Under Hitler and Stalin the Nazi and Soviet regimes murdered fourteen million people in the bloodlands between Berlin and Moscow. The killing fields extended from central Polads to western Russia.

History does not repeat, but it does instruct. European history shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and people can find themselves in unimaginable circumstances. Today, we are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to totalitarianism in the twentieth century. This book deals with this topic.