Was Stalin as bad as Hitler?

What do you think? Was anyone as bad as Hitler was? Was Stalin? Mao?

Eh... thump... for some reason that reads as inflammatory in my mind...

edited 12th Aug '11 11:00:31 PM by Wulf

Stalin,why didn't anyone go against him for his crimes against humanity?

Yep,he was on equal with Hitler.Heck,I remember seeing a story joking that they had a lot of Foe yay with each other.Hitler and Stalin two of the world's examples of real life Big Bads.

Pol Pot > Mao=Stalin=Hitler

Yes, and no. In terms of treatment of the general populace: Hilter was somewhat better. As long as you were 'acceptable', life was decent. Stalin? Even if you were 'acceptable' there was always the chance you died. Because to Stalin, 'acceptable' fluctuated widly, whereas under Hilter 'acceptable' was one defined constant.

Both are bad, yes, but are bad in different ways.

Stalin did not try any expansionist policies, whereas Hitler... did a lot of expanding - with the go-ahead of Britain and France.

I'd assume Stalin was worse than Hitler (given that he matched the slaughters and had no idea how to deal with famine for the people he actually liked), but I'm not clear enough on Asian history to place Mao. Wouldn't surprise me if he was worse too.

edited 12th Aug '11 11:06:33 PM by Pykrete

Actually, I'd say Mao as worse then Stalin.

Look up "The Great leap Forward" and the "Cultural Revolution".

Fair enough. Like I said, wasn't sure but it wouldn't have surprised me.

Yeah, I don't know much about Mao. I did Modern European History (even though it was called Modern 'World' History) for GCSE.

edited 12th Aug '11 11:09:07 PM by Inhopelessguy

I started "Nixon In China". I might have learned more from other laces.

Jesus, China would have 2 billion people if it wasn't for this guy.

Don't they have nearly 2bn anyway?

1.6 bil, IIRC.

Daymn. Still against the one-child policy though.

And the good thing is, there's no Chinese spin doctors on here; after all, I bet 'freedom' ain't in the Communist Party English-Chinese Dictionary.

One child policy is gone anyways. But, honestly, I think it will benefit the world.

Eh, not really. The lowering of fertility in China after the implemention of the OCP correlated with the lowering of fertlity rates in nearby countries. Effectively, what the CP wanted, they would've got nonetheless.

I think we need to start another thread for this.

http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/tyrants.htm

Stalin killed more people than Hitler. And Hitler at least cared about some people and had principles, even if his beliefs and actions were utterly abhorrent and a perversion of humanties worst inpulses. Stalin? I believe he was nothing more than a sociopath.

Both men were evil, but Stalin had a different quality as well as quantity of evil. Something which in my view makes him even worse than Hitler.

Both men were repellant, but while Hitler can at least evoke a certain air of pitiful tragedy amongst the disgust, Stalin has no redeeming features at all. At all.

Dude, you just summed up two years of GCSE Modern World History. Well, at least the units about Stalin and about Hitler.

Hitler had a wider impact than Stalin, because of the war he started, and given that you can lay all the bad consequences of that war to his account, you can argue that there was more blood on his hands. Stalin's worst crimes were against the people of his own country, although they were on a truly massive scale because it was a huge country.

Really, it's impossible to make this kind of judgment though. When you're talking about murder and mayhem on this scale, comparisons become impossible. They were both evil on pretty much every level, including in their personal life. Stalin beat his first wife and his second committed suicide (or was possibly murdered by him). His son died in a prisoner-of-war camp from which Stalin wouldn't rescue him. Most of the women who got close to Hitler ended up either committing suicide or at least attempting it. If you're like that with the people you love, what can the rest of the world expect?

Stalin was worse.

Impact-wise,

Culture-wise.

Depends on who you ask.

If you're German, Hitler was the mass-murdering psychotic dictator who dragged Germany down into the abyss and is an enduring symbol of German national shame.

If you're Russian, Stalin brought the country up from a backwards, agrarian backwater 100 years behind the other major powers to a military and industrial powerhouse in time to defeat Germany and become one of the world's two superpowers*

(If you're Austrian or Georgian, you're probably trying to forget that one of two of the world's worst mass-murderers actually originated in your country).

Everything's relative.

edited 13th Aug '11 9:11:47 AM by pagad

One can make a legitimate aregument for Hitler being a madman; but I'm pretty sure that Stalin was sane.

Personally, though, I hate Mao Zedong more than either Hitler or Stalin.

A Chinese girl once told me Mao was way worse than Hitler; at least Hitler was good for the German economy (well, It Got Worse near the end), but Mao put the Chinese economy back a few decades.

I don't think those comparisons of 'Stalin killer more than Hitler' hold that much water. Sure, comparing 30 million to 6 million seems like an easy comparison, but that's mostly due to the Allied efforts to stop the Nazis from getting their hands on the rest of the world. Taking the Soviet Union for example, Hitler easily would have killed more filthy slavs than Stalin did.

Let's say Hitler conquered the world: There goes the 1 billion people in Africa, the 100,000+ (edit: 100,000,000+) population among the Soviets, in fact, most of Asia (India, China), and probably all of Mexico and downward... well, that's not true. Most of them probably would be enslaved, but we're still talking about systemic exterminations as opposed to 'necessary' paranoia killings like Stalin. Sure, life is 'good' if you happen to be the right type of European, but most of the humans on this planet don't happen to be part of the superior race.

edited 13th Aug '11 11:30:07 AM by Vellup

One other thing often overlooked in these things: 6 million is the figure of the Jews alone that were killed in the Holocaust. It doesn't account for the 6 million other "undesirables" who perished in the concentration camps, and it certainly doesn't account for the 20 million total Soviet dead (of which "only" 7-8 million were military).

edited 13th Aug '11 10:59:58 AM by pagad