The Origins of Mass Killing: the bloodlands hypothesis

Here's from a fan in Ukraine: Prof. Snyder is an outstanding historian, thinker, and person. Many thanks to him for his so important work! Ukraine is really happy to have him as a friend while being an honest scholar.

I found the lectures of Timothy Snyder quite recently. What a scholar. So informative and with a humanistic touch. Also the old lectures has aged very well and give the background that we need. Very consistent.

Very, very informative. A very well-presented, well-formed thesis. I regret that I just found this lecture, only now. Thank you, Professor Snyder.

Tim Snyder is not just a historian, but a person who puts humanity first. He is a gifted speaker and questions beloved ways of thinking. His books and this lecture are musts.

I find Timothy Snyder's lectures so dense that I have to listen to passages sometimes a couple times to try to absorb his meanings. So packed with information and ideas. Anyone interested in this region and this region's history is really missing out if they don't know about his work.

This lecture has never been more important than right now, in spring of 2022.

Prof Snyder has been very important for the world, especially younger generations, to understand Eastern Europe and its tragic history. After so much violence and atrocities, we should do everything in our power so that another fascist dictator doesn’t do it again. But here we are again…

In 1937, Soviets killed my grand-grandfather in Mazyr, Paliessie region, and in 1943 Nazis burnt down my grandmother's village Mikhiedavichy. It's Belarus. A really damned land

Before they were gassed or shot in the head by creatures void of form, the women, the children and the aged prayed for a home in the sky, where it is always safe and warm. "What else could they do?" This man Timothy Snyder is the finest human historian of our era and his works relate to the entirety of time.

I recommend listening to this before reading his book. It’s a fantastic overall discussion of philosophy and method

"History is about life. It's the story of individuals." Beautifully said.

Timothy Snyder is not just a historian but a prophet of his own making. Like many who deliberate on the Holocaust he finds it prescient for the West. One might get the feeling that a denazification is currently warranted in Western institutions according to Snyder. While he would not come right out and say it, he has no difficulty in implying it.

Snyder unquestionably an authority in the subject. His work is amazing

If the USA was to Suffer as Eastern Europe Did The estimates in one English translated history book of Eastern Europe are that the countries where most of the fighting occurred lost "about one-third of their national wealth" or three times their highest GDP prior to 1940. Those countries are Poland, Hungary, and Yugoslavia. Losses in the western Soviet Union -- Belarus, Russia, and the Ukraine -- were higher still, perhaps one-half the national wealth. (Ivan T. Berend & Gyorgy Ranki, Economic Development in East-Central Europe in the 19th & 20th Centuries, New York: Columbia University Press, 1974, p.341) What represents one third of the United State's national wealth? One third of our wealth is in our housing stock (Statistical Abstract of the United States). So the equivalent level of destruction here in the United States would be if every single person in the country were to become homeless. If all of our housing stock, of every type -- suburban houses, apartments, dorms, prisons, hotels -- every single covered dwelling place in the whole of the country where a person could sleep overnight, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to Mexico -- disappeared from the face of the earth. The value of USA transportation infrastructure and vehicles is about a sixth of United States national wealth. For the USA to suffer the same destruction as was suffered by Belarus, Russia, and the Ukraine, in addition to losing all our housing stock, all of our airports, ports, roads, railroads, and highways would be destroyed, as well as ALL bicycles, boats, cars, horses, locomotives, planes, rail cars, and trucks. In addition to the amount of physical destruction of housing and transportation, for the USA to suffer as badly as eastern Europe, ALL of our animal husbandry would cease. There would be no dairy or beef cattle, no chicken and eggs, and no swine. All silage would be burnt away. No one would have a pet of any kind. In most all of Eastern Europe, more than a quarter of the population was killed. In Belarus, more than half the population was killed. The combined populations of Belarus, Poland, and the Ukraine were 66 million in 1930 and by the war's end, more than 14 million were dead. For the USA to suffer today anywhere near as badly, more than 60 million people would be dead. This is an UNDERESTIMATE.

I’m a fan of good, accurate history

Tim is very knowledgeable and it's more relevant than ever

Interesting to listen to this in 2022

Wow! Tim. Many blessings. Thanks for stretching my mind in new ways.

A true scholar that presents the world and his subject matter in a new light.

Professor Snyder, I don’t know if you ever come here, but of you do, perhaps I could ask your thought on two things you mentioned: 1) Your comments about the importance of a relationship with the State for a Jewish person’s chances of survival (1/2 vs 1/20) notwithstanding, what specifically enabled a Jew in Germany to survive, in contrast to “stateless” Jews further east, considering that he had been stripped of all his civic rights years beforehand in the Nuremberg Laws? 2) What is the significance (if any) of the fact that the bloodlands largely coincided with the territory of the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth or, more exactly, that state's territory prior to the Treaty of Andrusovo in 1667? I would also like to take this opportunity to thank you for this most interesting lecture and, of course, the book.