Author(s): Laurence Rees

History

Two twentieth-century tyrants stand apart from all the rest, Laurence Rees has met more people with direct experience 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. This is 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.