This book comprises 14 essays by scholars who disagree about the methods and purposes of comparing Nazism and Communism. The central idea is that if these two different memories of evil were to develop in isolation, their competition for significance would distort the real evils both movements propagated. Whilst many reject this comparison because they feel it could relativize the evil of one of these movements, the claim that a political movement is uniquely evil can only be made by comparing it to another movement.
How do these issues affect postwar interrelations between memory and...

This book compares the genocide perpetrated by both Nazism and Communism. Both political systems were evil yet, when compared, they lose some of their power to shock. The book considers: the different receptions given to Nazism and Communism; whether people can behave rationally in contexts of great wickedness; whether the Communist or Nazi worldview was more rational the relationship between post-war memories and history; and how atrocities are remembered by society and how intellectuals construct them. The editors argue that these twentieth-century evils invite comparison if only because of...