Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin - Timothy Snyder

I came across this book after reading an article by Timothy Snyder on the history behind the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In his piece, Snyder discusses the long history of invasion experienced by Ukraine and other Eastern European nations existing in the dubious space between belligerent powers. This is an area he explored more broadly in Bloodlands, the title of which refers to a swath of land roughly contiguous with Poland, Belarus, and the Ukraine. where the vast majority of civilian death in the European theatre occurred between 1933 and 1945.

Much of this death was part of the Holocaust, but Snyder demonstrates that the Nazis were not the only genocidal force operating in that particular time and place. He provides a detailed rundown of the atrocities that the Soviets committed in these lands as well, from the imposed famine in Ukraine to the Great Terror to the purging of Polish intellectuals. He emphasizes that many of these places were subject to not just one invasion, but two or three, as the Nazis and the Soviets moved from allies to belligerents, and the Nazis from invaders to a broken, retreating army.

Of course, the Holocaust is given much focus, as its deliberate and racist intentions arouse particular loathing, but Snyder makes it clear that the Ukrainians and Poles were at times targeted almost as deliberately by the Soviets, if not with the same absolutist intention to eliminate them.

Snyder’s prose is academic but approachable, engaging and clear without much ornamentation. He had a tendency to repeat certain points, which I suspect is an effective way to ensure the general thesis is clear, though it sometimes grated a bit to hear the same fact several times. Overall, an important study of a particularly brutal stain on human history, one which it is hard to look at but must never be forgotten.

The Berlin Stories - Christopher isherwood

This is a hard one to categorize. The Berlin Stories is a collection of two previously published novellas, Mr Norris Changes Trains and Goodbye to Berlin, the latter of which is itself a collection of smaller stories surrounding, and closely related to, the principal novella, Sally Bowles. Despite this slightly hodgepodge origin, the book works as a thematic whole, and could in its way be construed as a single episodic novel with a consistent narrator, albeit one who changes names midway through. For Mr. Norris Changes Trains is narrrated by one William Bradshaw, a clear standin for the author, whereas the stories of Goodbye to Berlin discard the pseudonymic pretense and are simply narrated by Isherwood. There is even a character who appears in both books—the landlady, Frl Schoeder—offering further continuity.

Despite the name swap, there is no real difference in behaviour or voice between Bradshaw and Isherwood. They are effectively the same character, and both books have a very similar flavour, dealing as they do with misfits in the simultanerously glamorous and squalid Berlin of the late 1920s and early 1930s. Politics plays a part, but it is largely relegated to the background, despite isherwood (sorry, Bradshaw) and many other characters being closely involved with the German Communist party. The real focus instead is on the people, largely outsiders, with strange jobs and stranger hobbies, orbiting on the outer ridges of Berlin society. Many are apparently based on real people—including Mr. Norris and Sally Bowles, the standout pedestal protagonists of Trains and Goodbye, respectively. What their attitudes were to being so intimately captured in prose, I’m not sure.

Isherwood’s writing is superb, rich and elegant, evokative without being too showy. He has a way of capturing minute, superficial details in people that brings out something deeper from them—Sally’s nails, Norris’ teeth. I would be interested in reading his other works at some point.

Incidentally, I struggled whether to classify this as fiction or non-fiction. The works are clearly presented as novels, but based as they are on real people and event,s you could make an argument either way. In the end, I chose to call it fiction, for the simple reason that Isherwood catalogued it as such. Plus, it reads more like a novel, regardless of how much if any of it was invented.

All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque

All Quiet on the Western Front is a story narrated by Paul Baumer, a young German man who, a long with his friends, enlists in the German army during World War 1. No jingoist, he is clearly disillusioned at the opening pages, and becomes only more so throughout. His enlistment, we learn, was largely due to social pressure, personified by an arrogant teacher who bombarded his students with stories of false glory.

The story is episodic, with the only overarching narrative e being the course of the war, which Baumer, as a lowly soldier, barely glimpses. We see through his eyes, and what he sees are generally periods of boredom and hunger punctuated with week-long stretches of terror at the front. Stints on leave and at a military hospital broaden the picture further, giving a cross-section of life as a soldier at that time and place.

The descriptions are frank and horrific without being melodramatic. Indeed, the almost casual way in which Baumer details life as a soldier serves to reinforce the horror of the war. However, the prose isn't always plain, and Remarque allows Baumer the odd poetic digression, without going beyond what a young German intellectual might reasonably say.

All told, the book deserves its reputation as a preeminent work of World War 1 fiction. It's interesting to read as a Canadian with German heritage, as I have relatives who fought on both sides of that conflict. Baumer's reflection on the war's futility, and the perversion of killing men who share more in common with you than the generals and leaders who insist you do the killing, is a simple one, but its truth is profound.