This new book from Prof. Jochen Hellbeck (Rutgers) on Nazi Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 is a challenging read, forcing readers to rethink their views of war on the Eastern Front, the Holocaust, and the incipient Cold War. His major point is that the Nazis’ goal was the elimination of “Judeo-Bolshevism.” This conflation of Jews with Communism meant that once Operation Barbarossa unfolded on June 22, 1941, the Germans were waging a war of extermination against the Soviet Union itself. Not only does this explain the beginnings of the ”Holocaust by bullets” carried out by the Einsatzgruppe and the Wehrmacht in general, it also explains the deliberate killing, mostly by starvation, of millions of Red Army prisoners of war, the vicious war against partisans, and the treatment of Soviet forced laborers in Germany. Hellbeck also claims that this obsession set off the extermination of German Jews and then the Jewish populations of Nazi-occupied Europe. World Enemy intends to reclaim the Soviet Union’s preeminent status as the ally that both sacrificed far more than the USA, Britain, and France, but also contributed more to their victory over Hitler. It also resurrects the role played by Ilya Ehrenburg, a Soviet Jew who was the USSR’s most prominent propagandist during the war.

Structuring his book chronologically, Hellbeck begins with Hitler’s rise to power, then moves on to the period of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, following with Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. The bulk of World Enemy describes the terrible consequences of that invasion for the Soviet people. First, and foremost, the Jews, who were simply murdered outright, killed in reprisals, or sent to death camps. Then the Red Army’s commissars, who were also shot on sight. Then the almost six million solders captured by the Wehrmacht, the majority of whom died from starvation and disease in German custody. Finally, the rest of the civilian population of the portion of the USSR occupied by Germany. Millions of them died, either resisting as partisans, working as slave laborers in Germany, or starving because the Germans destroyed their farms, villages, and cities. Almost all of this will be familiar to readers who know either the history of military operations on the Eastern Front or of the Holocaust. Hellbeck does bring in many new sources, though, since he uses primary and secondary material in German and Russian. He follows the Red Army through to the end of the war, including their infamous mass rapes and wanton destruction in Germany. The last chapter, “Erasure,” is an indictment of the Western Allies for their failures at Nuremberg, as well as Soviet failures to acknowledge the particular suffering of Jewish citizens under Nazi rule. He also criticizes the US Holocaust Memorial Museum for its neglect of Soviet Jewish victims, not to mention the role of the Red Army in destroying Nazi Germany and liberating the extermination camps.

Hellbeck tries hard to be evenhanded in his treatment of atrocities, propaganda, and ideology, though he is clearly painting the Soviet Union, particularly its soldiers and writers, and especially Ehrenburg, in a good light. He mentions Stalin’s crimes, from the prewar Holodomor and purges, to the killing of Polish officers at Katyn, to the persecution of Jews and others -- including in the late 1940s. Hellbeck’s comparative discussion of propaganda is novel: the “nation of Schiller and Goethe” relied on images and spectacle, while the USSR’s newly literate population was treated to texts from top writers. Whether readers will end up convinced by Hellbeck’s arguments, or not, they will learn new things about how the Soviet Union fought in World War II.

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Our Reviewer: Jonathan Beard is a retired freelance journalist who has devoted most of his life to reading military history. When he worked, he wrote and did research for British, American and Danish science magazines, and translated for an American news magazine. The first book he owned was Fletcher Pratt’s The Monitor and the Merrimac. Jonathan reviews regularly for the Michigan War Studies Review. His previous reviews here include Down the Warpath to the Cedars: Indians' First Battles in the Revolution, The Virtuous Wehrmacht: Crafting the Myth of the German Soldier on the Eastern Front, 1941-1944, Prevail Until the Bitter End: Germans in the Waning Days of World War II, Enemies Among Us, Battle of the Bulge, Then and Now, Mussolini’s War: Fascist Italy From Triumph to Collapse, Engineering in the Confederate Heartland, The Bletchley Park Codebreakers, Armada, Allied Air Attacks and Civilian Harm in Italy, The Collaborators, The Enigma Traitors, When Men Fell from the Sky, Midway: The Pacific War’s Most Famous Battle, When Men Fell from The Sky, The Lost Scientists of World War II, U.S. Battleships 1939–45, The Last Emperor of Mexico, Rain of Ruin: Tokyo, Hiroshima, and the Surrender of Japan, Convair B-36 Peacemaker, Eagle Days: Life and Death for the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain, The Concentration Camp Brothel, and The Maginot Line.

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Note: World Enemy No. 1is also available in paperback, audio, & e-editions.

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