[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Hitler: The Lesser of Two Evils? (Page 1 of 2)
Posted: 1/8/2007 10:19:34 PM EDT
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Who was it, Hitler or Stalin? I had this argument with a co-worker, who is a big history buff. Now that I have the poll up, I think that overall Hitler was the lesser of the two. Yes, he was an evil psychotic lunatic. But purely in the interest of a good argument, given the choices of Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia, I would rather have dealt with the Nazis. |
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I had to say Hitler on the basis that I believe Stalin killed more people, and that Hitler was completely and totally evil, and we could live with that, but we had to be allies with Stalin still have to watch our backs afterward. Another question. If not for Stalin and the cold war, would we have seen the rise of the "Military Industrial Complex" that Eisenhower foretold? |
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Depends on how you look at it. Stalin killed more people and didn't care whom he killed. He only cared about his power. He only killed to protect his power. Hitler was specifically out to destroy certain societies. He killed to kill, regardless of percieved threat to him. My vote goes to Hitler. |
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Germany is a major economic power and free society now though, and the Jews have their own (albeit contested) home. The lands under Stalin's control are still suffering from his latent influence. And despite the Nazis' supreme evil, we were at least able to salvage the building blocks of modern technology from their burnt out hulk of a society. About the only good thing to come from Stalin's rule are $49 Mosin-Nagants. |
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Of the two Hitler was the lesser of two evils. that being said it is like trying to decide if your going to put your hand into a bag with a black mamba, or a bag with a king cobra. Stalin was responsible for more murders by far than Hitler, it is not even a close comparison. Stalin used guns, starvation, and gulags, while Hitler used bullets and gas ovens. I tend to beleive that you probably had a better chance at survival in Nazi Germany than you did in Stalin's Russia. Rather amazing to me that even now there are societies that allow individuals no different than Hitler and Stalin to obtain and matain these ultimate positions of power. Pol Pot, Saddam Hussane. |
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I've always said that I couldn't understand why Stalin is generally thought of better than Hitler. He was at least as big a monster as Hitler was and his bodycount, even by conservative estimates, far exceedes Hitler's. Hitler was evil, but Stalin was evil and good at it. |
It funny how History Plays Hitler as being the most evil man and how quickly most forget that Stalin was just as Much an Asshole, even more cruel in some cases. Atleast Hitler had more respect for his own people, didn't send his troops into a battle and have them mowed down by gunfire for retreating because they had no weapons.  Like I said though, they were both Assholes, both evil in their very own ways. Evil is just evil. There is no Grey, Both are Teh Ghey. Nathan |
Tell that nonsense to the 6th Army or other whole Armies wasted by his idiotic no retreat orders… … Or the multitude of Germans murdered by the Nazis. ETA: I don’t understand this need by some to somehow make Hitler out to be less evil by some convoluted thought process that someone else was worse… it is just bullshit. |
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It is an appalling fact that both killed millions of people. Here's an overlooked "silver lining" if you will to hitlers reign of terror. His doctors performed so much research on live subjects that some experts say he actually advanced modern medicine by a half century. They perfected surgical techniques and did massive amounts of work on the nervous system. They stumbled across valuable data while perfecting torture techniques involving the nervous system. No I am not condoning hitler or what he did, just stating a benefit some of you might not be aware of. The nazi's perfected the setting of fractures and breaks of bones. The insertions of SS rods and pins was also perfected by them. |
Thats too funny. OK you can thank the American schooling system for this one, other than knowing the name Stalin i have no idea who he is. |
My usual response is something like " horse shit or cow shit -- but it is all shit" Both are leftists that did lots of bad. We as a world should learn from them and not allow a repeat. |
Not to mention advances in almost every other technology. German scientists were a goldmine after the war. Granted most was for war purposes...  This is a tough one. On balance I'm going with Stalin. Stalin killed purely for personal gain. Hitler had a real agenda for his people, albeit a sick and twisted one. |
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They were both a "Time" magazine "man of the year" www.time.com/time/subscriber/personoftheyear/archive/stories/1938.html www.time.com/time/subscriber/personoftheyear/archive/stories/1939.html (edited to make links hot) |
| Both were evil. Hitler killed many in his early days, but the final solution with its genocidal campaign against the untermensch didn't really kick into high gear until the war started. Stalin, on the other hand, never stopped the bloodbath after he ascended to power. They deserved one another. |
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I think Hitler takes it by just a hair. Stalin had him on the sheer scale of deaths, but it was done out of simple despotic greed, which while it's evil, it's not on the same scale of evil of tryin to exterminate a race simply because you don't like them. Stalin did it just to consolidate power - nothing more or less. Hitler did it out of something a bit darker. |
I must disagree. When you are killing me and my entire family, I could honestly not give a shit about your motives. Numbers are the key. And if you factor in motive, Hitler was killing his perceived enemies, Stalin was killing his own people. And not just those who threartened his position. |
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Depends on if you are JEWISH or not! But even if you aren't, you're quite foolish for thinking that Hitler was the lesser of two evils Hitler was NOT the lesser of two evils. Imagine if he had developed nukes and had gone on to dominate Europe. Imagine if his scientists had more time to develop weapons... It would have been a disaster! Neo-Nazis in America can't seem to comprehend that Hitler wasn't really about the whole race thing as much as he was about dominating the world. Hitler is not, and would not have been a friend to any American under any circumstances. |
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Hitler isn't even in the same league as Stalin. At the very minimum Stalin and his Jew henchman are responsible for over 20 million murders. Stalin's Jews We mustn't forget that some of greatest murderers of modern times were Jewish Published: 12.21.06, 23:35 Here's a particularly forlorn historical date: Almost 90 years ago, between the 19th and 20th of December 1917, in the midst of the Bolshevik revolution and civil war, Lenin signed a decree calling for the establishment of The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage, also known as Cheka. Within a short period of time, Cheka became the largest and cruelest state security organization. Its organizational structure was changed every few years, as were its names: From Cheka to GPU, later to NKVD, and later to KGB. We cannot know with certainty the number of deaths Cheka was responsible for in its various manifestations, but the number is surely at least 20 million, including victims of the forced collectivization, the hunger, large purges, expulsions, banishments, executions, and mass death at Gulags. Whole population strata were eliminated: Independent farmers, ethnic minorities, members of the bourgeoisie, senior officers, intellectuals, artists, labor movement activists, "opposition members" who were defined completely randomly, and countless members of the Communist party itself. In his new, highly praised book "The War of the World, "Historian Niall Ferguson writes that no revolution in the history of mankind devoured its children with the same unrestrained appetite as did the Soviet revolution. In his book on the Stalinist purges, Tel Aviv University's Dr. Igal Halfin writes that Stalinist violence was unique in that it was directed internally. Lenin, Stalin, and their successors could not have carried out their deeds without wide-scale cooperation of disciplined "terror officials," cruel interrogators, snitches, executioners, guards, judges, perverts, and many bleeding hearts who were members of the progressive Western Left and were deceived by the Soviet regime of horror and even provided it with a kosher certificate. All these things are well-known to some extent or another, even though the former Soviet Union's archives have not yet been fully opened to the public. But who knows about this? Within Russia itself, very few people have been brought to justice for their crimes in the NKVD's and KGB's service. The Russian public discourse today completely ignores the question of "How could it have happened to us?" As opposed to Eastern European nations, the Russians did not settle the score with their Stalinist past. And us, the Jews? An Israeli student finishes high school without ever hearing the name "Genrikh Yagoda," the greatest Jewish murderer of the 20th Century, the GPU's deputy commander and the founder and commander of the NKVD. Yagoda diligently implemented Stalin's collectivization orders and is responsible for the deaths of at least 10 million people. His Jewish deputies established and managed the Gulag system. After Stalin no longer viewed him favorably, Yagoda was demoted and executed, and was replaced as chief hangman in 1936 by Yezhov, the "bloodthirsty dwarf." Yezhov was not Jewish but was blessed with an active Jewish wife. In his Book "Stalin: Court of the Red Star", Jewish historian Sebag Montefiore writes that during the darkest period of terror, when the Communist killing machine worked in full force, Stalin was surrounded by beautiful, young Jewish women. Stalin's close associates and loyalists included member of the Central Committee and Politburo Lazar Kaganovich. Montefiore characterizes him as the "first Stalinist" and adds that those starving to death in Ukraine, an unparalleled tragedy in the history of human kind aside from the Nazi horrors and Mao's terror in China, did not move Kaganovich. Many Jews sold their soul to the devil of the Communist revolution and have blood on their hands for eternity. We'll mention just one more: Leonid Reichman, head of the NKVD's special department and the organization's chief interrogator, who was a particularly cruel sadist. In 1934, according to published statistics, 38.5 percent of those holding the most senior posts in the Soviet security apparatuses were of Jewish origin. They too, of course, were gradually eliminated in the next purges. In a fascinating lecture at a Tel Aviv University convention this week, Dr. Halfin described the waves of soviet terror as a "carnival of mass murder," "fantasy of purges", and "essianism of evil." Turns out that Jews too, when they become captivated by messianic ideology, can become great murderers, among the greatest known by modern history. The Jews active in official communist terror apparatuses (In the Soviet Union and abroad) and who at times led them, did not do this, obviously, as Jews, but rather, as Stalinists, communists, and "Soviet people." Therefore, we find it easy to ignore their origin and "play dumb": What do we have to do with them? But let's not forget them. My own view is different. I find it unacceptable that a person will be considered a member of the Jewish people when he does great things, but not considered part of our people when he does amazingly despicable things. Even if we deny it, we cannot escape the Jewishness of "our hangmen," who served the Red Terror with loyalty and dedication from its establishment. After all, others will always remind us of their origin. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0%2C7340%2CL-3342999%2C00.html |