Summary of Timothy Snyder's Black Earth

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 Hitler’s theory was that humans were simply animals, and the racial struggle for survival was a German campaign for dignity. He understood that Germany did not feed itself from its own territory in the 1920s and 1930s, but knew that Germans would not have starved if they had tried. #2 Hitler believed that the American dream was the German people’s dream, and that the German people needed an empire that was comparable to the American one. He declared that permanent struggle for land was nature’s wish, but he also understood that a human desire for increasing relative comfort could generate perpetual motion. #3 The struggle would continue as long as the United States existed, and that would be a long time. Hitler saw America as the coming world power, and the core American population as a world class people that was younger and healthier than the Germans who had remained in Europe. #4 Hitler believed that the only way for Germany to have a sound agrarian policy was to acquire land within Europe itself. He believed that the fate of Native Americans was a natural precedent for the fate of native Africans under German control.