Not to mitigate Hitler in any way, but Stalin did a fair bit of that himself, more than Hitler even. So it might have been a bit of a wash on that front as well.

Ummmmm... Stalin was most certainly a nasty character and I suspect the extent of his atrocities will never be fully known. Given the information available, though, Hitler out did Stalin nicely and I'm sure he would have out paced him when it came to exterminating the Russian people. At least the Gulags did not prominently feature creamatoriums. And don't forget the Jewish population of Britain who would have been wisps of smoke floating across the Atlantic. :headshake

Hitler outdid Stalin? Hitler was an amateur.

20,000,000.

Stalin was able to spread it out and hide it better because he was an equal opportunity killer.

Also because he never lost the war and had enemy troops uncovering his secrets.

Don't forget Germany had a lot of friends in South America.
Had they won in Europe they were in position to establish a foothold there, also :cool:

Truth, I'm back to reading the Rise and Fall blah blah and references keep coming about so and so, just back from Bolivia. However, I stand by the point no way we get rolled by an OUTSIDE power. We also need to remember that, like Castro, Hitler had a limited shelf life and it's really hard to smoothly replace an absolute dictator.

Well, going back to the OP and national soul searching, yeah right. We had someone jump on the thread and claim the ridiculous number of 400,000 or so war dead in the name of pacifism. Whatever. We've had a disagreement over who was worse- Stalin or Hitler? I've read stat's on Hitler that put him reponsible for 20 million deaths directly and 44 million indirectly. ABCXYletter pudding head would have us forget about everything, including the current war in Iraq and bury our heads in the sand and say, Hitler did it. We have Busterb posting live from one of the worst disasters in recent American history and detailing the lack of response from ANYONE except people here on the Cellar. We have Keryx posting back and going "nyah, nyah, stupid Katrina victims get what they deserve!" We have tw's ever growing thread on Bush's shrinking safety zone. Hell! W. didn't have a safety zone 5 years ago before 9/11 ever happened! What's he got is a wealth and power zone and that has NOT changed.

So when is the last time a single one of you - left, right, center, communist or libertarian has written a single letter to your state representative, attended a single session of your local town council, written a letter to the editor of your local paper, or donated an hour of your own time to whatever cause is most close to your own heart? Its easy to debate Stalin versus Hitler. How about doing something real? 60 years ago today, Americans were dancing in the streets and Japanese children were watching their faces peel off. So fucking what?

I agree, as long a we had the foresight to maintain enough military strength to stop an initial attack. It's one of those, if you can stand the first punch, then you'll be ok.

Last time? Two days ago. And more times than I can count but the only thing I probably accomplished was stress relief for myself.

Oh, and I try not to tell other people what to do with their money. :headshake

To return more consistent with Griff's recent post: Fundamentals behind this discussion were previously posted at Morality

Meanwhile below is a typical response posted previously. A response created by propaganda from a mental midget president and his mouthpiece Rush Limbaugh. They do this because so many citizens did not understand the purpose of war and did not appreciate why a 'smoking gun' is so critical. Did not learn from history and even ignored numbers about those aluminim tubes. We know UT was deceived by propaganda from facts in another series of posts - Growing Threat Seen In Afghan Insurgency and from Poll finds that most U.S. troops are in favor of withdrawal Each are only symptoms of mistakes made at the highest levels of the American government because a president is a mental midget. Its not nice, but the conclusion is based in facts which explains why we are in a "Mission Accomplished" war that cannot be won. No strategic objective and therefore no exit strategy. This also defines the word "Morality".

Notice how clean and more complex war - its purpose and its propaganda - can become. To keep it simpler, we tell the common man that "they (others) are evil". It is why we are in a "Mission Accomplished" war. A mental midget president is a genius at convoluting the truth. He has lesser intelligent among us thinking we are fighting a war against bin Laden - who runs free because our president is so immoral as to let bin Laden run free.

Years ago, MaggieL and I had a long discussion where I defined the invasion of Iraq as wrong for so many reasons. I was roundly in the minority then and have been proven today to be more accurate than even I had hoped. Those reasons, from historical lessons, were based in above concepts including the strategic objective, the smoking gun, and other lessons from history. That is why we When a president so routinely lies as this one does to the destruction of America, well, that is why citizens are suppose to be learned in history. A country with more intelligent people and less Christian religious extremists would not be fighting a war against those who were not a threat. It would again be safe overseas to let others know you are American. These extremist anti-Americans who don't advocate the president's impeachment make it dangerous to be an American citizen where Americans were once so welcome.

If there is an 'evil' in Iraq, it is the American 'crusader' invader. If there is 'evil' in Afghanistan, it is bin Laden who the American president protects by letting him run free. Lessons we all should have learned from 60 years ago.

For starters, the death camps weren't death camps until after the Wannsee Conference in 1942. What is generally thought of as the Holocaust--the Final Solution--was not proposed or implemented, much less known about, until after the U.S. entered the war, and therefore cannot be used to justify its entry.

Prior to 1941, if you had stacked up Hitler's murders against Stalin's, Hitler would've come out looking like a kitten by comparison. Only with Barbarossa did he begin to catch up to Stalin's record.

But all of this begs the question: is it America's job to police the world? And if so, should we have invaded the USSR in 1932 or 1933 to stop the deliberate starvation of 7 million Ukrainians--rather than extending the red killers diplomatic recognition, as FDR enthusiastically did? If your answer is no, then don't come with any sob stories about the Holocaust. The principle is the same.

The purpose of war is nearly always to convince semi-literate clods to die for a cause that has nothing to do with them, but which you are too much of a pussy to die for yourself.

Because cattle like you are still nuzzling the cold, dead bum of an epic criminal like Roosevelt who caused that to happen. If you won't admit your fuck-ups, you're doomed to repeat them...or something like that.

Um, I was not asking why we should know what Roosevelt and Churchill's strategic objectives were. I asked why we should give a damn whether they were accomplished if doing so was to cost an additional 120,000 lives.

Which goes right back to the purpose of war. If at a negotiation table were honest men negotiating, then human life has value. Once one party makes human life irrelevant, then either the other party must surrender (Chamberlin) or all parties must now regard human life as only secondary (war).

In war, human lives are wasted - spent like capital funds. War derates the value to human life to be only another military resource. Don't for one minute forget that. Never worry about human life as paramount once war breaks out. That only makes one a loser. Once in war, human life must lose value for more important purposes.

Suggested is that war could have ended without those additional 120,000 lost lives. But that is irrelevant. We were no longer at a negotiation table where human life has such value. Until we get back to a negotiation table, then human life is only another expendable military asset or target. Cold, hard, and it is called reality. Anything less means war may be lost or that another war must be fought. This from someone that Urbane Guerilla considers too liberal or Democratic and that MaggieL did not understand? You tell me how someone so ruthless could be so.

I don't like it. But that reasoning is also why we must have a smoking gun to justify war. BTW it is also why Patton was so good (old blood and guts) and yet probably saved so many American lives.

Bottom line point is that if one goes to war, then human life must be regarded as something completely expendable until negotiations will start. If one is not willing to make that commitment, then one does not belong in war or may just create another war - ie WWI may have only created WWII. Welcome to justification for the liberation of Kuwait AND why Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfovitz, et al only destroyed (squandered) an oppurtunity created by Swartzkopf and Powell. If you don't understand what 'squander' means here, then you are not ruthless enough to call for war.

Whether those 120,000 lives could have been saved is secondary. Until a conflict gets to a negotiation table, the leader spends people like a corporate president spends his capital. Most coporate advertising dollars are wasted. But he must spend anyway. Currency is what human life becomes once negotiations break down into war.

To worry about 120,000 lives when war has not yet terminated is to be too liberal or simply too naive. Or it is to be too right wing conservative as to get into a war due to penis based intelligence. Either extreme: both are examples of why extremists tend to be of lesser intelligence.

It is war. Life is something to be spent. Be very careful before another president in 30 years lies like Johnson & Nixon in 1960s and George Jr in 2002. Such men forget they work for us - forget what is an American patriot. Such men think we are only capital for them to spend - defines a dictator mentality. If one needs a definition of evil, two examples are Nixon and George Jr. Both would kill rather than solve problems at a negotiation table - all for their own personal glory and in the name of god. Country and intelligence had nothing to due with Nixon's and George Jr's wars.

Defined is also why containment is so effective at solving world problems. And why preemption is strongly based in extremist propaganda. Demonstrated is that one, declared a liberal by some, is more ruthless than the weak kneed Urbane Guerilla who thinks nothing about going to war at the drop of a feather. We need cannon fodder which is why we need Urbane Guerrilla types. But worry when these types get us into a war. Demonstrated by the number of above words, war is not something to enter without both good and deep seated reasoning since 120,000 people suddenly have no significant value.

No, I actually don't think it accomplishes much either, but I do feel a certain sense of satisfaction after sending one of my mass e-mails to the Colorado State Legislature. Sometimes, I even get replies. :D