‘The only way to deal with enemies is to apply the most ruthless policy of suppression’ Josef Stalin ‘Mankind has grown strong in eternal struggles and it will only perish through eternal peace’ Adolf Hitler Half a century after their deaths, the dictatorships of Stalin and Hitler still cast a long and terrible shadow over the modern world. They presided over the most destructive and lethal regimes in history, murdering millions. They fought the largest and costliest war in all history. Yet millions of Germans and Russians enthusiastically supported them and the values they stood for. In the first major history to analyse in depth the two regimes and their populations together, Richard Overy sets out to answer the questions: How was dictatorship possible? How did it function? What was the bond that tied dictator and people so powerfully together? Overy paints a remarkable and vivid account of the different ways in which Stalin and Hitler rose to power and abused and dominated their people.