ABSTRACT
The sufferings inflicted on people by Stalinism and Nazism are not easy to explain. The contempt for human life revealed by those in power was extraordinary. The First World War, followed by Stalinism and Nazism, made the Enlightenment belief that people are essentially rational and reasonable difficult to maintain. The labour camps and the Holocaust force historians to grapple with the question of how individuals, and sometimes communities and nations, can allow themselves to support, or turn a blind eye to denunciation, deportation and genocide.
