Who Sucked the Most?

[Vengerak]

I'm curious as to the opinion of others on this.

[windhound]

I'll have to side on hitler...

the whole holocaust thing, massive killings and trying to take over the world.. 

[Vengerak]

Would you be surprised if I told you that, compared to Hitler's sketchy figure of 5.7 million murdered, Stalin racked up somewhere in the region of 40 million (potentially, like, up to something over 50 million depending on what you credit him directly with)?

[windhound]

I'd say impossible, the go check wikipedia.. 
*goes to do so*

[Vengerak]

Wikipedia's a start.? For more information I'd recommend some reading on the eastern front (ostfront) in World War II or, better yet, "Gulag" by Anne Applebaum.

[Vengerak]

Ah, that's right. The Soviet Union appears to have killed near 61,000,000 people. Stalin himself (i.e under his direction and leadership) is responsible for almost 43,000,000 of these. Most of the deaths, perhaps around 39,000,000, are due to lethal forced labor in gulags and transit thereto. Communist China up to 1987, but mainly from 1949 through the cultural revolution (which alone may have seen over 1,000,000 murdered), is the second worst megamurderer. Then there are the lesser megamurderers, such as Pol Pot and the nations of North Korea and Tito's Yugoslavia.? Stalin has to bear some responsibility for these as well, as they largely came about as a result of his "world revolution", and we end up with a figure approaching some 80 million in total.

[Peace Alliance]

Boy a guys gotta have a lot of free time on his hands to be able to squeeze 40 million deaths in personally.


I can't figure out any reason why one would be considering this... my votes on hitler, but keep in mind thats a rather uneducated vote, and i don't plan on GETTING educated. *smug huff*

[Neobaron]

Well, im not saying he was a good guy or anything, but the Holocaust is the only bad thing that came out of Hitlers little run, and the only reason why you hear so much about it is because the victor states write History, and the Soviet Union was one of them.

Take this into account;
A few days before poland capitulated, the SU invaded from the east. Nearly 144,000 men of the polish armed forces were taken captive. Of these, nearly 14,000 were Officers. In 1943, a German Panzer division came across a mass grave, with nearly 4,000 bodies in it, most of which were still wearing a uniform that they too had enountered 4 years before; those of Polish officers. the SU denied is wholeheartedly, and since they were fighting for the allies, everyone believed them. Nearly 50 years later, the SU ecided to unveil that it had in fact destroyed all of the officers, and pointed the way to 2 moe mass graves with similar numbers of bodies in them.

The german army captured nearly 700,000 men of the polish armed forces. Regulars were sent back to their homes, and officers were put into camps (not concentration camps. The germans were still "gentlemen" in regards to how enemy leadership was to be treated) until they were liberated in the final days of the war.

I see a difference.

Had Stalin played Hitlers role, wed all eb speaking russian and living on farms. Oh, and you wouldnt be reading this either.

If anything (and i say this in a sadistic way) we should thank hitler for mauling the Russian industrial base in the Ukraine, and in turn thank Chairman Mao for being so hardcore and standing up to Stalin when all others told him to back down.

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History isnt supposed to be left to speculation, but ill be (gosh darned) if anyone /ever/ says that Hitler was worse than Stalin.









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On a completely unrelated note, you mods need to find out how to turn on the word blocker thingies... i just had to edit myself lololol

[Ruatine]

We have a word filter....

Since I'm pretty much uneducated as far as history goes... was Stalin genocidal?

[Vengerak]

Not as such. He didn't kill because of any particular belief, he killed to get people out of his way.  The Ukrainians, for example, who welcomed Hitler's soldiers as liberators when he invaded, lost some seven or nine million souls when Stalin enacted an artificial famine to break them. Some nine million died in Stalin's purge of the old guard, intellectuals, religious figures and anyone who owned so much as a cow (not an exaggeration).  Hitler's supposed holocaust was as a result of his experiences with "Judeo-Bolshevism" growing up--the betrayal of the Second Reich by the Weimar republic (seen by many as a Jewish establishment), the Jew-led communist revolutions in Munich and Bavaria etc.  Hitler's fears of so-called Jewish communism were shared by, among others, Winston Churchill, Neville Chamberlain, Lord Halifax, Benito Mussolini and Francisco Franco.  To be fair to them, a majority of the Soviet leadership was Jewish, and Stalin's real surname did in fact mean "son of a Jew".

It should also be noted that the "final solution" (if it wasn't just a typhus epidemic) was only enacted late in the war after original plans to deport the European Jews to Madagascar or the new territories in the east collapsed along with the various German fronts, and when Hitler was in terrible health and half-mad due to his lunatic doctor's "treatments" (cocaine eye drops, bull's testicle injections...).

Stalin did engage in deliberate exterminations of the Volga Germans, Cossaks, Poles, Estonians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Uzbeks, Tatars and all the rest, but not so much because he hated them for their race as because they were harder to control and wanted independence from the oppressive USSR, largely a Russian institution (not that a lot of Russians were happy about Stalin either--some 50,000 Russian collaborators fought alongside the Nazis in Stalingrad).  Hitler wasn't necessarily a good thing for the world, but he was certainly no Josef Stalin.  From a purely Utilitarian standpoint the world would be a better place today if we had allied with Hitler against Stalin rather than the other way around, simply because tens of millions less would have died under national socialism (co-operative with the West) than under communism.

[Gen. Volkov]

There is also evidence to suggest that Hitler had syphilis. And he was planning the final solution before the war, at least according to what I know. The ovens were already burning in 1940. That's well before the Germans started running into troubles. I only say Hitler is worse because he targeted one group and expanded solely to get as many of them as possible included in his sphere of influence. Stalin caused alot of deaths, but most of those were indirect results of his policies and actions. He didn't personally order the deaths of 43 million people. Not saying he didn't personally order deaths, I'm just saying most of them weren't direct orders of his, Hitler on the other had is directly responsible for 12 million ppl dying. 6 million Jews, another million Gypsies, homosexuals and assorted groups he didn't like, and all the German soldiers killed during the war. If you factor in allied losses, well the total begins to close the gap with Stalin. They were both evil men. One just happened to live in a more populous nation. Now of course Stalin could probably have won WW2 if he had been german, because he wasn't crazy in the same way Hitler was, and was just plain smarter than Hitler.

And Stalin wasn't genocidal, just extremely paranoid.

[Vengerak]

Highly unlikely.? Stalin was a [poop] commander, and if his purge of the Soviet Union's leading military figures had instead been directed against the Prussian officer class, Germany simply would not have developed blitzkrieg tactics or had anything like the military it did in the OTL.

The "ovens" were for cremating bodies. Nothing at all sinister about them.?

Stalin caused alot of deaths, but most of those were indirect results of his policies and actions.

Direct.? Engineering the deaths of these millions was a direct result and a goal of his government policy.? Artificial famine, the purges...

Hitler on the other had is directly responsible for 12 million ppl dying.

5.7 million Jews died under Nazism.? Where is this other six million coming from?

another million Gypsies, homosexuals and assorted groups he didn't like, and all the German soldiers killed during the war.

Homosexuality was illegal everwhere in Europe at the time, and the Gypsies were an undesireable group as well.? As for six million of them being killed--statistics?? And German soldiers--you can hardly put them onto Hitler.? Most were killed by Stalin's soldier, often murdered or starved to death in captivity or on death marches, and in practically ever other instance they were fighting nations that had declared war on them.

If you factor in allied losses, well the total begins to close the gap with Stalin.

No, you wouldn't. Not by a long shot.? And, again, these deaths can hardly be attributed personally to Hitler (at least a million and probably somewhere in the region on six million Russians were killed by their own side in the war--either fighting with the Nazis, starving or dying of cold, being driven weaponless into enemy machine gun fire or being shot in the back by their own commisarrs).? If we factor in the hundreds of thousands killed, left destitute or broken when the Soviets spread their trail of rape and pillage through eastern Germany and Prussia the gap only widens (there were a hundred thousand abortions after the Battle of Berlin alone).

I only say Hitler is worse because he targeted one group and expanded solely to get as many of them as possible included in his sphere of influence.

Yes. Germans. He expanded to bring all German-speaking peoples under the banner of the Reich and without exception the overwhelming majority of Germans in the territories exanded to were elated and often relieved at the Nazis' arrival (Sudetenland, Austria, Czecheslovakia, West Prussia, the Baltic states, Russia, Poland, Memel...), because they were being ethnically cleansed by their rulers (Poles, Russians, Czechs etc.).

And in fact this ethnic cleansing was finished after the war.? Germans were ordered from their houses in the dead of the night with only what they could carry and some 2.5 million (possible more, possibly just a little over 2 million, I haven't got any statistics to hand) died.

[Neobaron]

*raises head from bar as if to speak*

Ummm...

Lebensraum (sp)

Look it up.

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The goal of Hitler's expansion was not to kill more and more people, but to provide room for germans to expand, and a place to have agriculture while the bulk of the fatherland would become the industrial center of the world.

Also, people tend to see Hitler as the guy who attacked France and Britain as revenge for WWII, but it was in fact England who declared war, and France was drug in by alliance. Hitlers policy was to expand east, not west. (Its relevant to the expansion argument, since i can feel a mention of a 2 front war coming, but the western front wasnt hitlers idea, it actually caught him off guard, which explains the "Sitzkrieg"... all 55 Divisions (at the time) of the Wermacht were busy in Poland, and had france actually done something, the war may have turned out differntly.)

[Vengerak]

Quite right.  However, I'd disagree with your statement that the French were dragged in--they were far more keen to go to war in '38 over Czechoslovakia.  They were just terrified of attacking Germany proper in the beginning (as their laughable campaign in the Saar showcases), worried about retaliation and a subsequent bogging down of the campaign in France as in the Great War.  They instead looked to fight the war in other theatres--i.e Scandanavia and, bizzarely, the Soviet Caucausus, which they were pressuring the British to bomb.

[Gen. Volkov]

I'm trying to decide if I'm surrounded by Neo-Nazis or not...(jk) this is highly disturbing ppl supporting, Hitler, even if its just over a guy like Stalin. LOL. Why the heck did you even make this topic? And I know that the Brits declared war on Hitler after he invaded Poland, but Hitler also knew that the Brits had an alliance with them... so you can't say he was focused totally east. He made the non-aggression pact with the Soviets remember? Stalin's purge of the officer corps was bad for the socviet military yes, but he had alot more people left after that. Some of them arguably better tacticians than the ones he killed. And Hitler WAS stupid. The tactical and strategic decisions he made are why Germnay lost the war. For just one example, he got them into the war too early when he attacked Poland. And Hitler is directly responsible for every single battle death in WW2, because without him, there wouldn't have BEEN a WW2. The Germans were in a depression when he took power remember? And the only thing that brought them and the world out of it was gearing up for war. Its unlikely that Germany would have been able to recover without the Nazi's, at least as quickly as it did, and in the direction it recovered.

You guys know obviously know alot about WW2, well so do I. If you wanna get in a pissing contest, which is what I suspect you made this topic for, Raine, I don't know who will win, but it would be long and boring for the rest of the board, if not for us, so I suggest we stop now.

And for the record, "putting all the germans under one banner" was just an excuse, and if you know as much about WW2 as I suspect you do, you know it too. Also, the other 6 million, like I said in the post, is from the others he killed besides Jews, and german deaths from battle, being in battle, and other related war time injuries. Then you have the civilians who died, those cannot be directly attributed to him like the battle deaths, but if your gonna have 43 million dead by stalin's hand, even though well over half of those were not his direct responsibility, no matter how many died from purges and the famine he caused, the vast majority were still a result of policies not his direct orders, then Hitler gets the blood of all the civilians who died on his hands. Also, my post DOES say ovens, not overns. The "n" is messed up. And just because the ovens themselves never provably killed anyone, though I would suspect live people were sometimes thrown in with the dead, the people being burned in them were killed in gas chambers, shot, worked to death, what have you. You don't need ovens unless you are killing a poo ton of people and don't have room to bury them. WE never had cremation ovens in our camps for Germans and Japanese. The few who did die were buried, and none of them were killed, it was old age, or disease.