"But, sadly, because there are still large numbers of people (and judge for yourself which side of decency they stand) who still refuse to face up to the horrors of communism."

Because naturally refusing to face horror is a sign of indecency. As to the actual question you may as well ask which was better. I dare you.

Because naturally refusing to face horror is a sign of indecency. Actually, that's called cowardice, and cowards have always enabled the indecent. Communism and Naziism are two sides of the same coin. They're equally cancers upon humanity. It's just a shame that Communism was allowed to metastize for so long.

My answer: there was no difference between Naziism and Communism. They were both fraudulent political theories used by tyrants to oppress their people. No different from whatever Saddam Hussein was. They were excuses, not systems.

I'm not sure the "two sides of the same coin" analogy covers it well enough. I look at them more as two distinct variations of the aids virus, and liberalism as HIV. Not quite aids yet, but it will get there eventually.

Well said, Bullwinkle.

Nazism (German abbreviation for "National Socialist Worker's Party") had its roots in the German communist party. Hitler was first an ardent supporter, then branched off into his own version of dictatorship.

Communists & "liberals" act covertly while they ascend to power. Once they gain it, gone is the pretense of doing good for the peeeeeople, and out come the prison camps for all who disagree with them.

Fearful cowards + guns = vicious bullies.

According to the "genocidal yardstick" communism was way worse than national socialism:

http://www.freedomsnest.com/rummel_totals.html

How rotten to the core is this world that this is even a debate?

Soviet Union
Total killed: 61,911,000

Communist China
Total killed: 35,236,000

Nazi Germany
Total killed: 20,946,000

Nearly 100 million murdered vs. 21 million. Yeah, real close!!!!

Hell, even asshat "liberals" like George Lucas still pimp the communists in Vietnam. So how many did these "liberators" butcher?

Vietnam 1945-1987
Total killed: 1,678,000

But the commies had good intentions....

I think that one is a nobrainer.

I think the only reason Nazism comes to mind is because Hitler has been painted into the absolute villain corner, while the perpetrators of communist horrors are more varied.

I figure most people could tell you who Hitler was, but other than Stalin and Lenin (and I have my doubts about those given the state of education in the US) I think most people would be hard pressed to list too many communist leaders, much less the highly murderous ones.

And state-sponsored genocide need not be the only valid measure, either... how about the state terrorizing its own citizens, disappearances, gulags, "work camps", the making of non-entities?

I'd like to see some good numbers on how many of its own citizens each had killed (not including those who suddenly found themselves citizens through occupation).

Burgess:

http://www.freedomsnest.com/rumrud.html

When asked this question, I always invoke the Roger Daltrey Rule: "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." To the guy in the street, it's all the same. As to the claim that genocide was not intrinsic to Soviet Communism just because Brezhnev didn't practice it, two responses: (1) We really don't know that that is true, and there is some evidence that it isn't; (2) it somewhat begs the question -- how much genocide occurred in the Third Reich after Hitler was gone? My own take: Both systems were utterly evil. Period.

John Burgess this website has some very interesting stats on governments that murder their own citizens in addition to others.

http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/welcome.html

The Nazis killed 21 million in the name of white Germans.

The Commies killed 100 million in the name of Humanity.

In doubt, blame the White Man. Clearly the Commies were better since they killed so many more for more noble reasons.

Arguing about which is worse (or which is better) is akin to debating whether a tablespoon of arsenic is better or worse for you than a cupful. The fact that these two versions of tyranny aren't seen as equally evil seems to be a tragic reflection of the lack of real History in American classrooms over the past 20 years. Seems that most adults under 40 don't know anything about history if it didn't happen in their lifetime.

Call it a victory for the revisionists.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history." --Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." --George Santayana

...and let;s not forget MAO. Anyyway, if I HAVE to, I'd go with Stalin/Communism worse than Hitler/Nazism. But it's like saying that the Black Death was worse than AIDS: you can't pick a "better" disease. Hitler was clearly the immediate threat in the 40's and we allied serious doubt, though, that if positions had been reversed, if Russia had had the educated populace and technical/industrial base, and Germany a horrendously poor and backward totalitarian socity, that Stalin wouldn't have mounted a great war of conquest westward? Or that by fillip of history we might have allied with Hitler to defeat the dreaded Reds, only to have inarguably demonstrated to our ufully warned from the moment of victory over Communism, that Germany had slaughtered not just 6 million Jews, but scores of millions of other Europeans? A pox on both their houses.

Yalta and Potsdam, whcih condmned half of Europe to slavery for two generations, were in no small part brought about because of the arrogance of a sick and exhausted president, who said he and Stalin liked each other and that he could "handle" Uncle Joe". The same president whose closest counsellors on relations with Russia were, on the one hand, admitted leftist and communo-phile Harry Hopkins, and on the other the admnitted Communist Party member and (as finally proven after the fall of the USSR) Soviet agent Alger Hiss. With Armand Hammer thrown in for spice. Roosevelt and Truman betrayed Europe because Satlin blustered and bluffed, and they thought the US was too tired to continue standing uo to mad dictators.

What I resent today is the leftist dogma that has prevailed since the 30's, refined and altered along the years, to the effect that Communism was merely a glorious but failed well-intentioned experiment, while Nazism was evil incarnate. Treating one as a cold and the other as cancer, even though both were invariably fatal.

Why is it wrong to say Communism was worse than National Socialism?

It is simple math. A guy who murders three people is worse than a guy who murders one. A country which acually conquers and enslaves other nations is worse than one which just attempts to. 1+1=2

Don't fall into the leftist liberal PC trap. More murders, more enslavement, more oppression is worse than less murders, less enslavement, less oppression. There is a rational basis for more/less, despite liberal whines to the contrary.

The real difference between Naziism and Communism, in terms of body counts, was that the Nazis only had 15 years to kill their 21 million people, while Soviet/Maoist/Khmere Rouge-style Communism lasted for about 60 years, or four times the length of Naziism.

Still, the Commies managed to kill five times as many people (100 million +) within four times the number of years. So it looks like the award still goes to the Commies. And of course we still have Cuba and N. Korea around, so the final tally of Commie dead won't be known for some time.

I think that where a lot of people draw the distinction between Communism and Naziism based on the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps. The Commies were always good PR people, and they kept their killing well-hidden. But when we liberated the Nazi camps we collected enormous amounts of evidence related to everything the Nazi's did, including the gastly medical experiments. Since we don't have that kind of graphic evidence against people like Mao and Stalin, people assume that the Nazis were worse.

Slovakia is a bad choice to try to make this judgment. Given the history of Czeckoslovakia during the war, it is hard to say that Communism, even at its worst in Czeckoslovakia approached the depredations of the nazis.

See http://www.lidice-memorial.cz/index_uk.htm

The communists only aspired to this level of evil.

My point is not the the communists didn't do things like Lidice, they just didn't do them in Czeckoslovakia. Hence my statement that this is the wrong place to make the argument.

"Which was Worse -- Naziism or Communism?"

Communism. Communists committed all the horrors the Nazis did, on a larger scale, all while getting more sympathetic press.

Was it a contest?

Howzabout this for an answer: Communism was worse because it killed more people for longer and its apologists still expect to be able to make excuses for it in polite society and even to demand your admiration for their advocacy of Stalinism. It's like comparing a malignant tumor that was removed to one that was allowed to grow indefinitely. No contest.

Doesn't anyone here subscribe to the logic that 1 person killed is a murder, a tragedy---while a 1 million is just a statistic?

We're trying quantify evil here, people. C'mon now.

I agree communism or shall I be kind to Marx and say Stalinism or Stalinist style communism turned out to be more deadly than Nazism overall, because I don't think anyone has ever followed Marx's theory in the way he meant it to be applied except in the odd Israelis kibbutz. Of course the Asian variant is just as deadly of course.

However I do beg to nitpick on the numbers for the Nazis, first of all you could probably argue the Nazis were to blame for most of the estimated 60 million world wide casualties as a result of WWII.

My understanding was that the Nazis killed 20 million Russians plus another 11 million people including 6 million Jews via concentration camps etc. - I'm not sure if that 11 million number includes Allied soldiers and people summarily executed in the occupied countries daily.

Now what the Nazis had that Stalin didn't was efficiency of scale in their killing machine.

Let's be conservative and say they killed 30 million people in a six year period, which doesn't even include North Africa, the Russians were much slower. So that begs the question, what if Hitler had won the war but my favourite food for thought is what if Hitler hadn't turned on Stalin or at least not until after they had defeated the Allies. Makes for a good creative writing exercise for the kiddies.

I have many friends in the Ukraine who would have a word or two to speak about Russia and communism. I doubt that Mr. Steele would bother to listen, though.

What about people killed as a percent of the population of the infected area? Maybe the numbers will look different that way. Communists managed to gain a lot more ground than the Nazis did, but if we extended the Nazi regime over every area that was controlled/is controlled by Communists and proportionally expanded the number of people murdered, which system would have more blood on its hands? However, I don't really think it matters after a point; both the Nazis under Hitler and Communists like Stalin and Castro killed insane numbers of people and needed to be (or still need to be) stopped.

Who would bother to make a serious comparison of Nazism and Communism? In today’s world only academics or journalists would be interested in such a comparison. For these people, bashing Nazism is easy, but criticizing Communism has a price. Both groups are bastions of the political left, and many of the ideas underlying today’s left are the same ideas that defined Communism. Better to turn a blind eye to the horrific consequences of those ideas than question them.

If you are trying to total those killed by Communism, don’t forget the citizens of South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos killed after America bailed in 1975. Another group the left would like to forget about.

That's a strange question Kevin. Which was more evil, the one that killed 100 million or 20 million?

Nazi Germany gets the vote usually, as someone has already mention, because what they did was exposed when the allies rolled into the concentration camps, along with journalists and photographers. What happened in Communist Russia wasnt as well exposed by any means, but it was terrible just the same.

The numbers to me, or the relative amounts, arent really the point...both cases are horrific examples of what humans can do to one another.

Is some mass murderer who kills 20 people worse than one who kills three? Not in my opinion. The effect may be felt by more people in the former, but the crimes are one in the same.

I think it's important to consider why certain crimes are more well known than others though.

I dont see the use in saying that one is worse than another. Both are examples of the terrible things that humans can do to one another.

Is a mass murderer who kills 20 people worse than one who kills 5? Murder is murder, the rest is just a question of how many people are affected by it.

Nazi Germany was exposed to the world at the end of WWII when Allied troops reached the camps. What happened under Stalin was never really exposed in the same way, so not as many people know about it. And some people dont want to know about it.

It's an interesting question as to why certain crimes are more publicized than others.

sprry for the double post...my computer freaked out the first time and i thought it didnt post. damn.

"Which was worse -- Nazism or Communism?"

Like, either are past tense? Seems that both are more rabid today than ever, unfortunately, like Byrd and Kennedy in our Senate, they feed off one another like hateful marriage partners.

Kyer

The real stand out that Hitler is, is because he IMPORTED people to kill.

All other genocides happened locally, Hitler gathered from abroad, brought the people to the motherland & slaughtered them......that's what really sets him apart.

Jus sayin'

So can I gather you all think that Nazism was better than Communism because it killed less people?

And BTW, can anyone here name me one living American liberal that supports or defends Stalin or Stalinism? For bonus points give me the exact quote. Otherwise you've all been beating the proverbial strawman, you know the one you guys always drag out when discussing liberals and liberalism.

Here's my favorite quote so far. From Bullwinkle:

"I'm not sure the "two sides of the same coin" analogy covers it well enough. I look at them more as two distinct variations of the aids virus, and liberalism as HIV. Not quite aids yet, but it will get there eventually."

I always love it when people start using metaphors of disease and infection to brand their political opposition. Jus Suss anyone?

Oh yeah, and my second favorite comment:

"Well said, Bullwinkle."

Ryan the point of the post was not to figure out which one is more evil, nor to discuss why some crimes become more well known than others, but was rather another excuse to bring up communism, which to many people here is a virtual pavlovian bell, causing them to rant about how anyone with a political belief left of center is a breath away from becoming Stalin (or, oddly and ingnorantly, Hitler). It must be strange to live life constantly interacting with strangers, friends, and neighbors, all the while thinking they could be just this side of evil, if not a full blown red commie bastard who wants to take your house and shove you in a gulag. Duck and cover, boys and girls. Duck and cover.

And now that we've settled that, would anybody like to join me in trying to figure out exactly how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

No offense intended, but trying to quantify evil is a fool's exercise. So communism infected more countries, producing higher body counts and more suffering and misery among those who survived it than nazism. So what? Nazism attempted mass murder against entire races (Jews and Gypsys and they probably would have gotten around to the Slavs if they had won the war). Again, so what? Whether it's one million dead in the name of Saddam or sixty million dead in the name of Marx is irrelevant. Evil is Evil and it needs to be stomped on like a cockroach wherever it's found.

frameone, after reading your second post I went back and re-read every other post. I didn't find a single one that suggested that nazism was "better" than communism--Leftism is Slave Morality probably came closest, and even he/she didn't say that--just less worse, which isn't the same. I think you're just put out by bullwinkle's slap at liberalism. Lie down in a dark, quiet room with a cold compress and it'll pass.

BTW, I wouldn't call refusing to face horror a sign of indecency; I'd call it a sign of cowardice, at least among those capable of doing something about it.

So What? I'd argue the undercurrent of this entire pointless debate is epitomized in Bullwinkle's comment: Ultimately, the aim is to link the American left to mass murder. I personally don't know why you have to go so far back as Stalin when you can stop at LBJ, but wait you guys support our brand of mass murder, right?

BTW, I wasn't so put off by Bullwinkle's "slap" at liberalism, I was just amused/disturbed that, "in an irony that would certainly escape him," he mobilized the rhetoric of Nazism to make his point about how Nazism and Liberalism were two sides of the same coin. And was then applauded for doing so. Brilliant.

I'm also still waiting for my requested quote.

BTW Fatman, your own phrase -- "Evil is Evil and it needs to be stomped on like a cockroach wherever it's found" -- is another fascinating echo of Nazi rhetoric. Indeed, Nazi propaganda and press regularly branded the Jews and political enemies of the Reich as vermin in need of being "stomped on." Your blindness to the historical context and precedent of your own rhetoric would be funny if it weren't also so chilling. Seriously, you slay me.