Who was more evil, Hitler (and the Nazi's) or Stalin

[Grimes]

Stalin's blatant disregard for the lives of his people (among other things) or Hitler's attempt to exterminate a race. (among other things)

 

EDIT: Yes, it's subjective. I know.

[Chocolate]

"Evil" is very subjective.

 

Define the scope perhaps?

[♥Prof. Sugarcube♥]

Stalin.

 

He tried to commit genocide a number of times.

 

On his own people, on the Allies, even his Bloc countries. --> Ukraine & Hungary?

 

Hitler tried to exterminate Blacks, Jews, Gays and Gypsys, which is minor compared to Stalin almost starting nuclear warfare.

[Zefrom]

Probably Stalin. Not only did he killed a lot of people but he indirectly startedthe Cold War

[Grimes]

"Evil" is very subjective.

 

Define the scope perhaps?

 

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being Kim Kardashian and 10 being Hannibal Lector.

[Gent♥]

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being Kim Kardashian and 10 being Hannibal Lector.

That woman is a 15/10 on any scale of evil.

 

Um, well, it's important to compare the successes the two leaders did have. Both, despite all the murderings and stuff, led their country into a prosperous age (talking pre-WWII, of course.)

 

The difference being, Germany was entering a prosperous age anyway. It wasn't hit hard by the great depression of the late twenties and thirties, and Hitler has a lot of this sort of success attributed to him when it wasn't actually his doing.

Stalin on the other hand... is almost single-handedly responsible for the industrialisation and moderization of Russia. And of course the ends don't justify his particular means, but... you can't deny some pretty heavy ends. Despite the massive genocide a lot of Russians have respect for Stalin for this reason. Whereas I don't think any Germans are big fans of Hitler.

Hitler also actively started WWII. Russia was perfectly content to mind it's own business until Germany broke their peace treaty with them and started kicking their door down.

 

...I've gotta say Hitler. The direct numbers killed here don't come close to telling the full story.

[The Radiated Banana]

Both killed many people.

 

Stalin shaped modern Russia.

Hitler started WW2.

 

I have to say Hitler was eviler 

[Ward - MvM Anyone?]

Christians always go on about the time Jesus fed five thousand people with five loaves and two fishes.

What about Hitler? He made six million Jews toast.

 

 

+

Hans Lipschis, 93, has been arrested in Germany on suspicion of having been a guard at Auschwitz during the Holocaust.

He admits to working there, but claims he was only a cook.

I doubt that claiming to have been in charge of the ovens is going to help his defence much.

[Gent♥]

Christians always go on about the time Jesus fed five thousand people with five loaves and two fishes.

What about Hitler? He made six million Jews toast.

+

Hans Lipschis, 93, has been arrested in Germany on suspicion of having been a guard at Auschwitz during the Holocaust.

He admits to working there, but claims he was only a cook.

I doubt that claiming to have been in charge of the ovens is going to help his defence much.

 

Holocaust jokes. The ultimate taboo of the stand-up. Bravo, sir, even if that first one is blindingly obviously copy-pasted

[Ward - MvM Anyone?]

Holocaust jokes. The ultimate taboo of the stand-up. Bravo, sir, even if that first one is blindingly obviously copy-pasted

 

mwha sikipedia>

[Heated Bread]

The question doesn't make sense.  It's like asking which of 2 true things is more true.  Broken down to their purest form, truth statements are binary, and ultimately true and false are just labels we put on things to help categorize them.  There is no such thing as objective truth.  There is only objective reality.  Truth is a human concept, as is evil.  When discussing whether something is true, it usually means whether it matches up to objective reality or whether it is logically coherent/consistent and/or basic/self-evident.  Good and evil are the same.  They are labels we use to categorize things.  When someone says more or less evil, what they really mean is how harmful a person is or has the potential to be.

 

So I guess what we really should be asking is who did the most harm in terms of death and suffering caused, and possibly who had the most potential for harm given the right opportunity and based on the kind of personality they had.  In the latter case, we get into psychology, which i think is more fascinating, but also it's very hypothetical since it involves a lot of speculation about what might have been given possible circumstances which did not exist.

 

If it is purely a numbers game, we can try attributing a number of deaths to each person and declare whoever has the highest number the "most evil", but it turns out that even this is hard to do.  Estimates are all over the place, and you could argue the issue of responsibility for different cases endlessly.  For example, do we say that rommel is responsible for the deaths of his men at the hands of the allies?  Or do we say that the allied commanders are responsible for those axis troops that their men killed?  Or do we say that hitler is responsible for all of the deaths of german soldiers and the allies?  What about in cases where hitler failed to act militarily in a way that might have prevented deaths of axis forces?  It becomes a blame game.  Depending on your perspective and how you argue it, the blame for deaths can shift almost anywhere you'd like it to.  You could even just blame god for the whole mess if you like.  This gets us nowhere.  In this sense, the OP is very much correct in saying that it is a subjective issue.

 

It's not an easy question.  Maybe it's just a bad question to begin with.  Maybe the whole idea is nonsense.

 

Hitler and stalin were both evil.  Beyond that, I'm not really sure which of them had the worst impact on the world.  In other words, I'm not sure who was "more evil", and I don't think that's a question anyone can really answer with certainty.  It really depends a lot on how you're defining your criteria.

 

Stalin is generally thought to have killed more people than hitler, btw.  So if hard pressed for an answer, I'd have to go with stalin.

[♛ AlphaOmega ♛]

History specifically attack hitler for the genocide and WWII. Especially in the US, our history books portray him as the ultimate evil.

 

Stalin, on the other hand, in US history books, is definitely under-represented. They talk about how he took power etc etc but rarely go into details over what he did as ruler.

 

Time for a reality check: hitler actually came to power legally with good intentions. Stalin, on the other hand, took leadership by force, killed all political opponents, and proceeded to kill his own people. HOWEVER. Hitler, during the late stages of the war, became paranoid and also killed many Germans he felt were an obstacle to his regime. So they are BOTH guilty of killing their own people.

 

Genocide. From my knowledge, communism has no belief in God or gods, so perhaps he did kill religiously. However, he most likely just shot them or hanged them. Hitler on the other end, tortured, experimented, and harvested jews. Yes. Harvested for important organs, science reasons, and gold teeth. Perhaps Stalin tortured, but he did not take men and women and cut them open in the name of science and harvest.

 

in the end, it is your preference on what you grow up with. Most people will go through life with the textbook answer: Hitler. There is nothing wrong with that. Stalin is just underestimated throughout history. In fact, it is only just now that we are realizing his atrocities.

[Gent♥]

in the end, it is your preference on what you grow up with. Most people will go through life with the textbook answer: Hitler. There is nothing wrong with that. Stalin is just underestimated throughout history. In fact, it is only just now that we are realizing his atrocities.

 

Well, you say now... You mean 1991 when the Soviet Union fell and all their documents and archives got opened :3

So, contemporary historians have known about Stalin for a little while.

 

Well-intentioned extremists are always the worst kind, because you can always say 'oh, but he was trying to achieve so-and-so.' But, objectively, an atrocity is an atrocity. Whatever good you can scrape from it is just the thinnest of silver linings, I suppose.

[Zerr]

Nobodys evil. What does evil even mean? The human mind cannot be "evil".

[Gent♥]

Nobodys evil. What does evil even mean? The human mind cannot be "evil".

 

Think maybe you're reading too much into the question :3

[Zerr]

Think maybe you're reading too much into the question :3

True, true, but that's the kind of person i am.

[Gent♥]

True, true, but that's the kind of person i am.

Oh no, there was no value judgement attached to what I said, I was just highlighting it XD

 

I'm another sort who, when asked 'what time is it?', will ponder on at least some level 'what is time?'

[Heated Bread]

'what is time?'

 

the apparent progression of different configurations of a system

[Ixenzo]

Many people here in Russia are rather neutral about Stalin. He did lead the country to victory in WW2 (or The Great Patriotic War in USSR/CIS), but his ways of accomplishing it were... unconventional.

He made out of agrarian country a powerhouse and made the whole world to reckon with it. Many will agree that if it weren't for Stalin, world would have been very different.

No one could stop the Nazis. USSR, shaped by Stalin, did stop them,  saved the entire world.

 

As of Hitler...

I cannot judge him. He did what he considered to be necessary.

I didn't live back then, I do not know what really was happening. None of us here know.

[Bobsplosion]

http://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/the-all-time-worst-people-in-history

 

Moot used to be #1 and #3 (literally worse than Hitler.)

[♛ AlphaOmega ♛]

Well, you say now... You mean 1991 when the Soviet Union fell and all their documents and archives got opened :3

So, contemporary historians have known about Stalin for a little while.

 

Well-intentioned extremists are always the worst kind, because you can always say 'oh, but he was trying to achieve so-and-so.' But, objectively, an atrocity is an atrocity. Whatever good you can scrape from it is just the thinnest of silver linings, I suppose.

I meant just recently like in the last decade or 2. We didnt learn about what he was doing in 1946. It took a while.

 

Yes an antrocity is still an atrocity no matter how you put it. Thats why they are equally evil in my eyes. The preference on who is worse comes from our educational background. Most texts say that it was hitler, but the truth is stalin was just as bad.

[Zerr]

Oh no, there was no value judgement attached to what I said, I was just highlighting it XD

 

I'm another sort who, when asked 'what time is it?', will ponder on at least some level 'what is time?'

True, but i wouldn't do that in a normal conversation. 

[Splat]

http://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/the-all-time-worst-people-in-history

 

Moot used to be #1 and #3 (literally worse than Hitler.)

Holy shit this is hilarious

[λngelღмander]

Personally, I'd like to think they're both equally evil, because they both basically had the same ideals. They had an equal uncaring for human life. Probably a large portion of the human race is capable of committing such atrocities anyway, we're all animals inside. Fucking monkeys, I tell you.

[Prawblems]

No one could stop the Nazis. USSR, shaped by Stalin, did stop them, saved the entire world.

Yo Ixenzo, I'm really happy for you, Imma let you finish, but its Russia's cold climate that stopped Hitler from anschlussing Russia.

 

When Germany led the invasion, they were pretty successful until they were about to reach Moscow, when the winter came.

 

Most of the German forces were wiped out, so they backed off, and then Russia took advantage of that and prevented Germany from invading Moscow.

 

 

That aside, I think its really hard to tell. They're both evil in their own ways, Hitler by doing massacres on Jews and other minorites for not much of a reason other than his brain thinking that they're crap, while Stalin, trying to achieve his personal goals, ended the lives of hundreds of millions, while making Russia a superpower.

 

 

 

 

 

flies away