Stalin, worse than Hitler?

[Alexanderofmacedon]

Watching a documentary of Stalin on the History channel, and from what I comprehended, Stalin was as bad if not worse than Hitler.

Ideas? Comments?

[master of the puppets]

i watched the same one, YAY.

but honestly i already knew he was worse than hitler, hitler probably would have been worse but he did bnot have the population to sacrifice like stalin did. Stalin in his time had such a large population in russia where they could waste up to 50 russian soldiers to kill but 1 german one...and he did. thousands were killed for no reason except there race or religion or even there day to day demeanor, if anything. his forced labor camps in siberia were the reason that the USSR gained power but only at the expense of at least a few million people.

oh and then there is the incarceration of the jewish doctors.

[Kralizec]

A while ago I PM'd someone here who said pretty much the same thing...I'll quote my own message:

Estimates of Hitler's death toll vary, I heard a generally accepted figure is 20 million but it comprises at least the 12 million thad died in concentration camps (6 million jews + 6 million others, like gypsies disabled communists etc). Hitler's dictatorial regime lasted from 1934-1945
Suppose we accept that Stalin murdered around 30 million (again a contested estimate among historians). Yet he ruled longer then Hitler, namely 1924-53, and he did so over a country of over 150 million.
Estimates on Maos death toll are so varied, let's say he took the cake and murdered around 60 million. He ruled from 1945–1976, longer then Stalin or Hitler, and did so over a country of 400 milion (!) people.
Hitler killed less, but only because he got to rule for only 11 years over a country that was far smaller then China or the SU. Hitler was a far more accomplished mass murderer then Stalin or Mao was.

In the last years of his regime, Hitler seemed to have made killing an objective rather then a means.

[Alexanderofmacedon]

master of puppets:

It was good wasn't it? You watch the History channel often? Have you seen the documentary on Stalingrad?

[BelgradeWar]

Is that Viasat History?

[Ultras DVSC]

Is that Viasat History?

Hehe, it's funny to see the Polish, Serbian and Czech titles, but at least the commentary speaks in Hungarian..

To be summarized the topic shortly, Hitler was a bit moron, but Stalin was a neurotic idiot with too much power. But we cannot blame him for massacre of millions, he was infected by a mortal disease called communism...

[Avicenna]

Ah, but Ultras, communism has never really existed. Stalin imposed his own version, Stalinism on them. With him as a dictator, it is already obviously not communist (unless you think he was equal to the rest of the Russians).

Anyway, all of you are talking about World War II only. That isn't all he did: he almost destroyed his whole army before world war two: he killed most of the members of his Congress, I think it's called, killed all the old guard Bolsheviks, rivals, and most of the capable army and navy commanders. This is why he had to sacrifice so many Russians in WWII. You can't really blame him: it was them, or German occupation, German victory and a German Europe which would probably lose much of its population under Hitler. A hard choice to make, but necessary...

But of course, this was only because he weakened the USSR so much before the Second World War. Unwise move by Stalin.

[cegorach]

To be honest it is very hard to accept by some that the 2nd WW was more or less a battle Nazism vs. Communism two inhuman regimes with some small and and limited involvement of western democratic states which liberated less than half of Europe ( a part of which already collaborated with Hitler) less states than were occupied by the Soviets.

1989 really finished 2nd WW.

Regards Cegorach

[ShadesPanther]

Ah, but Ultras, communism has never really existed. Stalin imposed his own version, Stalinism on them. With him as a dictator, it is already obviously not communist (unless you think he was equal to the rest of the Russians).

Some are more equal than others, my friend

[Avicenna]

Some are more equal than others, my friend

Not really. There were always those upper class ones, and the peasants who were persecuted and dragged off to death camps for no reason. The rich factory owners could still make profits, and the poor factory workers had nothing to do except what they did: barely scratch out a living.

That's many different groups of 'equal' but as a whole it's not different from Tsarist Russia.

Hence Communism never has and never will exist: people would simply not work if however hard they did work they still earned the same.

[Sarmatian]

30 millions with or without war casualties included?

[Watchman]

I'd say the main difference is in the motivation of the two. Stalin's morbidly impressive death toll was a byproduct of his crude and mainly extremely brutal methods of securing and maintaining his power, plus sheer adminstrational incompetence (ditto for the Bolsheviks in general really; Mao was AFAIK mainly incompetent to an appalling degree and didn't actually mean to get all those people killed and starved...). Hitler's was very much an end in and by itself - true, honest-to-God genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Kinda the difference between criminal neglicence and premediated murder, although obviously for the victims the distinction is rather moot.

[Scurvy]

I think both of them genuinely belived in what they were doing, but of both Stalin inflicted the worst suffering on his own people, while Hitler reserved that for those he considered to be "lesser" or against him, so i think Stalin was more evil,

[Watchman]

I dunno. He was mainly out for "number one" and Devil take the costs. That's a perfectly rational and understandable agenda, if not terribly nice or agreeable. Hitler had a Cause that involved killing off huge numbers of people for no other reason than accidents of birth, ie. ethnicity and nationality...

[Scurvy]

but didnt hitler eliminate all those people because he thought they weakened the state and took up land/resources that his "aryan" race could use...he also persecuted others in order to gain power (for himslef and nazi germany) so in many ways similar to stalin,

[Watchman]

I dunno, seemed pretty "end unto itself" to me and a fairly central part of his ideology.

Put this way: Stalin was an equal-opportunity oppressor. If he thought you were trouble, he squashed you and everyone in the immediate vicinity just to be on the safe side. He wasn't too particular or ideological about it (I don't think he was a particularly fervent believer in the Cause anyway; a paranoid opportunist, more like).

Hitler was... more specific. Racist, bluntly put. He had you killed not because of what you did (or were thought to do in the future), but because of what you were.

There's also the detail that when it comes down to that Stalin's methods were by far cruder. The killing methods he employed never progressed beyond bloody handwork where someone was walked to the edge of a hole and simply shot. Nasty and ugly as that is, it's still somehow a... human way to do it. There's still the guy pulling the trigger, or the vicious and bored camp guard beating you to death, or the entirely dysfunctional management starving half the prison camp (I don't think even Stalin ever had genuine death camps, although many of the penal work camps were so bad they nearly amounted to the same thing; but they weren't *designed* to be that).

The Nazis got... industrial about their killing. Once they realized the amount of killing to be done was not really achievable by such primitive measures, they set about solving the problem like it was a question of cold logistics, capacity, machinery and organization. They went *scientific*.

And that's somehow far more disturbing. The Bolsheviks were merely crude and barbaric. The Nazis were civilization and sophistication gone wrong.

[Watchman]

Or, put shortly, the Bolshevik approach to killing people 'merely' denied the value of human life. The Nazis categorically and selectively denied the very humanity, and hence right of existence, of entire populations.

See the difference ?

[Kraxis]

Ah but Stalin had his odd quotas for killings and deportation. There weren't always reason behind what happened in the Soviet Union under him.
When you demand quotas you know that you have gone past any reasonable claims of whatever could be used for reasoning for an execution.

And specific groups were treated far worse than others. Ukranians were for instance singled out pretty badly. So were some of the more marginal people. And the Balts certainly suffered badly.

Stalin didn't always act like the scythe, cutting all equally, but more like a sickle, cutting high here, low there, not there and uprooting another.

[Watchman]

Divida et conquera. That's actually pretty standard power tactics - it helps keep the downtrodden underlings resenting each other rather than you, and the somewhat-more-fortunate harboring at least some nominal gratitude for being spared the worst.

And then sheer maximum-dispersion terror. When the Great Purge was at its peak the regional secret police offices had quotas of prisoners, and actually *competed* with each other in meeting them. Given such wonders as pre-printed confession papers it's pretty obvious the only purpose was to crush the will of the populace through the crude expedient of arbitrary, irrational, unpredictable terror that can strike anyone, anywhere, anytime, for no perceivable reason.

Worked too. Stalin eventually had to call it off when it was becoming obvious his maximum-coverage methods had begun eating away at the very core of the whole state, and made the terror machinery turn against itself...

How'd Uncle Joe's own ethnical reference group, the Georgians, incidentally fare anyway ? I actually don't know.

I'd say all that is still rather qualitatively different from condemning entire populations to assisted extinction purely for reasons of nutty racist ideology, though.

[Samurai Waki]

Another thing to add in the arguments, is that Stalin made it a personal issue to not only destroy an enemy, which he oftened viewed as everyone, not only in killing them outright, but completely destroying any evidence that they ever existed... we remember many people that were taken to the Nazi Death Camps by ledgers and such, we have no idea to a much larger proportion as to how many died in the Gulags or even who they were, nobody remembers because Stalin made it his personal mission to destroy a persons memory through relatives, pictures, and mass propaganda as well...I consider that pretty evil.

[Csargo]

master of puppets:

It was good wasn't it? You watch the History channel often? Have you seen the documentary on Stalingrad?

I watched it it was quite good all about the how the Russians clothing and guns were better than the Germans very good. In my opnion Stalin was worse than Hitler. If I remember right Stalin killed around 20 million people to I dont know how many Hitler killed. And you cant really say that Hitler worse cause he murdered 6 million Jews because Stalin murdered way more that Hitler. If I can think of anything else I'll post it. and I'm not quite sure on the numbers either but thats what I think it is.

[Rosacrux redux]

Stalin actually killed about 4.7 million people altogether. This includes the early purges, the late purges, the gulags, the army purges, the kulak purges and both great famines. If one does a bit of research in the USSR demographics, one would be surprised what an enormous pile of rubish the western propaganda about "20" or "30" or even "70" !!!! million victims is.

I have in the past posted a rather huge and detailed account on Stalin's victims and the USSR demographics. So, I'll just remind you all that USSR in 1929 (according to official census data) had 152 million people. In 1945, after a war that costed the country at least 26.6 million victims, USSR had 170.5 million inhabitants.

To achieve such growth had stalin killed 10 million people, the Russkies should reproduce at an extraordinary rate (double their normal, which was already way higher than the European average at the time). If we are to believe the more ludicrus numbers (like that 30 millions that seems a convenient point for those who are serving the anti-communist cause even today) the Soviets should've reproduced like rabits on viagra. And even during wartime.

Not very likely, wouldn't you say?

As for the question in hand... as personalities, Hitler and Stalin were both equally repulsive. The phrase psychopath homicidal maniacs is too mild to even begin describing them. But Hitler was the man that started a world war that had more than 60 million victims, while Stalin was the leader of the country that saved the world from Nazism.

So, it is rather idiotic to even compare them for the effect they had on humanity.

[screwtype]

I have to agree that Hitler was worse. Stalin was a brute, but his brutality was basically about eliminating opposition to his rule. As such, it was probably no different from that of hundreds of brutal dictators in history, except perhaps in terms of scale.

Also, Stalin's brutality was at least nominally in the service of a noble ideal of the equality of all men, no matter how debased in practice it was.

Nazism, on the other hand, was a philosophy that openly embraced genocide, slavery and conquest as the natural right of a supposedly racially superior group. As such, it was by definition far more evil, and potentially destructive, which must at least in part explain why Churchill and the US, in spite of their utter abhorrence of Communism, ultimately sided with Stalin.

In terms of absolute numbers I think Hitler must also trump Stalin. Even if one takes the upper figure of 30 million dead that is sometimes given for Stalin's purges and famines, Hitler's war probably killed about the same number of Russians alone, to which one must add five million Jews, six million Poles, 6 million Germans and hundreds of thousands of others who perished as a result of his war.

[cegorach]

Ont the list of the opposition were... stamp collectors - trully horribly dangerous

Anyway Stalin should be credited with at least a part of the victims of the 2nd WW because he STARTED THE WAR TOGETHER WITH HITLER signing the alliance and joining the war on 17th September 1939 which shortened the polish war of defense by at least 4-5 additional weeks. In addition at least the Polish losses actually include a number killed by Stalin's orders ( 100 000 Jews included). So it would be fair to give him a part of the victims adding to his little list - he tried so hard to get them and it is Hitler who is credited - poor, poor Joe

And the noble purpose - Hitler had his own the 'bright' future of his nation ( many people excluded), Stalin was aiming to reach a different 'bright' future and I can't see much difference in ideology in the end - even their banners were both red...

Regards Cegorach

[Rosacrux redux]

Communism in theory has absolutely nothing to do with Nazism. It's the exact opposite of it, actually, and Hitler ideologicaly was much closer to the western "democracies" than to USSR. That is why he was so fixed on destroying USSR, that is why all his rhetoric was anti-communist propaganda, that is why communists were the third largest group in the concentration camps (about 600.000 communists died, in addition to the 1.5 million gypsies and the 6 million Jews and an unknown number of homosexuals) and this is precisely why Hitler was desperately trying to render USA-UK into his allies, so they can together "eliminate the communist threat".

Hitler's bright future was including only his own people. Jews were the first group of people, along with the Gypsies, systematically exterminated. The Slavs would follow (Hitler was very, very emphatic in his assertion that the Slavs were subhumans, good only as slaves of the ubermenschen) and given enough time most others would too (assuming the Nazis would have it their way).

Communism, OTOH, is very much the opposite and even in it's extremely twisted incarnation in USSR, no genocide was instigated by Stalin or any other "communist" in the Soviet-occupied lands.

[Kraxis]

Communism in theory has absolutely nothing to do with Nazism. It's the exact opposite of it

Not true.
Both were centered around the 'common' man, the responseabilities of said man, his future in a revolutionary society of equality of all people (of the correct race of couse).
Nazism had a true ring in its real name National Socialism. Take note in Socialism as it was actually something the Nazis tried to work on.

How the two systems got there, and how they maintained themselves is the main difference, but in theory (as you brought up) they were not at all that different. But then again, neither Germany nore the Soviet Union lived up to the theory of either system. Neither society was equal and Hitler catered to the big industrial barons, while Stalin never really considered the common man.

The theories were not that different.
National Socialism came from Socialism (the NSDAP was actually a socialist party when Hitler joined it, only later did it change its name and some ofthe goals, and the old members remained), and Communism also came from Socialism.
They didn't come to a head because they were different, but because Hitler and many of the other early Nazis had a deeprooted hatred of what they percieved to have been he reason for the loss in WWI (the Communists and Socialists on the Home Front).

[screwtype]

Sorry Kraxis, but I must completely disagree, Nazism and Communism had radically different philosophies which is why they were mortal enemies.

Communism proposes the fundamental equality and brotherhood of all men. Nazism proposes a world divided up into "ubermensch" and "untermensch" with the untermensch (subhumans) fit only for slavery or extermination. You couldn't get two more radically opposed ideologies if you tried.

And this idea that Nazism was "socialist" in origin is nothing more than pure invention by the US Right, which today is keen to distance itself from any association with the movement. That however was not its attitude when Hitler was actually in power. The Right at the time not only recognized Hitler but keenly embraced him as one of their own, celebrating his thuggery against communists and his union busting tactics, whilst pouring money into the nazi coffers. Both Hitler's financing and his critical political support came from big industrialists both in Germany and abroad, indeed it was the support of the German industrialists that ultimately got him appointed as Chancellor.

Nazism's adoption of the word "Socialist" was quite cynical, designed to appeal to the electorate at a time when socialism was a very popular ideology amongst the working class. But there was nothing about Hitler's ideology that was socialist, save his totalitarian outlook which inclined him toward government control of the economy (as well as everything else). In fact the Nazis never had a clear economic platform - they had no real interest in the subject, their proposed method of enriching Germany was not via economics but through military aggression.

[Rosacrux redux]

Not true.
Both were centered around the 'common' man, the responseabilities of said man, his future in a revolutionary society of equality of all people (of the correct race of couse).
Nazism had a true ring in its real name National Socialism. Take note in Socialism as it was actually something the Nazis tried to work on.

I think you are basing your assumption solely on the pretext of the name, and that is fundamentally wrong. I think a basic knowledge of both ideologies, can prove that they are the exact opposite and have absolutely nothing to do with each other. In theory, as I said.

How the two systems got there, and how they maintained themselves is the main difference, but in theory (as you brought up) they were not at all that different.

Basic nazi theory: there is a "chosen people" and that is the germanic "race". those chosen people have the destiny to rule the earth and they have to stomp on the other (lesser) people to do so. Those lesser, have only one destiny: to serve the Germanic ubermenschen. Every ubermensch has the right to live a comfortable life, but nobody shall be deprived off his/hers property, unless it is for the greater good of the Volk and Heimat. The ideal society of the future shall be a world full of blond Germans, served by the rest of the humanity. Social stability must be preserved at all costs. Nothing should disrupt the social structure.
Blood is the only defining factor: if one has "Aryan" blood, one is superior and has to rule over those who haven't.
The fuhrer's word is law. Nobody can question his authority, as the fuhrer is the superior human being and cannot be judged.

I could go on for ages with the ramblings of Adolf Hitler from his "Mein Kampf", but I think this is enough. How is this ideology anything close to internationalism, absolute equality, lack of even the slightest notion of racism and discrimination, constant social change, reshuffle of the social structure, "to everybody according their ability, to everybody according to their needs" of communism, is beyond my comprehension. Only someone who hasn't read a line of communist theory and likewise of nazi theory, can find similaritie based on the "socialist" euphemism in the Nazi title and the similarities between Hitler and Stalin.

Hitler's and Stalin's regimes had quite a number of things in common, but that was not because of their ideology. It was because Stalin was a ruthless dictator, just as Hitler was. And one of the greatest weaknesess of the Soviet-style socialism was that it allowed to people like old-Jo to rise to power.

They didn't come to a head because they were different, but because Hitler and many of the other early Nazis had a deeprooted hatred of what they percieved to have been he reason for the loss in WWI (the Communists and Socialists on the Home Front).

Not quite. Nazis and commies are the extreme ends of the political spectrum and - as seen also by the above references - aim at completely different things. They had to collide sooner or later.
Hitler was fixed on his anti-communism and so was the whole Nazi party. And a host of, for instance, American businesspeople (like the famous Ford) who aided Hitler and build lots of factories for him, did so in the premise that he would destroy the threat for their fortunes and well-beeing: Communism.

[cegorach]

Hitler's bright future was including only his own people. Jews were the first group of people, along with the Gypsies, systematically exterminated. The Slavs would follow (Hitler was very, very emphatic in his assertion that the Slavs were subhumans, good only as slaves of the ubermenschen) and given enough time most others would too (assuming the Nazis would have it their way).

-----------> I would say that it would end as communism, which n its early phase was equally predatory and cruel.

Communism, OTOH, is very much the opposite and even in it's extremely twisted incarnation in USSR, no genocide was instigated by Stalin or any other "communist" in the Soviet-occupied lands.[/QUOTE]

NO GENOCIDE...

Ok, so Chechens, Tatars, Poles, Khazaks, Lithuanians, Estonians, Latvians, Moldavians, Ukrainians, Jews ( yes, yes like Hitler), Belorussians and countless others groups doesn't count ?????

Well... to me there is nodifference, especially from legal point of view - the definition of the genocide is fully useful for both Nazi and Communist crimes, or maybe should I say that only Nazi crimes are genocide and communst only errors with some regretable deaths.

[Rosacrux redux]

NONE of the peoples you list was targeted specifically for genocide. Mass deportion, probably (at least Tatars and to a point Khazaks) and the Ukrainians had the most victims in the two famines, but I think you got your definition of genocide quite wrong.

The Balts continued to thrive under Stalin - only the German cooperators were targeted (and, frankly, I would do the same to such people, too bad the Brits saved the cooperators in my own country, Greece). Poles? Bielorussians? Moldavians? Genocide? Yes, definitely you don't understand the term genocide.

Genocide is what the settlers did in the Americas
Genocide is what Chinghiz did to Hsi Hsia and parts of China
Genocide is what Timur Lenk did to parts of India and central Asia
Genocide is what the Turks did to the Armenians
Genocide is what Hitler did to the Jews and Gypsies
Genocide is what happened in Kambodia and Rwanda

An oppressive regime does not equal genocide, I fear.