Customer Reviews
Massive yet intimate portrait of evil - By: Mr. Tristan Martin, 04 Jan 2008 
Hitler & Stalin - Parallel Lives, is an outstanding portrait of two of the twentieth century's most savage monsters; a century that unfortunately is not short of candidates for the title. Alan Bullock has undertaken a daunting assignment - a parallel biography of two widely discussed dictators - & has excelledin not only that task but a further one on top, an analysis of the organisations they created & how those bureaucracies functioned. Though this is a `great man' view of history, the terrible impact these two personalities had on their time cannot be underestimated & deserves special consideration.
Parallel Lives is structured with alternating chapters, Hitler then Stalin & as the narrative progresses into the ravaged end of the Second World War, as the two foes face each other on the bloodily redrawn map of Europe, Hitler & Stalin's stories become related paragraph by paragraph. This audacious intertwining on the part of Alan Bullock serves the narrative superbly. The organisation of such a wealth of material is simply outstanding; the big sweep of momentous forces is ably conveyed but Bullock can also interject individual meetings, of say Hitler & his generals, where vivid quotations & personal contemporaneous notes are used to convey the atmosphere: the bureaucratic rivalry & disorganisationin Hitler's case or the abject terror of Stalin's party officials.
Whilst avoiding cheap psychobiography, Bullock traces the sources & channels of Hitler's driving motivations, his hatred & anti-Semitism from his earliest documented speeches & writing, through to the literal acting out of his insane fantasies of the Holocaust & the drive for Lebensraumin the East. This `intentional' approach is contrasted with a `structural' approach - how the Nazi regime was a bureaucratic mess, that policy instructions from Hitler were proclaimedin broad generalisations & left for subordinates to turn into reality, "...in accordance with the Fuhrer's wishes" so that the actual conspiratorial planning for the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem becomes difficult to determine (though Bullock places the actual decision sometimein July 1941, accuratelyin this reviewer's opinion).
Stalin's driving force, according to Bullock, was broadly similar: both men saw themselves as agents of history. Stalin, however, unlike Hitler, was deeply mistrustful of all around him & not only had murdered or exiled all those that were closest to him politically but took his paranoia out on the whole of Soviet society, decimating the officer class of the armed forces, the managerial & industrial class, peasant society & eventually the party bureaucracy itself. Stalin's communist party was incredibly organised & structured, totally unlike the Nazi apparatus. The fear that Stalin generated, the insanity of the purges & show-trials, lifein the gulags, all come within Bullock's grasp of history & mastery of detail.
Alan Bullock impressively conveys the personalities, the history, the party growth & organisational structure of the most impacting, monstrous individuals the twentieth century produced. His distillation of such a vast quantity of research, his presentation of evidence & weighing-up of judgements, are exemplary & should set a benchmark for any future historian looking to tackle the banality of evil. Hitler & Stalin - Parallel Lives, is a masterpiece; those looking for a history of the first half of the twentieth century & the monsters that shaped it, need look no further.
Brilliant analysis, poor writing - By: Jan Niemans, 11 Apr 2005 
This is a brilliant analysis & a must read for anybody interestedin the history of Europein the 20th century. Too bad that the writing leaves to be desired, with poorly structured chapters and, at times, unnecessarily convoluted syntax.
I found it irritating & reader-unfriendly to read, say, 'Hitler & Stalin had three pointsin common', without enunciating what they were, but launching into the first point with lots of (interesting) asides, going on for -- sometimes -- pages, keeping you wondering what the second point might be, & then springing that upon the reader, who has to figure out that this is indeed the second point referred to many paragraphs ago, & still no sign of what the third point might be.
Also, too often, I read a sentence & didn't understand what it meant. So, I reread it, trying to figure out where the subject, the verb, & the object were, & mentally inserting missing commas & semi-colons. Sometimes that helped & sometimes I had to try again. Mostly that worked but sometimes I just gave up & moved on.
As I said: brilliant content but a good editor could improve its readability -- & get rid of 200 pagesin the process.
A fascinating approach - By: Teemacs, 14 Jan 2005 The first photo you seein this book is of the elementary school classes of both Hitler & Stalin. By one of those bizarre coincidences, the young Adolf & Josef are both standingin the back row, third from the left, & both are striking cocksure, even arrogant poses. It may have been a sign of things to come... Lord Bullock's treatment is fascinating, moving from one man to the other, onein Austria & then Germany, the otherin Georgia & then Russia, both unknowing of each other, yet both moving inexorably towards the most mammoth collisionin history. He shows how alike they are - & at the same time how different. Both were doctrinairein their different ideologies, butin different ways, both exterminated enormous numbers of people, for quite different motives. Both are thoroughly evil, butin different ways, Hitler, securein power, seeking to promulgate the bizarre idea of the Aryan nation, Stalin, seeking to consolidate his grip on power, destroying anything that looked even vaguely like a class enemy & therefore a potential threat, from the landed peasants to the Russian officer corps. A fascinating look at the two greatest monsters of resent history.
Informative: It does what it is supposed to. - By: , 22 Oct 2004 This book is large. There's no denying it, so unless you're genuinely interestedin History & particularly these two figures there is no point starting it as you won't finish it. But for those of you who feel the period & individuals are really worth knowing about, then this is the book for you.
It cleverly combines the two characters so that they are discussed side by side rather than the more common, & if i may say so, more dreary approach of one after the other.
Parallel Lives runs through the entire lives of the two men whose names every child shall know until the end of human-kind.
This book is a must read for an extensive background knowledge for the first half of the last century. Recommended.
Tells the story the way you want to hear it.. - By: M. Woodgate, 02 Feb 2004 Lets cut to the chase, this book gets my highest possible recommendation. So similar, yet so different, arguably the two most negatively influential people of all time. Both brought forth unspeakable horrors but the way they did it & to whom they directed their wrath were very different. The scale unfortunately, was equally vast.
A paranoid & a megalomaniac, their lives intertwined, the only way to tell their stories is to intertwine them & thats what Bullock has done here.
A fascinating & eminantly readable account that will open your eyes to just what made these potent personalities tick.
