Why is Hitler regarded as the worse dictator ever when Mao left a death toll of nearly 80 million people?

Question

Brian T, and I still can't believe you don' t understad my question. We are all sick a tired of listening about Hitler's crimes as if there was nobody else as evil as him, when there are quite a few other monsters in History.

Answer 1

I would say for three reasons, one is that Hitler was the first one to have a plan to wipe out millions of people. It wasn't just gather them and shoot them, it was a whole system put up with the use of modern technology for the only goal of killing people. We always remember the first one.
The second reason is that he started a world war, so he tends to stick in our mind.
The third reason is that Mao closed up his country when he sent millions of Chinese to die either in the fields or in so called re-education camps, when they were not just shot on the spot as traitor to the great plan. The few reports that came out were ridiculed by plenty of people. When the truth came out years later it was old news and the world was busy with more recent news.

Answer 2

We know a great deal more about Adolf Hitler from the point of view of being of the same or similar race to himself.

Although I am not a German by race, I am nevertheless Germanic by virtue of being a Brythonic Celt.

As a European I am more focused on what happens and what has happened in European history than I am on the history of China or anywhere else.

It's really a matter of race connection. Most Britons know something about the former British Empire, the American Colonies, Australia, Canada etc. They may also know something about India and a little of China in terms of the former British colony of Hong Kong.

The real evil of Adolf Hitler is the fact that he was a Christian. Indeed, it is estimated that about 25% of the SS were actually Catholic.

What we have then is an evil man, who's theories destoyed much of Christian belief.

To some extent this may be the cause of the abandonment of Christianity in Britain and the take up of other religions including a much wider interest in paganism which seems on the whole much safer and non raceist.

The most popular form of escape from Christianity in Britain was Hinduism, but is now thought to be Islam.

I therefore regard Adolf Hitler and the Nazis to be the most evil in all history. They systematically set about the task of destroying another race, the Jews on an industrial scale. Nothing ever happened like this before and it should never be allowed to happen again, ever. Not to any race, no matter what. It is for this reason the Britrish sent 50,000 troops into Kosovo and why the Americans sent even more.

Answer 3

Simple answer: because most humans like to categorize and create archetypes to rationalize events instead of analyzing an entire situation to derive a conclusion.

The fastest way for these archetypes is to select the one most available and easiest to understand. Who receives the most attention from the Media? (Mao gets rarely a mention whereas the History Channel always seems to have some documentary on WWII) Who was hated by an entire generation that is still around with us? (The entire USA propaganda machine created the idea of Hiroito and Hitler as the devil in Earth - I have seen even WWII comics where Hitler "crucifies" Jesus) and which minority has been the focus of European persecution for years, which increases the guilt of Western civilization?

Now, whether Hitler or Mao was "worse" is a matter difficult to ascertain and depends on subjective reasoning.
If you were jewish, gypsy or a lower class minority, I bet you would prefer Mao, whereas if you were an upper or middle class average citizen, you would choose Hitler any day of the week.

In my subjective analysis, I think that Hitler is worse than Mao simply because Hitler is a recurring nightmare on how a Western nation can become a police state in little time and with complete support of the democracy. Hitler also created an industrialized process for killing, which, given 30 years, would potentially kill a billion people in with ease. Mao is just another example of why mainstream communism is just a fairy tale.

Answer 4

Both were monsters but with Hitler it wasn't so much the death toll as the extreme of cruelty. The jews & others were used in ways a lab rat was used in the 60s. Some were skinned alive to make lampshades. Others were put through various tortures to test how much pain they could endure before the body died. Some even with aryan qualities but jewish descent were killed for nothing more serious than a cleft palate.

History has always had it's murderous monsters but Hitler even surpassed Val the Impaler in the brutality & viciousness of the killing. What also made Hitler worse was he was elected by a democratic majority, not a dictator or king. Even at the height of his government no one in power in Germany was talking about his impeachment.

Answer 5

Stalin said "One death is a tragedy, twenty million is a statistic", or something along those lines. His death toll is estimated at 5-20m.

The answer, I think, is that Mao only killed, directly or indirectly (see below) his countrymen, whereas Hitler invaded other countries and systematically killed members of a different race in an attempt at achieving genetic purity.

Many millions of deaths under Mao were as a direct result of his trying to hold onto political power in China. However, many millions more were as a result of the "Great Leap Forward" under which farming became a "collective" ownership. Locals were so scared of not achieving their quotas that they would lie to party officials about their agricultural yields, not knowing that most other collectives were also failing. This led to a massive famine.

It could therefore be argued that, although he was a merciless power freak, most deaths were not directly by his hand, whereas Hitler actively pursued genocide.

Answer 6

First of all, I think that just because Mao left a death toll of nearly 80 million people, it doesn't mean he was a bad dictator.

We blew up Hiroshima and Nagasaki and killed many lives, but we don't call Truman the worst President ever, do we?

Well, it's all in the eyes of the beholders.

The Chinese actually regarded Mao as being one of the most important figures in world history because he was essential to the Chinese Revolution.
Check out the source.

goodday.

Answer 7

For some reason, dictators who espouse left wing ideologies, e.g. Mao, Stalin, Castro, are considered to be less horrible than right wing dictators such Hitler.

People say for example that Mao only killed people who got in the way of the establishment of communism (which they apparently view as a good thing) whereas Hitler deliberately set out to kill certain groups of people.

Personally, I do not understand the logic of the argument. I guess it is a more extreme form of the partisanship we see every day when supporters of one political party and/or candidate will tolerate their own people doing something wrong but will loudly condemn someone of another party for doing the same thing.

Answer 8

To understand this, you first have to understand that it is acknowledged, by the western world, that western lives are worth more than lives from other parts of the world.
Europeans wallow in the shame that Hitler was not stopped before the Holocaust took off.
It's time people became aware of this. We might then not be under the threat of terrorism.
John Donne said 'Every man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. Therefore never send to ask for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee,' and that was written in the 16th Century.
I'm appalled. I just read some of the other answers, and most of the people out there don't know who Mao was?
I don't believe it. What is happening to education in history? No wonder politicians don't learn from history. They didn't learn about it in High School!

Answer 9

The United States won a war against Hitler whereas we didn't against Mao. The Korean War ended in a stalemate.

Answer 10

I know someone will yell at me for this. The media in our country is run, for the most part by Jews. The Media in our country has such power it tells us what to believe. They want everyone to focus on the Holocaust. Which is all you learn about during World War II, even though it was not part of the war it was Hitler's domestic agenda. Hitler's deaths ranged around 5million. Mao although not all of his deaths were orderd, his actions did result in 80million deaths. Stalin had 40million ordered deaths. Mao and Stalin put Hitler to shame so to say. However the media in America like to focus on the Houlocaust and therefore Hitler is portyaed as the worst.
PS-We fought Stalin in the Cold War, Mao in Korea. So we faught them as well.
PSS-The Houlocaust also targeted, gays, gypsies and metally challanged people as well to name a few.

Answer 11

Because Hitler represents Fascism, which many see as a sort of evolution of Capitalism. This makes Hitler the right-wing bad guy with enough for everyone to hate. However, Fascism has little to do with Capitalism, and in fact is an entirely different way of thinking from our culture. Its eradication allows us the luxury to examine the breadth of its evil unmolested.

Mao was a communist, which people tend to view as misguided humanists rather than disspicable monsters. Because Communists had "the right idea" they are more willing to overlook atrocities. And because there are still Communists and "pinkos" (people sympathetic to Communist ideals) in our culture, there is an opposition to outright calling them evil.

A study was done in England a while back in which two groups of children were told to analyze a situation. One was the story of the fall of Jericho, the other was the exact story, only rewritten to take place in China under a fictional Chinese warlord. Recall that the fall of Jericho was the story where the Israelites descended into the city and slaughtered every man, woman, child, and animal. The Children who analyzed the battle of Jericho were quick to rationalize the work as the will of God, and none of the children outright condemned the action. The children who were analyzing the story about the Chinese were universally disgusted at the depravity of violence and all were united in calling it atrocious.

The point is, when it comes to matters of faith (faith in God, or faith in Communism), people are quick to rationalize atrocities, even if they themselves would never think of commiting such an evil. Clearly Jesus would not have condoned Jericho, nor would Karl Marx have condoned the USSR. Faiths change and mutate over the course of their lives.