Based on new sources from eastern Europe and forgotten testimonies from Jewish survivors, Black Earth recounts the mass murder of the Jews as an event that is still close to us, more comprehensible than we would like to think, and thus all the more terrifying.
Politics and procedures obviously enabled the killings; we owe Snyder a debt for his realism about this. But the desire to maim and murder had its roots in a disease of the mind so powerful and passionate that to call it political or procedural hardly seems to capture its nature, or its prevalence.
When [Snyder] reaches beyond the how—the conditions for mass killing—to the why, the ability to flip morality and kill neighbors, it all seems too clean.
Even minimally informed readers are likely to find at least some of Snyder’s so-called failures inapplicable and at least some of his remedies familiar.
