Robert Gellately is Earl Ray Beck Professor of History at Florida State University. He is the author of Stalin's Curse: Battling for Communism in War and Cold War, Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany, The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy, The Politics of Economic Despair: Shopkeepers and German Politics, and Lenin, Stalin and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe.