Is it really possible to say Hitler was more evil than Stalin or vice versa? They both committed heinous mass atrocities on an industrial scale.
I look forward to your opinions.
davidmich
Moderator Action
This is more of an opinion/debate type of thing than a factual question. Let’s try IMHO for now. If the responses end up being more of a debate it may end up in GD later.
Moving thread from General Questions to In My Humble Opinion.
“Evil” would be a personal flaw, assuming such a thing exists and mostly unrelated to what they did. I could be more evil than Hitler and Stalin combined and you would be none the wiser, as long as I don’t have the means to engage in mass murder.
I wonder what kind of metric you would use to measure “evil”.
ETA : Quite often, it’s said that Hitler was worst than Stalin for killing people for who they were rather than for what they did (or were suspected to intend to do). I’m not terribly convinced that it mattered much for the victims.
I don’t know. I think the actual commission of evil counts for something above and beyond mere evil intent. In my opinion, a person who kills ten people is more evil than a person who wants to kill a thousand people but never commits an actual murder.
Too late to edit :
Also in neither case it was gratuitous. Both had a purpose. They didn’t have people killed just for fun and giggle, as an “evil” person presumably would.
Maybe. I’m not sure what the OP means by “evil”, that’s why I asked him how he would measure it.
Yes, it was for a purpose. But it was an evil purpose. Too many people think that evil is restricted to pure sadism, but far more often, it consists of just not caring about the impact of your actions on others.
As to which of the two was more evil, I don’t see that it matters, from a human perspective. Either one is evil enough to warrant the full maximum measure of human response to stop them. Now, if there’s an afterlife to which they should be consigned based on their morality, and it differs in gradations for different levels of evil, then that would be another thing… But that’s not a decision any human needs to make, so we need not concern ourselves with it.
To me at least, Hitler always had an element of craziness or kookery about him- it wasn’t necessarily rational or sensible- he hated who he hated as much from mental illness as from sheer hate. It’s not like there was a huge Jewish, Roma, gay or disabled opposition to Hitler, you know.
Stalin on the other hand was much more coldly rational about the whole thing. Kulaks getting in the way of collectivization? Kill nearly a million of them and they’ll get the message.
I’m not letting either off the hook, but relatively capricious hatred and mass murder due to mental illness somehow seems less “evil” than cold, calculating elimination of your enemies and opponents, a la Stalin.
It strikes me that the OP is, actually, asking about the established narrative of WW2 and the Cold War in the West, or more specifically the US.
When WW2 unfolded, Hitler was The Bad Guy. The fact that he did such atrocious things to Jews and others made it that much easier to frame him as The Bad Guy. That’s why WW2 is referred to as the “last good war.”
Stalin’s atrocities were, I believe, less understood at the time. And as they became understood, it was in a very different context - a weird Cold War vs. a clear war vs. a Bad Guy.
They both made decisions which directly led to the deaths of millions of people. Whether either is “evil” is a personal moral view and part of historical narratives. History evolves.
Hitler’s side lost the war. Stalin’s side won the war. History, in the short term, is written by the victors. A longer view shows both as mass murderers.
A better summary than mine.
Well, for me, “evil” conjures up images of Sauron, or, at best, of a psychopath who enjoys killing.
I’m not convinced, either, that Hitler didn’t have any empathy. It seems to me that he fully realized that killing people in cold blood makes one feel awful but that a good nazi had to repress those feelings for the greater good. I believe he did say things to this effect.
On balance, the image I have of Stalin is closer to my conception of “evil” (cold blooded and primarily concerned with his own well-being, which I believe Hitler wasn’t much).
Of course, I’m still thinking of evil in terms of mindset rather than actual actions, here, but that’s my understanding of the word.
Curious; this is the opposite of how I feel. Stalin’s ruthless, rational elimination of his (perceived) opponents makes sense to me, whether it was purely self-serving to preserve his power, in service of the Revolution/Communism, or (almost certainly) some complicated mixture of the two*. Doesn’t make any of it right, but I can see where the guy was coming from. Hitler’s monomaniacal focus on a specific race, and systematic eradication of that race–that’s what gives me the jibblies.
- To what extent various communist leaders did things because they really believed the Marxist-Leninist ideology vs. to protect their own power and privilege is an interesting discussion all by itself, but suited for a different thread.
To me. neither Hitler or Stalin were mysteries – they were one flavor or another of crazy. The real mystery to me is their tens of thousands or millions of enablers, all the seemingly “normal” people who just buried (or surrendered) their own moral judgement in order to carry out mass murder after mass murder.
I know that evil is usually defined in terms of religion, but it doesn’t have to be. Morality can exist outside of religious dogma. I have not seen any good definition for it. I can only offer some key words.
Words that come to mind when I think of evil are: cold calculated/rational banal approach to some planned malicious/nefarious/ruthless…annihilation/desecration/extirpation/humiliation/utter destruction (of mostly people), I think sane people (even if neurotic) can commit real evil.
Perhaps someone out there can think of a good definition.
davidmich
Thats a pretty good definition. I recall reading an article which stuck with me, the author stated that too many people justify mundane petty everyday ‘evils’ because ‘its not like I’m Hitler or anything’.
As to how Hitler and Stalin differed I once read a rather chilling passage in an otherwise light-hearted comedy science-fiction book which stated that Hitler was a standard human ‘monster’ who directed his malice towards the ‘other’ while Stalin simply killed everyone and anyone who took he decided to and hinted that he was actually an enemy alien agent who was working towards initiating a nuclear Third World War to kill off much of humanity for his masters but died/was killed before he achieved his objective.
It doesn’t quite seem to be said above: Hitler was a rabidly racist nutbag who set out to kill all the “others” who didn’t measure up. Stalin was an ice-hearted bastard who would kill millions of his own people to fulfill his vision. I honestly don’t know which is worse. Wars are fought by “otherizing” the enemy, but few go to the extreme that Hitler did. OTOH, civil wars of any stripe involve killing your own kind and are thus the nastiest category of war.
Fuck 'em both, as I hope some demon is doing with a two-foot nail-studded prick.
Kilonazis, of course. (See the last two panels).
I guess it’s a matter of opinion. Stalin killed far more people than Hitler, but that’s largely because he was in power longer, and thus had more opportunity.
Personally, I consider Stalin eviler than Hitler, because Stalin was the kind of heartless asshole who would turn on his closest friends if he decided it would be to his benefit. Hitler at least had the excuse (no matter how insufficient it may be) that he hated the people he was trying to kill. Stalin wiped out millions purely because they were in the way.
Not too much of a hijack, but the Japanese gave Hitler and Stalin quite a run for their money in the 30s and 40s. Was there a single person who’s identified with that? Tojo, Hirohito?