Editor's Introduction

Abstract

"Stalin, too, must command our unconditional respect. In his own way he is a hell of a fellow! He knows his models, Genghis Khan and the others, very well."¹ Those are the words of Adolf Hitler, uttered around the dinner table on 22 July 1942, as recorded on the initiative of Martin Bormann, successor in May 1941 to Rudolf Hess as Hitler's head of the Nazi party.