The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is pleased to welcome award-winning historian Laurence Rees as he discusses his new book, Hitler and Stalin: The Tyrants of the Second World War. Rees will be in conversation with historian Michael Neiberg.
This event is free and open to the public. Book sales are encouraged through the Midtown Scholar Bookstore.
An award-winning historian plumbs the depths of Hitler and Stalin's vicious regimes, and shows the extent to which they brutalized the world around them.
Two 20th century tyrants stand apart from all the rest in terms of their ruthlessness and the degree to which they changed the world around them. Briefly allies during World War II, Adolph Hitler and Josef Stalin then tried to exterminate each other in sweeping campaigns unlike anything the modern world had ever seen, affecting soldiers and civilians alike. Millions of miles of Eastern Europe were ruined in their fight to the death, millions of lives sacrificed.
Laurence Rees has met more people who had direct experience of working for Hitler and Stalin than any other historian. Using their evidence he has pieced together a compelling comparative portrait of evil, in which idealism is polluted by bloody pragmatism, and human suffering is used casually as a political tool. It's a jaw-dropping description of two regimes stripped of moral anchors and doomed to destroy each other, and those caught up in the vicious magnetism of their leadership.
About the Author:
Laurence Rees is an award-winning historian and documentary film maker, and author of Auschwitz, and Holocaust, both published by PublicAffairs. He lives in London.
Michael S. Neiberg is the inaugural Chair of War Studies in the Department of National Security and Strategy at the United States Army War College. His published work specializes on the First and Second World Wars, notably the American and French experiences. He is the author of many books, including Dance of the Furies: Europe and the Outbreak of World War I and Potsdam: The End of World War II and the Remaking of Europe. He is currently based in Pennsylvania.
