5 ms·

"these guys are worse or on a par for atrocities with anyone ever, real or imagined" If you look at the total number of people killed, hitler's atrocities pale

"these guys are worse or on a par for atrocities with anyone ever, real or imagined" If you look at the total number of people killed, hitler's atrocities pale in comparison with those of Stalin and Mao.

Yzupnick 16y ago
True but if you look at the manner in which it was done then the Nazis are up there. What was horrible was the systematic way it was done. It wasn't a city gassed on a whim, or a population shot because they where rebelling. Those are terrible, but what is terrible about what the Nazis did was in the planning and efficiency of it all.
- stcredzero 16y ago
  And you can combine that with guards picking up children by the ankles and dashing their brains out on the nearest building.
arethuza 16y ago
Another big difference was that in Stalin's Soviet Union or Mao's China just about everyone was under potential threat - being a member of the party or close to the leader wasn't really any help. Whereas in Nazi Germany it was a much colder clinical decision to systematically remove "undesirable" elements from society. I think it is the systematic element of their terror, rather than the sheer lunatic barbarity of the communist regimes, that makes them so scary.
- riffraff 16y ago
  isn't this a reductionist view? the night of the long knives is just the first example I can think of, but I'm pretty sure there were more examples of people _becoming_ undesirable.
  - arethuza 16y ago
    But in the Soviet Union the arrests were made to quota to feed the slave labor camps of the gulag - not because of anything the prisoners had actually done (of course, they had to confess). There were some courageous Germans who chose to defy the Nazis (e.g. the White Rose group http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Rose http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Rose) but that to me is quite different. The overwhelming majority of Germans, if they didn't belong to one of the racial or political categories hated by the Nazis, had nothing to fear unless they chose to defy the state. Most didn't.
    - riffraff 16y ago
      I had not heard of a "arrest to quota" design in the USSR, could you point me to a relevant source so I can read about it? I still disagree on the main point that to be at risk in nazi germany you had to somehow defy the regime. Your view seem to be that in nazi germany you could simply comply with the ruling ideology and be fine, but as I said above, you can think of the killings and arrests by the thousands of the SA (which had been key to hitler's seize of power) as a glaring counter example. Moreover, the gestapo mostly run operations based on delations from common citizens (the origin of the "gestapo=big brother" misconception), it's not hard to imagine how mundane they can be. Unless you have a much better view of humanity than I have :)
      - arethuza 16y ago
        It's either from: http://www.simonsebagmontefiore.com/stalincourtredtsar.aspx http://www.simonsebagmontefiore.com/stalincourtredtsar.aspx or http://www.amazon.com/Gulag-History-Anne-Applebaum/dp/1400034094/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278967508&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Gulag-History-Anne-Applebaum/dp/140003...
      - easp 16y ago
        Whenever shit like that happens, you can be sure that there are people taking advantage of the situation to settle old scores. Wherever the official reason for depriving people of life or liberty, corrupt functionaries will trump up accusations to suit their personal agendas.
hack_edu 16y ago
What kind of asshole draws historical conclusions based on /numbers/ dead? Reducing the dead to numbers and comparing a lost life to another an atrocity in itself.
- JoeAltmaier 16y ago
  Classic morality problem: sacrifice 1 you know for 10 you don't. Have you solved it? Enlighten us.
- arethuza 16y ago
  "One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic" Stalin
sedachv 16y ago
The total numbers pulled from Reagan's imagination? edit: I'll post some sources when I get home
- sedachv 16y ago
  As promised: This includes the best available numbers on the people imprisoned and executed for counter-revolutionary (political, kulaks, etc.) crimes from 1921 to 1954 in the entire Soviet Union (includes republics annexed in 1939) from a report ordered by Khruschev (ie - the real numbers, not speculation), as well as an analysis of the commonly published speculative numbers: http://www.thewalls.ru/truth/repress.htm http://www.thewalls.ru/truth/repress.htm (Russian) http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thewalls.ru%2Ftruth%2Frepress.htm&sl=ru&tl=en http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&h... (Google English translation) 642,980 executed, 2,369,220 imprisoned, 765,180 internally exiled over a 30-year period. That is 21,433 people receiving capital punishment each year, and 78,974 imprisoned per year. To put it in perspective, 89,000 people were sentenced (up to a maximum term of 5 years) for cannabis possession in the UK in 1998. If you include the number of excess deaths from the Ukrainian and Kazakh famines of 1932, the direct and excess deaths from the civil war and the civil war famines, there's still no comparison to the Third Reich.
  - dgordon 16y ago
    According to Solzhenitsyn a quarter of the population of Leningrad were arrested in and around 1937. Apparently this turned out to be a conservative estimate. If this is so, your numbers cannot be correct. And yes, the Holodomor counts too.
    - sedachv 16y ago
      I'm so glad this article was posted on HN recently: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/11/how_facts_backfire/?page=full http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/11/...
- pfedor 16y ago
varjag 16y ago
Sorry, but those two didn't made lanterns and mattresses out of people. Hitler very much one-upped everyone in 20th century in terms of atrocities. As for the count, there are reasons to believe that Hitler was direct cause for WW2 in Europe. That one took quite a bit more people than 6M Jews you seem to imply.
js2 16y ago
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/tyrants.htm http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/tyrants.htm
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

Yzupnick 16y ago

True but if you look at the manner in which it was done then the Nazis are up there. What was horrible was the systematic way it was done. It wasn't a city gassed on a whim, or a population shot because they where rebelling. Those are terrible, but what is terrible about what the Nazis did was in the planning and efficiency of it all.

stcredzero 16y ago
And you can combine that with guards picking up children by the ankles and dashing their brains out on the nearest building.

arethuza 16y ago

Another big difference was that in Stalin's Soviet Union or Mao's China just about everyone was under potential threat - being a member of the party or close to the leader wasn't really any help. Whereas in Nazi Germany it was a much colder clinical decision to systematically remove "undesirable" elements from society. I think it is the systematic element of their terror, rather than the sheer lunatic barbarity of the communist regimes, that makes them so scary.

riffraff 16y ago
isn't this a reductionist view? the night of the long knives is just the first example I can think of, but I'm pretty sure there were more examples of people _becoming_ undesirable.
- arethuza 16y ago
  But in the Soviet Union the arrests were made to quota to feed the slave labor camps of the gulag - not because of anything the prisoners had actually done (of course, they had to confess). There were some courageous Germans who chose to defy the Nazis (e.g. the White Rose group http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Rose http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Rose) but that to me is quite different. The overwhelming majority of Germans, if they didn't belong to one of the racial or political categories hated by the Nazis, had nothing to fear unless they chose to defy the state. Most didn't.
  - riffraff 16y ago
    I had not heard of a "arrest to quota" design in the USSR, could you point me to a relevant source so I can read about it? I still disagree on the main point that to be at risk in nazi germany you had to somehow defy the regime. Your view seem to be that in nazi germany you could simply comply with the ruling ideology and be fine, but as I said above, you can think of the killings and arrests by the thousands of the SA (which had been key to hitler's seize of power) as a glaring counter example. Moreover, the gestapo mostly run operations based on delations from common citizens (the origin of the "gestapo=big brother" misconception), it's not hard to imagine how mundane they can be. Unless you have a much better view of humanity than I have :)
    - arethuza 16y ago
      It's either from: http://www.simonsebagmontefiore.com/stalincourtredtsar.aspx http://www.simonsebagmontefiore.com/stalincourtredtsar.aspx or http://www.amazon.com/Gulag-History-Anne-Applebaum/dp/1400034094/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278967508&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Gulag-History-Anne-Applebaum/dp/140003...
    - easp 16y ago
      Whenever shit like that happens, you can be sure that there are people taking advantage of the situation to settle old scores. Wherever the official reason for depriving people of life or liberty, corrupt functionaries will trump up accusations to suit their personal agendas.

hack_edu 16y ago

What kind of asshole draws historical conclusions based on /numbers/ dead? Reducing the dead to numbers and comparing a lost life to another an atrocity in itself.

JoeAltmaier 16y ago
Classic morality problem: sacrifice 1 you know for 10 you don't. Have you solved it? Enlighten us.
arethuza 16y ago
"One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic" Stalin

sedachv 16y ago

The total numbers pulled from Reagan's imagination? edit: I'll post some sources when I get home

sedachv 16y ago
As promised: This includes the best available numbers on the people imprisoned and executed for counter-revolutionary (political, kulaks, etc.) crimes from 1921 to 1954 in the entire Soviet Union (includes republics annexed in 1939) from a report ordered by Khruschev (ie - the real numbers, not speculation), as well as an analysis of the commonly published speculative numbers: http://www.thewalls.ru/truth/repress.htm http://www.thewalls.ru/truth/repress.htm (Russian) http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thewalls.ru%2Ftruth%2Frepress.htm&sl=ru&tl=en http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&h... (Google English translation) 642,980 executed, 2,369,220 imprisoned, 765,180 internally exiled over a 30-year period. That is 21,433 people receiving capital punishment each year, and 78,974 imprisoned per year. To put it in perspective, 89,000 people were sentenced (up to a maximum term of 5 years) for cannabis possession in the UK in 1998. If you include the number of excess deaths from the Ukrainian and Kazakh famines of 1932, the direct and excess deaths from the civil war and the civil war famines, there's still no comparison to the Third Reich.
- dgordon 16y ago
  According to Solzhenitsyn a quarter of the population of Leningrad were arrested in and around 1937. Apparently this turned out to be a conservative estimate. If this is so, your numbers cannot be correct. And yes, the Holodomor counts too.
  - sedachv 16y ago
    I'm so glad this article was posted on HN recently: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/11/how_facts_backfire/?page=full http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/11/...
pfedor 16y ago

varjag 16y ago

Sorry, but those two didn't made lanterns and mattresses out of people. Hitler very much one-upped everyone in 20th century in terms of atrocities. As for the count, there are reasons to believe that Hitler was direct cause for WW2 in Europe. That one took quite a bit more people than 6M Jews you seem to imply.

js2 16y ago

http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/tyrants.htm http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/tyrants.htm

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]