WWII Russia

[Vivisteiner]

^What prisoners? Know any more details?

[Tavrobel]

Stalin had a lot of prisoners. You're going to have to be more specific.

[champagne supernova]

Hitler didn't create a war economy. Volkswagen and the Beetle were his brainchild, creating thousands of jobs. Hitler didn't come into power until after 1929 if my memory serves correctly. I remember there was hyperinflation in the early 1920s because the German government decided to print ridiculous amounts of money to pay back their debts. Pity Zimbabwe didn't listen.

But then in 1929, the Wall Street Crash happened, and America stopped lending money to Germany. Under the Treaty of Versailles, Germany had to make repayments to the Allies. But the European Allies had also borrowed substantially from the Americans. So it was like a circle where the Americans lent money to the Germans, who gave it to the European Allies, who then gave it to America as repayment. After the Wall Street Crash, America stopped lending money to Germany, and that caused a huge economic upset in Germany.

And that is when Hitler's party became more and more powerful, eventually allowing him to be a dictator. He talked about how he would take back the land taken from the Germans, he talked about redeeming German pride. And Hitler was very charismatic. The combination of an economy in turmoil, along with something to hate made Hitler very attractive to the common German.

And he did a lot of good for Germany in the early years, before the War, although the Jews were already being targeted. But he was always twisted, and the extent of that was evident in the Holocaust. Although Himmler was probably more twisted than Hitler himself.

However Stalin is on another level of evil. Go read Soltenhitzen if you want to hear about Stalin's political prisoner camps. And Stalin was directly responsible for many more cold-blooded murders than Hitler ever was. Go read an article on the Soviet invasion of Poland, especially the bit about Prisoner's of War being shot.

[Big D]

While the purges killed more people than the holocaust, I don't think it's fair to use that as a sole basis for declaring Stalin "more evil" than Hitler. Stalin's policies never included the global eradication of 'subhumans', for instance, even though many of his measures amounted to genocide, with entire populations afflicted by famines, or forcibly exiled from their homelands, as 'punishment' for perceived disloyalty of economic failures.

However, during the war, he was an absolutely resolute leader, and also an adaptable and capable commander - much moreso than Hitler. That's how's Russia's initially devastating losses and gross under-preparation got turned into a military catastrophe that cost Germany the war.

For a concise and tidy overview of Russia's role in the war - something we're criminally under-educated on in the West - I'd recommend Peter Kenez's A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End, from the Cambridge University Press. A fine book for anyone interested in learning more about the Soviet Union in its entirety, including the horrific nature of the civil war, famines, collectivisation, gulags and purges, in addition to the Second World War.