Norman M. Naimark is the Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor of East European Studies at Stanford University. His books include Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe and The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949. The chilling story of Stalin's crimes against humanity Between the early 1930s and his death in 1953, Joseph Stalin had more than a million of his own citizens executed....

"In 1945, when the Red Army marched in, eastern Germany was not "occupied" but "liberated." This, until the recent collapse of the Soviet Bloc, is what passed for history in the German Democratic Republic. Now, making use of newly opened archives in Russia and Germany, Norman Naimark reveals what happened during the Soviet occupation of eastern Germany from 1945 through 1949. His book offers a comprehensive look at Soviet policies in the occupied...