ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the general question of the strategies employed by writers in presenting the terrible events of recent or contemporary history and discusses the literary portrayal of twentieth-century tyrants. Many authors who attempt to treat such subjects as the Nazi holocaust or Stalin's terror are fully conscious of the magnitude of the task they have undertaken. One method of presenting evil in fiction which avoids the melodramatic piling of horror on horror is extreme factuality. An examination of portraits of Hitler in fiction suggests interesting parallels with literary portraits of Stalin. During the period of Hitler's ascendancy German writers exalted their Eihrer in similar eulogistic tones to those of Soviet writers glorifying Stalin: a prominent example is Will Vesper's poem, Dem Führer. Western Europe possesses a less developed tradition of historical and political novels containing real historical characters than Russia, although, in compensation, it has a strong tradition of historical biography.
