Quote Originally Posted by Watchman
...based on what ? Having people killed was of purely instrumental value to him; it was how he secured his continued power. The second he realized his purges were about to start seriously undermining that power, he put the stops on the worst of them.

Hitler put the Final Solution to work smack in the middle of a total war against an industrially superior enemy, and basically shot his own military-industrial complex in the leg in the process. All because he was obsessed with not having filthy Jews and Gypsies and whatever anywhere near his oh-so-pure Aryans.

That's the difference between the two tyrants. Stalin had a measure of rationality in his policies - albeit of a decidedly callous and brutal sort, and not rarely quite contrafinal - while Hitler was guided purely by his crackpot (and murderous) ideology and delusions.

Quote Originally Posted by Watchman
Having people killed was of purely instrumental value to him; it was how he secured his continued power.
Not so. He launched a war against Protestants and killed them wherever he could.


Quote Originally Posted by Watchman
The second he realized his purges were about to start seriously undermining that power, he put the stops on the worst of them.
That is why he was unable to kill more. Because if he did, he would lose power, get attacked by western powers, and be destroyed like Hitler. You seriously think that if he had the power that there would be a Protestant alive in the world? He was a maniac with a vendetta, just like Hitler; he was simply more sucessfull than Hitler was.