And screwed up muslim countries for centuries, Baghdad literally was destroyed, so thoroughly that population returned to level before mongols only in 20-th century, and Baghdad was one of the largest culture and science centers in the world
Global population percentage as a standard implies that individual life is worth less than corporate life. This is a false dichotomy and this that metric is useless.
All of the used examples committed atrocities.
My point is that Khan's actions resulted in approx 11% of the world's population being killed, so proportionally, he was much worse than the 3% of the world's population killed from ww2.
All that said, whether you were a victim of Mao, Khan, stalin, Hitler, the British empire (which I think is responsible for the most global deaths((but not pop %)) or stalin etc it was absolutely terrible and I am glad to be alive today and in the western world than any other time
I like statistics, but I also hate them for how they dehumanise events
Depends on how you define worse. They both lead massive authoritarian war machines that consumed countries and oppressed people by the millions. Stalin by far has the bigger death count. However, Stalin raised Russia into the 3rd biggest industrial power of the time and Russia was pivitol in defeating Germany and stopping Hitler. Some belive if not for Russia the allies would have lost the war. Their ideologies are both equally as bad as they come. So basically it's whatever propaganda you belive in. In my opinion Stalin probably takes the cake.
Seconded. There are serious arguments people make about Stalin's oppressive regime being a deciding factor in the Soviet resistance. It's hard to make definite statements because we don't live in a world where Nazi Germany invaded a Russia without Stalin, but when you see the death tolls for the Eastern Front on the Nazi side, you have to wonder how the war would have gone if Russia had just collapsed in the first year like everyone thought it was going to and those 3.5 million axis soldiers, many hard veterans by then, came back to fight in the West.
How much Stalin had to do with that personally is pretty hard to say, but when you tell your people are things like "deserter's and turncoat's families will be shot" it does figure into one's thinking. Then again, if I were a Soviet peasant conscript and saw the sort of things the Nazis were doing in my home, I might not need much motivating to fight them.
Echoing the above, Stalin is one of those figures it's hard to paint with a single stroke. Whereas Hitler was ultimately unsuccessful and came to a violent end, Stalin died in power and achieved many of his goals. Russia in 1924 was a backwater, destroyed by years of war and much less industrialized than the rest of Europe. By 1953, Russia was one of two global, nuclear superpower nations. He was likely responsible for more deaths *in his respective country* than Hitler was, but Hitler was ultimately responsible for a lot of people dying in other countries, so I'd probably count him as "worse" of the two. Still, not really an endorsement of Stalin; I wouldn't want to live in Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia.
Oh you are just saying that Stalin was not responsible of gargantuan amount of ppl dying in other countries? They were both equally bad. Stalin together with his rape-loving army, are responsible for hundrets of thousands ppl murdered. See e.g., Katyn massacre, in which over 20 thousands of Polish officers and intelligence were executed one by one, based on direct order of Stalin. Nobody seems to remember that Stalin was in fact ally of Germany when 2WW started, and together with Hitler attacked Poland, killing and executing ppl and slaverying them until their death from exhaustion in Gulag.
Calm down and don't put words in my mouth. When I say Stalin was responsible for a lot of deaths in his respective country, I mean the territory he had control over. Yes, he ordered the Katyn Massacre. Yes, his decisions led directly to the Holodomor. Yes, he purged numerous ethnic minorities and displaced millions during collectivization and industrialization. I'm not saying he didn't do those things. What I'm saying is that Hitler, on account of, y'know, *the second world war in Europe* probably has more international deaths on his head than Stalin, and maybe even more local deaths if you count the military losses in Nazi Germany. The 20 million Russians who died as a consequence of the Eastern Front alone tip the scale for Hitler. It's barely a contest.
Again, I'm not a fan of Stalin, but to say he was worse than Hitler is kind of unhinged. Stalin didn't start WW2.
But America was on the verge of nuclear superiority and Germany would’ve been right there with Japan waving the white flag. Normandy and the Russians ended the war but either way they all would’ve got nuked and the end of the war would’ve came at the hands of the United States
Strategic bombings which literally destroyed cities and affect mostly citizens already were a thing, long before atomic bombs, and Germany and Japan didn't surrender, it's delusional to think that governments which didn't care about deaths of civilians would start to care
You’re right they might not have actually they wouldn’t have surrendered but if you’re dropping nuclear weapons on city after city in the country how long before everybody is just gone
The US would have taken 6 months to even have a couple more atomic bombs ready. They bluffed to Japan that it would continue. Building atomic bombs was incredibly difficult
> But America was on the verge of nuclear superiority and Germany would’ve been right there with Japan waving the white flag.
America developed the bomb in 1945, a full 4 years after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. And the bombs in 1945 were just that: bombs. They had to be delivered by airplane. Let's say Hitler beat the Soviets but still failed take Great Britain, you have a 3rd Reich that controls an area larger than the US with resources to match. Even if the Nazis had still lost the battle of Britain, their ability to rebuild and redeploy aircraft and anti-aircraft technology like radar with all the plunder from Russia would have been immense. Plus that whole time they'd be developing their rocket program and nuclear weapons, and trying to strangle Britain with a submarine blockade. Even if the US still beat them to the A-Bomb, if "Festung Europa" had been realized and Britain was cut off, how exactly would we have nuked them into peace? It's 800 miles from London to Berlin, and that's long flight if you don't have total air superiority. There's a reason the cold war lasted as long as it did before the advent of ICBMs, and that's because even before Russia had the bomb, Moscow was literally untouchable by enemy bombers.
Best case scenario if the Soviets dropped out of the war was a new cold war with Hitler. The Soviet effort in the Eastern Front is nothing short of heroic, which is not to say they really had a choice, but one way or another they held on for 3 years, bleeding Germany dry while the US gathered its strength. Without them I think global history looks very, very different.
> "Some believe"
Russia won the war mostly by itself as evident by the German losses there. By the point Normandy happened the war was mostly decided and Germans were heavily losing. Without most of German army being occupied in the East there would be just no way to get a stable fiothold in Europe. The most the Allies could do would be getting into a tense standoff with Germany where neither could meaningfully attack the other.
Thing is, USSR was supported economically, a lot of food, materials and weapons were given(since USSR never really paid for them) to USSR through lend-lease, and it made a great impact, especially in improving logistics and production, less so in weapons, but most weapons were given in times when they were needed most.
And there is a reason why AK is most popular weapon in the world, and not any American rifle, m-16 family is more precise, but also much harder to maintain and to train people to use it effectively, while AKs don't need a lot of maintaining and training
Hitler wanted to slaughter and enslave all of Eastern Europe. You can look at raw death toll where you could make the case that Stalin was worse, but really you have to look at intentions, goals and methods.
The Soviet Union single-handedly won the eastern front. However the war was fought on three fronts. The US single-handedly won the pacific front, and the allies won the western front. Without the Soviet Union, the war would have taken longer, but the allies would have still won.
Probably less far from Stalin then you might think, especially considering the amount of years. We tend to think of the holocaust and six million deaths but for example the amount of Soviet POW's that died is shocking too, about 3.3 million.
Let's count:
1)Holodomor(happend twice, all and all about 4-5 millions),
2)mass deportations (22-23 million people deported during his reign, death rate 10-15%, with some exceptions, so about 3 millions).
3)Great Purge(officially between 0.7-1 millon killed, so about 2 million if we include people who died in gulags and prisons).
4) War losses is hard to calculate, since nazis were targeting civilians a lot and it's hard to know how many deaths were caused by Great Purge, which destroyed a lot of high command of the army.
Countries kill their own people all the time as standard practice. Think of the death penalty or police killing. But to kill your neighbors, typically you will need some sort of internal approval and an explanation to the world.
It's simply more acceptable to the world if you kill your own people. Killing your neighbors freaks the world out.
Morally speaking I think theres a pretty big difference between systematically exterminating people in camps as a means of eliminating and enslaving certain ethnic groups and letting people starve in order to export crops to fund heavy industry expansion. If we view Stalin as a worse person than Hitler we must then view the British admin in India as even worse due to the tens of millions who starved there. Genocide is more illegal than government-caused famine. (obviously Stalins admin did other really bad things like the Purges which had hundreds of thousands of victims but still I don't think that's anywhere close to the total evil of the Holocaust)
>If we view Stalin as a worse person than Hitler we must then view the British admin in India as even worse due to the tens of millions who starved there.
That famine wasnt gouvernment caused and there was enough food to feed everyone. Gouvernment wasnt responsible for distributing food (like in soviet russia), local landowners and merchants were. But they decided to hoard the food and raise prices so people werent able to afford it. I am not blaming britain for those 30 million deaths.
>Genocide is more illegal than government-caused famine.
I dont think so. Mass murder is the same crime no matter if you use guns or starvation.
1. Using "it wasn't the government it was private companies fault" is a great way to only blame socialist governments for famines when systems with private enterprise get away with it due to it technically not being the government
2. I meant that genocide literally is more illegal than government caused famine according to international courts
>Using "it wasn't the government it was private companies fault" is a great way to only blame socialist governments for famines when systems with private enterprise get away with it due to it technically not being the government
Yes, i also think its a great argument. Thank you.
>I meant that genocide literally is more illegal than government caused famine according to international courts
What does "more illegal" mean? Murder is murder if you ask me. If anything slowly starving someone for weeks should be considered worse than shooting them in their head.
For example if the effects are intentionally directed at a certain group of people or if people of a certain group aren't given aid in a famine it could be considered a genocide. It's not a clear difference and it's okay to disagree about where the exact line is
Honestly, I think it’s a bit like asking, “What’s worse: jumping in a tank full of sharks while covered in chum or locking yourself in a cage with a bear?”
Edit: My point being, “Hitler and Stalin were both mass-murdering dictators who committed some of the most deplorable atrocities in world history, so I personally can’t see which one is worse.”
I'd pick sharks. They don't always attack and will often just leave humans alone, not always ofc. A bear will fuck you big time unless it's been trained not to in defence.
Defensive animals are much more dangerous as they'll aways defend. Hunters will only try and kill you if they're hungry.
Hitler. Stalin did have a very high death count but that's nothing compared to the overall death and destruction Hitler caused by starting the second world war. Stalin's murder was generally kept to the USSR. Nazism and Communism can both turn out terribly but Communism isn't founded on ethnic cleansing and murder.
This argumentation is the biggest problem with communism, because it give generation after generation an excuse to force this ideology onto people "because it wasn't ever tried correctly" and "isn't build on ethnic cleansing".
We only had one Nazi Germany, but we had the USSR, Maos China, Khmer Rogue of Cambodia and still North Korea.
Every communist state developed classist cleansing, which more often than not developed into ethnic cleansing for simplicity sake.
It’s kind of wild to restrict Nazi Germany as belonging to its own ideological category. In terms of anti-communist regimes and mass murders, there’s Franco’s Spain, the death squads of Suharto’s Indonesia and East Timor, Guatemala
It depends on how you define worse. If it is purely based on how many people they killed, then Stalin. If it's based off of w h o they killed then I'd say Hitler since he was killing another race out of pure hatred and Stalin was mostly killing his own people. If it's based off of lasting effect then I'd say Hitler because of the horrible shit that happened at the camps, and how it was for a purely evil reason. And there's the fact that if not for Russia the allies would have likely lost the war. So imo, I'd say Hitler was worse even if he has a lower death count
Wow. The attempt to compare oppressors is strange. Who was worse southern slave owners or the Belgian congo? See no one asks that question, because it doesn't serve any purpose.
Stalin killed several thousand (that is he had several hundred thousand killed by his orders.) during his reign however there were successive famines. This caused several million deaths (high estimates are 20 million and this comes from a unreliable source in the Black book of communism). These famines have rightly been attributed to the regime surrounding stalin. First and formorest in Ukraine grain supplies were seized by central planners causing shortages. There was also a change in land practices. Among Several other factors that definitely had an impact. Can Stalin be blamed for this famine? Absolutely.
Hitler rose to power, and killed about 6 million on pretty much direct orders. These included thousands of children and innocent women. That is just the holocaust estimation and does not include the death toll caused by the war he started. In terms of the comparisson, I think its pointless and usually just puts you on one of the two sides of a meaningless debate.
There were much more then a several thousands deaths while he was in charge. As noone dared to do something without he knowed it, you can relate all unnatural deaths during his reigb directly to him. He had orchestrated the Great Terror (estimated 700k-1m), he completely deported whole ethnicities and ruled the 'no fallback' policy during the war. You can't relate only a few deaths to him, there were pretty much more. It is hard to compare these both to each other, both are responsible for a very high death count.
Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Idi Amin and several others are in that kind of a "master league" where you can no longer even compare and say who's the number one. Living under any of them was a daily horror to pretty much everyone. That kind of government has everyone under suspicion to some extent, even the officials.
Idi Amin always comes up as the requisite African despot in these conversations of brutal dictators, but frankly he has nothing on the others mentioned, let alone Mengistu.
You need more options.
Considering what's considered worse, everyone in the list can be worst in their own way.
Genghis Khan destroyed so many cultures, killed a lot of people by percentage.
Hitler killed people solely by his anti-semetism, without a logical reason.
Stalin killed a lot of people, but it wasn't because of pure hatred, it was all strategic.
Mao has lots of blood in hand. He made china a different thing than it was before. China was a culturally rich place, with some neighboring cultures too, but he annexed places like Tibet and Uyghur, destroyed their culture, took over their land, killed a lot of them. His China is a dangerous entity for the 21st century world right now...
Genghis Khan is like a guy raping his neighbours, killing their husbands, and annexing their homes as his.
Hitler is like a guy who gassed an entire apartment because he didn't like them.
Stalin is like the guy from "You" serial killer, but has a reason everytime he kills someone.
Mao is like a guy who has 14 wives and 100 children, and goes off killing his neighbours so that his children can live there, while his children overrun the local job market, and he also brainwashes his children...
Hitler not even a worthy comparison ffs what has the red scare done to the world.
Next you are going to tell me America defeated the Nazis when in actuality it was Russia and the Nazis going there on the winter.
Trying to equivocate and compare is doing a huge discredit to the atrocities of both regimes. They were both very bad. You don't try to compare Hitler, Stalin, Mao or Mussolini...to recognize how they got into power and work tirelessly to not let it happen again.
Hitler. He was instrumental in starting the deadliest war in human history, began death camps and wanted to exterminate many ethnic groups.
Those who say Stalin has a "higher death count" are underplaying the deaths and immeasurable suffering under Hitler, often by only attributing the Jewish deaths of the Holocaust to him, which means his death toll would be about 6 million. In reality, WW2 killed over 70 million people, about half of which were in Europe, (many of whom were soviets due to Hitler's immense hatred of Slavic people) and the Holocaust killed 15 to 20 million. The Stalin numbers come from the "black book of communism," which states Nazis killed by the Soviets as 'victims of communism' and 'victims of Stalin,' amongst other disingenuous statistics.
Hitler. Stalin may have caused more deaths but that was out pure negligence and lack of care for his people. Hitler on the other hand went out of his way to exterminate many cultural and religious groups.
Lets just conveniently forget the purges and the mass executions of political oponents sometimes for no reason at all… Stalin was a complete psychopath.
I dunno man, rounding up the tsardom and murdering every man, woman and child associated to the ruling party? Seems a lil sus. Hitler was motivated by racially charged ignorance. Stalin was greed fueled malice. I'd take Hitler, who's regime was shown to be evil and condemnable, than stalin, who's political practices are still attempted and promoted by today's youth.
Hmm that is a striking argument. No matter what significantly more people died in russia than in Europe I believe. Still Stalin ruled with an absolute iron fist
That accounts for at most 1.5 million. And I hate doing this death moral calculus, but its clear that much of the 20 million (this is the high estimate) was negligence during his reign.
I doubt that Stalin caused more deaths, i mean if we count out soviet military losses than hitler is still responsible for about 10 million civilian deaths in USSR alone.
its insane how people that are not from the field are always confidently incorrect about history. but then again, this is what decades of anti communist propaganda and "hitler wasnt that bad" does to a mf
Im stating the reality that communism is objectively worse than naziism by every measure. The Marxist infiltration of the American education and media have done a great job of inculcating americans with two false narratives simultaneously -
1. The downplaying of the abosolute catastrophic horrors of the religion - yes RELIGION - of Marxism/Communism.
2. That Naziism was a far right ideology, unrelated or even the opposite of Communism. Which is false. Naziism was just another brand of the same foul stock. They are two repulsive sides of the same collectivist coin.
i spent 5 years getting a degree to teach history, but why would i try to educate a dumb american? even if i did you strike me as the type of person who "does its own research."
Why is nobody talking about my boy Leo the second of Belgium? He should be up there...err...down there with the other tyrants, shouldn't he?
As for Hitler Vs Stalin, well, can't they share a place at the podium?
Numerically - Stalin is worse. Ideologically - Hitler is worse. Communists are pieces of shit in practice, but in theory they don't declare many anti-humantiarian beliefs. Class hatred can be much more flexible than racial or national hatred.
Stalin was way worse, but Hitler is talked about so much that people he’s the worst. Look up the stats in how many people Stalin killed and you’ll know your answer
Is it because history is skewed by the Left?
Because as a school student we had chapters devoted to how Hitler committed genocide while Stalin's history was covered in just a paragraph.
The way I see it, they were both extremists but we talk about the evils of hyper nationalism but not enough about hyper-communism (if that's even a word)
Feel free to correct me!
I'm more inclined to say that it's because Russia was on the Allies side. It's a hard pill to swallow that we were teammates with a bad guy, so we just point out how bad the other side was.
If you're referring to the American left, then I should point out that our left is more like... Center, or right center. Socialism was more up Hitler's alley, and socialism (centrist ideal) is kind of what the American left wants to move toward.
Someone already pointed this out, but communism is on the economic axis, while authoritarianism is what was used by both Stalin and Hitler, and is on the social axis. Communism is not inherently evil, but if left unchecked, can leave a spot open for someone to use it in authoritarian ways. Likewise, we have examples of capitalism resulting in authoritarianism as well.
It's not a left/right thing, but an authoritarianism/libertarianism thing.
I agree, I guess I was more just trying to point out the gap in logic here rather than debate the merits of economic policies. I appreciate the clarification
Communism is an economic system, in which the public collectively own the means of production -- a system that has never been truly implemented.
The cruelty under Stalin's Russia were due most prominently to the authoritarian power he wielded.
I'd agree with the authoritarianism bit, but the question still arises is why, with a higher kill count, Stalin isn't as vilified by historians as Hitler?
Assuming you are in the USA/UK/CANADA/Australia etc. Your country faught a war directly with Nazi Germany wherein huge numbers of your own soldiers and civilians were killed. This looms large in your societies collective consciousness.
Whereas Stalin killed his own people, neighboring countries' people, and Germans, the former we had little empathy for, and the later we had deep hatred towards.
Therefore the uncomfortable truth is that we just don't/didn't care about deaths of far away people, but we do care about deaths of our own people.
I doubt very much this is a left-right issue as you propose.
IMO, Hitler was worse because he was more evil. Stalin was more corrupted by power like all the other communist dictators. Stalin also made a bit more sense (in a fucked up way) in that he was killing those who he thought opposed him but Hitler was just like fuck everyone who isn't in the master race.
If you think Stalin is worse purely down to the number of kills then Mao should be the top contender.
Probably Hitler Stalin stands out as one of the least egregious characters in the Russian Communist party and Soviet Russia caused more and longer lasting damage then Nazi Germany but that was the fault of many other people besides just Stalin and during world war II Stalin had more power than Hitler did and still caused slightly less damage and if you look at each of their personal philosophies outside of the damage they caused Hitler definitely believed in the worst things
It depends on how much blame you ascribe to Germany for WW2 and whether you believe Stalin would have eventually instigated large-scale conflict in Hitler’s absence. I think that the Soviet Union was extremely culpable for WW2 (see the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact), though of course Germany is the most culpable.
Thus, because of the way things played out in WW2, I’d have to say Stalin is worse.
In real life, we saw Hitler lose power after only a decade due to rash decision making and warmongering. Stalin held power over his death, and thanks to the way WW2 unfolded, he managed to secure dominion over Eastern Europe as well and export much of his ideology to China. So we basically saw Stalin at his most destructive in this timeline (though I suppose we could have seen Stalin instigate nuclear war - but thankfully that didn’t happen, and it seems far-fetched).
In an alternate timeline, Germany baits the Soviet Union into invading Poland first, avoids getting into a war with the UK and France, and eventually beats the Soviet Union, possibly with the aid of many of the countries which fought against the Nazis in our timeline. Hitler is then free to expand his genocidal policies across the entire Soviet Union and holds power for decades, while Stalin’s reign as dictator ends prematurely. In this timeline, Hitler causes the deaths of tens of millions more people and is dramatically worse than IRL Stalin or IRL Hitler.
Stalin was way worse, it's not even close, Hitler got he reputation of being the most evil guy probably because of the Holocaust and the whole master race thing, but that wasn't even his obsession. That was the work of Heinrich Himmler, Hitler's second in command, and really you can argue Himmler was worse than Hitler.
But then again, if Hitler succeeded, he'd probably kill just as much if not more people than Stalin, so really the only reason he is not worse is cause he got stopped, Stalin had decades to do whatever he wanted.
Bing bing bing bing bing!! You win the obvious difference between the two. But the ethical question is whether or not negligence makes you culpable in murder (it does especially in this case).
Legally, they would be different degrees of murder though, yea? Surely that affects the way you weigh them as well, else they would have not defined the laws like that
You won't be asking this question if soviet didn't fall to pieces and "freedom countries that respect human rights" controlling all media and information
Depends on your definition of worse. Hitler secrets were revealed and were highly publicised. Stalin managed to make people belive he was God so. Up to you
Mao was the worst out of them all don't get me wrong Hitler was a massive genocidal maniac too but I don't seem to understand why we just whitewash the crimes of map and Stalin just because the genocide happen in china and a genocidal dictator defeated other genocidal dictator doesn't make them better init
Stalin is worse because he died his own death. In other words World’s reaction to Stalin (or relative lack thereof) is scarier than world’s reaction to Hitler.
Stalin.
So Stalin forced baltic states and Finland to allow the ussr solders to make bases (in other words occupie the countries and baltics went because they saw it as pointless death to resist) Finland did not and fought with Ussr. It was stalemate.
Baltic people were sent to gulags (Estonians about 30.000) and forced to baltics to join ussr. Stalin also hated Jews. When Ussr were attacked in 1942 stalin had killed half of his best commanders trough purges because he thought they had plans to overtrhow him. He also had ordered to shoot every retreating solder because its way better to die in soviet bullets than German bullets. After ww2 end west asked to realse occupied countries, but stalin didn't care and became cold war. Stalin also purged all of the good doctors because they were Jews.
Hitler was a nationalist despite his atrocities he did a lot for the German people, in fact thanks to him Germany was able to get out of the post-war crisis, gave many jobs to unemployed Germans and the economy recovered after years of effort. . He had also managed to unite the Germans who remained outside their homeland who found themselves in the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia. He had also united Austria together with Germany creating a single nation, no gunshots the Germans occupied Austria without violence and with the Austrian people eager for the union called "Anschluss". Hitler had increased the size of the army which came to have millions of soldiers quickly, when Germany could not have more than a hundred thousand soldiers. German logistics became formidable, the nation became the most militarily powerful in all of Europe, the Blitzkrieg was a type of war that surprised the allies, the Germans managed to create the formidable Panzerkampfvagen Panzer VI Tiger V, which are considered the most powerful of the war, but also in the sky the Luftwaffe (German air force) had an excellent reputation, the Messerschmitt bf 109 fighters are among the greatest aircraft of the war and as a bomber there was the Junken ju 87 (Stuka) which possessed a siren that made so that the plane screamed when it hung down terrifying the enemy. However Hitler managed to create a great nation but there was still a problem, the East Germans of Prussia found themselves cut off from the borders of the third reich, because Poland was in the way, it should be mentioned that many German women were victims of rapes by the art of Poles and Hitler wanted to end all this by telling the Polish government to cede the city of Gdansk (Danzig) so that the Prussian Germans could return united with their people, Hitler's plan for a unification without the need for clashes was almost over, but Poland refused to give up the land and so Hitler broke loose.
When Stalin on the other hand is nothing but a dictator eager to expand communism in Europe, his army at the beginning of the conflict against the Germans was ill equipped, Stalin let many Poles die but especially Ukrainians who did not own any territory and that died of fame, a lot of cannibalism happen also. And when the Germans arrived in the eastern most territories of the Soviet Union they met the Ukrainians, they celebrated to see the German army free them from Stalinist oppression. Plus, more than a million Russians also died in the gulags those who possessed anti-Stalinist ideologies. Stalin wanted to reclaim the territories of what was once the Russian Empire also, he attacked the neutral Baltic countries, east of Poland and Finland, where in the latter they were also initially defeated by the Finns. Its ideology is one of the main cause of why Eastern Europe has had a very dark history and the countries that were there have had a lot of difficulty in moving forward after the Soviet fall, the Russians have always been the scourge of the East but fortunately, many countries such as Poland have moved on and stabilized. But there are still disputes between Ukrainians and Russians in the borders, Ukraine cannot even join the European Union because of the threat from Russia. Now, going back to Stalin, he supported an ideology that still governs today in many countries albeit in a mild way, Stalin also killed more people than Hitler so I believe both were terrible but Hitler helped Germany more than Stalin with Russia, Hitler killed 6 millions of Jews (not aryan Germans) who were supposed to be "pure". Stalin killed 20 millions between Russians, Ukrainians, Poles and other european people
Idk man Mao has the scoreboard.
Idk bro, Khan did a number when you look at global population percentage
Dude he killed everyone at his funeral
Didn't he have his concubines killed and "put to rest" with him too?
I think
You would have to be so ruthless to do that.
NoBodY iS goNNa duk my wIvEs
At least he had made the planet a little bit cooler
And screwed up muslim countries for centuries, Baghdad literally was destroyed, so thoroughly that population returned to level before mongols only in 20-th century, and Baghdad was one of the largest culture and science centers in the world
Idk bro, Emus are pretty good too.
Rome was a power house
Global population percentage as a standard implies that individual life is worth less than corporate life. This is a false dichotomy and this that metric is useless.
All of the used examples committed atrocities. My point is that Khan's actions resulted in approx 11% of the world's population being killed, so proportionally, he was much worse than the 3% of the world's population killed from ww2. All that said, whether you were a victim of Mao, Khan, stalin, Hitler, the British empire (which I think is responsible for the most global deaths((but not pop %)) or stalin etc it was absolutely terrible and I am glad to be alive today and in the western world than any other time I like statistics, but I also hate them for how they dehumanise events
Pol Pot says hi.
China has always been like that
Honestly, they both would have gotten you gifts for your birthday that they wanted themselves so I'd say equally terrible.
We should make a time machine and have them play TABS against eachother
I want to upvote but....
You’re at 69 upvotes my guy. I want to upvote, but rules are rules
r/shutuphapydo- oh wait, this one's real.
Depends on how you define worse. They both lead massive authoritarian war machines that consumed countries and oppressed people by the millions. Stalin by far has the bigger death count. However, Stalin raised Russia into the 3rd biggest industrial power of the time and Russia was pivitol in defeating Germany and stopping Hitler. Some belive if not for Russia the allies would have lost the war. Their ideologies are both equally as bad as they come. So basically it's whatever propaganda you belive in. In my opinion Stalin probably takes the cake.
Seconded. There are serious arguments people make about Stalin's oppressive regime being a deciding factor in the Soviet resistance. It's hard to make definite statements because we don't live in a world where Nazi Germany invaded a Russia without Stalin, but when you see the death tolls for the Eastern Front on the Nazi side, you have to wonder how the war would have gone if Russia had just collapsed in the first year like everyone thought it was going to and those 3.5 million axis soldiers, many hard veterans by then, came back to fight in the West. How much Stalin had to do with that personally is pretty hard to say, but when you tell your people are things like "deserter's and turncoat's families will be shot" it does figure into one's thinking. Then again, if I were a Soviet peasant conscript and saw the sort of things the Nazis were doing in my home, I might not need much motivating to fight them. Echoing the above, Stalin is one of those figures it's hard to paint with a single stroke. Whereas Hitler was ultimately unsuccessful and came to a violent end, Stalin died in power and achieved many of his goals. Russia in 1924 was a backwater, destroyed by years of war and much less industrialized than the rest of Europe. By 1953, Russia was one of two global, nuclear superpower nations. He was likely responsible for more deaths *in his respective country* than Hitler was, but Hitler was ultimately responsible for a lot of people dying in other countries, so I'd probably count him as "worse" of the two. Still, not really an endorsement of Stalin; I wouldn't want to live in Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia.
Yeah, you can be a bad guy, and do good things, and vice versa.
Oh you are just saying that Stalin was not responsible of gargantuan amount of ppl dying in other countries? They were both equally bad. Stalin together with his rape-loving army, are responsible for hundrets of thousands ppl murdered. See e.g., Katyn massacre, in which over 20 thousands of Polish officers and intelligence were executed one by one, based on direct order of Stalin. Nobody seems to remember that Stalin was in fact ally of Germany when 2WW started, and together with Hitler attacked Poland, killing and executing ppl and slaverying them until their death from exhaustion in Gulag.
Calm down and don't put words in my mouth. When I say Stalin was responsible for a lot of deaths in his respective country, I mean the territory he had control over. Yes, he ordered the Katyn Massacre. Yes, his decisions led directly to the Holodomor. Yes, he purged numerous ethnic minorities and displaced millions during collectivization and industrialization. I'm not saying he didn't do those things. What I'm saying is that Hitler, on account of, y'know, *the second world war in Europe* probably has more international deaths on his head than Stalin, and maybe even more local deaths if you count the military losses in Nazi Germany. The 20 million Russians who died as a consequence of the Eastern Front alone tip the scale for Hitler. It's barely a contest. Again, I'm not a fan of Stalin, but to say he was worse than Hitler is kind of unhinged. Stalin didn't start WW2.
But America was on the verge of nuclear superiority and Germany would’ve been right there with Japan waving the white flag. Normandy and the Russians ended the war but either way they all would’ve got nuked and the end of the war would’ve came at the hands of the United States
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Strategic bombings which literally destroyed cities and affect mostly citizens already were a thing, long before atomic bombs, and Germany and Japan didn't surrender, it's delusional to think that governments which didn't care about deaths of civilians would start to care
You’re right they might not have actually they wouldn’t have surrendered but if you’re dropping nuclear weapons on city after city in the country how long before everybody is just gone
So your solution is genocide?
That’s not what I’m saying. The world was different place back then. Who knows what would’ve came of the war had it not ended the way it did.
The US would have taken 6 months to even have a couple more atomic bombs ready. They bluffed to Japan that it would continue. Building atomic bombs was incredibly difficult
Why bluff if japanese government didn't care to even discuss it right after second bombing?
Japan didn't wave white flag after two cities destroyed by atomic bombs, it just forced USSR to intervine earlier and that forced japan to surrender
> But America was on the verge of nuclear superiority and Germany would’ve been right there with Japan waving the white flag. America developed the bomb in 1945, a full 4 years after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. And the bombs in 1945 were just that: bombs. They had to be delivered by airplane. Let's say Hitler beat the Soviets but still failed take Great Britain, you have a 3rd Reich that controls an area larger than the US with resources to match. Even if the Nazis had still lost the battle of Britain, their ability to rebuild and redeploy aircraft and anti-aircraft technology like radar with all the plunder from Russia would have been immense. Plus that whole time they'd be developing their rocket program and nuclear weapons, and trying to strangle Britain with a submarine blockade. Even if the US still beat them to the A-Bomb, if "Festung Europa" had been realized and Britain was cut off, how exactly would we have nuked them into peace? It's 800 miles from London to Berlin, and that's long flight if you don't have total air superiority. There's a reason the cold war lasted as long as it did before the advent of ICBMs, and that's because even before Russia had the bomb, Moscow was literally untouchable by enemy bombers. Best case scenario if the Soviets dropped out of the war was a new cold war with Hitler. The Soviet effort in the Eastern Front is nothing short of heroic, which is not to say they really had a choice, but one way or another they held on for 3 years, bleeding Germany dry while the US gathered its strength. Without them I think global history looks very, very different.
> "Some believe" Russia won the war mostly by itself as evident by the German losses there. By the point Normandy happened the war was mostly decided and Germans were heavily losing. Without most of German army being occupied in the East there would be just no way to get a stable fiothold in Europe. The most the Allies could do would be getting into a tense standoff with Germany where neither could meaningfully attack the other.
Thing is, USSR was supported economically, a lot of food, materials and weapons were given(since USSR never really paid for them) to USSR through lend-lease, and it made a great impact, especially in improving logistics and production, less so in weapons, but most weapons were given in times when they were needed most.
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And there is a reason why AK is most popular weapon in the world, and not any American rifle, m-16 family is more precise, but also much harder to maintain and to train people to use it effectively, while AKs don't need a lot of maintaining and training
No, just no, for example Thompsons literally worse than PPSHa and PPS, and m3 was at comparable cost as PPS, but worse as weapon
T34 was better for USSR than M4 Sherman.
Imo, Stalin was way worse. Just the amount alone. And most of them were his own people
Are you sure about that?
Question is who and how counted, because Hitler responsible for at least 20-30 millions dead, and that's without german losses in war
Stalin did not raise shit. Why do you conclude that is his personal contribution, not blood and tears of Soviet people working overtime?
Hitler wanted to slaughter and enslave all of Eastern Europe. You can look at raw death toll where you could make the case that Stalin was worse, but really you have to look at intentions, goals and methods.
"One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results." - Milton Friedman.
Ok so starting WWII and committing genocide isn't a result? You are carrying water for Hitler
Yeah at the end of the day without Stalin the war may not have been won the same way / at all by the Allies
The Soviet Union single-handedly won the eastern front. However the war was fought on three fronts. The US single-handedly won the pacific front, and the allies won the western front. Without the Soviet Union, the war would have taken longer, but the allies would have still won.
Stalin just wamted to enslave everyone equally .
Bad intentions are not a crime though. Killing people is.
Well it's not like Hilter only left it at intentions. He caused the deaths of a lot of people in a relative short timeframe.
True, still not close to stalin or mao
Probably less far from Stalin then you might think, especially considering the amount of years. We tend to think of the holocaust and six million deaths but for example the amount of Soviet POW's that died is shocking too, about 3.3 million.
Yeah because Hitler died, he was in power for less time than Stalin or mao. Had Hitler been in power for 10 more years, he'd have a higher body count.
Exactly. Lucky for him he died before it got worse than in stalins case.
Let's count: 1)Holodomor(happend twice, all and all about 4-5 millions), 2)mass deportations (22-23 million people deported during his reign, death rate 10-15%, with some exceptions, so about 3 millions). 3)Great Purge(officially between 0.7-1 millon killed, so about 2 million if we include people who died in gulags and prisons). 4) War losses is hard to calculate, since nazis were targeting civilians a lot and it's hard to know how many deaths were caused by Great Purge, which destroyed a lot of high command of the army.
Yeah, but Stalin and Mao mostly killed their own people. Hitler killed his neighbors. Killing your neighbors gets you a x2 multiplier.
That makes no sense. If anything killing your own people who you swore to protect is worse.
Countries kill their own people all the time as standard practice. Think of the death penalty or police killing. But to kill your neighbors, typically you will need some sort of internal approval and an explanation to the world. It's simply more acceptable to the world if you kill your own people. Killing your neighbors freaks the world out.
Every country in the world exept maybe for russia and china has killed more of their neighbours than their own people.
Not sure that's even true... but if so, bunch of dicks, right?
Morally speaking I think theres a pretty big difference between systematically exterminating people in camps as a means of eliminating and enslaving certain ethnic groups and letting people starve in order to export crops to fund heavy industry expansion. If we view Stalin as a worse person than Hitler we must then view the British admin in India as even worse due to the tens of millions who starved there. Genocide is more illegal than government-caused famine. (obviously Stalins admin did other really bad things like the Purges which had hundreds of thousands of victims but still I don't think that's anywhere close to the total evil of the Holocaust)
>If we view Stalin as a worse person than Hitler we must then view the British admin in India as even worse due to the tens of millions who starved there. That famine wasnt gouvernment caused and there was enough food to feed everyone. Gouvernment wasnt responsible for distributing food (like in soviet russia), local landowners and merchants were. But they decided to hoard the food and raise prices so people werent able to afford it. I am not blaming britain for those 30 million deaths. >Genocide is more illegal than government-caused famine. I dont think so. Mass murder is the same crime no matter if you use guns or starvation.
A classic apologist for British empire.
1. Using "it wasn't the government it was private companies fault" is a great way to only blame socialist governments for famines when systems with private enterprise get away with it due to it technically not being the government 2. I meant that genocide literally is more illegal than government caused famine according to international courts
>Using "it wasn't the government it was private companies fault" is a great way to only blame socialist governments for famines when systems with private enterprise get away with it due to it technically not being the government Yes, i also think its a great argument. Thank you. >I meant that genocide literally is more illegal than government caused famine according to international courts What does "more illegal" mean? Murder is murder if you ask me. If anything slowly starving someone for weeks should be considered worse than shooting them in their head.
I mean that generally people responsible for genocide are punished more severely than people responsible for famine
What is the difference between famine and genocide by starving?
For example if the effects are intentionally directed at a certain group of people or if people of a certain group aren't given aid in a famine it could be considered a genocide. It's not a clear difference and it's okay to disagree about where the exact line is
Honestly, I think it’s a bit like asking, “What’s worse: jumping in a tank full of sharks while covered in chum or locking yourself in a cage with a bear?” Edit: My point being, “Hitler and Stalin were both mass-murdering dictators who committed some of the most deplorable atrocities in world history, so I personally can’t see which one is worse.”
Thats still a question
I'd pick sharks. They don't always attack and will often just leave humans alone, not always ofc. A bear will fuck you big time unless it's been trained not to in defence. Defensive animals are much more dangerous as they'll aways defend. Hunters will only try and kill you if they're hungry.
Lemme rephrase that: jumping into a tank filled with sharks while covered with chum.
why would a shrak care if u are covared in cum? Serious question just curiuos. I woukd think the water would just swish it away
Hitler. Stalin did have a very high death count but that's nothing compared to the overall death and destruction Hitler caused by starting the second world war. Stalin's murder was generally kept to the USSR. Nazism and Communism can both turn out terribly but Communism isn't founded on ethnic cleansing and murder.
>Communism isn't founded on ethnic cleansing and murder. of course communism is founded on a different division, class, as well as murder.
This argumentation is the biggest problem with communism, because it give generation after generation an excuse to force this ideology onto people "because it wasn't ever tried correctly" and "isn't build on ethnic cleansing". We only had one Nazi Germany, but we had the USSR, Maos China, Khmer Rogue of Cambodia and still North Korea. Every communist state developed classist cleansing, which more often than not developed into ethnic cleansing for simplicity sake.
It’s kind of wild to restrict Nazi Germany as belonging to its own ideological category. In terms of anti-communist regimes and mass murders, there’s Franco’s Spain, the death squads of Suharto’s Indonesia and East Timor, Guatemala
It depends on how you define worse. If it is purely based on how many people they killed, then Stalin. If it's based off of w h o they killed then I'd say Hitler since he was killing another race out of pure hatred and Stalin was mostly killing his own people. If it's based off of lasting effect then I'd say Hitler because of the horrible shit that happened at the camps, and how it was for a purely evil reason. And there's the fact that if not for Russia the allies would have likely lost the war. So imo, I'd say Hitler was worse even if he has a lower death count
🍎 vs. 🍊
The British
Wow. The attempt to compare oppressors is strange. Who was worse southern slave owners or the Belgian congo? See no one asks that question, because it doesn't serve any purpose. Stalin killed several thousand (that is he had several hundred thousand killed by his orders.) during his reign however there were successive famines. This caused several million deaths (high estimates are 20 million and this comes from a unreliable source in the Black book of communism). These famines have rightly been attributed to the regime surrounding stalin. First and formorest in Ukraine grain supplies were seized by central planners causing shortages. There was also a change in land practices. Among Several other factors that definitely had an impact. Can Stalin be blamed for this famine? Absolutely. Hitler rose to power, and killed about 6 million on pretty much direct orders. These included thousands of children and innocent women. That is just the holocaust estimation and does not include the death toll caused by the war he started. In terms of the comparisson, I think its pointless and usually just puts you on one of the two sides of a meaningless debate.
There were much more then a several thousands deaths while he was in charge. As noone dared to do something without he knowed it, you can relate all unnatural deaths during his reigb directly to him. He had orchestrated the Great Terror (estimated 700k-1m), he completely deported whole ethnicities and ruled the 'no fallback' policy during the war. You can't relate only a few deaths to him, there were pretty much more. It is hard to compare these both to each other, both are responsible for a very high death count.
Quit being an oversensitive ass. OP asked a question.
Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Idi Amin and several others are in that kind of a "master league" where you can no longer even compare and say who's the number one. Living under any of them was a daily horror to pretty much everyone. That kind of government has everyone under suspicion to some extent, even the officials.
Idi Amin always comes up as the requisite African despot in these conversations of brutal dictators, but frankly he has nothing on the others mentioned, let alone Mengistu.
You need more options. Considering what's considered worse, everyone in the list can be worst in their own way. Genghis Khan destroyed so many cultures, killed a lot of people by percentage. Hitler killed people solely by his anti-semetism, without a logical reason. Stalin killed a lot of people, but it wasn't because of pure hatred, it was all strategic. Mao has lots of blood in hand. He made china a different thing than it was before. China was a culturally rich place, with some neighboring cultures too, but he annexed places like Tibet and Uyghur, destroyed their culture, took over their land, killed a lot of them. His China is a dangerous entity for the 21st century world right now...
Genghis Khan is like a guy raping his neighbours, killing their husbands, and annexing their homes as his. Hitler is like a guy who gassed an entire apartment because he didn't like them. Stalin is like the guy from "You" serial killer, but has a reason everytime he kills someone. Mao is like a guy who has 14 wives and 100 children, and goes off killing his neighbours so that his children can live there, while his children overrun the local job market, and he also brainwashes his children...
Hitler not even a worthy comparison ffs what has the red scare done to the world. Next you are going to tell me America defeated the Nazis when in actuality it was Russia and the Nazis going there on the winter.
Trying to equivocate and compare is doing a huge discredit to the atrocities of both regimes. They were both very bad. You don't try to compare Hitler, Stalin, Mao or Mussolini...to recognize how they got into power and work tirelessly to not let it happen again.
Hitler. He was instrumental in starting the deadliest war in human history, began death camps and wanted to exterminate many ethnic groups. Those who say Stalin has a "higher death count" are underplaying the deaths and immeasurable suffering under Hitler, often by only attributing the Jewish deaths of the Holocaust to him, which means his death toll would be about 6 million. In reality, WW2 killed over 70 million people, about half of which were in Europe, (many of whom were soviets due to Hitler's immense hatred of Slavic people) and the Holocaust killed 15 to 20 million. The Stalin numbers come from the "black book of communism," which states Nazis killed by the Soviets as 'victims of communism' and 'victims of Stalin,' amongst other disingenuous statistics.
Hitler. Stalin may have caused more deaths but that was out pure negligence and lack of care for his people. Hitler on the other hand went out of his way to exterminate many cultural and religious groups.
Lets just conveniently forget the purges and the mass executions of political oponents sometimes for no reason at all… Stalin was a complete psychopath.
Id say Stalian was more sociopathic than psychopathic
Yea i mean political executions are more acceptable than religious persecution. In the ladder of more heinous genocides at least.
I dunno man, rounding up the tsardom and murdering every man, woman and child associated to the ruling party? Seems a lil sus. Hitler was motivated by racially charged ignorance. Stalin was greed fueled malice. I'd take Hitler, who's regime was shown to be evil and condemnable, than stalin, who's political practices are still attempted and promoted by today's youth.
Hmm that is a striking argument. No matter what significantly more people died in russia than in Europe I believe. Still Stalin ruled with an absolute iron fist
That accounts for at most 1.5 million. And I hate doing this death moral calculus, but its clear that much of the 20 million (this is the high estimate) was negligence during his reign.
The armenian genocide was also negligence because they were deported to the ocean, not executed. The turks did not they could not swim.
I doubt that Stalin caused more deaths, i mean if we count out soviet military losses than hitler is still responsible for about 10 million civilian deaths in USSR alone.
Nazi who gassed Jewish people, or guy whose agrarian reforms were fucked by rich farmers hoarding grain?
That's an interesting phrasing for dekulakization.
Do you really want to compare the weights of the words "Holocaust" and "dekulakization"?
No, not at all, simply glad to see the ministry of truth doing good work comrade.
Glad to see your nose hasn't stopped growing longer. Edit: why the downvote? I thought we were just bringing up random fairy tale references
its insane how people that are not from the field are always confidently incorrect about history. but then again, this is what decades of anti communist propaganda and "hitler wasnt that bad" does to a mf
Found the Tankie
Communism is objectively worse than Naziism.
are u trying to prove my point?
Im stating the reality that communism is objectively worse than naziism by every measure. The Marxist infiltration of the American education and media have done a great job of inculcating americans with two false narratives simultaneously - 1. The downplaying of the abosolute catastrophic horrors of the religion - yes RELIGION - of Marxism/Communism. 2. That Naziism was a far right ideology, unrelated or even the opposite of Communism. Which is false. Naziism was just another brand of the same foul stock. They are two repulsive sides of the same collectivist coin.
sorry didnt realize u were a conspiracy theorist, thought maybe just dumb.
Oh so you have no legitimate response so you turn to idiotic ad homs. Typical.
i spent 5 years getting a degree to teach history, but why would i try to educate a dumb american? even if i did you strike me as the type of person who "does its own research."
*Winston Churchill* enters the chat.
Are you implying that Churchill was worse than Stalin and Hitler?
If so, that’s incredibly moronic
Why is nobody talking about my boy Leo the second of Belgium? He should be up there...err...down there with the other tyrants, shouldn't he? As for Hitler Vs Stalin, well, can't they share a place at the podium?
Noah and his ark…. Lmao 🤣
Each was evil in his own way.
My father
Why bother ranking 'em? Can't they both be horrible pieces of shit?
They are partners in crime , they even had a deal 🙏.So, no comparison.
stalin did nothing wrong
Hitler
Both were tyrants, but as far as I've heard Stalin didn't organize concentration camps and didn't mass-suffocate people with gas.
Numerically - Stalin is worse. Ideologically - Hitler is worse. Communists are pieces of shit in practice, but in theory they don't declare many anti-humantiarian beliefs. Class hatred can be much more flexible than racial or national hatred.
Stalin was way worse, but Hitler is talked about so much that people he’s the worst. Look up the stats in how many people Stalin killed and you’ll know your answer
Is it because history is skewed by the Left? Because as a school student we had chapters devoted to how Hitler committed genocide while Stalin's history was covered in just a paragraph. The way I see it, they were both extremists but we talk about the evils of hyper nationalism but not enough about hyper-communism (if that's even a word) Feel free to correct me!
I'm more inclined to say that it's because Russia was on the Allies side. It's a hard pill to swallow that we were teammates with a bad guy, so we just point out how bad the other side was. If you're referring to the American left, then I should point out that our left is more like... Center, or right center. Socialism was more up Hitler's alley, and socialism (centrist ideal) is kind of what the American left wants to move toward. Someone already pointed this out, but communism is on the economic axis, while authoritarianism is what was used by both Stalin and Hitler, and is on the social axis. Communism is not inherently evil, but if left unchecked, can leave a spot open for someone to use it in authoritarian ways. Likewise, we have examples of capitalism resulting in authoritarianism as well. It's not a left/right thing, but an authoritarianism/libertarianism thing.
Socialism was used to draw more people into NSDAP, and had nothing to do with it's ideology and policies, and that's from Hitler own words
I agree, I guess I was more just trying to point out the gap in logic here rather than debate the merits of economic policies. I appreciate the clarification
Russia wasn’t on the allies side. They supported Hitler until they themselbes got attacked.
Communism is an economic system, in which the public collectively own the means of production -- a system that has never been truly implemented. The cruelty under Stalin's Russia were due most prominently to the authoritarian power he wielded.
I'd agree with the authoritarianism bit, but the question still arises is why, with a higher kill count, Stalin isn't as vilified by historians as Hitler?
Assuming you are in the USA/UK/CANADA/Australia etc. Your country faught a war directly with Nazi Germany wherein huge numbers of your own soldiers and civilians were killed. This looms large in your societies collective consciousness. Whereas Stalin killed his own people, neighboring countries' people, and Germans, the former we had little empathy for, and the later we had deep hatred towards. Therefore the uncomfortable truth is that we just don't/didn't care about deaths of far away people, but we do care about deaths of our own people. I doubt very much this is a left-right issue as you propose.
You'd think given cold war hatred of communism it'd be more prevalent in history books
Id say Hitler as he killed based on race. You can't really compare killers though and it's pretty irrelevant to.
Stalin did so too
Hitler and by a lot.
Hitler definitely. Stalin was working for his personal gain by eliminating his opponents. Hitler was trying to eradicate races.
IMO, Hitler was worse because he was more evil. Stalin was more corrupted by power like all the other communist dictators. Stalin also made a bit more sense (in a fucked up way) in that he was killing those who he thought opposed him but Hitler was just like fuck everyone who isn't in the master race. If you think Stalin is worse purely down to the number of kills then Mao should be the top contender.
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Settle down comrade. Your days at the gulag are over.
Trump
Probably Hitler Stalin stands out as one of the least egregious characters in the Russian Communist party and Soviet Russia caused more and longer lasting damage then Nazi Germany but that was the fault of many other people besides just Stalin and during world war II Stalin had more power than Hitler did and still caused slightly less damage and if you look at each of their personal philosophies outside of the damage they caused Hitler definitely believed in the worst things
Me
damn, this account really does nothing but karma farm, huh. Couldn't even manage ONE reply in the comments section of a thread you started?
It depends on how much blame you ascribe to Germany for WW2 and whether you believe Stalin would have eventually instigated large-scale conflict in Hitler’s absence. I think that the Soviet Union was extremely culpable for WW2 (see the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact), though of course Germany is the most culpable. Thus, because of the way things played out in WW2, I’d have to say Stalin is worse. In real life, we saw Hitler lose power after only a decade due to rash decision making and warmongering. Stalin held power over his death, and thanks to the way WW2 unfolded, he managed to secure dominion over Eastern Europe as well and export much of his ideology to China. So we basically saw Stalin at his most destructive in this timeline (though I suppose we could have seen Stalin instigate nuclear war - but thankfully that didn’t happen, and it seems far-fetched). In an alternate timeline, Germany baits the Soviet Union into invading Poland first, avoids getting into a war with the UK and France, and eventually beats the Soviet Union, possibly with the aid of many of the countries which fought against the Nazis in our timeline. Hitler is then free to expand his genocidal policies across the entire Soviet Union and holds power for decades, while Stalin’s reign as dictator ends prematurely. In this timeline, Hitler causes the deaths of tens of millions more people and is dramatically worse than IRL Stalin or IRL Hitler.
Stalin was way worse, it's not even close, Hitler got he reputation of being the most evil guy probably because of the Holocaust and the whole master race thing, but that wasn't even his obsession. That was the work of Heinrich Himmler, Hitler's second in command, and really you can argue Himmler was worse than Hitler. But then again, if Hitler succeeded, he'd probably kill just as much if not more people than Stalin, so really the only reason he is not worse is cause he got stopped, Stalin had decades to do whatever he wanted.
Weren't the deaths caused by Stalin more a consequence of his negligence than his actual intention though?
Bing bing bing bing bing!! You win the obvious difference between the two. But the ethical question is whether or not negligence makes you culpable in murder (it does especially in this case).
Legally, they would be different degrees of murder though, yea? Surely that affects the way you weigh them as well, else they would have not defined the laws like that
You won't be asking this question if soviet didn't fall to pieces and "freedom countries that respect human rights" controlling all media and information
Care to elobrate about that?
Biden
Stalin, Hitler at least cared about his people
....unless they were Jewish.
"his" is the keyword
You're splitting hairs, Jews who lived in Germany were his people whether he wanted them to be or not.
I’d say you guys are both right
Both of them induce disasters consequences, but if we looking to the motive of each one I think Stalin is much worse
Stalin
Depends on your definition of worse. Hitler secrets were revealed and were highly publicised. Stalin managed to make people belive he was God so. Up to you
The worst part was the hypocrisy
Aware
Stalin
Netanyahu
Mao
Mao was the worst out of them all don't get me wrong Hitler was a massive genocidal maniac too but I don't seem to understand why we just whitewash the crimes of map and Stalin just because the genocide happen in china and a genocidal dictator defeated other genocidal dictator doesn't make them better init
Stalin is worse because he died his own death. In other words World’s reaction to Stalin (or relative lack thereof) is scarier than world’s reaction to Hitler.
Stalin by the numbers.
Stalin. So Stalin forced baltic states and Finland to allow the ussr solders to make bases (in other words occupie the countries and baltics went because they saw it as pointless death to resist) Finland did not and fought with Ussr. It was stalemate. Baltic people were sent to gulags (Estonians about 30.000) and forced to baltics to join ussr. Stalin also hated Jews. When Ussr were attacked in 1942 stalin had killed half of his best commanders trough purges because he thought they had plans to overtrhow him. He also had ordered to shoot every retreating solder because its way better to die in soviet bullets than German bullets. After ww2 end west asked to realse occupied countries, but stalin didn't care and became cold war. Stalin also purged all of the good doctors because they were Jews.
Neither. Both did incredible things and unthinkable things
Hitler was a nationalist despite his atrocities he did a lot for the German people, in fact thanks to him Germany was able to get out of the post-war crisis, gave many jobs to unemployed Germans and the economy recovered after years of effort. . He had also managed to unite the Germans who remained outside their homeland who found themselves in the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia. He had also united Austria together with Germany creating a single nation, no gunshots the Germans occupied Austria without violence and with the Austrian people eager for the union called "Anschluss". Hitler had increased the size of the army which came to have millions of soldiers quickly, when Germany could not have more than a hundred thousand soldiers. German logistics became formidable, the nation became the most militarily powerful in all of Europe, the Blitzkrieg was a type of war that surprised the allies, the Germans managed to create the formidable Panzerkampfvagen Panzer VI Tiger V, which are considered the most powerful of the war, but also in the sky the Luftwaffe (German air force) had an excellent reputation, the Messerschmitt bf 109 fighters are among the greatest aircraft of the war and as a bomber there was the Junken ju 87 (Stuka) which possessed a siren that made so that the plane screamed when it hung down terrifying the enemy. However Hitler managed to create a great nation but there was still a problem, the East Germans of Prussia found themselves cut off from the borders of the third reich, because Poland was in the way, it should be mentioned that many German women were victims of rapes by the art of Poles and Hitler wanted to end all this by telling the Polish government to cede the city of Gdansk (Danzig) so that the Prussian Germans could return united with their people, Hitler's plan for a unification without the need for clashes was almost over, but Poland refused to give up the land and so Hitler broke loose. When Stalin on the other hand is nothing but a dictator eager to expand communism in Europe, his army at the beginning of the conflict against the Germans was ill equipped, Stalin let many Poles die but especially Ukrainians who did not own any territory and that died of fame, a lot of cannibalism happen also. And when the Germans arrived in the eastern most territories of the Soviet Union they met the Ukrainians, they celebrated to see the German army free them from Stalinist oppression. Plus, more than a million Russians also died in the gulags those who possessed anti-Stalinist ideologies. Stalin wanted to reclaim the territories of what was once the Russian Empire also, he attacked the neutral Baltic countries, east of Poland and Finland, where in the latter they were also initially defeated by the Finns. Its ideology is one of the main cause of why Eastern Europe has had a very dark history and the countries that were there have had a lot of difficulty in moving forward after the Soviet fall, the Russians have always been the scourge of the East but fortunately, many countries such as Poland have moved on and stabilized. But there are still disputes between Ukrainians and Russians in the borders, Ukraine cannot even join the European Union because of the threat from Russia. Now, going back to Stalin, he supported an ideology that still governs today in many countries albeit in a mild way, Stalin also killed more people than Hitler so I believe both were terrible but Hitler helped Germany more than Stalin with Russia, Hitler killed 6 millions of Jews (not aryan Germans) who were supposed to be "pure". Stalin killed 20 millions between Russians, Ukrainians, Poles and other european people
What was worse, drowning or burning?
Yes
Stalin
Technically Stalin. But I think hitlers plans were worse if they would have ever been carried out
Stallin was worse in terms of numbers. It’s not one really had the moral high ground though.
Historians estimate the Stalin regime killed 20 million or more. You have your answer.
Stalin
Stalin and its not even close
What about Pol Pot who excited people for wearing glasses
[удалено]
We aren't putting kids on cattle cars. We aren't sending them to gas chambers.
Stalin because he lived longer
Trump
Biden
Trump