Who was worse, Stalin or Hitler ?

Mance Rayder

Latchy wrote: »

Actually when I wasn't name calling but instead of refreshing page to see your correct username, which I wasn't familiar with and which I should have done , for some reason I had Ciscokid in my head .

ha Fair enough;)

Latchy wrote: »

Then you close your eyes for a minute or two trying to imagine what's going on and you shudder at images so our imaginations don't need a lot to picture the horrific scenes although of course that's nothing compared to the Reality of being there .

CDfm wrote: »

History is about facts and factually my sympathies start with the peasant farmer who were not really any different to my own peasant farmers.

Ellian wrote: »

I imagine to a lot of the poor folk between Berlin and Moscow between '39 and '45 there wasn't a lick of difference between them as they watched armies marching one way and then the other.

I remember in Secondary school, closing my eyes and trying to soak in the gravity of what I was being told. My natural instinct and sympathys fell with the peasants, regardless of nationality, Race or politics. I still have the same strong sense today of who the real victims were. As I said before, all totalitarian doctrines are wrong and it is unacceptible for one group to force their ways and rules down innocent peoples throats as the Soviets and Nazi's did. I understand the above sentiments.

Latchy wrote: »

I don't see that your mother in law having a happy life in Russia or your wife being Russian has anything to do with thread about Stalin and Hitler although I will acept that you may speak some Russian ,have visted Russia and know a lot more about the Russia ,their people and their customs than myself but you said people on this thread come across as being pro German -anti Slovac and probably in denial about the Holocust simply because they have a different point of view than yours ?

Yes Allow me to say that I got a little defensive the other night and accused people of having a pro Nazi sentiment. It was out of line, I just saw the poll results and reacted. So sorry for any misgivings.

As regards my in laws and wife, they are Ukrainians, and I've never been to Russia, I have been to Ukraine many times. The lines are very blurry there, the lands she is from were in Russia, then in Ukrainian SSR, then in Russia again, and then Gifted to Ukraine. So they are themselves both Russians and Ukrainians.

Many of the Nostalgia and romantic sentiment amongst the Slavic people of that area (Crimea) actually falls within the period of the last Romanov family, who were brutally murdered by the Rising Soviet reds. Now of course the Tsars had their own sins, but thats a different debate. As an Irishman I am obviously never going to admire any monarchist system.

The reason I mentioned my In laws happy upbringing was because I wanted to point out that Modern Soviets, of the latter decades in those parts were not so miserable as is genereally believed.

I was trying to point out that overall, The Soviet Ideal, in the end, did allow for a quality of life for its citizens which beats modern Ukraines quality of life hands down. It was also open to all races.

Now to compare that to an imagined Nazi victory, and what life would be like, I shudder to think what would of become of the Slavs and indeed The Irish. It's all speculative of course, and I agree Stalin was evil. I personally feel Hitler was worse, I feel this quite strongly, but I would as I am obviously biased based on my family loyalties.

Although even before I met my wife I always admired the Slavic spirit, as opposed to the German spirit. History tells me that there was always something rotton in the heart of central Europe, where the Germanic countries were involved. Thats just my opinion. I think that the Soviets were kinder to the Ukrainians then to the Poles, and the Nazi's were just as bad to both.

Latchy

CiscoStudent wrote: »

Yes Allow me to say that I got a little defensive the other night and accused people of having a pro Nazi sentiment. It was out of line, I just saw the poll results and reacted. So sorry for any misgivings.

As regards my in laws and wife, they are Ukrainians, and I've never been to Russia, I have been to Ukraine many times. The lines are very blurry there, the lands she is from were in Russia, then in Ukrainian SSR, then in Russia again, and then Gifted to Ukraine. So they are themselves both Russians and Ukrainians.

Many of the Nostalgia and romantic sentiment amongst the Slavic people of that area (Crimea) actually falls within the period of the last Romanov family, who were brutally murdered by the Rising Soviet reds. Now of course the Tsars had their own sins, but thats a different debate. As an Irishman I am obviously never going to admire any monarchist system.

The reason I mentioned my In laws happy upbringing was because I wanted to point out that Modern Soviets, of the latter decades in those parts were not so miserable as is genereally believed.

I was trying to point out that overall, The Soviet Ideal, in the end, did allow for a quality of life for its citizens which beats modern Ukraines quality of life hands down. It was also open to all races.

Now to compare that to an imagined Nazi victory, and what life would be like, I shudder to think what would of become of the Slavs and indeed The Irish. It's all speculative of course, and I agree Stalin was evil. I personally feel Hitler was worse, I feel this quite strongly, but I would as I am obviously biased based on my family loyalties.

Although even before I met my wife I always admired the Slavic spirit, as opposed to the German spirit. History tells me that there was always something rotton in the heart of central Europe, where the Germanic countries were involved. Thats just my opinion. I think that the Soviets were kinder to the Ukrainians then to the Poles, and the Nazi's were just as bad to both.

Good post and clarifys your views much better .

I understand that one has to go back to centuries to understand the Germanic / Slav races and how the Russians in particular are basically a combination of many different tribes so to speak .The Nazi idology of superior race was the opposite way of thinking to the Russians with the Nazis seen the Slavs as inferior and ' babarians ' when they only proved themselfs over to be as barbaric and inhuman as their eastern neighbours could be .

Also ......

The problem was that two egotistical and paraniod leaders as Hitler and Stalin would not let their decisions be swayed by their generals and Hitler let thousends of troops dies needlessly when good logical military action might have saved many of them .

Stalin also knew at the end of the war that he had 3 times the force of men the United States and British had , who would not be as fresh or ready for a long drawn out war with Russians yet statistics show that the Russians lost more men in WW2 then both the Germans and Allies put together and basically the allies handed Stalin over great parts of eastern europe .

CDfm

CiscoStudent wrote: »

I remember in Secondary school, closing my eyes and trying to soak in the gravity of what I was being told.

I met one of my history teachers a few years ago. This guy had become a local politician and brought his political bias into the classroom.

I am convinced he saw himself as one of the intellegensia and wasn't just teaching history but was a revoloutionary.

My natural instinct and sympathys fell with the peasants, regardless of nationality, Race or politics. I still have the same strong sense today of who the real victims were.

I compare it to the graphic pictures pictures of lynchings in the USA and it puts it in perspective the human effort it takes to kill a man. And thats what I don't like when a political ideology is used to dismiss it because it takes some effort



In the case of the kulaks in Russia it was 1.3 million of these .

Yes Allow me to say that I got a little defensive the other night and accused people of having a pro Nazi sentiment. It was out of line, I just saw the poll results and reacted.

.

We all have subjects that are closer to us. It just makes you human.

Reekwind

CDfm wrote: »

In the case of the kulaks in Russia it was 1.3 million of these

Which would be true if the Soviet state had ever executed (never mind lynched) 1.3 million 'kulaks'

CDfm

Reekwind wrote: »

Which would be true if the Soviet state had ever executed (never mind lynched) 1.3 million 'kulaks'

You are right , nobody knows the exact figure

It could have been as high as 8 million and as a class these industrious peasants were eliminated .

The Kulaks in general understood that the Bolshevik government was antithetical to property ownership and would strip away the rights and land the Kulaks had worked so hard to acquire and maintain. Unfortunately, the Bolsheviks won the Civil War. After the Russian Civil War there was widespread famine throughout Russia. This was partly due to the war and partly due to the inefficiencies of collectivization. To relieve the hunger, Lenin attempted to confiscate grain from the peasants, including the Kulaks. Because not enough grain was collected he blamed the Kulaks and ordered not only that the Kulaks be deprived of grain themselves, but also any seed grain. He declared "Merciless war against the Kulaks! Death to them."4 This, of course, only had the effect of making the shortage more severe.
After Lenin's death, Stalin took power in the Soviet Union. He continued the policy of collectivization. But the repeated failure of communist policies continued, and supply problems became even more endemic as the policies were more rigidly enforced. A scapegoat had to be found. The Kulaks were blamed for recalcitrance and a campaign of deportation was begun that amounted to wholesale slaughter. Kulaks were transported to Siberia, which was bad enough. However, they were simply dumped off in the middle of nowhere, without food, supplies, or resources of any kind. Many more were forced to work their farms but not allowed to keep any of the their production - even for sustenance. Literally millions of Kulaks died. The exact number is not known, but estimates range from 4 to 8,000,000.5
Once dispossessed, the Kulaks no longer existed, except as an excuse to be used by the communist regime to attack the peasant class whenever it seemed convenient. Many of the people who died as "Kulaks" were shocked to find out that this accusation had been laid upon them and that they were to suffer or die for it.


http://www.indepthinfo.com/russia/kulaks.htm

Politically they were used as a scapegoat in the same way the Jews were in Germany.

Reekwind

CDfm wrote: »

You are right , nobody knows the exact figure

No, but we have a pretty good idea. We know that there were a minimum of 800k political executions in the USSR from 1927-53. The vast majority of these occurred during the period 1937-38. 'Kulaks' would have been a small minority of this figure: a 'mere' 35k were sentenced to death by the OGPU in the dekulakisation period of 1929-32. So suggesting that over a million peasants were executed (ie, something akin to lynching) is simply wrong

Now in addition to the above (read: purposeful killings) we can also blame the Stalinist state for around another 2-3 million (max) deaths during deportations or in custody. Again, these are total figures for 1927-53 and across all classes. These deaths were the product of criminal neglect but there is no evidence whatsoever that people were sent to Siberia to die; this was not the norm

So that is 3-4 million deaths, of which only a fraction correspond to your depiction of lynchings, that can be laid directly at the door at the Stalinist state. Another 3-7 million died as a result of famine. This is a highly charged issue but there is again no evidence to suggest that Stalin deliberately set out to 'liquidate' an entire class of people through 'man-made famine'. The latter is simply a myth. The famine of the 1930s was certainly exacerbated by 2-3 years of Stalinist agricultural policies (this should not however be reduced to 'Stalin stole peasant grain'; that's a ridiculous simplification) but weather was also a factor. The best comparison is the Irish Famine of the 1840s: a product of disastrous state policies, exacerbated by a callous response by authorities, but by no means intentional. Trevelyan may have regarded the Irish peasant with contempt but no one would suggest that he set out to commit genocide

Politically they were used as a scapegoat in the same way the Jews were in Germany.

No. Leaving aside the whole racial dimension (ie, ignoring the central plank of Nazi ideology) the two are completely different. 'Kulak' was a slur but little else: Stalin did not set out to liquidate 'kulaks', he waged war on the peasantry as a whole. Far from being an ideological drive against some alien class (which is how Stalin and Soviet propaganda portrayed it), dekulakisation was a response to (perfectly understandable) peasant resistance to collectivisation. It wasn't directed at the rich peasants* but all peasants who objected to the destruction of their traditional commune structures

By 1930 anyone who opposed Stalinist was a 'kulak'. Now are you going to suggest that the only 'Jews' in Nazi Germany were those labelled as such by the state?

*Who had incidentally ceased to exist as a distinct class in 1917, when they were forced by their peasant peers to rejoin the communes. The irony is that Western historians have so often taken Soviet propaganda at face values and discussed Stalinism on its own terms

CDfm

Reekwind, I am not doing the only Jews thing.

I am saying look, the kulaks were just like the Irish farmers ,so I can understand what happened to them as if they were our own and the Irish famine and the like.

The reason I posted the lynching pic was to put in context what death is. It happened on a scale not seen in the USA.

The Soviet action had exterminate written all over it.

Reekwind

CDfm wrote: »

The reason I posted the lynching pic was to put in context what death is. It happened on a scale not seen in the USA

You might as well put in a picture of a starving Ethiopian or a man dying of AIDS. Lynching is a deliberate act of murder and you suggested that there were 1.3 million kulaks similarly killed in such a purposeful manner. This is factually wrong

The Soviet action had exterminate written all over it.

Based on what?

The great irony about this whole topic is that since the collapse of the USSR the academic consensus has increasingly settled on a relatively low range of numbers. Figures of tens of millions of deaths that were put forward in the 1960s, by the likes of Conquest, are unsustainable today. Yet in the same time the popular perception has veered wildly in the opposite direction, to the point that some can argue that Stalin was worse, or as bad as, than Hitler. This is not true in terms of numbers, methodologies or intentions

So you say that "the Soviet action had exterminate written all over it". Fine, show me the evidence. Show me the 'smoking gun' that makes clear that Stalin set out to exterminate millions. Because after twenty years of archival research not one such shred of evidence has emerged. Instead a far more nuanced picture of the violent 1930s has emerged: one that paints Stalin as a brutal and callous despot rather than a genocidal ideologue bent on world domination

Yet this gets ignored so often in favour of bald statements that make blithe assumptions about Soviet intentions that have little basis in reality

CDfm

Reekwind wrote: »

one that paints Stalin as a brutal and callous despot rather than a genocidal ideologue bent on world domination

I dont think it matters whether you get killed by a callous despot or a genocidal ideologue bent on world domination - it does not make you any less dead.

And the figures are still phenomenal - anyone with 000,000 in their body count stats is one evil mutha

Reekwind

CDfm wrote: »

I dont think it matters whether you get killed by a callous despot or a genocidal ideologue bent on world domination - it does not make you any less dead

Well that depends largely on whether are not you are destined to be killed because of your race. And even that is something of a red herring: if we are to judge all regimes solely from the perspective of their victims then Hitler's Germany is little better than Bush's Texas

And the figures are still phenomenal - anyone with 000,000 in their body count stats is one evil mutha

Naturally. Its also completely irrelevant when discussing which was worse

CDfm

Reekwind wrote: »

Well that depends largely on whether are not you are destined to be killed because of your race. And even that is something of a red herring: if we are to judge all regimes solely from the perspective of their victims then Hitler's Germany is little better than Bush's Texas

I miss your point here .

History is a retrospective based on facts .

I am not aware of any Bush regime other than being elected as Governor .

Naturally. Its also completely irrelevant when discussing which was worse

I disagree, the zero's are important as it indicates how far a person is prepared to go.

‘Good God, what a brute man becomes when ignorant and oppressed. Oh Liberty! What horrors are committed in thy name! May every virtuous revolutionist remember the horrors of Wexford’! [Written in his Journal, Jan 1799, referring to the recent Irish Rebellion of 1798]

Daniel O'Connell

http://dublin.forumforus.com/Daniel+O+Connell

Reekwind

CDfm wrote: »

I miss your point here

My point is simple: from the perspective of the dead all killers are the same. For the executed it matters little whether death arrives via lethal injection in Texas or poison gas in Poland. The end result is identical: a dead man. Now obviously this tells us nothing about the nature of the regime doing the killing. For this we look at the historical context, scale, methodology, motive, etc, etc

So saying that it doesn't matter "whether you get killed by a callous despot or a genocidal ideologue" is completely irrelevant when it comes to evaluating these regimes and deciding which was worse

I disagree, the zero's are important as it indicates how far a person is prepared to go

What? So both Hitler and Stalin are as bad as each other because both 'wanted it more'? I'm not sure I understand

Simply stating that both regimes led to the deaths of millions tells us nothing about the differences between the two. Stopping at that moral threshold precludes any examination of the structures of each regime, the factors that drove it to mass violence, the role of the state, etc, etc. It's akin to simply sealing all mass murdering regimes off in a nice little box marked 'evil' and then assuming that no further research or discussion is needed. That approach leads us no where other than smug self-congratulation at being Westerners

And hey, while we're mentioning O'Connell, you could mention that the British Empire killed millions (in the 20th C alone, depending on your definitions). Is it indistinguishable from Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia?

CDfm

Reekwind wrote: »

My point is simple: from the perspective of the dead all killers are the same. For the executed it matters little whether death arrives via lethal injection in Texas or poison gas in Poland. The end result is identical: a dead man. Now obviously this tells us nothing about the nature of the regime doing the killing. For this we look at the historical context, scale, methodology, motive, etc, etc

Comparing Texas with the nazi's is a bit of a stetch .

So saying that it doesn't matter "whether you get killed by a callous despot or a genocidal ideologue" is completely irrelevant when it comes to evaluating these regimes and deciding which was worse

What? So both Hitler and Stalin are as bad as each other because both 'wanted it more'? I'm not sure I understand

It is a bit like ethics really .

Simply stating that both regimes led to the deaths of millions tells us nothing about the differences between the two. Stopping at that moral threshold precludes any examination of the structures of each regime, the factors that drove it to mass violence, the role of the state, etc, etc. It's akin to simply sealing all mass murdering regimes off in a nice little box marked 'evil' and then assuming that no further research or discussion is needed. That approach leads us no where other than smug self-congratulation at being Westerners

The OP asks who was worse.

The Soviets have the edge as there were no prosecutions.

And yes, the zero's in the numbers tell us those participating in the killings etc had an idea of the enormity of what they were doing.

And hey, while we're mentioning O'Connell, you could mention that the British Empire killed millions (in the 20th C alone, depending on your definitions). Is it indistinguishable from Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia?

I mention O'Connell because he was an Irish leader and thinker on issues like this.So I am introducing an Irish benchmark into it.

I think the British Empire is way off topic here.

Reekwind

CDfm wrote: »

Comparing Texas with the nazi's is a bit of a stetch

Which is exactly my point...

The OP asks who was worse.

The Soviets have the edge as there were no prosecutions.

What does that mean?

And yes, the zero's in the numbers tell us those participating in the killings etc had an idea of the enormity of what they were doing.

While it would be more accurate to say that those ordering the killings had an idea of the scale (not always the case) this tells us nothing about the differences between Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia

I think the British Empire is way off topic here.

The topic is not the British Empire, the question is whether millions killed automatically ranks it amongst the 20th C dictatorships of Hitler and Stalin. If, as you suggest, "the zeros" alone qualify a regime as "evil" then why isn't the Empire comparable?

Personally of course I think that would be ludicrous, but then I'm arguing against using your defintions

CDfm

Reekwind wrote: »

What does that mean?

The lack of prosecutions made them winners and lends a degree of legitimacy the their actions.

While it would be more accurate to say that those ordering the killings had an idea of the scale (not always the case) this tells us nothing about the differences between Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia

I really so not see much of a difference really

The topic is not the British Empire, the question is whether millions killed automatically ranks it amongst the 20th C dictatorships of Hitler and Stalin. If, as you suggest, "the zeros" alone qualify a regime as "evil" then why isn't the Empire comparable?

Personally of course I think that would be ludicrous, but then I'm arguing against using your defintions

Maybe the British colonial administration could be compared with the Belgians and that would allow people to appraise Casements work in the area.

I think it is possible to over analyse the regimes and to give others involved a "by" in the responsibility stakes.

Reekwind

CDfm wrote: »

The lack of prosecutions made them winners and lends a degree of legitimacy the their actions

So the Soviets were worse because they were never held to account for their actions?

Are you seriously suggesting that an actual evaluation of the historical record is unnecessary because no Stalinist ever stood trial and the regime is therefore automatically worse? That this "lack of prosecutions" somehow trumps the actual differences between the regimes and their crimes. In which case you are not talking history at all. In fact you are merely substituting your own moral opinion for anything resembling an analysis of the historical reality

I really so not see much of a difference really

Then I suggest that you look harder. Anyone who states that there was no real difference between the Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia (or the crimes of each) is either ignorant of the historical record or deliberately pushing an ideological line

CDfm

If I am to evaluate a dictator and say who is worse then measured against the ethics of socialism / communism then Stalin is worse.

The Nazi regime stood trial and the Soviet one did not.

The weird bit for me is that Stalin's collegues and those who succeeded him went untainted and his and their political associates and supporters outside Russia got off lightly.

Brezhnev and Kosygin were both close associates of Stalin .

Mance Rayder

CDfm wrote: »

If I am to evaluate a dictator and say who is worse then measured against the ethics of socialism / communism then Stalin is worse. The Nazi regime stood trial and the Soviet one did not.

Your Logic is perverse.

Measure your evaluation of a dictator against the ethics of socialism/communism??

The Nazi regime stood trail and therefore it's crimes are reduced?

CDfm

CiscoStudent wrote: »

Your Logic is perverse.

Measure your evaluation of a dictator against the ethics of socialism/communism??

The Nazi regime stood trail and therefore it's crimes are reduced?

Well stalin and his associates were communists so if they are being judged by their own yardstick/peers then they did nothing wrong

It is a bit like when the role of civil servants in monitoring institutions is being assesed you get the trite "well we were afraid of nuns/priests" excuse instead of being assessed for the depraved indifference they displayed.

Was the major mistake the nazi's made was loosing the war ?

Why can't the ideology of the Germans be tested against the British after all they British - they essentially invented the Concentration Camp notion in the late 19th century in Africa during the Boer War where they killed thousands. Kenya was another of their sites. This is well documented . The Germans referenced the British model in their design of such camps. Maybe we need a thread on this issue?

Holocaust denial is a crime but it does not have an equivalent in marxist political circles or parties. It is as if the casualties are mere economic statistics rather than real people.

Reekwind

CDfm wrote: »

If I am to evaluate a dictator and say who is worse then measured against the ethics of socialism / communism then Stalin is worse

No, I think you'll find that genocide is as strongly condemned by socialists as it is by liberals

The Nazi regime stood trial and the Soviet one did not.

Yeah, I get that. What I don't get is how this relates to an evaluation of who was worse

To use an analogy: if one man gets life for murder and another man gets away with stealing a purse, would you really claim that the latter is the worse criminal? Of course not. That's because because what's relevant here is the crime itself. It is the actions of each regime - not excuses and not ideology and not who got their just deserts, etc, etc - that matters when deciding between Stalin and Hitler

Fuinseog

CiscoStudent wrote: »

Stalin had a brain disorder which confounded his paranoia and insanity, hitler was calculated and cold. Stalin at least wanted to bring the world together in his own twisted way, regardless of race. For example, oriental people were as welcome as Slavic people in the soviet union.

Hitler wanted a ruling Master race of Germanic peoples and to enslave the 'Lower races'

.

this notion of a master race ruling 'subhumans' is today associated with the Nazis, yet they were only aping the thinking of the time. They modeled some racial policies on the much admired British Empire for example India. they may not have termed them untermenschen, yet any British book from the period makes reference to 'savages'
Shamefully thousand of Irish volunteered to help restore the British Empire in Asia.
I wonder aloud if Churchill should be added to the list of who is more evil Hitler or Stalin. After all he chose to fight Germany, when the latter wanted peace.

CDfm

CiscoStudent wrote: »

Stalin had a brain disorder which confounded his paranoia and insanity, hitler was calculated and cold.

Do you have any proof of this.

Medical opinions by a physician who terretory examined them rather then a historians "theory".

Stalin at least wanted to bring the world together in his own twisted way, regardless of race. For example, oriental people were as welcome as Slavic people in the soviet union.

Hitler wanted a ruling Master race of Germanic peoples and to enslave the 'Lower races'

Hitler was worse.

Thats an opinion and the sources for Stalins mental illness would need to be cited and discussed.

Reekwind wrote: »

No, I think you'll find that genocide is as strongly condemned by socialists as it is by liberals

Well , you havent given me sources for this and havent shown sources (or Irish sources)

Was stalin ever discussed etc and had a motion criticising him carried at the Labour party conference

Yeah, I get that. What I don't get is how this relates to an evaluation of who was worse

To use an analogy: if one man gets life for murder and another man gets away with stealing a purse, would you really claim that the latter is the worse criminal? Of course not. That's because because what's relevant here is the crime itself. It is the actions of each regime - not excuses and not ideology and not who got their just deserts, etc, etc - that matters when deciding between Stalin and Hitler

ah now , that is ethics not history

CDfm

Here is a link to reviews of the book Bloodlands -Europe between Hitler and Stalin which covers the relationship and the who was worse questions

http://vilnews.com/?p=5913

Fratton Fred

Fuinseog wrote: »

I wonder aloud if Churchill should be added to the list of who is more evil Hitler or Stalin. After all he chose to fight Germany, when the latter wanted peace.

You obviously have a different notion of peace to most people.

Mance Rayder

CDfm wrote: »

Do you have any proof of this.

Medical opinions by a physician who terretory examined them rather then a historians "theory".

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1379479/Brain-illness-Stalin-paranoid-ruthless-dictator-doctor-said.html

Fuinseog

Fratton Fred wrote: »

You obviously have a different notion of peace to most people.

the Führer wanted peace with England. The Germans had nothing but respect for the Empire. Chamberlin would probably have sought peace but Churchill loved nothing better than a good scrap.

Latchy

I watched this interesting programme last night on BBC 4 and it hits on many of the points and views raised in this thread .For those who have it , it's still available to view on BBC player for the next 6 days .

Here's a summary below

Marking the 70th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, historian Professor David Reynolds re-assesses Stalin's role in the life and death struggle between Germany and Russia in World War Two, which, he argues, was ultimately more critical for British survival than 'Our Finest Hour' in the Battle of Britain itself.

The name Stalin means 'man of steel', but Reynolds's penetrating new account reveals how the reality of Stalin's war in 1941 did not live up to that name. Travelling to Russian battlefield locations, he charts how Russia was almost annihilated within a few months as Stalin lurched from crisis to crisis, coming close to a nervous breakdown.

Reynolds shows how Stalin learnt to compromise in order to win, listening to his generals and downplaying communist ideology to appeal instead to the Russian people's nationalist fighting spirit. He also squares up to the terrible moral dilemma at the heart of World War Two. Using original telegrams and official documents, he looks afresh at Winston Churchill's controversial visit to Moscow in 1942 and re-examines how Britain and America were drawn into alliance with Stalin, a dictator almost as murderous as the Nazi enemy.

The narrator in the documentary also describes how Stalin got rid of his secretarys partner then shortly afterwards informed him '' don't worry ,we'll find you another '' . Stalin seemed to get a sadistic pleasure from playing mind games with everybody.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011wh1g

MarchDub

CiscoStudent wrote: »

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1379479/Brain-illness-Stalin-paranoid-ruthless-dictator-doctor-said.html

The newspaper reports notwithstanding the issue can only be posed as a question, not a conclusion. Excerpts from Alexander Myasnikov’s private diary have only been published in May of this year. Here are some direct quotes:

"The major atherosclerosis in the brain, which we found at the autopsy, should raise the question of how much this illness – which had clearly been developing over a number of years – affected Stalin's health, his character and his actions,"

"Stalin may have lost his sense of good and bad, healthy and dangerous, permissible and impermissible, friend and enemy. Character traits can become exaggerated, so that a suspicious person becomes paranoid,"

This is the doctor’s opinion and historically any expressed opinion - not a documented fact - always must raise the issue of whether it is a bias for some reason? – AFAIK there is no other corroborating evidence for this that has been published?

CDfm

CiscoStudent wrote: »

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1379479/Brain-illness-Stalin-paranoid-ruthless-dictator-doctor-said.html

Its a hypotheses it is unproven.

Dr Myasnikov, who was called to the Stalin's deathbed when he passed away in 1953, wrote that he had suffered from the condition for a long time, the Independent reported.
'Stalin may have lost his sense of good and bad, healthy and dangerous, permissible and impermissible, friend and enemy. Character traits can become exaggerated, so that a suspicious person becomes paranoid,' he wrote.

Anyway, it did not bother his colleagues.

It was very convenient for his political heirs and long term colleagues to blame mental illness.

Very convenient IMO.

The other option is that it was the agreed political policy of the regime.

a dictator almost as murderous as the Nazi enemy

Almost as murderous

is like a little bit pregnant.

The Soviets had agreements with the Nazi's and they only went to war because the Nazi's broke their secret protocol .

Reekwind

CDfm wrote: »

Well , you havent given me sources for this and havent shown sources (or Irish sources)

Was stalin ever discussed etc and had a motion criticising him carried at the Labour party conference

I don't know where to start with that. Are you honestly suggesting that genocide is compatible with socialism? In which case its not a Labour resolution I should be pointing you to but any introductory work on socialist theory

ah now , that is ethics not history

Well yes, but you've so far shown a stubborn refusal to engage in any discussion of the latter. My whole point is that Stalin and Hitler must be judged on the basis of historical reality; not moral/ethical pronouncements about 'who got away with it'

The Soviets had agreements with the Nazi's and they only went to war because the Nazi's broke their secret protocol

You are aware that the exact same could be said for France and Britain, right?

MarchDub wrote:

AFAIK there is no other corroborating evidence for this that has been published?

In fairness, what exactly are we to work on here - a medical analysis of one of Stalin's doctors that the dictator was indeed mad? If only it was that easy

That said, it is fairly well accepted by historians that by the end of his life Stalin was demonstrating signs of clinical paranoia or, as S Wheatcroft puts it, "a personal degeneration of Stalin's own mental capacities". This is the understandable impression formed from accounts/memoirs of those within Stalin's personal circle in his later years

That said, this should by no means be taken as an excuse. The most obvious reason being that any such mental illness only became marked in the final years of his life. Stalin's mind was not clouded when he exiled and killed his party rivals, when he ordered the dekulakisation process, when he launched the Great Terror, when he ratcheted up the repression after 1945, etc, etc. These were not products of a diseased mind (at least not clinically) but rather the outcome of planned economic and political policies. Which is not to say that everything went according to plan, of course

The other point is that its really rather silly to be talking exclusively of Stalin, as if he personally murdered millions. He was merely at the peak of a pyramid of bureaucrats who had no problem with putting his policies into action. Its really more appropriate to talk of the 'Stalinist system'