Stalin vs Hitler

[brandondrury]

This was written on another thread, so I moved it here:

If the Holocaust gets this much attention (deservedly), then how come Stalin doesn't get at least the same "coverage" for killing 25 million Poles, slavs, and russians??

Simple. Because Hitler is WAY more well known than Stalin. In practically every way Stalin was worse than Hitler, but we never fought a real war against Stalin. (Just the beginning of the Cold War).

As history passes, it matters not what really happened. It only matters who the good guy is and who the bad guy is. Hitler is the bad guy. Stalin gets forgotten. This is the logic of the laymen who aren't interested in such topics.

Of course, this leads to problems because people see a Swastika and flip out. When people see my growing collection of books that happen to cover the most horrific events in history they somtimes get upset when they see all the Swastikas. These people are brain dead and simply assume I'm reading "hate books". In my experience, "hate" and "books" seldom go together.

So, to answer the question, I think people want/need simple explanations to difficult problems. This is why Hitler is the worst dude in history (Christopher Columbus is directly responsible for more deaths than Hitler), Stalin is forgotten, and Columbus gets a national holiday.

Interesting about Stalin, I can't recall ever hearing about him wiping out 25 million people. That is an interesting contrast as to why one has so much attention and the other doesn't. Maybe because the U.S. was so involved in WWII and not involved in what went on in Russia during that period?

We didn't give a damn what Stalin did because he was on our side at the time. He was fighting Germany in the East (at VERY VERY HEAVY casualties) while US, Britian, Canada, etc were in the West.

[.tom]

"In my experience, "hate" and "books" seldom go together" hahaha -brilliant!

[thesilentdrummer]

Yah, I brought that up mainly because of the influence of my Modern World History Teacher in High School. We covered extensively the Russian Revolution and the Nazi Revolution (and the economic failure that set up the Nazi rise to power). This teacher didn't give a crap about morals or stuff as far as the political leaders like lots of teachers do (he didn't talk about the Holocaust at all). He did say Stalin was way worse than Hitler. He compared the dictators of WWII, saying Mussolini killed around 200,000-500,000 (but he was more mafia and beat up/kidnapped a lot more), Hitler killed about 10million People total (I think), and Stalin killed upwards of 25million.

Basically, though, I think it would suck if either Hitler or Stalin didn't like you.

[izzme]

i'm not sure but i believe mao tse tung killed even more. or at least as many. check it out.

[thesilentdrummer]

Wikipedia says 2.5-5mil killed by the Chinese dude, with about 1.5 sent to labor camps.

[shure_1302]

first I would not cite Wiki as a source of reliable information, since anybody can write there whatever they want.


The reason world (and especially US) know about Hitler is that Jews in Europe (mostly in Poland) were almost completely exterminated during his time and by his direct orders. When nazi started their antiJew policy in their own country nobody in Europe cared. When they started a war in Europe nobody in US cared. However afterwards the formation of Israel and establishment of strong Jewish lobby in US let them to rise awareness on the Holocaust.

Stalin however is another matter - russia did not invade any other country (but Finland, where russians lost). He was the leader of Russia and under his regime people of any nationality were allegedly convicted and prosecuted for nothing. It was called "personnel cleaning" - if you are not loyal enough you can be accused in counterrevolutionary activity. But the point is that it was happening inside Russia - it was an internal affair. Moreover, at that time Russia was the _only_ example of more or less socialistic-communistic country without ruling clique of aristocracy and rich and it was surrounded by capitalist countries. So any bad things which were happening inside russia were only beneficial for the governments of all the other countries. The worst situation in Soviet Russia the better, because working class in their own countries would think harder before doing new local revolution. So what was the point to rise a question?

I can ask you another question, why nobody knows about french genocide in Algeria. or British mass killings in India? I even would not mention US activity on the issues.

[brandondrury]

British mass killings in India

I had a thread on that here somewhere.

I wasn't aware of the Algeria / French genocide, but I'm still learning.

This is the part of that the typical US citizen doesn't include in his magic Christopher Columbus - George Washington - Most Powerful Country In The World - Richest Country in the World - Most Righteous Country in the World way of thinking. The west has been a part of many horrific incidents. We are probably in the middle of one right now.

Brandon

[kyle barton]

why all the angst against Christopher Columbus? he was a friggin sailor, not the anti-christ, or hitler, or any other world leader.

he sailed west until he bumped into something.

[brandondrury]

why all the angst against Christopher Columbus? he was a friggin sailor, not the anti-christ, or hitler, or any other world leader.

The book I read "Lies My Teacher Told Me" stated that Columbus came back to the new world a 2nd time in a quest for gold. The rule was simple. Each slave on the new island had to bring back X amount of gold or they had one hand chopped off. If you didn't bring back X amount of gold the second time around, you were killed. According to the book, there were 18,000,000 people on the island (that always seemed high to me). When Columbus left, there were nearly zero.

I may be mixing up some of the claims of the book, I read it two or three years ago. However, the book made the claim that Columbus was directly responsible for more deaths than Hitler and this did not take into account the effects on the American Indian population which were devastating. (Depends on how you define "directly").

Maybe the book is full of shit. It didn't feel like it, but you never really know.

Brandon

[izzme]

columbus caused the death of two thirds of the population in mexico when he brought diseases to which they had no resistance.the same thing happened to europe and great britain when the caravans brought the plague from the east. later the middle east and north africa were hit so badly by it,that it retarded their economics and steps to modernity.then they were weak and were colonized easily. colon-ized, i don't even like the sound of that word arrggg. i hope i'm not buggin anybody with my runnin on it's kinda pent up. oh yeah and what made our illegal immigration easy was that the french landed earlier further north than plymouth bay and the diseases they brought had decimated the native population in that region,so the indians the pilgrims came across saw the superior weapons they had so they were interested in having them as allies.high tech wins standard wars.i guess its a good thing they didn't have the tech to throw us out or they would have!