The Holocaust, Nazi Germany, and the War on Bolshevism: Reexamining the Causes of World War Two
CMES Room 102
38 Kirkland St.
Cambridge
Thu., Apr. 23, 2026, 12:30 – 2:30 p.m. 
Jochen Hellbeck is the Distinguished Professor of History at Rutgers University, specializing in modern Russia, the Soviet Union, and the history of World War II. Hellbeck is the acclaimed author of "Stalingrad: The City That Defeated the Third Reich", "Revolution on My Mind: Writing a Diary under Stalin", and the online project Facing Stalingrad. Now in "WORLD ENEMY NO. 1: Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia and the Fate of the Jews" (Penguin Press; on sale October 21, 2026), Hellbeck transforms our understanding of WWII as he traces the conflict and its most infamous crime, the Holocaust, to Germany’s implacable hostility toward Soviet Russia. "WORLD ENEMY NO. 1" is the first major work of history to describe the war from both the German and Russian side and the interactions between both, as opposed to only following one nation’s experience. To tell this revisionist history of WWII, Hellbeck had rare access to the most important, never-before-seen Soviet wartime documentary trove, which contained hundreds of oral histories of life under Nazi occupation as well as photographs.
In the West, WWII is commonly understood as the Allies’ struggle against Nazism. Often elided, if not simply forgotten, is the Soviet Union’s crucial role in that fight. Hellbeck rectifies this omission by relocating the ideological core of the conflict. It was not the Western powers but Communist Russia that Nazi Germany viewed as an existential threat—in fact, “World Enemy No. 1.” Jewish revolutionaries, the Nazis believed, had seized power in 1917 and were preparing the Soviet state to destroy Germany and the world. And so, on June 22, 1941, a German army of three million attacked the Soviet Union to exterminate Hitler’s cardinal obsession: “Judeo-Bolshevism”. While Europe’s Jews were expelled, exiled, and persecuted by the Nazis, Soviet Jews were immediately slated for elimination. Soviet lands thus became ground zero for systematic extermination, which was only later extended to all Jews, igniting the Holocaust.
Hellbeck expertly reconstructs the years leading up to the war when “Europe against Bolshevism” was the Nazis’ most fervid rallying cry, and documents their annihilatory ambitions on the battlegrounds in the East. Widely disseminated accounts of German atrocities mobilized millions of Soviet citizens to join a people’s war against the hated invaders. Hellbeck tracks the desire for revenge that drove the Red Army on its path of reconquest, an advance that further inflamed the belief in a murderous “Bolshevik Jew,” stirring the Germans to fight to the bitter end. Recounted here in vivid detail are the events at Babi Yar, the Battle of Stalingrad, the liberation of the concentration camps, and the arrival of the Red Army in the Nazi capital. Finally, Hellbeck reckons with the West’s persistent disregard of the Soviet Union’s incalculable contribution to winning the war—and its sacrifice of twenty-six million citizens—as anti-communism and the Cold War turned erstwhile allies into mortal enemies.
By mining the newly declassified archives and previously undiscovered sources—testimonies, diaries, and dispatches from soldiers and civilians, Soviet and German— Hellbeck, who himself is West German by birth and a Russian historian by training — offers a unique history that takes account of both sides. Groundbreaking and eye-opening reading for understanding the root causes of the war, "WORLD ENEMY NO. 1" will no doubt be an essential reading in the cannon of World War II literature.
Jochen Hellbeck is Distinguished Professor of History at Rutgers University, specializing in modem Russia, the Soviet Union, and the history of World War II. The recipient of fellowships from the New York Public Library Cullman Center, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the American Academy in Berlin, among others, he is the acclaimed author of "Stalingrad: The City That Defeated the Third Reich", "Revolution on My Mind: Writing a Diary under Stalin", and the online project Facing Stalingrad. He lives in Brooklyn.
Gazette Classification: Lecture, Social Sciences
Organization/Sponsor: CMES Hilda B. Silverman Memorial Lecture
Speaker(s): Jochen Hellbeck, Distinguished Professor of History at Rutgers University
Contact Info: [email protected]
Harvard Key Required: No
More info: cmes.fas.harvard.edu…