A major new his­to­ry that trans­forms our under­stand­ing of World War II — trac­ing the con­flict and its most infa­mous crime, the Holo­caust, to Germany’s implaca­ble hos­til­i­ty toward Sovi­et Rus­sia

In the West, World War II is com­mon­ly under­stood as the Allies’ strug­gle against Nazism. Often elid­ed, if not sim­ply for­got­ten, is the Sovi­et Union’s cru­cial role in that fight. With this book, acclaimed his­to­ri­an Jochen Hell­beck rec­ti­fies this omis­sion by relo­cat­ing the ide­o­log­i­cal core of the con­flict. It was not the West­ern pow­ers but Com­mu­nist Rus­sia that Nazi Ger­many viewed as an exis­ten­tial threat — in fact, ​“World Ene­my No. 1.” Jew­ish rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies, the Nazis believed, had seized pow­er in 1917 and were prepar­ing the Sovi­et state to destroy Ger­many and the world. And so, on June 22, 1941, a Ger­man army of three mil­lion attacked the Sovi­et Union to exter­mi­nate ​“Judeo-Bol­she­vism,” Hitler’s car­di­nal obses­sion. While Europe’s Jews were expelled, exiled, and per­se­cut­ed by the Nazis, Sovi­et Jews were imme­di­ate­ly slat­ed for elim­i­na­tion. The Sovi­et lands thus became ground zero for sys­tem­at­ic exter­mi­na­tion, which was only lat­er extend­ed to all Jews, ignit­ing the Holo­caust.

Hell­beck plumbs new­ly declas­si­fied archives and pre­vi­ous­ly undis­cov­ered sources — tes­ti­monies, diaries, and dis­patch­es from sol­diers and civil­ians, Sovi­et and Ger­man — to offer a unique his­to­ry that takes account of both sides. He recon­structs the years lead­ing up to the war when ​“Europe against Bol­she­vism” was the Nazis’ most fer­vid ral­ly­ing cry, and doc­u­ments their anni­hi­la­to­ry ambi­tions on the bat­tle­grounds in the East. Wide­ly dis­sem­i­nat­ed accounts of Ger­man atroc­i­ties mobi­lized mil­lions of Sovi­et cit­i­zens to join a people’s war against the hat­ed invaders. Hell­beck tracks the desire for revenge that drove the Red Army on its path of recon­quest, an advance that fur­ther inflamed the belief in a mur­der­ous ​“Bol­she­vik Jew,” stir­ring the Ger­mans to fight to the bit­ter end. Recount­ed here in vivid detail are the events at Babi Yar, the Bat­tle of Stal­in­grad, the lib­er­a­tion of the con­cen­tra­tion camps, and the arrival of the Red Army in the Nazi cap­i­tal. Final­ly, Hell­beck reck­ons with the West’s per­sis­tent dis­re­gard of the Sovi­et Union’s incal­cu­la­ble con­tri­bu­tion to win­ning the war — and its sac­ri­fice of twen­ty-six mil­lion cit­i­zens — as anti-com­mu­nism and the Cold War turned erst­while allies into mor­tal ene­mies.

Hellbeck’s eye-open­ing work is an aston­ish­ing new read­ing of both the Sec­ond World War and how its his­to­ry has been told.