@LHoffman:
Not that you cannot make a damn good case for Hitler, because you can and you are. However, if a life is a life and each is equal, why not a communist like Stalin who both killed in his own and supported other regimes/governments to do the same? If you had to ask yourself who was more successful, you would pick Stalin. He lived longer, likely killed more, and perpetuated the culture of death and crushing of freedom in communism the world round. Hitler was less evil if only for the fact that he did not live to see his dream succeed. Stalin did, and we continue to struggle with the mess he made today. Hitler’s World War II has been cleaned up for some time now.
I haven’t been on here to make a reply because of all that’s been going on, so it’s mostly a dropped discussion, but thought I’d make a few comments.
Stalin simply can not be blamed for everything. Neither can Hitler, but I think everyone can agree what damage he wrought on the world. I didn’t give him credit for the entire war, but the fatality count is extremely high for a short amount of time.
Stalin, on the other hand, appears to be the culprit (by your opinion and others on here) for everything before he was in power, and after he was dead. This is absurd. Stalin had a larger window of rule than Hitler, but not by much. And the failure of his rule/inaction/severity of his policies have some room for debate, but I included them. As I said, 20 million is on the larger end of the scale of those who’ve given the issue much thought. It’s more than a simple “well China was communist so therefore STALIN”. It doesn’t work that way.
BTW, it only took 3 years after Stalin’s death for Khrushchev to enact Destalinization.
Yeah, any dummy off the street will pick Hitler given the choice of the two (or even anyone else on the list). Fortunately, our community here is a little more knowledgeable than the general populace. As noted by IL.
Apparently not. It seems like a knee jerk reaction to communism to me and throwing anything that will stick at a guy that had very little to do with more than half of what you attribute to him.
@Mallery29:
I did several research projects on Stalin going through school and 20 million would be a very very conservative number. He did have a lot more years on Hitler though, because he was there from the beginning, so that’s why you will find the numbers will never be solid….the Revolution itself put a lot of blood on Stalin’s hands…and after Lenin’s stroke, he had a free pass as essentially being the #2 or 3 (depending on how you look at it)…
Except that 20 million is being generous. From what beginning? Stalin wasn’t a leader until after the Revolution.
See, this is what I’m talking about: you can be vague and imprecise to defend a faulty argument. Or just be completely wrong.
Specificity is what we are looking for here.