ALTHOUGH the dictators are integral to the narrative, Richard Overy, who is professor of history at King's College, London, has not produced a twin biography. Nor is it a straightforward history of Nazism and Communism.
Instead, Overy intelligently analyses both the similarities and the differences between the two regimes.
What resulted were real-life nightmares of violence, cruelty and death, where civil liberties were virtually non-existent.
We who are used to a liberal democracy, whatever its faults, should be profoundly grateful for what we have.
Anthony Looch
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