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Was Stalin worse than Hitler?

dd972

Created Famines in the USSR that wiped out 5-10 million people, equally brutal with opponents and underlings, the fact that he wasn't prone to the follys of Hitler and died in his sleep of old age somehow makes him worse, I think so anyway, at least AH got his comeuppance.

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Guy:Incognito

archer22 wrote: »

which is certainly not the mark of a Psychopath.

Would that not make it all the worse? He wasn't psychotic, he just wanted to act like he was?

the_syco

Hitler was a clever bastard who killed people.

Stalin was a paranoid bastard, and would've been f**ked had Hitler not been stopped by the winter.

Stalin had a bad habit of killing his best men, thinking they were plotting a coup against him. Best generals, best scientists, best... everyone. You did bad in commi Russia, you get paid same as everyone else. You did good, you'd get paid slightly better, and then get killed.

=-=

Stalin killed his own people without discrimination, Hitler killed the jews and the english. The jews and the english became very powerful, and wrote that Hitler was a very bad man. Gassing the jews didn't really help his cause, so Hitler is now seen as ultimate bad guy. Although Stalin killed jews, he killed his own people as well, so you could say Stalin was fairer than Hitler?

Guy:Incognito

solas111 wrote: »

We probably will be speaking German before long. Hitler fought with guns and bombs and lost. Lessons have been learned and the present crowd are using smarter weapons. Little by little we will become good little Bavarians.

The following headline in the horrible Independent says it all:

“Germans name Kenny as European of the Year”

What’s the German for tipping the cap?

You forgot to mention bankers and bondholders :rolleyes:

Difference Engine

solas111 wrote: »

We probably will be speaking German before long. Hitler fought with guns and bombs and lost. Lessons have been learned and the present crowd are using smarter weapons. Little by little we will become good little Bavarians.

The following headline in the horrible Independent says it all:

“Germans name Kenny as European of the Year”

What’s the German for tipping the cap?

Tipping the cap or tinfoil hat?

Back in topic, its hard to rate evil but I think Stalin was worse. Systematic starvation of the Ukraine, mass deportations of entire peoples, massacres like the Katyn forest, the sheer scale and mechanical mature of what he did is unbelievable.

Bloodlands is a great book on what Stalin and Hitler did in Eastern Europe. When talking about numbers of dead, hundreds of thousands and millions are casually used.

RDM_83 again

archer22 wrote: »

Stalin had all the hallmarks of a Psychopath he showed empathy or affection for nothing,not even his own son.Hitler was ruthless but capable of empathy..he showed genuine affection for some people and had great affection for Animals..in fact introduced Animal rights legislation that has still not been matched today..which is certainly not the mark of a Psychopath.

Yeah agree with the above

Stalin was way worse by modern standards obviously, He got a 15 year old girl pregnant when staying in her parents house (I base my moral views on British red tops as every person who reads this forum should*)

In all seriousness Stalin killed an amazing amount of people, but not caring if your actions result in vast death tolls is still better than deliberately killing vast numbers even though doing so impedes your goals (the Holocaust or at least the later stages were a drain on the German system as is clear if you think of moving all the people to the death camps and the resources needed)

* The evil scale goes something like this in terms of increasing evil for those that don't have time to read them.

White collar crime > assault > rape > burglary >War Crimes> Genocide > Irish/Islamic Terrorism > Murder > Saying something nasty about the queen > Welfare fraud > Being a Pedo

archer22

Guy:Incognito wrote: »

Would that not make it all the worse? He wasn't psychotic, he just wanted to act like he was?

If you regard ruthless as worse than psychotic...but then that includes the Vikings, Normans, Genghis Khan,Attila,most of the Roman emperors,Spanish conquistadors,virtually all the great conquerors of history.

dttq

archer22 wrote: »

I think you managed to totally miss the point.Read again the question asked in this thread!!

I'm well aware of the question. Hitler was indeed a psychopath, I can't understand why anyone would think otherwise given the atrocities committed under his regime,

phoenix999

Difference Engine wrote: »

Tipping the cap or tinfoil hat?

Back in topic, its hard to rate evil but I think Stalin was worse. Systematic starvation of the Ukraine, mass deportations of entire peoples, massacres like the Katyn forest, the sheer scale and mechanical mature of what he did is unbelievable.

Bloodlands is a great book on what Stalin and Hitler did in Eastern Europe. When talking about numbers of dead, hundreds of thousands and millions are casually used.

Not to mention giving up on his own son in a German prison camp who they later shot in the head.

phoenix999

dttq wrote: »

I'm well aware of the question. Hitler was indeed a psychopath, I can't understand why anyone would think otherwise given the atrocities committed under his regime,

He certainly wasn't clever. It was his decision to drop the designs for long range bombers that could have reached most parts of Europe. Also sent his troops 4-5 weeks late into Russia after Mussolini got bogged down in Greece. Thereby getting caught by the weather and failing (thank christ) to take the old Imperial capital of St Petersburg which he planned to demolish and turn into a giant lake. And who would open a war on several fronts? But Stalin is an equally evil specimen without a doubt.

Chuck Stone

Scanlas The 2nd wrote: »

Socialism is .. about the redistribution of wealth.

No.

Socialism as an economic system is the collective ownership of the means of production (machines, factories, mines, infrastructure etc). In the countries where socialism was attempted large-scale everyone worked and there was no stratification (everyone was equally poor and miserable except for the elite) so there was no call for redistribution of wealth.

In state capitalist countries like here and the US/UK/Germany taxation is used to run the state and lessen the negative impact of the winners-and-losers nature of state capitalism.

marcsignal

These 2 Documentaries give great insight into both dictators.

Stalin - 1941 and the Man of Steel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cywSTsv9BJ8

Hitler - The Dark Charisma of Adolf Hitler (3 Parts)

Part 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J0uP_itowE

Part 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bcx783yN9Jg

Part 3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oCovr69_1U

Who was worse ?? Difficult to say. As someone already pointed out, it depends on your point of view.

Ask the same question to a Jew, or a Kalmuck..

Pablo Escobar

If the Allied nations had listened to Stalin and let him put troops in Poland as he had requested, there probably would have been no WWII

marcsignal

Pablo Escobar wrote: »

If the Allied nations had listened to Stalin and let him put troops in Poland as he had requested, there probably would have been no WWII

Slightly off topic, but when did Stalin make this request ?? Before the war ?

News to me I must admit. I do think though, the Poles might have had a thing or two to say about Stalin making such a request of Britain and France.

mattjack

The one good thing I've got from this thread is that I've learned what a balalaika
is.

johnwest288

I dont think either of these guys actually ever killed someone by their own hand.... Am i right in that? They probably never even saw someone being executed or tortured. They were just misunderstood :pac:

Wibbs

johnwest288 wrote: »

I dont think either of these guys actually ever killed someone by their own hand.... Am i right in that? They probably never even saw someone being executed or tortured.

Well Hitler served in the German army in the first World War so might have shot someone. He certainly would have seen people being killed on both sides. His fellow troops thought him a right oddball. He won a medal for bravery*. Interestingly it was his Jewish commander who put him up for it. Later on when he came to power, when Jews were being squeezed out of German society, retired Jewish soldiers lost their state pension, except for that guy. The gestapo knew who he was and also left him well alone because of orders from above. Luckily him and his family made it out of Germany before the real evil crap kicked in.

Stalin would have seen people being killed and executed. He had so many killed in his purges it would have been hard for him not to. It's amazing he lasted so long as he was far more self destructively vicious than hitler.

As for who was worse? On balance I'd say Stalin. While hitler was a right evil bastard, he was far less aggressive towards "his own"(you could argue Franco was worse in this and of all the fascists he survived, lasting until the 1970's). If you were considered "pure" German and not an "enemy" under his reign life got appreciably better for you. Germans went from dire economic depression and political uncertainty to relative prosperity and certainty in remarkably short order. He gave them their pride back, so you can see why they supported him out of loyalty rather than fear(for the most part). If you read accounts from ordinary Germans of the time they reflect that. Indeed most of them can't get into their heads why the rest of the world wasn't as concerned/hated the Soviets and were convinced that sooner or later the allies would come to see this threat and help them fight the Russians. Of course the fall was to come later after defeat and when the atrocities came out in their name and you can read that real sense of betrayal in the majority of them afterwards. Quite a few held onto disbelief in it too, or tried to absolve hitler of direct involvement, happier to blame the other top nazis for the disgusting criminality that was now too obvious to deny.

Russians and others under the Soviets couldn't say the same thing with Stalin. They went downhill, many millions starved to death or were purged and were living in the very definition of a totalitarian state. Contemporary accounts of Russians are very different in their take. A lot more fear involved.

In general life under Hitler would have been better than life under Stalin. Both saw "enemies", but stalin saw more and he saw them more as personal enemies rather than enemies of his country. Plus Stalin survived. He went on to put more European territory under the soviet yoke.

*Hitler never wore his medals, unlike the rest of his cronies who were busy inventing medals and awards for themselves. On that score at least he was less of a preening dickhead.

Leftist

johnwest288 wrote: »

I dont think either of these guys actually ever killed someone by their own hand.... Am i right in that? They probably never even saw someone being executed or tortured. They were just misunderstood :pac:

ffs

CruelCoin

Putin summed up the soviet history quite well:

"Whoever does not miss the Soviet union has no heart.
Whoever wants it back has no brain."

tritium

Hitler and Stalin, two prime examples from a century of worldwide horror and evil doers. Others have already given us the names of Mao and Pol Pot, and even the 'good guy's ' have atrocities against their names in this period, with war crimes and atrocities against german POWs into the fifties by the allies in western Europe and the indiscriminate targeting of civilians throughout the century. Really we should just seal the 20th century in a lead box and bury it deep underground with a do not open sign stuck on (although it's also given us wonderful scientific progress)

On a lighter view, there's been other examples of brutality across the ages so I guess we just got more efficient in the 20th century. If I had to say who was worse between Stalin and hitler I guess I'd go for Stalin, though not in a hitler was a better person kind of way.......

bnt

Strange as this may sound, there are worse fates than being conquered, and winning a war does not make all problems go away. Conquered territory has to be ruled if it is to remain conquered, and some empires are better at it than others. The Romans let the locals do it for them, after offering real incentives, rather than try to do it all themselves. Look at Scotland & England in the 18th Century, for example - you'd be forgiven for wondering just who "conquered" whom. The USA has "won" two wars in Iraq, and for what? Winning is just the start of the problems.

Can you imagine Hitler and the Nazis trying to manage a Third Reich that included the UK, Ireland, France, Spain, Italy, and most of Eastern Europe? All those unruly natives refusing to learn German. They would have had to resort to some fairly draconian measures to retain control. Strict economic planning and control ... pervasive surveillance to find and root out "dissenters" ... maybe even build a Wall to keep the Russians out ...

(Actually, others have already imagined it e.g. Robert Harris in Fatherland and Len Deighton in SS-GB. There's a whole alternate history on the topic.)

SafeSurfer

Pablo Escobar wrote: »

If the Allied nations had listened to Stalin and let him put troops in Poland as he had requested, there probably would have been no WWII

This request is news to me. The Germans wanted Poland to join the anti comintern pact and access to the city of Danzig through the Polish Corridor. Britain became involved in the war because they had guaranteed the sovereignty of Poland. After the war Poland became a Soviet puppet state and Britain lost its empire. The history of the war was been written to perpetuate the myth that the plucky Brits stood alone against the evil Germans and won. The British decision not to reach an accommodation with Nazi Germany was catastrophic and relegated Britain from superpower status to the second or third rate power she is today.

Leftist

bnt wrote: »

Can you imagine Hitler and the Nazis trying to manage a Third Reich that included the UK, Ireland, France, Spain, Italy, and most of Eastern Europe? All those unruly natives refusing to learn German. They would have had to resort to some fairly draconian measures to retain control. Strict economic planning and control ... pervasive surveillance to find and root out "dissenters" ... maybe even build a Wall to keep the Russians out ...

(Actually, others have already imagined it e.g. Robert Harris in Fatherland and Len Deighton in SS-GB. There's a whole alternate history on the topic.)

which is exactly what they would have done. No hint of protest would go unpunished and the germans were fantastic at manipulation, carrot and stick and murdering people's families as a form of reprimand and punishment.
but...
Soviet and eastern bloc did it better. While the nazis banned organisations which were forced underground and still remained in opposition, the communists inflitrated those opposition groups, infected them and took control.

so basically I don't know, you're probably right but they (germans) would have made an almight mess while they tried it.

Jonny7

johnwest288 wrote: »

I dont think either of these guys actually ever killed someone by their own hand.... Am i right in that? They probably never even saw someone being executed or tortured. They were just misunderstood :pac:

Not quite, both knew what was happening. Stalin would secretly observe trials of his political opponents and take obvious pleasure in what was a foregone conclusion.

Doc Ruby

SafeSurfer wrote: »

The British decision not to reach an accommodation with Nazi Germany was catastrophic and relegated Britain from superpower status to the second or third rate power she is today.

You honestly think the empire would still be around if the nazis were accommodated?

The only reason the empire reached the size it did (and only for a few decades at that) was because the British had access to things like machine guns and howitzers versus spears and flintlocks. The "empire" lasted as long as it took for the natives to get hold of similar weapons.

old hippy

Difference Engine wrote: »

We are closer to the West culturally and geographically. We will naturally be more interested in what happens in European and English speaking countries like Australia and the USA.

Also having a large Irish emigrant community in those countries will mean we have an interest and possible links to what happens there.

Well, maybe it's just me, then. I'm more interested in what happens in the East.

Somebody mentioned Putin earlier. He's another "President for life" dictator, in all but name. I am strongly of the opinion that he gets what he wants, by hook or by crook. Allegedly.

archer22

You could sum it up like this..Hitler was loved by most of his people..Stalin was feared by all of his people.Hitlers staff in the bunker had deep affection for him and wanted to die with him..Stalin's staff were terrified of him and afraid to even sneeze when he was around.

larchill

Stalin was probably worse, causing the deaths of more people overall both by starvation, exile & extermination. Hitlers activities were more 'headline grabbing', getting more attention as a result. It was the concentrated activities of the holocaust which got most attention. Most if not all of the 6m people died in a few short years from 1940 - 45. It was the planned intent & manner of execution along with the scale of this undertaking which brought attention. Stalins efforts were over a much longer time frame: his 'reign' was 20 years from 1933 - 53.

SafeSurfer

Doc Ruby wrote: »

You honestly think the empire would still be around if the nazis were accommodated?

The only reason the empire reached the size it did (and only for a few decades at that) was because the British had access to things like machine guns and howitzers versus spears and flintlocks. The "empire" lasted as long as it took for the natives to get hold of similar weapons.

I think that the third Reich and the Japanese in the east would have been much more amenable to the continuation of the British empire than the Americans which were completely opposed to colonialism.

As for the British only maintaining their empire as long as the natives had inferior weapons, that is not quite true. The south Africans boers had access to arguably superior Mauser rifles as well as maxim guns and the latest artillery.

Britain emerged from the second world war exhausted and almost bankrupt, rationing continued until 1954! If Britain had avaoided involvement in the war its ability to maintain the empire would have been much greater, especially in the context of a new wave of empire building by the Germans, Italians and Japanese.
Once The US and USSR emerged as the victors of WW2, the age of empires for other nations was over.

Madam_X

bnt wrote: »

Strange as this may sound, there are worse fates than being conquered, and winning a war does not make all problems go away. Conquered territory has to be ruled if it is to remain conquered, and some empires are better at it than others. The Romans let the locals do it for them, after offering real incentives, rather than try to do it all themselves. Look at Scotland & England in the 18th Century, for example - you'd be forgiven for wondering just who "conquered" whom. The USA has "won" two wars in Iraq, and for what? Winning is just the start of the problems.

Can you imagine Hitler and the Nazis trying to manage a Third Reich that included the UK, Ireland, France, Spain, Italy, and most of Eastern Europe? All those unruly natives refusing to learn German. They would have had to resort to some fairly draconian measures to retain control. Strict economic planning and control ... pervasive surveillance to find and root out "dissenters" ... maybe even build a Wall to keep the Russians out ...

(Actually, others have already imagined it e.g. Robert Harris in Fatherland and Len Deighton in SS-GB. There's a whole alternate history on the topic.)

And The Man In The High Castle by Philip K. Dick.

old hippy wrote: »

I'm more interested in what happens in the East.

Thought you'd be interested in goings-on everywhere equally?

Difference Engine

Madam_X wrote: »

And The Man In The High Castle by Philip K. Dick.

Thought you'd be interested in goings-on everywhere equally?

Dominion by CJ Sansom was out recently.