While Hitler was born in Austria, he was born right over the border from Germany and his family moved to Germany when he was three. Beyond that, Austrians and Germans are basically identical biologically speaking. The only real difference would be in who he identified with. Growing up in Germany from the age of 3, he undoubtedly identified himself as German. So, for all intents and purposes the Germans were his people. The Jews may or may not have been his people. Some think that he was and others do not. His father's ancestry is ... murky. The distinction drawn with Stalin is even less relevant. He was Georgian, but Georgia was a part of the USSR, and the people he killed were Soviets. At the time of his birth Georgia was part of the Russian empire. Stalin was thus born in the Russian empire, and worked for the creation of the Soviet Union the entire time that Georgia was independent between the end of the empire and its annexation into the USSR. Thus, both Hitler and Stalin killed their own people, and both in FAR greater numbers than the Shah. Stalin likely killed in the neighborhood of 20 million of his own people through famine, purges, forced relocations and the like. Countless more died from things like being sent into battle against the nazis with wooden replica rifles. While the personal tragedy suffered by someone under the Shah (or the Ayatollah for that matter) would be no less, their actions do not come close to the scale of the big boys. They are not even on the level of Pol Pot. They should fall somewhere around Idi Amin.
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Give Hitler some more assertive, technocratic advisors and he might have surpassed Stailn's body count and made Germany the second superpower. Then maybe Germany could have nuked Russia and America into detente, and probably encroached into Africa and the Middle East. And, unlike Stalin, possibly less chance of his successors repudiating his legacy or policies since his genocide focus more on minorities and outsiders, whereas Stalin's killing was a bit more random?
Leaders or not, we kind of all did it: take away the commercial banks, grocery stores, gun laws, corporate/professional jobs and fully gentrified suburban neighborhoods and ask what you or some of your neighbors would do to build a homestead.
yes. the shah killed 250,000 people (with united states support btw). many of them were brutally tortured to death in a manner that would give george w. bush a major chubby. stalin killed more than hitler (he once admitted the number was close to 30 million). but mao killed more than stalin and hitler combined and he is still deified in china.
Depends on how you define 'evil'. Suppose, just for the sake of argument, that Hitler or Stalin directed somebody to be killed that would have destroyed the entire planet at some point in their life; would they be evil, or good? Good and evil are entirely of the human mind. Their definition is completely subjective. What would be considered good to some might be considered evil to others.
You know this sounds good and really smart and all...but if you're lining up women in front of trenches and telling them to hold their children against their breast so that when you shoot them in the back, you'll only have to use one bullet to kill both....that's mother falcon evil. You can call it whatever you want.
I just mean to say that there is a bigger picture beyond our experiences on this planet. To us, both men are evil. There isn't really a point in measuring which is more evil because evil is immeasurable. Beyond our consciousness, good and evil have no meaning.
You can also put Mengle on the list, Hitler ordered the deaths, but Mengle watched them, and enjoyed watching them and seeing all the crazy stuff that happens with death and eugenics.
no, no! dont you see that this is only your subjective opinion. you have your own narrow-minded definition of what constitutes "evil" and through your own inherent biases you are unfairly judging hitler and stalin when you have no right to do so. who are you to say what they did was evil? and what about the fact that maybe some of those people who hilter and stalin murdered would have gone on to commit acts of murder on others. think how many people he saved by killing millions of other people! as uncle jo himself said, "you cant make an omelet w/out breaking a few eggs!" what if stalin killed the man that was destined to kill your father...in that scenario stalin saved your life, so can you really call him evil??? did i just blow your miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiind?
ehhhh you give Hitler way too much credit. Hitler was only good at one thing; Politicking. It was his advisers and high ranking military officers that gave him Europe. He frequently ignored the advice of his advisers. In retrospect, Hitler was an awful and ineffective leader. The continent of Europe wanted peace and upheld the agreement of the Treaty of Versailles while Hitler ignored it and built up large armies and pursued advanced technologies of war. He then conquered much of Europe with little resistance. He couldn't even conquer England with the pacifist Chamberlain in office. If Chamberlain had been more proactive in stopping Hitler, things would have been very different. Heck, even many of the French were not happy with the invasion of the Allied forces as it destroyed much of their countryside. Hitler basically collapsed at the first formidable challenge that came his way.
I certainly can't refute any first/secondhand stories you've heard, but I read up some and still can't really find much. It does seem that SAVAK was pretty brutal, but I couldn't find any reliable numbers anywhere; the figures I saw ranged from 700 political prisoners to the 250,000 victims that jo mama mentioned. For numbers to range that widely, that indicates that there is a lot of misinformation going on here. That said, hundreds of thousands of people don't just disappear without some reliable record of it being made. Also, every article I read in major newspapers regarding the Shah (most were about his children over the last decade) were FULL of comments by presumably Iranians berating the respective author for repeating what they felt were unsubstantiated claims of the Shah's brutality. Many comments confidently stated that "all" Iranians rue the day they kicked out the Shah and so on. Granted, these are just comments on articles on the internet, but so far, I've seen 50 anonymous internet opinions for the Shah vs yours against him... and all that is accompanied by a severe lack of factual sources. Care to humor me and send me some reliable linkage?
