I thought I would start the first post in this forum with a topic that is sure to be a real barn burner.

I do believe that Hitler was a SOB who killed millions of innocent people. I wont argue that point. I think that the US did enter the war on the right side. What I do find troubling is the kidd glove treatment historians give to Stalin.

Remember that Joe Stalin did make peace with the Germans when Hitler invaded Poland. Stalin then invaded Poland and cut the nation in half with the other half going to Germany. The Soviets then imprisoned thousands of Polish citizens, sending them to labor camps in Siberia where thousands died. Outright, he killed 15,000 Polish Officers in the Smolansk Forest and buried the bodies in mass graves (an incident denied by the soviet union until the very recently).

In the 1939, Stalin invaded the Baltic states and forced these nations into the Soviet Union. The same year an attempt was made to invade Finland, thus sparking the Winter War of '39 to '40.

The Winter war began with the invasion of Finland by the USSR. The Soviets vastly outnumbered the Finns, but were defeated. This was undoubted due to the fact that the Red Army was purged of 90% of its officer corps because of Stalin's paranoia.

We should also remember that as many as 700,000 soviet citizens actually fought for the German forces, not because they supported Hitler, but because they were opposed to Stalin. In the early years of the German invasion, ordinary russians welcomed German soldiers with bread and salt. Alexander Solzenytzen went so far as saying that if the Germans would not have been so harsh in their rule of Russia, the russians would have turned on Stalin and the Germans would have won the war.

The story of Hitler's Russian Army deserves special mention. During the seige of Moscow the invading Germans captured a brilliant General named Andrei Vlasov. Vlasov was a former aid to General Chang Kai Chek in China, sent by Stalin. He was well known for being intollerant of waste and corruption. In the early days of the war he organized the Soviet defenses and encountered the only successes for the Red Army.

After his capture Vlasov was persuaded to organize a "Russian Liberation Army", which was to fight Stalin. Vlasov believed that such a force would rescue the Soviet state from the harshness of Stalinist rule. As time went on he realized that this was not to happen. No such army existed until the end of the war, though some russian forces were used to fight resistance movements in the Balkins, Italy and elsewhere.

It was not until the very end of the war that the Russian Liberation Army actually existed. They were deployed in Poland and Bohemia to fight the invading Red Army. Ironically, when sent to defend Prague, they joined the Czech resistance on May 5, 1945 in the uprising of that city and took the city from the Gestapo. As Solzenitsyn said, how many citizens of Prague are aware which russian army liberated their city.

In the end, Vlasov and his army surrendered to the US and British Forces, but were betrayed, by order of the US president who was honoring the Yalta agreement, and turned over to the Soviets. Vlasov and several of his fellow officers were put to death. The remaining members of his army were forced into Siberian Labor camps where very few of them survived. Only in the 1990's were the few survivors released.

Yeah, they're both truly evil men.
After the first million does it matter who is more evil? ;)

Originally posted by Powerboss
Yeah, they're both truly evil men.
After the first million does it matter who is more evil? ;)
I think what I find so outragious is that, while Hitlers crimes are so well known, people choose to ignore those of Stalin. There were war crimes trials galore after the war. The Nazis were rightfully condemmed and hanged at Nurenburg. Where was the justice for the Soviet killers? We all know the word Auchawicz, but does anyone know about Kolyma, the icey hell where up to a million people died?

I think the reason people did not hear about it or know about it is because many in our government at that time supported, at least in thought the Soviets. Many in Hollywood supported them in thoughts and spoke out in thier behalf and whether we like it or not Hollywood influences our lives. On top of all that most folks simply did not know what was happening over there. If the media at the time did not, or would not, tell what was happening or actually lying about what was happening, how was anyone to know? Much of the information was just recently declassified and confessed.

I also agree with DD that both are evil, one just had more time to kill more people. But the killing didn't start with Stalin......it started with Lenin.

They were both true "evil doers" but certainly Stalin is favored by the establishment for some reason. Not many Hollywood productions or public school history lessons about this "evil doer." Stalin (real name Dzhugashivili) was a dictator from 1928-1953 who pioneered and instituted terrorism and concentration camps a decade before Hitler. FDR and the US military selected to arm, support, and embrace Stalin, who like the Taliban after we armed them, was later classified from an ally to an "evil doer."

Yeah, but Snouter, a lot of this is from shear lack of knowledge. Heck, we didn't know THAT much about Hitler till we got over there.

In a country like Russia, how easy is it to hide a few hundred thousand people for 10 or 15 years? Evidently, VERY!

Both were monsters...

However, it's true that Stalin isn't talked about as much as Hitler. I think, in part, it's because the Soviet regime lasted so much longer than the Nazis. The process of getting out info on Stalin took much longer. Khrushchev's began the "de-Stalinization" of the Soviet Union in the mid-1950s, but a lot of what he did just didn't become know in the west for a long time.

There's a great book by Adam Hochschild called "The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin" that documents Stalin's madness. I recommend reading it if you're interested in this topic.

Originally posted by Criminal
but does anyone know about Kolyma, the icey hell where up to a million people died?


Yep, I do. Actually, the number that died is closer to three million (the figures are inexact). I read "Kolyma Tales" by Varlam Shalamov in college many years ago. This is another book I recommend reading if you want to know what the Soviet regime was like under Stalin.


Here's some background on Shalamov from Penguin Classics...

Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov was born in 1907. A prose writer and poet, he has become known chiefly for his Kolyma Tales, in which he describes life in the Soviet forced-labour camps in north eastern Siberia. It is a theme he returns to in a second collection of stories, Graphite.
Shalamov was arrested for some unknown “crime” in 1929 while he was only twenty-two and a student at the law school of Moscow University. He was sentenced to three years in Solovki, a former monastery that had been confiscated from the Church and converted into a concentration camp. In 1937 he was arrested again and sentenced to five years in Kolyma. In 1942 his sentence was extended “till the end of the war”; in 1943 he received an additional ten-year sentence for having praised the effectiveness of the German army and having described Ivan Bunin, the Nobel laureate, as a “classic Russian writer”. He appears to have spent a total of seventeen years in Kolyma.

Shalamov did manage to smuggle Kolyma Tales out to the West, and they were published in German and French (and only much later in English). The Soviet authorities then forced him to sign a statement, published in Literaturnaya gazeta in 1972, in which he stated that the topic of Kolyma Tales was no longer relevant after the 20th Party Congress, ‘that he had never sent out any manuscripts, and that he was a loyal Soviet citizen’. Once Shalamov had renounced Kolyma Tales, he was permitted to publish his poems in the Soviet Union, and these began to appear in literary journals in 1956. Four small collections were published between 1961 and 1972. When he first came across an anthology of Shalamov’s poetry, Solzhenitsyn said that he “trembled as if he were meeting a brother”.

Varlam Shalamov died in 1982.

Originally posted by Powerboss
Yeah, they're both truly evil men.
After the first million does it matter who is more evil? ;)

Yeah id have to agree that after youve killed enough people and inflicted so much suffering people like this enter into the upper echelon horrific historical figures and it becomes a moot point, Id rank Pol Pot and Mao right down there with Stalin and Hitler. I dont think you can really put a numerical value on it though its like once youve inflicted so much suffering that you can never makeup for it then i think you enter their ranks.

Good to see we agree on a few things Cody.

Originally posted by Momof6
I think the reason people did not hear about it or know about it is because many in our government at that time supported, at least in thought the Soviets. Many in Hollywood supported them in thoughts and spoke out in thier behalf and whether we like it or not Hollywood influences our lives. On top of all that most folks simply did not know what was happening over there. If the media at the time did not, or would not, tell what was happening or actually lying about what was happening, how was anyone to know? Much of the information was just recently declassified and confessed.

I also agree with DD that both are evil, one just had more time to kill more people. But the killing didn't start with Stalin......it started with Lenin.
An excellent point. I think it has always been "PC" to be against Hitler, but if you were part of the intellectual elite in the 30's or 40's then you could not be opposed to Stalin. If anyone said anything bad about the Soviets they were labled a "fascist" extremist. It should be remembered that even many ernest leftists such as George Orwell were blasted for opposing Stalin.

All good points so far... Personally, I've heard Stalin killed alot more of his own people than Hitler killed in concentration camps, etc... Can't remeber the source though. It's been a while.

Given that both were extreme mass murderers, the point could very well be moot as has been previously pointed out. Here's another angle to view the whole debate from however...

Could it be argued that Hitler was worse because the brand of hate he preached lived beyond him, AND inspires other races to hate back with equal or greater intensity?

Despotism --the Emporer, King, Tsar/Commisar, der Fuhrer, whoever -- is absolute w/no 'legal' checks & balances available other than revolution. It has ALWAYS ended, by warfare (economic or armed conflict) ---so far anyway -- and been replaced with another try at society & civilization.

Communism: final stage of Marxist theory where State has withered away and economic goods are distributed equally. All goods owned in common and available by need.

Socialism: stage in Marxist theory transistional between capitalism and communism distinguished by unequal distribution of goods based on work done. Collective ownership of goods of production(capital).

Fascism: a regime that exalts nation(and race) above the individual. Autocratic and dictatorial.
State ownership of goods.

Hitler had the germanic speaking aryans and 'everybody else'. Judeo-Christians were defined as the 'bad guys'; he wanted the Roman Empire put back together with him & his in charge.

Stalin had a larger challenge with multiple languages/ethnics to unite against non-communism=capitalization, and used force against all dissenters (defined as non-party members to some degree).

Both arrived at same point, absolute dictatorship. USSR fell apart under Economic factors helped out by Cold-War sword waving by the West.
Armed conflict provide resolution in the other case.

Evil is evil, and I make no differentiation between the two, and a host of other immitators thru history.

I think Communism was better accepted, especially by liberals in the west, since the end point of communism promises eden. Fascists just plain have no utopian end to promise(to other than the chosen race). POWER is IT.

my $.02

Originally posted by Shadowhawk

Could it be argued that Hitler was worse because the brand of hate he preached lived beyond him, AND inspires other races to hate back with equal or greater intensity?
While there is no justification for Stalinist terror, I think there are many who would be more forgiving of this type of tyrany because it was in the name of an ideology which, at least in theory, preached equality of all men, whereas Hitler and his bunch were racial supreamists.

Personally I think both men should share the same place in hell.

Its like comparing a serial killer to a mob boss. They were each wrong and evil in their own way.

What these men are both guilty of -- above and beyond their crimes against humanity -- was taking advantage of the fears of their people, to harness a jingoistic, unquestioning allegiance to their philosophies. This, in turn, led to a manipulation of society and a surrendering of common sense, compassion and courage to the regime.

I blame the German and Russian people, for tolerating such despots and not having the courage to organize effective opposition to their rule. Not entirely, mind you...but their tolerance of what were obvious abuses of power lends to their cupability.

- Andy

Originally posted by acdavies
What these men are both guilty of -- above and beyond their crimes against humanity -- was taking advantage of the fears of their people, to harness a jingoistic, unquestioning allegiance to their philosophies. This, in turn, led to a manipulation of society and a surrendering of common sense, compassion and courage to the regime.


- Andy


That sounds so familiar...:eek: :o :cool: