It was through Robert Conquest’s work that I learned of the Holodomor, a genocide committed by Stalin against the Ukrainian people in the 1930s on scale comparable to the Holocaust. Unfortunately, this holocaust and genocide seems to be largely ignored in the history books.
You watch movies like “The Guns of Navarone” and “Sahara” and you realize our government was in bed with Stalin for years; both portray characters who fought for what is now known as the communists against the military uprising that sought to prevent the slaughter of the middle & upper classes and clergy in Spain in 1936. Both are portrayed as “good guys”, fighting alongside Americans/Brits.
Anything I want to know about the real history of Europe in the 1930s and 1940s I get from people who lived there - they know who were the real devils.