Booklaunch event: World Enemy No. 1, Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the Fate of the Jews
by Jochen Hellbeck, Penguin Press, 2025
Jochen Hellbeck in conversation with Brandon Schechter and Yana Skorobogatov
Moderated by Adam Tooze
In the West, World War II 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. With this book, acclaimed historian Jochen 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 “Judeo-Bolshevism,” Hitler’s cardinal obsession. While Europe’s Jews were expelled, exiled, and persecuted by the Nazis, Soviet Jews were immediately slated for elimination. The Soviet lands thus became ground zero for systematic extermination, which was only later extended to all Jews, igniting the Holocaust.
Speakers:
Jochen Hellbeck, Distinguished Professor of History, Rutgers University
Brandon Schechter, Historian, The Blavatnik Archive, and Visiting Assistant Professor of History, Sarah Lawrence College
Yana Skorobogatov, Harriman Assistant Professor of Russian and Soviet History, Columbia University
Adam Tooze, Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of History, Director of the European Institute, and Chair of the Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University
Event sponsored by the European Institute, the Harriman Institute, and the Department of History.
