TBC BOOK REVIEWS 📖

I have shared before that I have been reading about World War II since I read Snow Treasure in fourth grade and was immediately hooked!

For comprehensive history volumes (not biographies not historical fiction but straight, heavy history), I have read my two best ever this year. They were long and hard to read but I did it and know so much more as a result.

First was At Dawn We Slept, the almost thousand page life work of Gordon Prange about Pearl Harbor. That burst my belief that we were totally taken by surprise at Pearl Harbor. We had wargamed the scenario many times. We just did not know when and how and did not have adequate resources for 24/7 coverage, with a war already going on in the Atlantic.

Now I have just finished Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands about the 14 million civilians purposely killed by Stalin and Hitler between 1933 and 1945. Since Hitler did not get far into Russia itself (and since Stalin killed far more non-Russians than Russians), the Bloodlands turn out to be Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. These suffered first by being incorporated into the Soviet Union, then by being occupied by Hitler, then by being reabsorbed into the Soviet empire. Lots of people died throughout those years by intentional starvation, shootings, and gassing.

It is a horrific book but man is a horrific creature when God is left out of the equation. As I said to Joey a few days ago, when I contemplate how evil mankind is, it is really pretty shocking that a sinless Saviour chose to come live among us!

An interesting historical fact: did you know that, to this day, Russians regard the beginning of World War II as the day in 1941 when Hitler attacked the Soviet Union? We say September 1, 1939, when he entered Poland but Russians cannot admit that part because they simultaneously invaded Poland from the other side, under their pact with Hitler. History is amazing, isn’t it?