By Timothy Scott
Special to THE DAILY

Occasionally, rarely, you will read a book that profoundly resonates with your mind and soul. “Lenin, Stalin and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe” was just such a book for me. It was compelling and written to be understandable to the layman. My only struggle was putting it down each night.

In biographical format, author Robert Gellately documents the adult lives and the rise to power of Vladimir I. Lenin, Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler. More important, Gellately also uses then-current events in Russia, Germany and the rest of Europe to enable the reader to empathize with the plight of the citizens and to set the stage for each society and the challenges facing the citizens.

I found myself eager to learn how a civilized population could and would submit to rule by any of the subject leaders.

Global forces

The implicit message to the reader is that global economic forces were necessary to create the environments in which these three figures were able to grab and hold positions of absolute power within their respective countries.

Certainly some sequences of events were needed to create an environment where citizens would embrace the routine use of terror and murder as political tools. In each case, Gellately shows how each figure’s ascension to power was initiated and heralded by the citizens and other leaders of each country.

Even the murder and mayhem perpetuated at the behest of each leader was rationalized, accepted and initially praised by the citizenry. The magnitude of the unbridled evil loosed by the three subjects and embraced by the citizens of Russia and Germany, remains staggering to this day.

Gellately performs a masterful job in demonstrating how Lenin implemented the idea of using terror and similar tactics as political tools to shape the perceptions of his fellow Russians, while lulling them with heady stories of cooperative ownership and worker utopia.

Middle class

The deprivations and shortages caused by World War I, coupled with base greed, allowed Lenin to gain traction and essentially eliminate the entire Russian middle class, the bourgeoisie.

His success in Russia tempted Lenin, and later Stalin, to export terror-induced revolution as a means of expanding communism on a global scale. With apologies to George Orwell, in the worker’s paradise where everyone is equal, the leaders are just a little bit more equal and certainly far richer for the efforts of the proletariat — the working class.

Stalin’s place at Lenin’s right hand during the period from the end of World War I through the 1920s, positioned Stalin as Lenin’s natural successor following Lenin’s death in 1924. The unmitigated brutality, terror and starvation employed first by Lenin to foment unrest among the Russian proletariat, were elevated to an even more horrible scale under Stalin.

I found it difficult to classify Stalin as merely, only, a sociopath and murderer. He ordered more of his own population killed than any other world leader — yet. Gellately does well at presenting research that dispassionately chronicles the monster that became Stalin’s Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Hitler’s start

Meanwhile in Germany, an otherwise undistinguished artist and World War I veteran realized he had a knack for public speaking and could earn a good living in politics. A narcissist of Lenin’s caliber, Hitler had a talent for emotional public speaking that incited a nationalistic pride and equally strong feelings of anti-Semitism among the German middle class.

Building on fears of a Lenin-style communist revolution, directly threatening middle class Germans in the latter 1920s, Hitler blamed Germany’s economic ruin and runaway inflation on the crushing debt levered by the Treaty of Versailles.

Ignoring Kaiser Wilhelm’s impetus in driving Germany into World War I, Hitler espoused a vitriolic and putrid version of hatred levered at those of Jewish heritage in particular, and all non-Aryans in general.

According to Hitler, the Jewish conspiracy of world domination was responsible for Germany’s economic disaster and thus represented an imminent danger to the lives and livelihood of Herr and Frau Citizen. Hitler’s maneuverings and manipulations succeeded in gaining his appointment as chancellor in 1933.

World War II and securing the German state excused Hitler to continue his meticulous pogrom of demonizing the Jews to enthrall the German population, making “ethnic cleansing” and the Holocaust socially acceptable to the average German.

“Lenin, Stalin and Hitler” sets a historical tone relative to events today that is unmistakable. Depending upon your perspective, it is easy to substitute current, notorious “leaders” in place of the figures described in the book.

Certainly some countries and non-governmental groups have leaders who believe, like Lenin, Stalin and Hitler, that terror is necessary for societal change.

This terror may come from the horror of mass death or the tragedy of a single kidnapping and execution. For it is fear that galvanizes civilized people into following the lead of madmen, and Gellately shows you how it happened in Europe.

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