World War II: Were the Western Allies the "Good Guys?"

[TheContrarian]

The thing about purges is that, coming from massive paranoia as they tend to, they are fairly self-sustaining.

Once you run out of the actually disloyal and the false positives who just got caught up in the fun, you'll just move on to include more groups on the list to be purged.

If the war hadn't happened and forced pragmatism to supercede paranoia, the internal death toll for the Soviets could have even surpassed China's hilarious experiments with collectivism.

Ironically, it might even have approached the projected death toll for Generalplan Ost (which basically involved the depopulation of most of eastern europe).

[Skybison]

The popular truism that Stalin killed way more people then Hitler probably isn't true.  The rough consensus figure for Stalin these days is around 20 million, give or take.  For Hitler it depends how much of the European civilian war dead you think is his fault but it can easily get to the 25 -30 million range.

Even if we decide that's too high they were probably more or less tied.

[Ultimate Paragon]

The popular truism that Stalin killed way more people then Hitler probably isn't true.  The rough consensus figure for Stalin these days is around 20 million, give or take.  For Hitler it depends how much of the European civilian war dead you think is his fault but it can easily get to the 25 -30 million range.

Even if we decide that's too high they were probably more or less tied.

My position is that they were both mass-murdering shitheads, and trying to say who was "worse" is splitting hairs.

[dpareja]

[Sigmaleph]

The popular truism that Stalin killed way more people then Hitler probably isn't true.  The rough consensus figure for Stalin these days is around 20 million, give or take.  For Hitler it depends how much of the European civilian war dead you think is his fault but it can easily get to the 25 -30 million range.

Even if we decide that's too high they were probably more or less tied.

My position is that they were both mass-murdering shitheads, and trying to say who was "worse" is splitting hairs.

On the one hand, yes, definitely both were horrible people and muss murderers and so on.

On the other hand it feels odd to call several million dead people "splitting hairs".

[Skybison]

Well it sort of is.  If someone tries to argue that say communism isn't that bad because Stalin killed less people then Hitler, but the actual between them is 20 mil to 25 mil there isn't that huge of a moral difference.  Especially because such numbers are rough ballpark estimates who's margins of error overlap a lot.

There are some interesting things you can learn from looking at the number though.  ie if you classify mass murders in terms of orders of magnitude (tens of millions, millions, hundreds of thousands, etc) and add up their scores, then it turns out that a small handful of regimes at the tens of millions level (Mao, Hitler, Stalin, and maybe Imperial Japan, King Leopold and Chiang Kai Shek) are between them responsible for most of the violent deaths that happened in the 20th century.

[davedan]

I also think when you are dealing with numbers of this magnitude it is important to consider percentages. So while Stalin may have racked up larger total numbers there were a lot more Soviets to begin with. It's why when you look at deaths relative to the population of the planet as a whole at the time no one touches Ghengis.

[dpareja]

I also think when you are dealing with numbers of this magnitude it is important to consider percentages. So while Stalin may have racked up larger total numbers there were a lot more Soviets to begin with. It's why when you look at deaths relative to the population of the planet as a whole at the time no one touches Ghengis.

Except BibleGod, who killed all but 8 people at one point.

[davedan]

I wasn't including fictional accounts.

[Skybison]

I also think when you are dealing with numbers of this magnitude it is important to consider percentages. So while Stalin may have racked up larger total numbers there were a lot more Soviets to begin with. It's why when you look at deaths relative to the population of the planet as a whole at the time no one touches Ghengis.

Well most historians today seem to think the death tolls for Ghengis are highly exaggerated.  (Although that can be taken in the wrong direction, a greatly reduced death toll for the Khan could still be comparable per capita.)

In terms of percentages, here's a chart for war/genocide death tolls in terms of percentage of the countries population


So in terms of per capita kill rate, it seems the greatest monster of the 20th century isn't Hitler or Stalin, or even Pol Pot, but some German Colonialist named Lothar Von Trotha that barely anybodys heard of.

[Sigmaleph]

Well it sort of is.  If someone tries to argue that say communism isn't that bad because Stalin killed less people then Hitler, but the actual between them is 20 mil to 25 mil there isn't that huge of a moral difference.  Especially because such numbers are rough ballpark estimates who's margins of error overlap a lot.

The margin of error point is valid.

Of course you really shouldn't be putting much weight on Stalin vs Hitler as a source of data on whether communism is worse than fascism in the first place. Single data point and so on. But if you're asking which of two individuals did the most evil (for whatever reason you'd be asking that question...) a few million people either way really is kind of a big deal.

[TheContrarian]

Might have guessed Germany would come from nowhere to take the prize O_o

I am surprised DR Congo 1996-2008 doesn't make the list though.  That was very nasty.

[davedan]

Might have guessed Germany would come from nowhere to take the prize O_o

I am surprised DR Congo 1996-2008 doesn't make the list though.  That was very nasty.

I think you'll find there's probably two reasons for that:

1. It spanned both the 20th and 21st Centuries.

2. This image is copyright 1998 at the bottom.

[Lt. Fred]

You also haven't included East Timor, which was no less bad than Cambodia, or the truly catastrophic Paraguayan War.

[Skybison]

The chart is for the 20th century, so a 19th century war doesn't make the list.

East Timor should be on it though, the low ball number for that are more ten percent of the islands population.