They presided over the most destructive regimes in history, murdered millions and fought the most barbarous war the world had seen. Yet countless Germans and Russians worshipped them and the values they stood for. How did Hitler and Stalin come to cast such a shadow over the twentieth century?
Richard Overy’s acclaimed history is the first to examine both the two regimes and the people who lived under them: how dictatorship became possible, the use of terror, the camp systems, the bond between leader and followers, and, above all, how these men managed to draw the wide consent that enabled them to kill on such a colossal scale.