Was Stalin a Greater Evil than Hitler?

Stalin has decidedly more blood on his hands. On the other hand Hitler seems to have been the more pro-active of the 2.
Stalin had comparetively little opposition throughout his career, while Hitler's ambitions were squashed by armies.

 

In the long run, Stalin, i.e. communism was a more persistent threat. It's message was not bound to a national agenda and it appealed to struggling classes of people in many nations, though the promise it offered them was false. The struggle with communism preceded Stalin and lingered after he was gone.

OTOH, Hitler's movement was more closely attached to being German and to following Hitler. Hitler sought power by force and gained much, but was not as successful at persuading others in other countries of his philosophy. The nations he conquered, including his own, gladly threw off his yoke when he was gone.

Each man had to be defeated on his own terms. Hitler had to be defeated militarily because he used force to attempt to have his way. Communism had to be defeated by a superior idealogy for, while communists did use force to advance their cause, they were a greater threat because of their ability to persuade.

Of course the question is not "who was the greater threat?" but "who was more evil?" Both men were spiritually void, evil in their political goals and methods, and lacking in any personal affection. I find no reedeming quality in either, so I cannot judge one as more evil than the other.

 

Stalin made Hitler look like a weekend ham and egger.

Stalin shot his victims, starved them, gassed them, froze them, mutilated them and so on and so on.

Stalin waged war more effectively against the Soviet Union than he ever did against any one else. His paranoia and crazyness were there from the beginning. Hitler lost his mind progressively as the situation for Germany worsened.

Hitler was only a threat from 1933-1945. Stalin was a threat from 1925-1953. The state he left behind was every bit as backward as the Czars and in possession of much bigger weapons.

Stalin was far more dangerous. He outmurdered Hitler by 2-1 at least. Thank good ness that both men are in hell, where they rightly belong.

 

Stalin had a great deal of internal opposition if one looks at the constant purges of the Communist Party in Russia that he employed to gain and keep power. A good book on the subject is Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives by the late Alan Bullock, a British expert.

In terms of the number murdered, Stalin is the worse.

By the way, I would date Stalin from 1917 since he was high-ranking in the Communist Party from the beginning. Interestingly, Stalin received a superior education from the Russian Eastern Orthodox church as a boy.

 

One wonders if that cowardly democrat, Roosevelt, went to war to protect his buddy Uncle Jo, from Hitler.

Stalin was clearly the evil.

Since hindsight is acceptable, it would have been better to let Hitler rid the world of the French and taken out Russia. Since we didn't, we had nuclear weapons staring us down for half a century.

 

Hitler invaded the West first. If Hitler had gone only East, we might not have cared. However, Hitler started the German-Russian war on June 22, 1941. It lasted for 1400 days and killed 36,000,000 people. Churchill said that he would have made an alliance with the devil if he were against Hitler and the Germans. We supported Russia in order to take pressure off England and Western Europe as well as to gain an ally against Japan. We saved the Russians with our trucks, tires, spam, clothing, and munitions. The Russians had the superior tank of World War II and the German shells bounced off it.

Very few German prisoners of war ever were released from Russia alive.

 

swaimj
"OTOH, Hitler's movement was more closely attached to being German and to following Hitler."
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A number of countries had ideological movements similar to that of Hitler. Facist Italy headed by Mussolini comes to mind, so does Spain under Franco and Mussert's NSB in the Netherlands.

CMG
Hitler declared war on the US, if he hadn't you guys might have stayed out of the war alltogether.

"if one looks at the constant purges of the Communist Party in Russia"
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A lot of them seem to have been caused by baseless paranoia on Stalin's side.

Daniel David
"it would have been better to let Hitler rid the world of the French and taken out Russia."
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The US never had that choiche Hitler simply took that option away by declaring war on the US.

CoachC
"Stalin waged war more effectively against the Soviet Union than he ever did against any one else."
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That would make him the greater evil and ironically the lesser threat as well.

 

I understand your point. However, fascism was not the force for evil in the 20th century that communism was. This is because fascism, as I understand it is related to nationalism, therefore one country must conquer others. Communism is not necessarily nationalistic, so the ideology spread to nations without those nations being conquered directly by the Soviet Union.

This thread seems to be a comparison of the individuals, Hitler and Stalin, not the movements of communism and fascism, so I probably am off topic.

 

mioque said,
"That would make him the greater evil and ironically the lesser threat as well."

Normally you would be right but throw in the immensity of the Soviet Union and atomic weapons and Stalin still winds up being the bigger threat.

Stalin was a threat to Asia as well as Europe. Adolf never did manage to move into Asia.

 

swaimj
"This is because fascism, as I understand it is related to nationalism, therefore one country must conquer others"
"
3 basically Facist countries had this alliance thing going during WWII (Japan, Italy, Germany). If things had been slightly differently Spain might have become a 4th member.
On top of that Communist internationalism didn't stop Communist China and the USSR from intensely dislikng eachother most of the time.

CoachC
"throw in the immensity of the Soviet Union and atomic weapons"
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Both factors that made the Soviet Union a more passive threat than Nazi Germany, that hungred for Lebensraum and didn't have to worry about destroying all life on earth in a quest to conquer it.

 

Hitler may have declared war on the USA first, but Pearl Harbor put the US in the war. Japan as Hitler's ally attacked the US before the US was active militarily.

I doubt if Stalin's purges were all a result of his baseless fears. A person in his position was a constant target, as shown by the history of the Soviet Union, including the mystery surrounding Stalin's own death.

Stalin was responsible for helping North Viet Nam after World War II so he exported communism to Indochina and he finally gave some help to Red China after the war ended.

The point about Germany's quest for "living space" is without merit because Russia dropped the iron curtain on Eastern Europe and enslaved millions for years. So Communism and Stalin did lust after territory.

Stalin was worse by all measures because he murdered the most, took the most territory, and tried to rule the world armed with the atom bomb. John Foster Dulles told the Russians that if they dropped the bomb, we would drop even more bombs on them. As a matter of fact, Stalin was a criminal all of his life.

 

CMG
"Pearl Harbor put the US in the war."
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In theory the US could have simply fought Japan (which only had a relatively lose alliance with the nazis) and stayed out of the non-asian side of the conflict.

"I doubt if Stalin's purges were all a result of his baseless fears."
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Not all, most.

"he exported communism to Indochina"
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The Nazis tried to export a bit of Facism to most of the Spanishspeaking world at one time or the other. Ofcourse in Southamerica they didn't have the sort of resources the USSR had.

"Stalin did lust after territory."
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Absolutely, but less fanatically than Hitler who seems to have been as bad in this regard as Trotsky.

Stalin became worse by all measures because his ambitions weren't as completely squashed as Hitler's.

 

Yes, it is oft argued that WWII was necessary to stop Hitler - yet it strengthened Stalin. We gained little, we just traded one devil for another far worse.