Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, by Timothy Snyder, a history of Nazi and Soviet mass killing on the lands between Berlin and Moscow. And The Show Went On, by Alan Riding, about how the Nazis occupied Paris and gained cooperation from French cultural figures. Germany 1945, From War to Peace, by Richard Bessel. These books appear to intend to show the ambiguity of the stories that the winners tell.
The Cold War became the dominant US preoccupation, but millions of people were affected by other considerations. These books help us remember those millions.
Nuremberg Legacy: How the Nazi War Crimes Trials Changed the Course of History, by Norbert Ehrenfreund, successfully weaves personal anecdote, historical record and legal analysis into his account of the trials and their legacy, according to a 2008 review in the New York Law Journal.
Collectively, these books remind us that if you kill one person you're a murderer, but if you kill hundreds of thousands, you're a general, and if you kill millions you're a patriarch, so long as you stay in power.
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