Century of Horrors: Communism, Nazism, and the Uniqueness of the Shoah

The twentieth century bears the indelible imprint of both communism and Nazism. Today, it sometimes seems as if the former is all but forgotten, at least among Western elites, while our cultural memory of the latter is an inextinguishable fire. This stunning asymmetry calls out for explanation, argues the French political thinker Alain Besancon in this wise and elegant meditation. In examining the horror and destruction caused by both of these terrible ideologies, Besancon finds that recourse to…