intended or not.) Prof. Snyder has accomplished this without “merely” writing a history of specific “mass murder.” His purview and conclusions are much much larger and more profound and compelling. (If this isn’t the “job” of a historian, whose “job” is it? ).“Black Earth” allows us to understand the minds of the perpetrators and accomplices , and even question the innate beneficence of humankind. In fact, many “choices” made in the Holocaust were more a question of shades of gray than “Black” or Blood(lands) red. In my view, this approach well serves the memories of the victims of this tragedy, as it explicates their then-incomprehensible (and often shades of gray) universe as the unfortunate product of much more than the simplistic “antisemitism” gone rampant. At least thinking in this way can, hopefully, serve to thwart subsequent “perfect storms” and their havoc, as Snyder urges. “Black Earth” enables a big payoff for intensive reading and some new, big words. Most people interested in trying to comprehend the Holocaust have one book “in them”. This is that “one book” I’ve long sought that I can recommend to attempt comprehend the “how did it happen?” of the Holocaust, for those who know-- or think they know-- “what” happened.

To understand Western Europe and the Soviet Union in 1930’s and 1940’s as related to current political events, this book is necessary reading. I’ve been following historian Timothy Snyder. He has his finger on what’s going on in the US as to the development of an autocratic government. This book is a strong warning as to how rights can slowly and insidiously be stripped away while many people do nothing. It’s a laborious read, but it’s important enough to stick with it.

Review by Nicole Fox My husband and I are sincerely astounded by Dr. Snyder’s newest expression of his genius in book form. Black Earth is the most clearly written, well researched, and insightful book that I have ever read. Ever since I was a small child and first dissolved into tears upon observing grainy photos of piles of corpses at concentration camps; I have been trying to understand the thought process in the brain of Hitler. I have always been bothered by the discrepancies between facts about the actions of Hitler and theories regarding his motivations. For those steeped in the conventional wisdom, you now have an extraordinary new resource. I have always believed that Hitler was just using Germany for his own malevolent goals and was never a nationalist. Nothing about someone who could perpetrate the horrors being described ever made sense, but I did not have the educational foundation or depth of understanding to swim through the apparently chaotic information. I applaud Dr. Snyder’s ability to explain the mechanisms Hitler used to obtain his inherent anarchical goals. Dr. Snyder has done a great service to us all by submerging himself in the atrocities of history to provide the world with a clear view of the motivations behind the brain of of a mass murderer. I want to express my complete agreement with his conclusions regarding our current climate change issues and our dangerous teetering upon the brink of repetition of this horrifying history. I truly appreciate Dr. Snyder’s sacrifice in delving to such depths in the darkest and coldest abyss of history to find pearls of wisdom and truth that can be applied to the problems of today.

This is such a thoughtful and important examination of the Holocaust, and finally a work that bridges what too often seems a distant (both temporally and geographically) event with the present. Two important themes run through this book. First, that most victims of the Holocaust had already been murdered, over open pits by "ordinary men," before Auschwitz began systematically gassing Jews: "Auschwitz has also become the standard shorthand of the Holocaust because, when treated in a certain mythical and reductive way, it seems to separate the mass murder of Jews from human choices and actions.... When the mass murder of Jews is limited to an exceptional place and treated as the result of impersonal procedures, then we need not confront the fact that people not very different from us murdered other people not very different from us at close quarters." And second, that the integrity of a state--whether it had been occupied by the Nazis or doubly occupied, first by the Soviets and then by the Nazis, and in the process essentially rendered a non-state--was closely linked to survival: "The likelihood that Jews would be sent to their deaths depended upon the durability of institutions of state sovereignty and the continuity of prewar citizenship. These structures created the matrix within which individual choices were made, the constraints upon those who did evil, and the possibilities for those who wished to do good." Snyder's previous book "Bloodlands" has much to say about the first theme; it's the second that has made me think about the Holocaust from a new perspective and is an idea that makes it both necessary and possible to gauge our future with an appropriate dose of caution.

A fantastic and wonderful book. It should be a must read for everyone especially the ruling class in America and elsewhere in the world. If I could, I would send a boatload to the Russian Embassy in Washington DC, addressed to His highness, Putin. I was born in Riga, Latvia in 43 and I know of the horrors of the double occupation from my parents and their friends who are gone. But now I feel like I know the whole story after reading the Black Earth. What scares me is that the world may be heading again for the same disaster. Eastern Europe is in Putin's sights as well as the Middle East. Anyone who trusts the Kremlin is a fool. The only thing, unfortunately, a thug understands is force, specifically someone who will use force without hesitation against him. One pet peeve I have always had that never has been answered but maybe Snyder can answer is this. The US never recognized the incorporation of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia into the USSR. Yet on every world map printed in the USA after WW2 up to the collapse of the USSR in 1991, these Baltic countries were always shown as part of the Soviet Union in the same color, red. They were never shown as distinct and separate countries like Poland, Hungary, Rumania, etc. were. Thus they literally disappeared from the world's sight for 50 years! A simple word from the US Congress and the White House could have fixed this and kept these mangled former democracies at least visible to the world. What's done is done as they say. "Stuff happens"!

An excellent book on the politics of state and statelessness in the context of the Holocaust, Snyder's "Black Earth" is a critical examination of the ideas and conditions that made Holocaust possible. I would not call it a history of the Holocaust per se, though it does provide a big picture description of that history, but rather the history of the destruction of statehood and institutions and norms that made Holocaust possible to execute. Snyder's key idea advanced in this book is that it was destruction of state institutions (by Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, or both) in Eastern Europe, and stripping away of citizenship, protection by the state, and social norms, that permitted the Nazis to commit the Holocaust often with support by local people and communities. And that the ideology that made it possible did so by viewing politics, nature, and science as one and the same: in service to a mythical idea of endless blood struggle between races. Speaking for myself the most interesting parts of the book for me were Polish-Jewish relations and politics before the Second World War, and the politics of local collaboration with the Nazis in occupied Eastern Europe. That's where I learned the most new things from the book. The weakest part was probably the conclusion in which Snyder tries to draw some parallels between the conditions that made Holocaust possible and climate change. But hindsight from 2026 is easy to engage in.

Era difícil publicar algo verdaderamente nuevo en este tema, aportar algo a la ya extensísima bibliografía sobre este tema. Pero Snyder lo consigue con un enfoque interesantísimo sobre la cuestión. Absolutamente imprescindible para los iniciados en el tema y también muy recomendable para el público en general.

"Black Earth" is one of the most unsettling and intellectually powerful books out there. Rather than treating the genocide as an inexplicable eruption of evil, Timothy Snyder explores the political and ideological conditions that made it possible. His argument that the Holocaust thrived most intensely in regions where states collapsed and people became stateless is both convincing and frighteningly relevant even today. Snyder also examines Hitler’s ecological worldview — the belief that races were locked in a brutal struggle over limited land and resources — which adds a chilling layer to understanding Nazi ideology. The book moves beyond simple memorialization and forces readers to confront how institutions, citizenship, and law protect societies from descending into barbarism. Dense at times, but immensely rewarding and thought-provoking. The book arrived in very good condition — neat packaging, clean pages, and excellent print quality. Overall, a deeply important read and a great purchase.

L'ouvrage, au-delà des polémiques passées et à venir, fait le point, comme Bloodlands, sur la place de l'Etat dans la protection des populations. Les arguments sont forts, tombent souvent juste, mais Tim Snyder ne se gêne pas pour contourner certaines difficultés liées à la difficulté d'avoir, justement, un phénomène européen avec des déclinaisons multiples. Oui, l'Etat absent est souvent synonyme de mortalité record pour les Juifs (polonais, biélorusses, ukrainiens, néerlandais...), mais dans d'autres cas, le déterminisme fonctionne moins bien. Le cas du Protectorat de Bohême-Moravie, où le taux de déportation et de meurtre est très élevé, frappant une communauté bien assimilée, et où un gouvernement tchèque est préservé - fut-il, comme ailleurs, très encadré par des Allemands, y compris des Allemands locaux -, aurait apporté un éclairage intéressant. Or, il n'est pas évoqué, quand les cas croates ou slovaques sont expédiés en une page. Des déceptions et de beaux morceaux pour un ouvrage qui a le mérite de relancer certains débats historiographiques. La bibliographie n'est pas sans intérêt et recense des approches très variées, mais elle n'est pas hiérarchisée et, en définitive, peu exploitée dans le corps du texte, qui ignore les apports de nombreux historiens ou historiens-anthropologues.

Ich habe bereits den Vörgänger "Bloodlands" - ebenfalls von Dr. Snyder - als beachtenswertes Werk wahrgenommen und hatte dementsprechend hohe Erwartungen an "Black Earth". Ich wurde nicht enttäuscht. Inhaltlich bietet "Black Earth" einen ungewöhnlichen Blick auf die komplexen Einflüsse, welche in den 1930er und 1940er Jahren schließlich zum Holocaust geführt haben. Im Gegensatz zu anderen Büchern, welche ich zum Thema gelesen habe, gefällt mir die Balance zwischen pragmatischem, kausalem Geschichtsblick (á la Götz Aly) und dem mutigen "Einblick" in Primärquellen. Es gehört einiges an Mut dazu, "Hitler's zweites Buch" ernst zu nehmen und in einem Mainstream-Buch über die Geschichte des Holocaust mit Gedanken daraus zu argumentieren. Dieser gewagte Schritt eröffnet jedoch eine spannende Lesart der Eskalation deutscher Diskriminierungs- und Gewaltpolitik hin zu dem Komplex, welchen wir heute als "Holocaust" beschreiben. Ebenso wie bereits bei "Bloodlands" überzeugt mich hier, wie erstaunlich breit die Argumentationsstruktur Snyders aufgestellt ist. Er führt eine große Zahl an unterschiedlichsten Quellen und unterschiedlichster Perspektiven an. Jeder Argumentationsfortschritt wird verständlich vorbereitet. Hier sehe ich auch die zweite große Stärke von Snyders Büchern - die sehr hohe Lesbarkeit für Leser außerhalb des Fachbereiches (wie auch mich) durch eine klare, nachvollziehbare Struktur und eine zuweilen bewegende, beinahe belletristische Sprache. Zu keinem Zeitpunkt fühlt man sich als Laie "verloren" im Argumentationsfortschritt, sämtiche Quellen werden verständlich verortet und eingeführt und nötiges Hintergrundwissen stets kurz umrissen. Das viel beachtete letzte Kapitel des Buches ist ohne Frage mutig und vorausschauend formuliert. Eventuell lehnt sich Snyder hier für meinen Geschmack etwas weit aus dem Fenster - eben hier finde ich die eingangs gelobte "Breite" der Argumentation nicht wieder. Mir gefallen seine Punkte inhaltlich durchaus, jedoch finde ich, dass das letzte Kapitel etwas "kurz angebunden" und pauschal formuliert wirkt. Eingedenk der Tatsache, dass der Untertitel des Buches "The Holocaust As History And Warning" ist, kommt mir der "Warning" Part etwas unausführlich und "zusammengezimmer" vor - insbesondere im Vergleich zum sonst herausragenden Standard der vorherigen Kapitel. Snyder hat in der Vergangenheit bereits zu aktuellen Konflikten und politischen Gegebenheiten klar Position bezogen - wer mit seinen Äußerugen reflektiert umgehen kann, wird durch die Übertragung der Rückschlüsse aus "Black Earth" auf unsere Zeit auf jeden Fall eine interessante und diskussionswürdige Perspektive auf die zeitgenössischen Herausforderungen und Konflikte hinzugewinnen. Long story short... "Black Earth" ist auf jeden fall eine tolle Ergänzung für das Bücherregal jedes geschichtlich interessierten Lesers. Für Leser, die sich bereits mit verschiedenen Herangehensweisen zur Erklärung des Holocaust beschäftigt haben, bietet "Black Earth" eine weitere Facette um die eigenen Sichtweisen zu komplettieren; für "Einsteiger" und Fachfremde ist es ein zugänglches, unterhaltsames Buch zur Zeitgeschichte. Im Verbund mit "Bloodlands" ergibt sich für mich ein langsam kompletter werdendes Geschichtsbild, welches Snyder erarbeitet hat - als nächstes steht "Nachdenken über das 20. Jahrhundert" auf meiner Leseliste.