Reference no: EM133754593

Assignment:

So who was worst, Hitler or Stalin? The best answer, undoubtedly, is that each was worse than the other. We are, after all, talking about men who presided over the twentieth century's most awful crimes, dictators who wielded unprecedented powers in pursuing their terrible agendas. Both displayed exceptional indifference to the sufferings they inflicted; each demonstrated a remarkable capacity for cruelty.

Let's be clear: I doubt that, in the end, any meaningful moral distinction can be drawn between Hitler and Stalin; they are equally awful in every respect. But there's some value nonetheless in comparing their leadership and governance. I ask that you address the question, "who was worse?", with the following questions in mind:

a) Did either man actually believe what he said (e.g. Hitler's rants about race, Stalin's dedication to class-based categories)? This is not, again, a matter of moral judgment - whether Hitler was "sincere" in his genocidal hatred of Jews, or cynically used them as convenient scapegoats, hardly matters when we consider the nearly six million Jews killed under his command. Just the same, addressing this question provides us one way of getting at the role played by ideas in each of these dictatorships. How much were the crimes of Stalin and Hitler the direct result of their hateful ideas, in other words, as opposed to the dynamics of power and exercising dictatorial control?

b) Who caused the greatest suffering? Answering this requires that you consider the grim statistical record, the ledger sheet of death and destruction we assign to each regime. But in considering this question, please remember that there are many death tolls to consider: the victims of Stalin's domestic policies, for one; the victims of Hitler's Final Solution, on the other. But alongside these millions are the more than fifty million people who died during World War II, including some three million Polish gentiles and six million Germans. To whose ledger do we assign these deaths?

c) Who left the most destructive legacy? Here, you might consider that Hitler's Thousand Year Reich lasted only twelve years; Stalin's state, on the other hand, survived that dictator's death and is still, in various forms, embedded within today's Russian government. Does the durability of their achievements make any real difference in how we evaluate these dictators and regimes?

As always, there are no right or wrong answers to these questions. Nor do you have to address all three topics; I have presented these as yet another menu of options. So write up your position, sit back and read what others are saying, and take part in the debate that follows.