Comparing Hitler and Stalin

UPI ^ | May 9, 2005 | Robin Shepherd

[Tailgunner Joe]

As a matter of fact, mass terror and purges were even more central to the Soviet system of rule than to Nazism, the full extent of whose tyranny did not evolve until several years after Hitler had taken power, and then in the midst of World War II.

Soviet mass terror, by contrast, was a feature of the regime right from the beginning. Lenin's core principle of Red Terror was applied in the slaughter of up to half a million class enemies in the very first years of Soviet rule. And that is before we add in the millions of victims of a civil war which was the direct result of communist despotism.

In Lenin's own words, the new Soviet system was "a special system of organized violence against a certain class." The use of terror against class and ideological enemies was thus a central, defining part of the communist system.

Lenin's Commissar for Justice Issac Steinberg well remembers in his memoirs a telling conversation with Lenin in which he (bravely) expressed reservations about the scale of that terror. "Then why do we bother with a commissariat of Justice?" he asked Lenin. "Let's call it frankly the commissariat for Social Extermination and be done with it!" Lenin jumped at the idea. "Well put," he said. "That's exactly what it should be...but we can't say that."

Nazism and Communism shared many things in common. Both were varieties of socialism -- one a nationalist socialism, the other a Marxist-Leninist socialism. Both were intrinsically anti-capitalist, anti-individualist and anti-democratic. Both categorized entire groups as enemies destined for annihilation, and did all they could to annihilate them. Both hated each other, and both hated the West.

[Cyclopean Squid]

Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679729941/qid=1115682036/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/102-2733444-6640131) by Alan Bullock is a superb work that examines both the similarities and differences of Hitler and Stalin. It is in the form of a dual biography with similar events in their lives grouped together (difficult to do it chronologically, since Stalin was born 10 years before Hitler and lived about 7 years longer).

[Cyclopean Squid]

I guess I should have rounded that to 8 years longer.`8^)

[rudyudy]

I don't know how accurate this is but I read somewhere that Stalin and Hitiler were, in their younger days, both in Vienna at the same time. I wonder if they walked passed each other as they were trying to determine what to do with their lives.

[spanalot]

There is no comparison.

Stalin got away with murder - being a newspaper man himself, he manipulated the MSM into being his usefull idiot.

Fascinating that this mass psychosis is still so strong after 75 years.

[dfwgator]

The only difference between the Nazis and the Soviets is that the Nazis filmed their victims, while Soviet victims suffered in secrecy. We have the images of Nazi atrocities, that are etched into our memories. There are no such images from the Lubyanka, or from the Gulags.

[tet68]

I don't know about that, I think we just haven't seen them
yet.

[Cyclopean Squid]

I don't know how accurate this is but I read somewhere that Stalin and Hitiler were, in their younger days, both in Vienna at the same time. I wonder if they walked passed each other as they were trying to determine what to do with their lives.

I've heard that too. I'm not sure exactly where, though. You know, it might actually be in Bullock's book! There were also several other personages in Vienna in the early 1900s. I often thought of the same thing--these titans of history could very well have hung it in the same cafe. Trotsky, too (although I'm not sure when he was in Vienna).

Trotsky hung out in Cafe Central, while Hitler favored Sperl. I have to say, having visited them both, that I am a bigger fan of Sperl.

[sergeantdave]

It's always refreshing to read an article that correctly identifies fascists as left wing socialists. Not as some kind of right wing capitalist/government conspiracy that formed a mutually agreed upon partnership.

Businesses under fascism were under duress to conform to bureaucratic edicts in order to achieve the goals set out for the so-called common good. Businesses who failed to do so faced fines, seizure of business or a trip to the concentration camps. The primary tenet of fascism/Nazism was government control of private property for the collective common good.

I would disagree on one small point with the author and it's this -

Fascism and communism are but two branches that grow from the same Marxist tree. They are the ultimate Marxist competitors.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Stalin got away with murder - being a newspaper man himself, he manipulated the MSM into being his usefull idiot.

Really? First mention I've seen of Stalin's involvement in newspapers. Mussolini, OTOH, I knew was the biggest journalist in Italy before making himself its national editor-in-chief as head of his Fascist government.

[GSlob]

"First mention I've seen of Stalin's involvement in newspapers."
IIRC, he was involved in provincial clandestine commie publication in pre-revolutionary Russia, in Transcaucasia area. If memory serves, the rag was called (in Georgian) "Tskhovreba", but in what capacity he was there - as an editor, assistant printer or anything else - I do not know.

[Finny]

I agree, there is no comparison. Hitler was a fluke, a guy in the right place at the right time to take advantage of a thoroughly demoralized populace (Treaty of Versailles) in the name of nationalism.

Stalin, Mao, Lenin, were not flukes. They were the calculating enforcers of a twisted "intellectual" political philosophy that shunned religion and killed many, many more millions than Hitler ever did, in the name of the Communist goal of making a reality of the motto, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."

[GOP_1900AD]

Hannah Arendt nailed it in her book "The Origins of Totalitarianism."

[GSlob]

"Fascism and communism are but two branches that grow from the same Marxist tree."
Close, but no cigar. Better comparison would be, say, an 80 proof vodka versus Everclear at 190. You see, fascism still contained respectable amounts of water.

[wrathof59]

Adolph and his cabal didn't have too shabby of a record when it came to propaganda either.

[Freemarketman]

One of the chief differences between life under Nazism and Communism, as pointed out in the excellent new book "Stalin and his Hangmen", was that if you were an ordinary citizen in pre-war Nazi Germany, and not a member of one of Hitler's target groups, life was quite good. You just had to look the other way. In contrast, the Soviet period in Russia was a time of terror for everyone.

[RightWingAtheist]

The only people who have ever had it good under communism are tourists.

[Revenge of Sith]

There's credible information suggesting that Stalin died a violent death.

[Arthur Wildfire! March]

"You see, fascism still contained respectable amounts of water."

I disagree. There are different kinds of fascism. The nazis were a Junk-eugenics worshipping sect of marxism, just as bad as Stalin ever was. In fact, I don't recall learning about Stalin turning human skin into lamp shades.

Then there's Islamo-facism, perhaps the first form of facism that is actually a theocracy. That version of facism is volitile. It almost annihilated the entire nation of India at one time. And it so far has been tamed in one nation by a Turkish constitution that actually calls for occasional military coups if the Islamo-facists get too domineering.

Then there is the 'neocon' theory, which theoretically is a slippery slope that 'neocons' will one day use foreign wars to bring facism to the US. Well, it's 2005 now, and I don't see any alarming signs of it yet. If anything, the World Court, the UN, and the underground leftist RINOs in DC seem like a greater threat to me.

[PzGr43]

"Mass terror and purges," he says, "were not intrinsic to Soviet rule, as was clear after Stalin's death."

"This, remember, is taken from a column in the Guardian last week. Not from the ranting of some half-crazed Marxist in the 1930s, screaming: "I've seen the future and it works." It is the opinion of a respected British commentator writing in 2005 in a newspaper which claims the values of intellectual honesty and moral decency as its own. "

This is simply a classic. Better than George Bernard Shaw's "There is no famine in the Ukraine" after his visit to the Ukraine at the height of the famine.

You must remember, that the psychopathogens of the left are far more important to them than anything like 'the truth' or 'facts'. There are no such thing to them, merely items to be used in their struggle to bring about 'social-justice'.

WRT: Political taxonomisation, Stalin vs Hitler, etc. If you really must attempt taxonomisation of something so spectral, ultra-nationalist, fascism, Marxism, socialism, etc, then some works by Dr Roger Griffin might be of interest.

http://dogbert.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=%22roger+griffin%22&y=10&x=24

The thing is, the programs of both Hitler, Stalin, and a lot of others, require a police state, and thus you need to take out the common denominator of a police state to make the comparison. Sometimes, there is little left apart from the wrapping after you have canceled on both sides of the equation.