Hitler is the general western world's first thought when we think about the ultimate incarnation of evil, the second being Satan. This is despite his much lower death toll compared to Stalin - though there are occasional people who argue that Hitler was worse than Stalin, even amongst them the death toll for Stalin is higher, and the vast majority consider Hitler more important - when I type "Hitler" into my google search, which gives me suggested searches based on others' searches, a variety of suggested searches about Hitler come up, but amongst the Stalin suggested searches are both "Stalin and Hitler" and "Stalin vs Hitler" - in terms of mass-murdering villainy, Stalin is clearly Hitler's still-evil-but-not-quite-as-bad assistant.
The reason for this is probably American propaganda during WW2, which led to lots of "Captain America fights the Nazis" and very little "Captain America fights the Russians". However, I wonder whether there is any other reason that Hitler is so much more the ultimate villain than Stalin.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Hi Sam, here is what I said with Nate, whose link led me to your post.
ReplyDelete"And also, we have a lot of access to Nazi archives. We have none with regards to this period of Soviet history. Thus, the definitive history of the age of Stalin has yet to be written. The Holocaust is well documented, Stalin's atrocities are not."
In other words, transparency can do a lot for a reputation--both good and bad.