Synopsis
In the Nazi imagination, the USSR was the most powerful Jewish organization in the world. They called it ‘World Enemy No. 1’.
The shocking number of Soviet citizens who lost their lives between 1941 and 1945 – 26 million, more than any other country – is widely known. But the faces and the voices of these victims of Nazism are conspicuously absent. In a pathbreaking new work of history, Jochen Hellbeck restores the USSR to its proper place in the history of the Second World War, arguing that to truly understand the conflict, we must set its axis firmly in Soviet territory.
It was not the Western powers but Communist Russia that Nazi Germany viewed as the greatest threat to its existence. The German crusade against ‘Judeo-Bolshevism’ was the driving force of the Nazis’ most extreme violence, and Soviet territory became ground zero for systematic extermination. Only later was this shocking regime of killing extended to all Jews, igniting the Holocaust.
Using newly declassified archives, testimonies, diaries and dispatches from soldiers and civilians both Soviet and German, Hellbeck reveals the sheer, untold breadth of terror the Nazis inflicted. This eye-opening masterwork is an astonishing new reading both of the Second World War and of how its history has been told.
Details
05 February 2026
9781529038934Reviews
A history of World War II closely focused on its true epicenter: the Russian front . . . An essential contribution to the modern literature of what Russians still call the Great Patriotic WarKirkus (starred review)
It takes courage, as well as tremendous talent and dedication, to tell this story with so much empathy, eloquence, and insight. World Enemy No. 1 is a magnificent memorial to both the victims and the victorsYuri Slezkine, author of The Jewish Century
In World Enemy No. 1, Jochen Hellbeck, a pioneering historian of Stalinism, has turned his attention to the German-Soviet genesis of the Holocaust. The book breaks new ground by shifting the focus from some primordial German hatred of Jews to the fierce political competition between Hitler’s fascism and Soviet Communism, which Hitler re-coded as ‘Jewish Bolshevism'Keith Gessen, author of A Terrible Country
In this passionate, original history, Jochen Hellbeck explores how Adolf Hitler fused his twin obsessions against Jews and Communists into a global battle to the death. A vivid, sometimes terrifying account of the Nazi crusade on the Eastern front - a war like no otherVictoria de Grazia, historian, Columbia University
