How Was Worse? Stalin or Hitler?

Who's More Evil

  • Adolf Hitler

    Votes: 34 65.4%
  • Joseph Stalin

    Votes: 18 34.6%

  • Total voters
    52
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Soundgarden

Banned
The two biggest superpowers in Europe during World War II, both men were synonomous with the term "evil." While both men had similar upbrinings and goals for World Domination, the two certainly weren't exchanging Christmas Cards with one another, especially after Hitler invaded the Eastern End of Poland. At the end of the War, Stalin emerged as the bigger superpower, but his hunger for power and his paranoia didn't end there.

That being said, who was more evil and why? While Stalin wasn't genocidal in the sense Hitler was, he killed millions of more people, though over a longer span of time, while Hitler killed about 15 to 20 million people in the span of 6 years(excluding Knight of The Long Knives).

While both men's sanity was questionable at best, Stalin could at times be reasoned with. Problem with Stalin though, was he had people murdered for the most trivial of reasons like looking at him funny or not depicting him as large and majestic(he was 5'4 and if his painters depicted him wrong, he would have them shot).

Hitler only killed people who were not what he viewed as "Aryan" or people who would even challenge his views, while Stalin would have you killed if he THOUGHT you were going to betray him, regardless of race or not.

I believe most people would say Hitler was worse for a variety of reason 1)He lost the war(you know what they say, the winner writes history), 2)Is used more often as an epiphet for evil, and 3)Stalin is still talked about in Russia, while any mention of Hitler or the Holocaust is forbidden.

Being one-quarter Jewish, I'm pretty much forced to side with Stalin, even though he wasn't the friendliest to the Jews, he wasn't officially anti-semitic like Hitler was(later in his life was a different story).

What are your thoughts?
 
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Hitler fought an alliance of Imperialists, Segregationists and Stalin yet he was still easily the worst option.
 
Problem with Stalin though, was he had people murdered for the most trivial of reasons like looking at him funny or not depicting him as large and majestic(he was 5'4 and if his painters depicted him wrong, he would have them shot).
What's your source for this? Sounds pretty ridiculous.

Anyway, I don't like to blame a single person for a regime's failings. I think that ignores huge contextual and material factors that drove various events in history, not to mention absolves all the other people involved. That said, the Nazi regime was clearly more horrific.
 
Not that we haven't done this before, but the vote invariably comes out with Hitler deservedly way out in front on the evil-o-meter.
 
InB4 thread lock:

Hitler, of course.

All you really need to consider is that, while Poland had a Stalinist dictatorship imposed upon it for half a century, the alternative under Nazi dominance would've seen that nation cease to exist at all.
 
...Hitler only killed people who were not what he viewed as "Aryan"

"Only?" That is the very reason that Hitler was worse than Stalin. With Hitler millions of people were condemmed to slavery or death entirely because of racial/ethnic factors they could not control. With Stalin, even considering his change in moods and paranoia, he went after people or groups of people who did, said, or believed things that he felt were threats to him (the various purges of fellow communists) or the Soviet system (clergy, capitalists, Kulaks, nationalists, etc). People possibly had at least some control over their fates under Stalin. Under Hitler, if you were a targeted untermentsch , there was absolutely nothing you could say or do to save yourself.

Plus, warped and bad as Soviet communism was, it was at least based on humane notions of acheiving equality and inclusiveness. Nazism was based on the opposite.
 
Easily Hitler, who probably has a bigger death toll anyway if you count the combat dead on both sides in his war of aggression. While Stalin was a paranoid mass murderer guilty of quasi-genocide against Ukrainians, Tatars, etc, only Hitler sought to outright eliminate certain groups and turn a third of Europe into German colonies.

I'd argue that Pol Pot was more evil than either; thankfully, he had far fewer people to destroy and so wasn't as destructive overall.
 

stefanbl

Banned
Hitler only killed people who were not what he viewed as "Aryan" or people who would even challenge his views, while Stalin would have you killed if he THOUGHT you were going to betray him, regardless of race or not.

Hitler got plenty of Germans killed.
 
Lenin first ,then Stalin continued the death and enslavement of millions before the war. And Stalin continued to kill his own people even when fighting a war. The mass starvation of the Ukraine in the 30's equaled Hitler's death camps totals and that was just one nationality Stalin persecuted.So Stalin was much more the devil than Hitler but he was the left's devil so he could be excused his crimes.
 
One left his country in ruins, and it didn't reunify for 45 years after his death. The other brought his country to new heights of power. Not much of a question.
 

mowque

Banned
Lenin first ,then Stalin continued the death and enslavement of millions before the war. And Stalin continued to kill his own people even when fighting a war. The mass starvation of the Ukraine in the 30's equaled Hitler's death camps totals and that was just one nationality Stalin persecuted.So Stalin was much more the devil than Hitler but he was the left's devil so he could be excused his crimes.

This thread does not bring out the best in people.
 

stefanbl

Banned
Lenin first ,then Stalin continued the death and enslavement of millions before the war. And Stalin continued to kill his own people even when fighting a war. The mass starvation of the Ukraine in the 30's equaled Hitler's death camps totals and that was just one nationality Stalin persecuted.So Stalin was much more the devil than Hitler but he was the left's devil so he could be excused his crimes.

I'm sure its the left's love of Stalin and not the whole world war thing.
 
After the Gulf War Prince Klahid said “If there has to be a superpower thank Allah that it is the United States.” Obviously if either Stalin or Hitler emerged heading the only superpower the world would have been a very different place; to put it mildly. Ultimately I vote for Hitler because he was the more unstable of the two. Stalin placed a greater emphasis on survival and I think he would have stopped the war sooner. Remember that many of the Soviet communists really believed that there economic system would eventually supplant capitalism and they would have expected that to happen. Hitler on the other hand seems to have been even more of megalomaniac and fought for the shear joy of fighting.
 
Stalin gets my vote for :
He get away with murder in some way,Hitler lost the war
He seems like the more calculated one of the tow,Will Hitler was driven by hate,Stalin seams more cold blooded.
 
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