World Enemy No. 1 - Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the Fate of the Jews

In the Nazi imagination, the USSR was the most powerful Jewish organization in the world. They called it ‘World Enemy No. 1’.

‘A magnificent memorial’ Yuri Slezkine, author of The Jewish Century
‘A tour de force’ Paul Hanebrink, author of A Specter Haunting Europe
‘Passionate, original, vivid, sometimes terrifying’ Victoria de Grazia
‘Remarkable . . . fascinating’ The Wall Street Journal
‘An essential contribution’ Kirkus (starred review)

26 million Soviet citizens died between 1941 and 1945. This number may be well-known, but the human faces and voices behind the statistics have been conspicuously absent.

In this groundbreaking history, Jochen Hellbeck argues that it was Communist Russia, not the Western powers, that the Nazis viewed as their greatest threat. The German crusade against ‘Judeo-Bolshevism’ was the driving force of the Nazis’ most extreme violence, and Soviet territory became ground zero for systematic extermination. Only later was this shocking regime of killing extended to all Jews, igniting the Holocaust.

Drawing on newly declassified archives, diaries and raw testimonies from both Soviet and German soldiers and civilians, this eye-opening work completely redefines our understanding of the Second World War and of how its history has been told.