Stephen Kotkin

They knew that they were forced to make that sacrifice to preserve some of their family members or whatever.

There are elements of belief and elements of, let's say, suspension of disbelief and elements of cynicism and knowledge and understanding simultaneously in almost everybody.

They coexist.

We think of them as contradictory, but humans can hold contradictory thoughts simultaneously without too much trouble.

We could give many examples.

You've had people like that on your show, for example.

So the psychology is not as surprising in some ways.

What's surprising is that this whole thing succeeds.

It doesn't collapse of its own internal contradictions.

It doesn't undermine itself.

If you're murdering a high percentage of your upper officer corps,

if you're murdering your intellectuals, your scientists, your cultural figures, if you're murdering your loyal party elites, centrally and in the provinces, and if you're murdering the police who are carrying out all of these murders.

The thing about Stalin's terror is the police are also murdered during the terror while they are doing the murdering.

You're doing all of that and the whole thing doesn't collapse.

To me, that's more interesting in some ways than the complexity of human psychology that holds these contradictory thoughts and fails to go for self-preservation in some cases or fails to say, I'm going to die anyway.

I might as well go down fighting or whatever the metaphor might be.

And so the fact that the system is able to undergo this level of self-disruption and come out the other side, that's pretty astonishing.

So Hitler does not murder his upper officer corps.

He doesn't like them.

He retires them and they get a pension.