Why there is no moral distinction between Hitler & Stalin, merely Totalitarian fellow travellers

By Oliver Green

First of all let’s look at the numbers of non-combatants murdered by Hitler and Stalin. The numbers for Hitler are as follows; Ukrainians 5.5 – 7 million, Jews (of all countries) 6 million, Russian POWs 3.3 million +,Russian Civilians 2 million +, Poles 3 million +, Yugoslavians 1.5 million +, Gypsies up to 500,000, Mentally/Physically Disabled 70,000- 250,000, Homosexuals in the tens of thousands (but no reliable figures) Spanish Republicans in the Tens of thousands (again no reliable figures), Jehovah’s Witnesses 2500 – 5000, Freemasons 80,000 – 200,000, and German Communists 100,000. Giving a maximum rough total of around 24 million people give or take.

However, for Stalin the figure is more than double, as total non-combatant deaths directly caused by Stalin within the Soviet Union throughout his rule from 1924 to 1953 and excluding the war itself, is estimated to be around 50 million people. The only factors that differentiate Stalin from Hitler are Second World War Geo-Politics and contrasting military fortunes. Stalin did not pose a direct threat to the western democracies at the time, and ended up on the same side as us through a combination of ideological and strategic policy decisions on Hitler’s part, and was politically vindicated by his victory in the war vs Hitler’s rightful defeat. Furthermore, when Churchill heard the news of Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union, he said the following in the House of Commons; “If Hitler invaded hell, then I would make a favourable reference to the devil!” Thus it was the simple political and military imperative of my enemy’s enemy being my friend, as without Stalin and his vast resource of Soviet manpower we could not have won the war!

Stalin’s killings on the other hand were solely for political reasons and were more or less completely random and unplanned, as anyone in the Soviet Union at that time could be arrested and/ or sent to their death for the slightest seemingly critical remark or gesture, or by just being in the wrong place at the wrong time, the only major exception to this being his military purges of course, which were directed and planned. I’ll quote Churchill again, as he had the following to say on Stalin’s reign of terror;

“In Russia a man is called reactionary if he objects to having his property stolen and his wife and children murdered.”

So in my view mass murder is mass murder, regardless of whether it is racially or politically motivated, specifically directed or completely random, and that therefore neither is less of an evil or abhorrent than the other! I’ve based my figure of non-combatant deaths caused by Stalin on the book “Europe A History,” written by Historian Norman Davies, who counted 50 million killed between 1924-1953, excluding wartime casualties. But even the Russian Soviet politician and historian, Alexander Nikolayevich Yakovlev, estimated the figure at a least 35 million deaths. In his acclaimed book “The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purge of the Thirties,” historian Robert Conquest said: “We get a figure of 20 million dead [under Stalin], which is almost certainly too low and might require an increase of 50 percent or so.”

Quotes attributed to Stalin himself reflected his utter disregard for human life. Such as;

“Death is the solution to all problems. No man — no problem!”, and “One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic!”