Why do most people consider Hitler most ruthless man in history?

Question

When cleary Stalin was worse then him

Answer 1

I believe we don't need to look back in the history to find ruthless personality.........Bush has topped every body

Answer 2

I'd agree with an earlier comment. Nice Uncle Joe helped us bring about the fall of Nazism, ipso facto he is not as bad.

Hitler was much less ruthless than Stalin. Hitler was lucky and a great politician (despite his policies I hasten to add!!!). He had the support of much of the German population for most of his rule, despite the Fuhrerprinzip.

Stalin plotted from the moment of Lenin's death to become the dictator and showed the inherent problems of Communism. He was also much more evil in my opinion.

Also, Stalin never declared war on the free world, which may have been Hitler's downfall.

Answer 3

I'm not sure that statement is true. He was certainly among the most ruthless. I didn't think there was a contest for the title. How do you measure ruthlessness? Some people can be ruthless without killing millions of innocent souls.

Personally, because of the result of their actions, I would consider Hitler and Stalin just about equal AT THE TIME THEY LIVED. More recently, one would have to consider Pol Pot of Cambodia as extremely ruthless - he is believed to have destroyed 40% of his country's population.

In earlier times you can look at the Spanish king Philip II and his successors who tried to exterminate the entire population of the Netherlands, and before that there was Genghis Khan.

Rather than run a contest for who was the most ruthless, let's just decide that all these people (and others not mentioned) were a blot on humanity, and one can only hope that others of their kind will never again be in positions of power.

Answer 4

Well i pesonally would consider Hitler to be the worse out of the two but thats my opinion and it's a great debate on who was worse really.

Ok numbers wise Stalin leads the pack obviously, but numbers arent everything.

Hitler went about to systematically wipe out an entire people, he said he would do it and made no secret of it. The Holocaust was a scientific, modernised and industrialised way of killing millions of people in a short space of time, surely a man behind something on this scale should really be considered worse.

Answer 5

Because most people understand what Hitler done and do not look at what the Communists achieved during their 20th century existance. The same as people look at the disgusting actions of the Japanese to POW's and not the treatment of the Natives and Chinese. Or the way the Allies treated some of the refugees from the two powers.

Answer 6

Because Hitler holds responsibility for WWII. This was only the most recent psyche-changing event in Europe that had immense effects throughout the world. And because those most devestated by Germany during the war - Poles, Brits, Norwegians, Danes, French, Dutch, Czechs, Belgians.. later Russians, Greeks, Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks, Arabs, Egyptians.. Americans, Australians, Canadians, Italians, then the German people themselves (not to mention the Jews and Roma who long were singled out) - because they all were affected by Hitler and were all recepients of propoganda in their home countries (exaggerated but with a high degree of truth), "Hitler" became the great devil of his age.

Josef Stalin, on the other hand, fought against Hitler. He succeeded in painting his country as victims of the war, despite the Molotov-Tropp pact that partitioned Poland between Germany and the USSR to begin the war in the first place. Stalin didn't affect the US directly, he didn't bomb London or capture Paris. Therefore he wasn't the despised criminal that Hitler was. His crimes, his purges were overlooked because we needed the Russians to ally with us. And in the great totalitarian machine that the USSR was at the time, a lot of the information about those purges was lost, hidden, our numbers were only best guesses as the Soviet state had every reason to lie and cover up, produce its own reasons and numbers.

Of the estimated 30 million who died of unnatural causes during Stalin's reign, a great many were during WWII and due to his failed collective agricultural policies during the first five year plans. Millions died in the purges, show trials and one-way tickets to the gulags of Siberia, but Stalin is still seen as a tyrant who mismanaged policies (agricultural), leading to needless suffering, and a bit of a mad man who tried to consolidate his power (the purges), while Hitler is seen as having "the master plan", inspiring his top officers to push forward with concentration camps and enslave and exterminate around 6 million of an entire ethnic group. Hitler is viewed as the greater evil with the evil means to an evil end. Stalin is viewed as the lesser evil with the evil means to a better end. These are trivial differences perhaps, but it affects our psyche, and it's why Hitler comes out as the most ruthless, with Stalin usually first runner-up.

Answer 7

Higher numbers of victims do not make one more ruthless. Hitler was more ruthless/evil because of his systematic and deliberate intention to wipe out a specific race of people; Stalin's 23 million included those who died in the stages of collectivisation and all that, and those people were stepping stones to his power, or the pavement on which he stabilized his regime.

In other words, he did not kill people just for the sake of it, like Hitler did with the Jews.

Answer 8

Wether it be Stalin or Hitler or Pol Pot wrong is wrong, as with British atrocities in India, South Africa,and the terrible 100 years of transportation to Australia and Norfolk Island.

Answer 9

Probably because Hitler managed to draw the attention of the world with his internal and foreign policies, and made no bones about who knew them; whereas Stalin's atrocities took place behind a veil of secrecy and beaurocracy and did not draw the attention of the world. The number of Soviets who were eliminated or expired in the gulag will probably never be discovered.
Yes, he was worse than Hitler. Hitler made it clear who his enemies were, and made it plain that they would be eliminated. Stalin just had "wreckers" rounded up and disposed of arbitrarily in accordance with the quotas (ie/ number of arrests to be carried out in a given time period) which the NKVD invariably fulfilled (and frequently displayed a huge degree of inventiveness in doing so).

Answer 10

Stalin took it out on his own people. Hitler took his aggression abroad and affected the lives of other nations people.

Hitler probably came closer to realizing his dream of global domonation than did Stalin.

Also, Hitler had more video images of what he accomplished. Stalin did his dirty work behind closed doors, so we know more about the Nazi regime.




g-day!

Answer 11

Because Stalin was our ally, and the United States simply couldn't be allied to an evil nation! (joking!)
At any rate Stalin defiantly caused the death of more people then Hitler, but keep in mind Mao Zedong killed more then Hitler and Stalin combined. It is clear that the U.S government is full of hypocrites because we fight against something, but are allied to it at the same time. For example, we are allied to Saudi Arabia but some of the terrorists of 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia.