We are taught that World War II was a battle between good guys and bad guys. I came out of that notion some years ago. But there’s a difference between feeling something to be generally true, and being confronted with it in all the detail. It really is chaos out there. It’s always been chaos out there.
He’s been gazing into the book-shaped abyss known as Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands. It does tend to have that effect on people. If you’re not prone to gibbering like a character in an H.P. Lovecraft novel upon encountering that sort of chaos, I recommend it as well.