*No. Stalin was already killing people hand over fist by 1939. Not to mention the night of the long knives in Germany in 1934, and the Kristalnatch in 1938. I could go on.*
I should not have stated “No one”...but, you’re comparing the relatively few deaths in Germany before 1939 to the tens of millions that happened after the invasion of Poland? Not just the military/civilian deaths, but the Final Solution which was a direct result of that. Annihilating the jews wasn’t the plan pre-1939.
Without the invasion of Poland, the Germans wouldn’t have come into control of such huge populations of people they considered to be less than rubbish. Nor would they have had control of the destiny of the vast majority of European Jews, who had nowhere to run after Barbarossa.
Stalin could never have achieved the mass death that Hitler inflicted on the populace of the Soviet Union. He was just too inefficient. Yes, I know about the famines, collectivization, etc...Hitler unleashed mechanized killing on top of that whole mess. They weren’t just shooting 10 or 12 at a time in Lubyanka Prison. They were killing off entire towns.
I was not trying to make moral equivalents. I was simply pointing you that your statement was inaccurate.