Worst influence in History

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Stalin had almost 3 times the length of rule of hitler, i can't find the figures on kills at the moment but if we just adjust for the extra 20 years stalin had to kill im pretty sure hitler kills more, if not just take into account the total population both leaders presided over and hitler is clearly the far deadlier leader

Look at it this way - how many more could Hitler have killed? The Jewish population was almost wiped out. The discussion of averages strikes me as odd - one did kill more than the other.

EDIT: Just for you.

Stalin
Rule - 31 years

2,200,000 - NEP period
11,440,000 - Collectivization
4,345,000 - Great Terror
5,104,000 - 1939 to 1941, Pre-War
13,053,000 - War period
15,613,000 - Post-war to end of regime
Plus a few more deaths for 1922, which is not included in these totals.
Source

Per Year Average - 1.7 million

Hitler
Rule (in combined office) - 11 years

16.3 million (not including blame for WWII, but including murders of Slavs, Poles, Jews, Roma, and homosexuals)
Source

Average - 1.48 million

Stalin still has more.

well stalinism is simply not communism, it was called it and perhaps somewhat based on it but it was perverted to something which isn't communism, i can't comment on whether hitler is facism or not i just assumed it was.

It is a form of communism, and that's backed up by the Wiki page:

"Stalinism" refers to the brand of communist regime that dominated the Soviet Union, and the countries within the Soviet sphere of influence, during the leadership of Joseph Stalin. The term usually defines the style of a government rather than an ideology. The ideology was "Marxism-Leninism theory", reflecting that Stalin himself was not a theoretician, in contrast to Marx and Lenin, and prided himself on maintaining the legacy of Lenin as a founding father for the Soviet Union and the future Socialist world. Stalinism is of the order of an interpretation of their ideas...

Then you presume wrong, blame can be put in a multitude of places but hitler and his ideaology can take a large percentage of the blame.

Certainly a percentage, but it was predicted immediately after and during the Treaty of Versailles that the Paris peace would lead to war. The Allies, in their infinite wisdom, knew what would happen, but chose to ignore it.

Facism. All the other choices at least governed based on ideology, but facists governed based on looks.

...Sure...

[PanzerJaeger]

Everything was given to the people. Everyone was equal. Everyone had equal footing in terms of financial success.

Good ideology, poor execution.

Was it? Who makes up the people? It certainly wasn't the people who already had things.

For the betterment of the people, other people had to be punished. Hitler felt the same way.

[Lemur]

None of the above. Vote: Theocracy

Germany and Italy recovered from Fascism in a generation or two. Many ex-Communist nations are coming around nicely. But theocracy jacks up your nation for centuries.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

None of the above. Vote: Theocracy

The Vatican's doing just fine.

[Lemur]

Sure, now that they don't have a standing army they're fine. But let's talk about some of the earlier Medicis and see how that worked out for the middle ages ...

[LittleGrizzly]

Look at it this way - how many more could Hitler have killed? The Jewish population was almost wiped out. The discussion of averages strikes me as odd - one did kill more than the other.


There we alot of jews who survived the holocaust, don't forget jews were not hitlers only target, gypsys, slavs, coloured people and im sure theres a few groups im forgetting, imagine hitler kept all the land he had at the nazis peak, early 1942 i think, and held it for a similar time to stalin, the numbers would be astronomical.

It is a form of communism, and that's backed up by the Wiki page:

well it branched from it i would agree to, true communism as envisioned by marx would look drastically different from stalinism, seen as marx is the founder of communism i find it hard to pick a more esteemed judge.

[PanzerJaeger]

well it branched from it i would agree to, true communism as envisioned by marx would look drastically different from stalinism, seen as marx is the founder of communism i find it hard to pick a more esteemed judge.

Stalin was a dictator, but he was also a true communist. He tried his hardest to impose the communist principles proposed by Marx & Lenin including collectivization, wealth redistribution, elimination of the free market, etc. Thats why the USSR failed and China scrambled during the '90s to open its markets.

[LittleGrizzly]

I have been told by various people on this board that Reegan caused the collapse of the USSR by making it over spend, now assuming stalin did implement marx economics policys fully (which he didn't but we'll get to that later) it powered one of the military power houses for the duration of the cold war, if it wasn't for the sudden abondment of these policys the USSR could have probably chugged along for a good while with its ridiculous military expenditure.

Stalin may have had some pure marxist vision to start with but as we know power corrupts. I don't pertend to be an expert on communism but im sure it calls for the destruction of class (or the removal of the upper class creating just one class ?) stalin simply replaced one elite with another.

Know imagine if you will the immense economic power brought about by partail undertaking of marx economic policys had actually been used for the good of the russian people, the workers shared in the spoils of thier hard work as marx envisioned rather than have this wealth they created support a huge military budget, a secret police to control them and thier sateliette states.

[Geoffrey S]

Has the last century tought us nothing!?

[CountArach]

If we can restrict this conversation to Communism without refering to Stalinism (Which is authoritarianism) then I will join, otherwise count me out...

[Andres]

Other : Eurovision.

Definitely.

[InsaneApache]

The Commies murdered far more people than all the others put together. So Commie it is then.

[CrossLOPER]

Are we forgetting colonialism and western expansion again?

[LittleGrizzly]

Stalin still has more.

As we can stalin has a yearly kill rate of 220,000 extra and thanks for finding figuring that out.

The figures still need to be adjusted though based on populations, if we want to figure out simply who killed more it was obviously stalin but we have to take into consideration the available population to kill.

for example country A has population of 1 million they kill 10,000 people
country B has a population of 10 million they kill 20,000 people

Now country A's leader has killed of 1% of his population country B has killed 0.2% of its population, so country A's leader is far deadlier in comparison even though the leader of country B has killed more.

You look at Hitlers available to kill population and it was limited to Germany until about '36 (forgot the name and unsure on date the joining with austria) and im pretty sure even at the peak of Hitlers empire which would have only lasted about a year the soviets had a far bigger available population after WW2. Probably still a comparable population when Hitlers empire was at its peak.

[InsaneApache]

Stalin was an amateur compared to Mao.

[TinCow]

Voted Other, because my answer is None. Worst Influence implies that there is a Best Influence. It is not possible to make such a determination without first identifying what is desirable and undesirable in human history. On an objective level, there is no such thing as 'good' or 'bad' history, society, or civilization. Therefore I reject any notion that any particular ideology or government could have been good or bad for history as a whole. History simply is, it is not something that should be considered good or bad. You might as well ask whether gravity had a positive or negative influence on science.

[drone]

Other - Organized religion.

[LittleGrizzly]

Other - Organized religion.

Now how the hell did i forget this one, facism is more of a second placed vote, as far as im concerned Organised religion is the worst influence in history and to the present day.

[cegorach]

Fine to me - organized atheism is already here as communism and to lesser degre (varies from much lesser to slightly lesser) fascism.

[LittleGrizzly]

I don't see how you can call atheism one of the worst influences, the very fact Stalinism was deviod of religion doesn't mean it was the reasons for the deaths, infact the reason for the deaths was mainly stalin's economic policys (which have nothing to do with atheism) and stalin keeping control (which also has nothing to do with atheism)

I realise most of the deaths to do with organised religion aren't actually directives from that religion but people using the religion and perverting it so people will believe what they want them to, or more importantly believe that god wants them to do such and such. With atheism no such thing is possible, there is no atheist god you can convince the atheist populace to do crazy things because off.
Atheism by its very nature cannot influence you to do anything, it also takes away alot of 'good' reasons to do bad things, facism throughout its history has been side by side with religion so the second comment is nothing more than a throw away.

[cegorach]

I don't see how you can call atheism one of the worst influences, the very fact Stalinism was deviod of religion doesn't mean it was the reasons for the deaths, infact the reason for the deaths was mainly stalin's economic policys (which have nothing to do with atheism) and stalin keeping control (which also has nothing to do with atheism)

I realise most of the deaths to do with organised religion aren't actually directives from that religion but people using the religion and perverting it so people will believe what they want them to, or more importantly believe that god wants them to do such and such. With atheism no such thing is possible, there is no atheist god you can convince the atheist populace to do crazy things because off.
Atheism by its very nature cannot influence you to do anything, it also takes away alot of 'good' reasons to do bad things, facism throughout its history has been side by side with religion so the second comment is nothing more than a throw away.

Stalin is not the only one mr Grizzly.

Early communism in Russia and later in the Soviet Union is full of militant atheism before and during Stalin's rule - similar with the franchises 'opened' in occupied countries and between its followers worldwide.

Too much time and effort was spent on attacking religion in those countries to see this as something of no consequence.
Atheism was essential to the existence of communism - a total controll through getting rid off any competition, independent thought or opposing guidiance.

There might be no atheist god, but it is as with all real fanatics - give one the ability to lead a country and they will do anything for thought control.

Of course in communism it was all 'for the good of the subjects' - after all religion is such a terrible evil it cannot be tolerated.

It always ends like that - every active movement needs to do something and organised atheism certainly doesn't mean apathy.
Because its purpose is spreading its word it eventually ends in organized violence the final tool of all extremists.


'Organized atheism' - or rather militant atheism which takes over a country is nothing better than a reign of fanatical believers, it has only been implemented for much shorter periods of time and killed less people.
Hardly a difference to the people who die if it is because they don't believe, believe in something else or just believe in a god/-s.

Any fanaticism is dangerous - every movement has its extremists - there are several we seen 'in action' and a lot we never gave any chance. Good.



With fascism - true, I said that on purpose, though the hard core nazism was quite the same against religion as hardline communism.

[Pannonian]

Stalin was an amateur compared to Mao.

Most of Mao's kills were due to idiotic incompetence, rather than malice. He had the idea that one could change reality through concerted communal effort, resulting in the massive failure to feed his people. Deng Xiaopeng's famous saying was a repudiation of ideology in favour of pragmatism.

[PanzerJaeger]

If we can restrict this conversation to Communism without refering to Stalinism (Which is authoritarianism) then I will join, otherwise count me out...

Heh, lets keep Hitlerism out of this too.

[LittleGrizzly]

I think i see what your saying, militant atheism, i think militant anti-religion is a better term (ill explain why later in the post), actually becomes dangerous to the religous because it commonly has the view of organised religion as a bad thing, so one thing leads to another and you have the militant anti-religous going round killing religous people. I see how in this way atheism could be described as a bad influence.

Atheism was essential to the existence of communism - a total controll through getting rid off any competition, independent thought or opposing guidiance.

I would argue this point though, many leaders throughout history have used religion to help them control a populace, i would say by the removal of organised religion you remove a useful tool in population control, of course an orgnaised religion can be a problem to a dictator but too many times this has simply not been the case and organised religion has helped various dictator's keep control and allowed them to claim they are on the side of god and the enemy are a bunch of heathens. To anyone that can be convinced of this there can be no greater reason for doing something.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

There we alot of jews who survived the holocaust, don't forget jews were not hitlers only target, gypsys, slavs, coloured people and im sure theres a few groups im forgetting, imagine hitler kept all the land he had at the nazis peak, early 1942 i think, and held it for a similar time to stalin, the numbers would be astronomical.

But he didn't, and they weren't. What if Ghengis Khan had conquered a billion people, aliens invaded, they were conquered by the Mongol hordes, and the world imploded? Doesn't matter, because it didn't happen.

The figures still need to be adjusted though based on populations, if we want to figure out simply who killed more it was obviously stalin but we have to take into consideration the available population to kill.

Hitler controlled France, Norway, Denmark, Slovakia, Germany, Austria, and Poland, and indirectly controlled Italy, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Greece - indeed, almost all of continental Europe.

Anyhow, averages don't really matter, and neither do adjustments or proportions - indeed, that seems to me like the talk of an apologist. What matters is what did happen - nothing else.

[LittleGrizzly]

But he didn't, and they weren't. What if Ghengis Khan had conquered a billion people, aliens invaded, they were conquered by the Mongol hordes, and the world imploded? Doesn't matter, because it didn't happen.


I have not said what if, my point all along has been deadlier, go back and look, that is what i was saying

Hitler controlled France, Norway, Denmark, Slovakia, Germany, Austria, and Poland, and indirectly controlled Italy, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Greece - indeed, almost all of continental Europe.


yes but that was for a very short space of time, Stalin had 9 years after world war 2 in control of the whole population of eastern europe and 23 years before world war 2 in control of the whole russian population, hitlers chance to kill was a very short space of time in some countries, even france were only under his control for 6 years.

Anyhow, averages don't really matter, and neither do adjustments or proportions - indeed, that seems to me like the talk of an apologist.


if you look at my first point on which you disagreed with me
im willing to argue pure numbers would show facism to be a far deadlier ideaology

that is all i have been arguing all along, indeed if i am an apologist would that not infact make you an apologist also ?

What matters is what did happen - nothing else.

Exactly and what did happen was Hitler was a far more effecient killing machine than Stalin but had his time and empire cut short.

Also incase there is any confusion i do think Stalin was a crazy killing machine and have not been trying to make him out to be anything else, i am simply comparing crazy killing machines to some people this may some cold or apologist but i feel its essential to answering the question

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

I have not said what if, my point all along has been deadlier, go back and look, that is what i was saying

Stalin killed more people, and had a larger section of people killed per year. Hitler could have killed an equal amount that Stalin did every year, no problem, considering Germany alone had a population of eighty million. He didn't.

if you look at my first point on which you disagreed with me
im willing to argue pure numbers would show facism to be a far deadlier ideaology

Pure numbers are totals. Communism under Stalin alone killed more than Hitler - once we add in all the other regimes, communism has killed many, many more people.

Exactly and what did happen was Hitler was a far more effecient killing machine than Stalin but had his time and empire cut short.

Hitler's efficiency was mostly directed at two or three ethnic groups, and once these were gone, Hitler would not have had more people to kill on a large scale.

[LittleGrizzly]

Hitler could have killed an equal amount that Stalin did every year, no problem, considering Germany alone had a population of eighty million. He didn't.

Yes Germany had a sizeable population but russia's is alot bigger, and then if we take into account the whole soviet union which he had control of for a while the population is huge

[BPure numbers are totals. Communism under Stalin alone killed more than Hitler ][/B]

i said pure numbers show it to be deadlier

so A kills 5 out of 20
the B kills 10 out of 50
A is deadlier, B has killed more, its pretty simple really, i have even shown this example already.

once we add in all the other regimes, communism has killed many, many more people.

Well like i said at the start i don't think stalinism is communism, so i was taking communism to mean stalinism.

If you basically want to add up all stalinism type dictators then add up all facist dictatorships and compare numbers i can't be too sure who would come out on top, for one i couldn't be too sure about what goverments through history have counted as facist.

Hitler's efficiency was mostly directed at two or three ethnic groups, and once these were gone, Hitler would not have had more people to kill on a large scale.

Well your assuming Hitlers rate of killing would have gone down but what of the various resistance movements, there was an assanation attempt on him would he have needed to purge the german population of disloyalty, he started going crazy towards the end whose to say his crazyness would have led to even more mass murder. I can't see any valid reason to assume Hitler would have mellowed in his old age...

[Northnovas]

In theory:
Communism has the edge because it loses all of its nobility in trying to gain effectiveness, but it can never gain any effectiveness since it's a flawed concept, resulting in a totally repressive, worthless system.

I would have to agree Communism and the flawed concept by the states that created it's birth. They were not designed to be created in places like Russia and China.
The over wroked capitalist states were to give Communism it's start. Though noble of an idea it just goes against human nature.

[Strike For The South]

People who dont understand basic economic princples.