WIth the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the war in Europe just behind us, I'd like to reflect on the mainstream assumption that the U.S.S.R. was somehow morally superior to Germany.

First, let us start with the [presumably] widespread premise that killing unarmed civilians (as distinguished from partisans, which is completely different---German Heer and S.S. men did kill a lot of armed civilians in the Soviet Union) is morally wrong. Now, let us examine the scholars' accepted death totals for Hitler and Stalin:

Hitler

With Hitler, there is the widely-held figure of 6 million civilians killed.

Stalin

"About one million people were shot during the periods 1935–38, 1942 and 1945–50 and millions of people were transported to Gulag labour camps. In Georgia about 80,000 people were shot during 1921, 1923–24, 1935–38, 1942 and 1945-50, and more than 100,000 people were transported to Gulag camps.

On March 5, 1940, Stalin himself and other Soviet leaders signed the order to execute 25,700 Polish intelligentsia including 14,700 Polish POWs. It became known as Katyn massacre. See massacre of prisoners.

It is generally agreed by historians that if famines, prison and labour camp mortality, and state terrorism (deportations and political purges) are taken into account, Stalin and his colleagues were directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of millions. How many millions died under Stalin is greatly disputed. Although no official figures have been released by the Soviet or Russian governments, most estimates put the figure between 8 and 20 million. Comparison of the 1926–37 census results suggests 5–10 million deaths in excess of what would be normal in the period, mostly through famine in 1931–34. The 1926 census shows the population of the Soviet Union at 147 million and in 1937 another census found a population of between 162 and 163 million. This was 14 million less than the projected population value and was suppressed as a "wrecker's census" with the census takers severely punished. A census was taken again in 1939, but its published figure of 170 million has been generally attributed directly to the decision of Stalin[5] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin#endnote_Cunningham) (see also Demographics of the Soviet Union). Note that the figure of 14 million does not have to imply 14 million additional deaths, since as many as 3 million may be births that never took place due to reduced fertility and choice.

A quote popularly attributed to Stalin is "The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic." (possibly said in response to Churchill at the Potsdam Conference in 1945)."

[Emphasis mine]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin

Why is it that despite these public facts, Hitler is given much more negative attention than Stalin? Indeed, why were the Soviets portrayed as heroes at all when they enslaved and tortured their own people? Why do we never stop hearing of Germany's invasions of its neighbors, and yet the Soviet Union's unprovoked attack on Finland is rarely mentioned?

Edit

Questions for Debate:

1) Do the aforementioned double standards in fact exist?

2) If no, then why not?

3) If yes, are the aforementioned double standards justified at the present time?

4) If yes, what are some of the possible root causes of said double standards?

Stalin was a standard-issue murderous megalomaniacal tyrant writ large, propelled by a flawed interpretation of an unworkable doctrine. With a gigantic state apparatus at his disposal.

Hitler contrived a repellant worldview based on racial purity and ethnic cleansing, then used it to come to power. He then attempted to impose it on the world by invading everybody he could and building the world's first industrial death factories.

It's one thing to be killed because you spoke out against the government. It's another to be killed because your grandma was a Jew.

Can I detect some sympathy for der Fuhrer in your post?

Well, there are a few reasons, the primary one being that Hitler was a genocidal maniac who fought a bloody war with the United States and our allies.

The USSR did not. Stalin also killed millions of his political enemies. But, at least for a time, we were allied with them against the Nazi's.

That's why Hitler was given more negative attention than Stalin for the most part.

I think your question overstates the degree of differentiation. Most people, I believe, would consider your question akin to "which is blacker, the pot or the kettle?". Both were profoundly evil men. If you want to argue over whether this beach has more grains of sand than that beach, well, OK, but the question doesn't much interest me.

Robert B



What difference does motive make? The end result is the same: corpses.

lordhelmet



1) Is this a snide remark?
2) What difference do my feelings make, when the fact is that I was born decades after all of the events being discussed actually transpired?



I ask that you answer the question that I posed to Robert B. If morality is centered around America, I challenge you to speak to an elderly Fin who suffered at the hands of the Soviets. Is their suffering any less valid than the suffering of those who are from countries occupied by the Germans, simply because the U.S. says so?

Erasmussimo



Please tell me whether or not you think that the differential treatment received by these men in their portrayals qualifies as a double standard.

Which portrayal? By which persons? You seem to be assuming some sort of monolithic standard that forces itself upon everybody. Have there been apologists for Stalin? Of course! Apologists for Hitler? Sure thing! Are there more apologists for Stalin than for Hitler? I don't think so, but I don't keep track of the fringe elements. And even if there are more loonies for Stalin than there are loonies for Hitler, I really don't think it's a matter for serious concern.

1) Do the aforementioned double standards in fact exist? No way.

2) If no, then why not?
Hitler as a result of his actions killed way more than 6 million people. Just looking at my trusty copy of The Reader's Digest Illustrated History of World War 2 my count for Hitler is between 36 and 40 million. Hitler started World War 2, death as a result of war in the European Theatre should be counted towards how many people he killed. You could also say Stalin killed Russians as a result for World War 2 so you also have to factor that in. And despite these public facts that Hitler killed more people it isn't a killing contest to see whom is more evil anyway.

Hitler is the personification of evil in humanity. He was destroying a huge ethnic group of people for the sake of murder and genocide. Personally I believe the holocaust is the single most disgusting, repugnant event in the history of the world, period. Hitler murder wasn't to gain land, money or power. It was to wipe out and annihilate on the basis of race. Stalin killed because he was paranoid and because he believed it would better the Soviet Union. Hitler killed because he was consumed with hatred for those he wanted to kill. That is much, much more evil. It's like the difference between manslaughter and capital murder. Hitler's genocide was a calculated murder to exterminate. Stalin's genocide was a murder in the heat of paranoia. Hitler is given more negative attention because he is more negative.

Who was worse?
Seriously?
Does it really matter that stalin gets less press than hitler? Both are prime examples of the absolute lowest level of humanity—actually scratch that—almost forgot the bottom feeders who harbor admiration for them. What’s the point of picking a winner or who comes off being unfairly cast as the lowest form of life compared to the others?
The question is a null.
Hitler believed in an absurd and pathetic racial superiority myth and stalin was just a run of the mill tyrant who very sadly had control of a lot of power.
As for the double standard—Nazis make better film villains so they get more air time.
That pretty much sums up the “double standard”. They are simply seen more in various forms of media because they fit easily into the quick and easy bad guy. They are universally reviled and it won’t offend anyone of any actual consequence when they meet the fate they deserve at the end of the movie. No matter how gruesomely they die—Everyone cheers which makes for a great ending. However just like monsters under the bed, once exposed to the light they are revealed for the sad little creatures they are. Only dangerous when left to fester in fetid little trailer parks and if you turn your back on one while he has his friends with him.
Not very many stories are well known about the murders of Stalin and so there is a lesser amount of disgust. Americans as a whole rarely care about what happens in the world if it does not affect us personally so there is little interest in what happened during Stalin.
Is there any difference between the plight of a Jew or a Finn in how they were treated? Of course not, so I really don’t see the point in such a question except for a flimsy and weak attempt to somehow make hitler the lesser evil.
Once again they are both equally prime examples of the absolute worst failures in the evolution of mankind.

Erasmussimo



It is certainly the case that the educational system in this country portrays Hitler as more evil than Stalin. Those who control the educational system may be loonies, but they most certainly are not the powerless fringe freakshows that you imply that they are. Rather, they wield a tremendous amount of power when it comes to shaping childrens' opinions.

Rancid Uncle



The Third Reich's policies toward the Jews were stated as self-defense. In our legal system, when a person claims self-defense, it is incumbent upon the police and the prosecuting district attorneys to prove that self-defense was not the case.

Assuming that Hitler was responsible for the killings of that number of Jews, one would have to discredit his claims about the extreme danger that Jews pose to European Man in particular, and indeed, the human species in general. However, when one merely brings this point up (regarding proving that self-defense was not the case), that person is usually drown out with death threats, shouting, and the like, but the bottomline is this: if the self-defense claim is so absurd, then people would calmly refute it, but instead, the mere act of repeating the Third Reich's stated reasons for its anti-Jewish actions, and the corresponding challenge to refute them, results in the aforementioned highly uncivil responses.

With a possible major war on the horizon, and also because of too many reasons to go into at the moment (but definitely later in this or another thread), it is quite evident that the Jews pose a major threat to the existence of mankind. I will be very disappointed if the best "rebuttal" to the Third Reich self-defense claim is mere politically correct, fashionable, trendy, self-righteous indignation with no supporting facts or logic (but I am very used to such lynch-mob-with-torches-and-pitch-forks-in-the-middle-of-the-night-mentality by now).

Do you consider the use of stereotypes to be an effective argument? I find it very ironic that the politically correct masses claim to loathe stereotypes, and yet they engage in them when discussing members of groups that are sanctioned for verbal abuse (e.g. those who dissent from Orwellian political correctness, Egalitarian dogma, and other such modern garbage that has largely replaced religious mythology as the new de facto religious mythology), though perhaps not physical abuse/murder (yet).

Do you seriously think that every anti-Jewish person is an uneducated trailer park dweller, or was that line just an attempt at an appeal to the pathos of the masses, you being fully aware that there are indeed articulate, intelligent, well-educated, polite anti-Jewish people?

I will do my best to remain civil because I respect the effort made by AD to remain a decent and civilized place of debate. annoyingly fair...consistently mature is how I have termed it in the past.
My opinion on this matter is simply experience. As for me being politically correct-- I tried it once when in college--but I was drunk..no impressionable..whatever.


Yes on the first and no such animal for the second.. I have little time for weak people and their paranoid fantasies. There are no black helicopters and the Masons and the Illuminati aren't trying to overtake the world. The tri Lateral commision isn't gonna get us and there is no chupacabra. There are no haunted houses and trickle down economics is a fairy tale.

but Of course you are free to convince me otherwise.
lead on macduff.....

First, how do you explain the existence of people who score high on IQ tests, who have advanced degrees, who are law-abiding citizens, and who are also anti-Jewish?

Second, I will start by pointing you to another thread in the History Forum: http://www.americasdebate.com/forums/index...?showtopic=9834

You may want to start from my post ( http://www.americasdebate.com/forums/index...ndpost&p=150910 ) and then work down, paying particular attention to the posts belonging to psyclist (a liberal Democrat, FYI) and Erasmussimo.

We can start at the present (since it's fresh in our minds) and work backwards. Why does the U.S. unfailingly support Israel despite the fact that it is clearly not in this country's best interest, as seen after the 11 September 2001 attacks, as well as earlier attacks? In case you disagree that the 11 September 2001 attacks were a result of the Zionist lobby's successes in commandeering the U.S. government, then I remind you to look at the aforementioned posts.

1) Do the aforementioned double standards in fact exist? Yes, they exist within the popular culture and most of academia. The double standards do not exist within the subculture of "Cold Warriors" and military historians. As a general rule, both subgroups consider Stalin and Hitler to be equally vile.

2) If no, then why not? The double standard does not exist in the two groups because they've been aware of Stalin's tyranny.

3) If yes, are the aforementioned double standards justified at the present time? No, they are not justified now, and at best a weak case can be made for them being justified even during World War Two.

4) If yes, what are some of the possible root causes of said double standards? The root cause, plain and simple, is that the Left within this country has been more successful in shaping "public consciousness" than Fascism ever was... We did not get into a shooting war with Stalin's USSR, we were in a shooting war with Hitler's Third Reich. The surviving victims of Hitler had decades of access to the communications infrastructure of the West to make their case, backed up by lots of hard evidence. The victims of Stalin (those who survived) were almost all locked up behind the Iron Curtain, and were countered by a sophisticated and extremely extensive network of "friends of Stalin."

The Left has continued to "sex up" its image, the various Fascists have been unable to do so. Even today, with Che Guevarra's mug on T-shirts being fashionable, we see the same dynamic. Che was a murderous thug, but he is being romanticised by the Left and popular culture.

You are mistaken. When claiming self-defense, it is incumbent that the party making the claim can establish the credibility of their "fear." If an unarmed thief is running away from you, self-defense is a mighty hard sell. This is the problem that the Third Reich's genocidal policies face when cast as "self-defense." How large was the Jewish military? Were the Jews waging an ongoing campaign of violence against the Reich? etc, etc. Simply put, the reason nobody ever bothers to explicitly refute the "self-defense" claim is because it is specious on its very face. The fact that the Nazis were able to liquidate some 6 million Jews without any effective resistance by the Jews (aside from Warsaw) merely bears out the hollowness of the "jewish threat."

Incidentally, intelligence and education can be remarkably poor defenses against bad ideas. Phrenology, alchemy, and communism are all examples of bad ideas that have been championed by the "intelligent and educated." Anti-Semitism is no different...

1) Do the aforementioned double standards in fact exist?

In the way you've phrased them, I think they do exist, and they are justified, for the following reasons.

Nazi Germany may have killed somewhat fewer people (or somewhat more, depending on which guesstimates you use), and certainly Stalinist Russia should not be held up as some kind of paragon (and I don't really believe it is outside the Communist Party).

On the downside, I'd say there is a kind of personal spin that is relatively unkind to Nazism compared to Stalin. Someone here said that America and the West generally fought against Hitler and with Stalin, so there may be something of a hangover from wartime propaganda lingering in the perceptions of the two regimes today.

Quite apart from everything else, the colossal sacrifice of the Soviet peoples during WW2 was not only completely unprecedented, far surpassing any of the other wartime Allies but it enabled the subsequent Allied victory in a way no other single act can be said to have done, so I think this might also reflect well on Stalin as thier figurehead at the time.

There is also the case that modern nation states (going back to the 18th century) take a rather dimmer view of tyrannies that expand internationally, or have ambitions to do so, than those which confine their murders within their national borders. We don't have to go very far back in time to see examples - Darfur in Sudan has garnered press attention and little else.

And I think there is also a prejudice in the West; one that is not so much a type of racism (most of the Russians that died under Stalin were as white and European as the people killed by Hitler) as a kind of familial acknowledgement. The people murdered by Hitler (as opposed to those killed in war, deliberately or "collaterally") had many more relatives in the West, particularly in America. And the countries he invaded, as they fell, still had relatively free presses and open borders, so we got to hear about what went on a lot more easily than we got to hear about what went on in Stalinist Russia (the people most likely to tell us were the first ones in the gulags). In that respect, if in no other, Stalin learn some grim lessons from the mistakes made by Hitler.

So far, so equivocal. Which goes some way to supporting your position of some kind of underlying moral equivalence. However, this (I would say) does not make Hitler "as good as" Stalin, but certainly makes Stalin "as bad as" Hitler.

I don't think it makes him worse, for one very simple reason. There have been many attempts at genocide throughout history, right up until the present day. But Nazi Germany, under Hitler's leadership, was the only one in history to have industrialised racially and politically motivated mass murder. It was the only one to have made it mundane.

To my mind, that is a colossal escalation of inhumanity that more than makes up for a notional shortfall in numbers compared to Stalinist Russia - most of whose victims were simply allowed to starve to death, rather than being processed like a raw material.

I think that is why history judges Hitler to be intrinsically worse than Stalin, and I think that is why it always will.

*aside* Wehrwolf. Your handle, and your comments about Jews, make me (and several other posters who have already appeared here) suspect that your intention is to somehow rehabilitate Hitler's reputation, because you agree with him and his policies to some degree.
I think speculation on current Arab-Israeli problems is better placed for other threads, however I would say that Hitler is at least partly responsible, in both giving focus to Zionist elements within world Jewry, and in giving more sympathy to the cause in the West in response to the horror of the Holocaust, than perhaps would have happened had it never taken place or had he chosen some other minority as his main target. Western guilt over the Holocaust may not be the only reason that the state of Israel exists today and why it commands such support in the US, but I think it is a major factor, and one that is spoken of rather less than it should be.
My hunch is that without Hitler, modern Israel would not exist as a Jewish state. Clearly Israelis would be the last people on earth to acknowledge this, and I wouldn't blame them. But modern neo-Nazis, (among whom you may or may not number, would do well to remember that their hero played a big, and perhaps the biggest, part in creating their modern nemesis.
I think that you will need to do more than attempting to argue that Stalin was even worse than Hitler and that some of the reasons for anti-Semitism have roots in fact to convince anyone that Hitler was one of the good guys.
Mugabe's dim view of white Zimbabweans and European foriengers has rather more historical and practical validity than any of Nazism's anti-Jew ideas, given Zimbabwe's colonial history, but that doesn't make the torture and murder of white farmers by ZanuPF mobs any less barbarous, let alone a good idea. (If you agree with that solely because you are white, you are missing my point.)

Motive does matter. Extreme example: If a guy who rapes and murders a child is tried and executed for his crime, the result is the same for both people involved in the crime: a corpse. Does the fact that the end result is "the same" make the deaths in each case morally equivalent?

Besides, being oppressed because one speaks out against the government is (sadly) typicial for murderous tyrannies throughout history. You can always do as the government demands and hope for the best. But you can't change who your parents are.

Hitler was something new under the sun. He led the way in corrupting a nominal democracy into an rampaging, murderous obscenity. He did this by appealing to the worst instincts of his compatriots; ethnic hatred and a demand for bloody vengeance. He and his underlings invented and were the first to perpetrate industrial-scale ethnic genocide.

Having said all this: Hey, if you want to lump Stalin and Hitler together as moral equivalents, I won't press the case. Beyond a certain point, it's just an interesting diversion to rate who is "more evil". If thorough research and reasoned debate result in the conclusion that Stalin was just as bad as Hitler, what have we really gained from it? The warm glow of knowing that Hitler wasn't such a bad guy after all?

Wehrwolf

So is it fair to say that this entire thread was started not to debate the moral equivalence or otherwise of Hitler and Stalin, but really as an excuse to air anti-semitic opinion?




Yes. Or they're just plain crazy.

"Double Standards" are justified - ahh, so many reasons, where do I start...

As Julian pointed out, Stalin and USSR were part of the Allies, not part of the Axis powers. The D-day in 1944 would not be possible without the enormous sacrifice of Russians. Nazi Germany had the majority of its losses on the Eastern Front. It is probably fair to say that if Hitler didn't have the Eastern front on his hands, the Great Britain would be eventually starved to surrender, and the outcome of the war could have been very different...
29 million dead Russians dwarfs the death toll of any other nation. Just yesterday I was listening to the roll call of Leningrad High Schools in 1941 - "school X: 85 people volunteered, 4 came back; school N: 93 people volunteered, 9 came back; school Z: 102 people volunteered, 16 came back", and so on, and so on. Because Westeners realize that all those sacrifices were made against the common enemy, they are probably willing to look at Soviet Union a little bit more forgivingly...
The second reason is the difference in ideology. Many people see no difference between Fascism, Nazism, and Communism, but the difference is huge. The latter is an utopian ideology which is based on several faulty principles; however, the idea itself is good at its core and is not much different from the principles of the French Revolution: "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite". Even though Communism realistically can never be achieved (with the exception of several kibbuzim in Israel), the Socialism (arguably, the next model on the scale closer to the center) is alive and well and arguably implemented to a certain degree in several Scandinavian countries.
There's no "Nazism-Lite"; the core of that ideology is not equality, but hate and racial superiority; there're no "noble, worthy goals" that people can relate to (well, normal people, let's put it that way) and strive to achieve.
As individuals, Stalin and Hitler were worth each other; it's all the other circumstances that make the difference.

P.S. The Russian-Finnish War you keep bringing up is really not one of the brightest pages in the history of Russian military. Russians really got their butts whipped; their losses were huge and the degree of resistance was totally unexpected and caught Russians by surprise. They were victorious, eventually, but that victory has cost them dearly. Also bear in mind that part of Finland was a part of Russian Empire for a long, long time....

OK people, lets try and sort some of this out.

There are several important differences between Hitler and Stalin that lead historians to being able to state that Hitler was 'Worse' then Stalin. However before I go into them, let me be clear that this debate is similar to debating whether Pancreatic cancer is 'worse' than liver cancer. They are both horrible death sentences and an awful way to die, why on earth would you ever want to have the debate in the first place?

However, since the debate exists, let me begin.

1) Intent.
Hitler killed for the sake of killing. He killed as a primary intent, and anything else; slave labour, by-products, etc, was entirely secondary.
Stalin killed for the sake of other projects. Produce was his end goal, the deaths were simply a by-product. For example, one of the most famous 'death camps' of Stalin was the construction of the White Sea canal, during the construction of which hundreds of thousands of workers died. However, the primary goal of this project was the construction of the canal, lives lost in the balance were immaterial.

Treblinka however produced nothing. It was a factory dedicated to extermination and nothing else. In Nazi Germany there were over 300 concentration camps, where people were worked to death, such as Dachau, Ravensburg, Belsen-Belsen, and so on. However there were also six death camps, whose only product was extermination.

2) Industrialisation.
Stalin killed most of his victims through the age old methods of disappearances at night, assassinations, show-trials and purges, mass migrations of populations, and his biggest one, the forced collectivisation and resulting starvations. None the less, this was all still a 'knife in the dark' mentality similar in procedure, though vastly higher in scale, then any violent dictatorship such as Franco's Spain, Mussolini's Italy, Imperial Japan and so on.

Nazi Germany however governmentalised and industrialised the process, bringing it into the regular function of government. No longer was massacre something to be kept on the outer fringes of society and done quietly and surreptitiously, rather it was incorporated into government and given its own department and administration. This administration dealt with moving timetables, rolling stock, capacity of the death camps and disposition if the victims, assembly, processing and distribution of byproducts and goods of the victims. They even had their own propaganda apparatus, from which postcards supposedly from victims were sent on a regular basis to families in ghettoes talking about the great resettlement, in order to maintain morale in the ghettoes. This was socialised, industrialised murder, something never before seen in humanity.

3) Victims:
In Stalin’s Russia there was usually a way out. During the Red Army purges all you had to do was renounce your commission and throw yourself on the mercy of the court and you were almost always spared. (Spared death that is, instead you usually faced a lengthy prison sentence). Those arrested, even during show trials, could throw themselves on the mercy of the tribunals and their lives would generally be spared, in favour of prison. In Hitler’s Greater Germany, being Jewish was a death sentence, and there was no remission. You were killed not because of your activities or political affiliation, but because you existed. Even decorated war veterans of WWI were rounded up and killed because they could be identified as Jewish, homosexual, communist, gypsy, or mentally or physically handicapped.

4) Priority
The purpose of Hitler’s Germany was extermination. In 1941, the Red Army faced the brutal onslaught of Barbarossa, with its military decrees, not for the SS or the Einsatzgruppen, but for the rank and file Wehrmacht saying that this war was to be waged with unprecedented brutality, including the automatic executions of commissars (31 March, 1941) and that offences and brutalities against enemy civilians by members of the German armed forces were NOT to be punished (13 May, 1941). In response Stalin rehabilitated many of the men in prison previously arrested under both military and security purges. Soldiers awaiting execution were released and ent back into the army. It is clear that as much as Stalin was anxious to kill people, his first priority was the survival of the USSR.

In 1944 the German armed forces having been thrown back in the Russian summer offensives had established something of a line and a strategic reserve, all they needed was supplies, rolling stock for railway and manpower to try and build a decent defence. Hitler stripped his Reich of all rolling stock and SS reinforcements in order to achieve the liquidation of all Jews in the newly acquired Hungary. His insistance on killing Hungarian jews took priority over the survival of his armies in the east, many of whom were cut off and wiped out for lack of rail cars and rolling stock to organise and move. When it came down to it, Hitler’s priority was with extermination even over survival.


Next, let me deal with a few errors of fact. Firstly, the ‘death count’ of Hitler is difficult to measure because it is difficult to know what to add. In the Holocaust itself between 6 and 8 million died in camps, gas vans and at the hands of Einsatzgruppen. That is not just Jews but also gypsies, homosexuals, political enemies, communists and so on.

Add to that 130,000 mentally and physically handicapped people killed in the forced euthanasia program before the war. Add to that 2-4 million Soviet POWs deliberately killed or starved to death on the Eastern front AFTER capture. (That does not include those executed upon capture) Then add the reprisal deaths, hundreds of thousands in Russia and Poland along, tens of thousands more in Czechoslovakia, France, Greece, Italy, and so on. That is ALL before we include military actionable deaths, such as combat deaths, combat related civilian casualties, bombing casualties, V-weapon casualties, civilians killed by submarines and commerce raiders, and so on.

Lets just say, it is a hell of a lot, significantly more than Wehrwolf presented to you in his initial post

Also keep in mind that while, in total, there may be slightly fewer non-military related deaths in Nazi Germany then in Soviet Russia, keep in mind that Germany was a population of 60 million, while Russia was 100 million, and Hitler had 12 years in power, while Stalin had 29.



Oh, and Wehrwolf (who names himself after an embarrassingly pitiful attempt to create a Nazi resistance movement in post-war Germany that fell apart in no time) you worry me a little.

Firstly, you wrote this statement, which I sincerely hope I am misunderstanding:


Then you make the baffling statement in your opening post that "German Heer and SS men killed a lot of Armed civilians in the USSR". Yes, they did, but they killed FAR more unarmed and helpless civilians, on a staggering scale. Or do you maintain that Babi Yar, and the hhundreds of massacres like it, was just an excersise in killing Russian 'armed' civilians?


Then you make the asserting that Hitler’s war on the Jews was a matter of self-defence, and that as such it is on the ‘opposition’ to prove it was not. Firstly, your knowledge of law is appalling. Firstly, no court on the planet would allow a case of pre-emptive self-defence with no obvious clear and present danger. Secondly, before a claim of self-defence can be entered, the judge must rule on the prima fascae case, also known as the ‘air of reality’ test, as to whether there is enough evidence of self defence for such a claim to even be considered. In neither of these cases does your argument hold any water.

BUT, even if that were not enough, your knowledge of history apparently equals your knowledge of law: at no point did Hitler claim his actions against the Jews, or the Jewish Bolsheviks as he usually referred to them, were self defence. In fact littered throughout Mein Kampf and his many speeches are statements claiming quite openly that Germany must take the land to the east from its inhabitants to provide living space, that the Jewish ‘presence’, or ‘stain’, or sometimes ‘threat’ (though never with any explanation of what this threat is) must be eliminated, and so on. His speeches were quite clear on the need for offence, not self-defence.



Lastly, I must disagree with one of the general consensuses here. Anti-Semitism is sadly not just restricted to the trailer-trash and wilfully ignorant of society. Sadly, unreasoning and idiotic hate can be found in educated people and those who consider themselves intelligent. David Irving, the grand Vizir of holocaust denial until his crushing defeat in libel action in the UK in 2001 (a trial which I attended and wrote on) was an educated, well-off, well-spoken analytical man. Sadly, in this world, you do not have to be a backwoods hillbilly in order to be incredibly stupid and hatemongering.

I don't think any assumptions are necessary here; the evidence for Hitler's responsibility for the Holocaust is overwhelming, wouldn't you agree?



I believe that history has already discredited those claims. If the Jews were so dangerous, where's the damage?


I can't blame people for getting emotional over something of such emotional intensity. When I once used the phrase "feline holocaust" to describe the euthanization of millions of cats in this country every year, I was set upon by a Jewish chap who found the term demeaning to his murdered relatives. I think he was pushing too hard, but I don't blame him for becoming angry.


I believe that you have been presented here with several calm refutations of the self-defense claim. It does in fact appear to be absurd.



It takes two sides to make a fight and there are more than two sides in this particular fight. First, the Jews are not the active party here; it's the Israeli government. I as an American would never want to be held responsible for the actions of the Bush administration and we should not hold Jews responsible for the actions of the Israeli government. But if a major war develops in the Middle East (which I agree is a serious possibility), we cannot blame only the Israeli government. The Arab governments are playing a role too and the American government also shares some blame for the mess in the Middle East.


I believe that the well-reasoned, factually based rebuttals presented by others provide you with plenty of reason to be pleased. They are none of the things you fear and they compellingly shatter the self-defense claim.

"Rebuttals" to the defense of Stalin:

First, Rancid Uncle lays the exclusive blame for World War Two at Hitler's feet, and this presents a perfect illustration of the narrow case of double standards that Wehrwolf is attempting to explore. World War Two "started" in Asia, with the Japanese invasion of China. Nobody paid much attention to it (aside from the Chinese obviously, and much later, the US), but the Sino-Japanese War was a going concern from 1937 until August/September 1945. Since we aren't discussing the Asian Theatre, we'll let this one slide and focus on the happenings in Europe, 1939. Stalin and Hitler made a "non-aggression Pact" in August of 1939, which secretly included the division of Poland. Hitler (actually, the Wehrmacht at his direction, but that's a quibble) invaded Poland on September 1st. The Soviet Union invaded Poland September 17th. Hitler and Stalin started World War Two in Europe. In November 1939, while the Germans and French/British were engaged in the Sitzkrieg, the Soviets invaded Finland. 2 weeks later the righteous and noble Soviets were tossed out of the League of Nations, due to their aggression. Now, some have excused Stalin for only being murderous towards his own people and being "defensively paranoid", rationalizations that fall in the face of Stalinist aggression Poland, and Finland, not to mention the Soviet occupation of the Baltic States. Throw in the Soviet genocide agains the Poles, the Ukrainian famine, etc, the 15,000,000 who died at the hands of Stalin's government after World War Two, and there can be no more defense of Stalin than there is of Hitler. Stalin's government was just as "industrial" in murdering as Hitler's, and just as irrational. Here's an example:

Soviet Genocide

Both were driven by ideology to murder millions of people. Both were monstrously evil, and just as suspicion falls upon Wehrwolf that he is sympathetic to Hitler's ideology and thus inclined to be charitable in his assessment, so to should suspicion fall upon those who justify Stalin. Perhaps the only difference between those charitably inclined for one dictator vs. the other is that those "embracing" Hitler have a modicum of honesty in taking him lock, stock, and putrid barrel. Most of those who are sympathetic to Stalin consider his excesses to be an aberration that does not derive from communist ideology. Such thinking is delusional. It's remarkable is how consistently those aberrations have haunted communism. From Lenin, to Stalin, to Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, etc, every communist regime has been murderous.

And yet, as Wehrwolf points out, a double standard continues even today in how the standard bearers of the two evil ideologies are evaluated.

There is no more defense possible for Stalin than there is for Hitler. None, and to make any suggests moral bankruptcy of the first order, on par with the Holocaust deniers.

I don't think there's a single post on that board that expresses any kind of sympathy for Stalin. However, since I have a hunch that your post is directed at me, I'd like to point out that I explicitly stated that


However I do stand by my assertion that the difference is in underlying ideology. Just like the dark history of Catholic Church has little to do with teachings of Christ, ideals of communism (or rather, socialism since a communist society has never been built with the exception of already mentioned kibbuzim in Israel) have little to do with Stalin's regime. There have been plenty of murderous regimes which were strictly anti-communist (Pinochet and Saddam Hussein come to mind). On contrary, Western Europe embrased certain socialistic principles and implemented them with various degrees of success.

And here of course, is your first problem. Trying to maintain that anything that has been said in this thread, and I mean anything at all, is in any way, shape, manner or form a defence of Stalin.



Next: Firstly, as you say we are all clearly talking about the European theatre, so discussing anything else is somewhat irrelevant to the point at hand.

Secondly, Yes, we are all aware of the actions of the USSR during the Phoney War, and how contemptible they were, you did not even go into the half of it, such as the massive shipments of supplies and raw materiels from the USSR to German factories as a result of the Nazi-Soviet pact, but again I have to say, and I mean this with all due respect, so what?

I repeat, nobody has at any point in this thread ever tried to defend Stalin, and your pointing out that he was a despot and a murderer, when the whole purpose of this discussion is wheither he or Stalin are the worst humans in 20th century history is a bit off-centre.


Here we come to the first major disagreement between you and general historical thought. Stalin did not start the war in Europe, nor did he participate in the starting of it, barring that it could easily be argued that the signing of the Nazi Soviet pact allowed Hitler to invade Poland ahead of schedule. Yes the USSR participated in the dismembering of Poland, and later ocupied the three Baltic states, attacked Finland and annexed part of Rumania, but while these go a long way to supporting the argument that Stalin was a terribly evil man, they are also in no way under debate here.



Here is the first of your facts I question. What 15 million people died at Stalins hands between 1945 and 1953? If you are referring to German POWs, the number is vastly lower, less than 1 million in fact, so I am curious where that number comes from?





I agree entirely. If you ever come across somebody in this board who makes an attempt to 'Justify Stalin', then let me know and we will be equally suspicious. So far I have seen none.


And as an aside, suspicion, at least in my mind, did not fall on Wehrwolf because he is 'sympathetic towards Hitler' (I have no idea if he is or not). Rather it fell on him because of a combination of his revisionist and incorrect history, and his comment that the Jews were a threat to mankind.

Of all of the posts I've read that you've written Bikerdad, I think this is the best I've seen. Your arguments are sound and backed up by facts. However, your argument earlier that the Left were the ones who created this purported double-standard are ludicrous. Even the most die-hard of Western Communists don't defend Stalin as a great leader (Lenin, maybe, but Stalinists? never met one). And those are the communists. The majority of the 'extreme' left in this country are for a socialist democracy similar to the dozens of successful implementations in Europe. When was the last time you heard a Green Party politician (our most extreme left party) argue for a move away from the democratic form of government (which any devout Stalinist would have to argue). I simply can't see, and never have seen a leftist hold up Stalin as an example. Why would they? He's more of a worse-case scenario.

I also would have to take issue with your complete dismissal of the fact that Hitler maybe was more evil than Stalin, or at least America as a whole would be justified to see it that way.

Stalin was the crucial ally of Churchill and Roosevelt. Without him, and the brave men and women of the USSR's Armed Forces, we could very well all be speaking German & Japanese today. Do you see how maybe that could make a country a little biased when it comes to the lesser of two evils argument? Additionally, while your source does seem to document industriliazation of genocide, we simply don't have access to the horrors and the historical data that we do with the Holocaust. The scope and speed (5 years) at which Hitler comitted his atrocities certianly helps him become a more nightmarish figure in history.

Additionally, I would like to point that this entire thread is ludicrous. There are dozens of equally horrifying genocides committed across the globe in the 20th century. Why can most people not even tell you what they were? Let's just be happy the American Public has the long-term memory to at least remember one genocide.
To this day the Turkish government denies they killed millions of Armenians (my great-grandmother was the only survivor from her family to escape to America). Yet the US has put no pressure on them to acknowledge the evils of their past.




Hitler believed that no one would remember his actions:


Luckily we've proved him wrong, but is there a double-standard? I really don't think so. I just don't think there's enough room in America's collective conciousness to fathom the amount of horror, murder, and genocide committed in the 20th century.

So those of us that didn't respond to the initial post "correctly" (ie Stalin and Hitler are exact moral equivalents) are down there with deniers of the holocaust?

I think it's more like responding incorrectly makes you a communism success story.

Despite Bikerdad's assertion that "the Left within this country has been more successful in shaping 'public consciousness' than Fascism ever was," a greater revulsion towards Hitler is not indicative of a successful academia agenda. If a general slant against Hitler's methods in the U.S. exists it isn't completely unwarranted. By the turn of the 20th century America legislated eugenics and looked up to the Furor before the movement went underground.



I'm not arguing that Americans "like" Stalin compared to Hitler, but shame for our actions or inactions (as Julian alludes to) is not a specious argument compared to alleging we have generations of brainwashed commie sympathizers.

1) Do the aforementioned double standards in fact exist?

No, they do not. A double standard exists, but not the "aforementioned" one.

2) If no, then why not?

First, I'd have to agree with Erasmussimo that this is essentially a debate about whether the pot or the kettle is blacker. Among consumers of popular culture, academics, cold warriors, and military historians, both men are considered supremely - and similarly - evil.

But, beyond the application of the abstract "evil" to both men, there is a key difference. Stalin has no apologists. Hitler does. Soviet communism - especially Stalinism - has done a lot to thoroughly discredit communism as a political and economic theory. The Third Reich has done little, if anything, to discredit fascism as a political and economic practice. The double standard? Thanks in large part to Stalinism, the communist movement in the west is virtually dead. Despite Hitler - and Mussolini - and Franco - fascism is alive and well. "Stalinism" has been used to discredit communism. "Hitlerism" - which hasn't even entered the language - has been used to discredit Hitler. Period.

The assertion that "the left within this country has been more successful in shaping 'public consciousness' than Fascism ever was" is patently absurd. There is no neo-Stalinist movement in the US - or Europe. Neo-Nazi organizations, however, are thriving - and succeeding. Even given the worst excesses of FDR or LBJ, it could never be rationally argued that the US even approached being socialist - never mind communist. The corporatist economy and uniting of corporate and military power structures fashioned by Mussolini and espoused by Hitler have been embraced by the party which now controls all three branches of our government. It could be argued - easily - that fascism is the current form of government in the United States of America - at least, by Mussolini's definition.

I would therefore argue that Stalin is far worse than Hitler. His reputation has so befouled an economic theory that it cannot even be spoken of in polite society. Hitler, on the other hand, has simply become a boogie man - a synonym for "evil person" - while his fascist form of government has become mainstream.

Yes, Stalin said that "the death of one man is a tragedy" while "the death of millions is a statistic" - and, to an extent, he was right. Six million, fourteen million, forty million - such figures become meaningless in attempting to assess the relative "evil" of those responsible. I can understand where some people are coming from when they argue that Hitler's attempts at genocide are worse than Stalin's mass murder on a grand scale. It is the same place people who advocate hate crime legislation are coming from. But I would tend to agree with those who argue that, to the millions of dead, the motivation of the perpetrator is not highly relevant. But the legacy of those perpetrators is.

It is dangerous to dismiss those who base their political beliefs on hatred as "trailer park trash". They are not. People who base their political beliefs on hatred are among the wealthiest and most powerful people in our nation. They are the majority leaders in both houses of Congress, they are our most vocal religious leaders, they dominate our courts, they control our mass media, and they occupy the White House. They are not stupid or necessarily insane - but they are, in my opinion, every bit as "evil" as either Stalin or Hitler, though in espousing the Gospel of Hate, they are far more akin to the latter.

A much more pertinent quote from Stalin in assessing the legacies of these two men is this: "It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything." That is something that Fascists have learned from Stalinists. All too well.

Ignoring the success of fascism while dancing on the grave of communism is a double standard indeed. And it demonstrates that history has taught us nothing.

They were both evil in my opinion.

Do we really have to say who was more evil? Is their some sort of evil-o-meter that is used to measue evil?

No, their is not. Evil is Evil. Plain and simple. Their is no excuse and numbers and statistics do not make a difference who is more evil.

Both men are hated, both governments are hated. I think they both deserved their fair demise.

The real issue here is, not who is more evil, but how do we stop evil like this in the future from occuring.

Most Jews I have talked to do not want revenge on the Germans. They do not want everyone to mope and cry for them. They just want people to remember what happened. They want to make sure that something so terrible will never happen again. They want the world to realize genocides can happen, and that they will happen unless people remember the past and act.

We all here are missing the real issue. How do we stop this from occuring again?

Without Hitler there would be no World War 2 in Europe. Hitler started the expansion of Germany before the invasion of Poland anyway. I also realize that WWII in China happened before Hitler started WWII in Europe, but the first in no way precipitated the second.

Saying Hitler and Stalin are equally evil makes the evils they committed seem equal. I'm not aware of anything Stalin did that comes close to the holocaust. If some people want to argue that the holocaust is somehow justifiable I just don't know what to say.

evil-o-meter? good one!

As stated before, you're right, they were both evil men. But, for a period of time, Stalin was allied with the US against the Nazis and help bring that evil regime down.

That's why Stalin isn't as reviled as Hitler. At least he did a few things right.

I think Julian's post shows a good understanding of why Stalin's memory is treated differently from the memory of Hitler. Had Soviet Russia not joined the Allies, we would possibly be treating the history of Stalin's regime with as much antipathy.

I, too, am a Euro-American, Wehrwolf.* But I harbor no disdain for Jews or people of different ethnicity. I cannot think of Adolf Hitler without thinking of the brutality he and his followers inflicted on those he blamed for Germany's problems.

Undoubtedly there were Jews who were making money hand over fist in Germany at the time. Undoubtedly in this country there are "good" Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Jews, what-have-you who are making high-level corporate decisions that eliminate jobs for good, hard-working Americans. But to blame any religious or ethnic group for all problems does a great disservice to that group; further, to systematically work to exterminate that group is monstrous.

That is not to let Stalin off the hook, because untold thousands died at his direction as well. That is not to let Chairman Mao off the hook, either. But Adolf Hitler actually believed that the Jews were Europe's worst problem, and from where I am sitting (I am not a Jew), that was irrational. Greed is the world's worst problem, when you combine it with the world's billions of impoverished people who go to bed hungry or don't even have a bed.

*I mention this here because your introductory thread was closed. By the way, welcome to the forum.

I'm glad you mentioned Chairman Mao, Elspeth. When I was first considering "Who was worse, Josef Stalin or Adolph Hitler?" my immediate response was "Mao Zedong". But, of course, he wasn't even on the list. As we're addressing double standards, though, they don't get much more "double" than ignoring China. No, not ignoring, revering.

Not only did the Chinese murder between 35 and 65 million civilians under Mao, but egregious human rights abuses continue there (there's a wealth of source material here and a recent assessment of ongoing abuse by the US governement here - which doesn't even mention Tibet, for example).

But ever since Nixon's rapprochement in 1970, compounded by Carter's bestowing of Most Favored Nation status on the regime and Reagan's astronomical expansion of economic trade ties throughout the eighties, we have become increasingly dependent on China: we are their second largest trading partner and they are our third largest (after Canada and Mexico). And, due to China's investment in US Treasury Bonds, their ongoing support of the US dollar, and Congress having made our trade relationship permanent in 2000, we are increasingly dependent on this brutal regime. China is the second largest holder of US Treasury after Japan and, together, they are financing our war in Iraq and bolstering the plummeting dollar to the tune of 2 trillion dollars. Should China sell off their Treasury Bonds or their dollars, our currency would be utterly worthless and the United States would go bankrupt over night. China powns us.

So, when one talks about "evil" leaders, one hears much of Stalin and Hitler. But Chairman Mao, the country in which he probably butchered more innocents than Stalin, the racial hatred Chinese communists continue to foster, their ongoing human rights abuses and continuing slaughter of their own citizens, their occupation of Tibet, their threats against Taiwan, their support for North Korea, their enabling of nuclear proliferation - the entire legacy of Chairman Mao - don't even get a mention. Hitler and the Third Reich are dead. Stalin and the Soviet Union are dead. But China is as "evil" as it ever was - and Mao's grim legacy is alive and thriving. I guess one doesn't bite the hand that feeds one, supports one's illegal wars, and covers up one's colossally failed economic policies. Now that's a double standard.

I'm probably reiterating points already made, so feel free to skip over this.....

.... A quote, which some might find ironic in this context;

"Success is the sole earthly judge of right and wrong."

Ultimately, both Hitler and Stalin were unsuccessful in their aims, and thus both can be seen as being very wrong. Neither's dream survived the century..... Hitler's Reich lasted twelve years, give or take. Stalin's 'Worker's Paradise' lasted only slightly longer - cosmically speaking.

And both Hitler's Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union were absolutely drenched in blood; each was brutal in their own way. Personnally, I consider them both to be two sides of the same coin, in that regard... and both absolutely abhorrant. Trying to say that Stalin's victims were any more or less deserving than Hitler's victims because of each man's differing motivations to have them killed, or even the implication of such, is a pretty disgusting example of moral relevance -- But that's my opinion.

Hitler ordered deaths because he considered them to be untermenschen, or subhuman - Jews, Roma, homosexuals, the disabled; Stalin ordered the deaths of his victims because they were bourgeois, capitalists, counter-revolutionary, or just his personal enemy - or even someone suspected of maybe being his enemy. In neither case were the victims anything less than arbitrarily chosen and killed for little or no reason at all - the method of choice shouldn't factor into the determination of which is more or less "evil." As I said, they're two sides to the same ugly coin.

And trying to measure each's respective "evilness" in relation to the other based on their "tally" in terms of how much death they sowed across the earth, is something like trying to determine how full two glasses are of water, and which one is more full -- when they're both at the bottom of a lake.


Anyway... I'll try and answer one of the questions posed;

Why is Stalin (and, by extension, Communism) spared the same sort of condemnation and revulsion bestowed on Hitler and Nazism?

Simple - Stalin was the Ally of the United States, Great Britain and the other democracies lined up against Hitler during the War. We needed Stalin in order to defeat Hitler... the survival of our nations and freedoms were dependant on making that choice - to make a deal with one devil to defeat another. To use the old cliched saying, 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend.'

The Soviet Union entered the Second World War, for better or worse, as an Axis accomplice - they willingly supplied raw materials and oil to Germany from after the Invasion of Poland until the very day of Operation Barbarossa; a period of almost two years. Those resources fuelled the tanks which invaded France in 1940, and fuelled the planes which bombed London during the Blitz; Germany offered the Soviets 'technical assistance' and other services in return. That trade was a provision of the Nonaggression Pact, and many people tend to overlook that and instead focus on the Germans' invasion of the Soviet Union as when the Soviets entered the war.

I'm certain Churchill and the other Western leaders understood that Hitler and Stalin would be near-impossible to defeat if they had stuck together; combined, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany would have likely had the manpower, industrial base and raw resources to carry on a near-endless campaign, and quite likely crush the then-disorganized and unprepared western Allies.

That in itself was probably the decisive factor in why French and British promises to Poland that both would go to War in its defense only really applied to the German invasion on the 1st of September - and not the Soviet invasion of Poland two weeks later. I'm sure the hope amongst those in the War Cabinet was that the Nazis and Communists wouldn't be able to contain their differences forever, and that one man or the other would start a war between them. Two biggest kids on the block - sooner or later, they're going to fight.

And anyone who has read Mein Kampf would've been able to see those differences as being deep-rooted and insurmountable, so long as Hitler and Stalin weren't given a common cause. In that case, war between them would be seen as being inevitable...

I see evil every day at work- does economy of scale make one more or less evil?

I have a guy here that likes to kill and rape women- he is a very evil person. However, he only killed two women before he was caught and stopped. Is he more or less evil than Stalin or Hitler? I don't think so- he just didn't run a country and do it.

A evil sociopath is an evil sociopath is an evil sociopath- and the number of thier victims doesn't increase or decrease thier evil-ness (is that a word?)

Sometimes evil has an opportunity to manifest in a wholesale manner, as with Stalin, Pinochet, Saddam, Hitler etc etc, or sometimes it is merely in a retail manner - Dahmer, Gacy, Bundy etc.

Why do we put degrees on evil, just because one does it in a wholesale manner and one in retail?

Some evil folks get away with thier evil doing and never have to pay a price here on earth (Stalin, Mao) some do (at least hitler had to die) - but usually, the good does not win in this world, and the bad guys win more than hollywood wants to to believe.

Yeah, sort of... But we don't judge our history by determining who was the nicest guy and who was the meanest. If evil is just a trait like hair color or height, for all we know the most evil person ever was baby who died at 2 months. We judge history by what people do. One could argue that Ben Franklin was a nicer guy than George Washington, but George Washington was the first president so he gets the capital named after him.

In the case of Stalin and Hitler, the actions Hitler took were more disgusting and more evil. In one sense maybe Ted Bundy was more evil than Hitler, but Ted Bundy didn't have his own country. But in a historical sense the crimes against humanity committed by Hitler are unsurpassed. We can look back at history and make a judgement of which type of crime we find more abhorrent. It's not really the most important thing in the world but it's more honest than saying Hitler=Stalin=Genghis Khan=Osama bin Laden=Ivan the Terrible=Louis XIV.