1. Russia was not ready at all to be industrialized. Millions of people lost their lives in the process and many more lost everything but their lives.
What do you mean Russia was not ready? That makes no sense. Russia was a whole century behind the other countries. It HAD to be industrialized. Stalin feared an imperialist attack on Russia at anytime, and he was right.
His industrialization was a important factor in winning WW2. It is true, many people died as a result of the rapid industrialization though.
2. Stalin didn't defeat the Germans by his own. It is said the Russian contribution was the biggest of the Allies, but that doesn't really matter. NO single allied power could have defeated on their own.
Why doesn't it matter? Russia fought the hardest of the allies and had its lands completely devastated. On the other hand, the US profited massively off the war. They quadtripiled their production and by the end of the war, owned 50% of the world's resources.
4. You mention Stalin made the SU a better place. Even though the production of food dropped drastically.
What? Thats not true at all!
Industrialization might have been harsh but it sure did work. The Soviet Union's industrial production was increasing by 16.5% each year! US economists even feared that the USSR would catch up.
`The breakthrough wrought by the revolution of 1928--31 laid the foundations of the remarkable industrial expansion in the 1930s that would sustain the country in the Second World War. By the end of 1932 ..., the gross industrial output ... had more than doubled since 1928 .... as the capital projects of the First Five-Year Plan were brought into operation one after another in the mid-1930s, industrial production expanded enormously. During 1934--36 ..., ``the official index showed a rise of 88 per cent for total gross industrial production ....'' In the decade from 1927/28 to 1937 ..., gross industrial production leapt from 18,300 million rubles to 95,500 million; pig iron output rose from 3.3 million tons to 14.5; coal from 35.4 million metric tons to 128.0; electric power from 5.1 billion kilowatt hours to 36.2; machine tools from 2,098 units to 36,120. Even discounting the exaggeration, it may be safely said that the achievements were dazzling.'
5. You say Hitler was a horrible strategist. This is true of course, he should have listenend to his staff. However, this is also true for Stalin. He made several big mistakes, but they are not remembered because he won the war.
Well mistakes are always ought to be made in a war which requires many instant decision making. However, from what I know of the German invasion, it was not very smart at all. Hitler refused his armies to retreat or to surrender when they were obviously doomed and nor did he listen to his generals. He insisted on claiming Stalingrad for the sake of it being STALINgrad, but not with military strategy in mind.
Also, Stalin let his generals make almost all the decisions so we cant put all the blame on him.
6. Hitler didn't allow his troops to surrender. Again, this is ALSO the case for Stalin. Stalin went further and didn't allow civilians to run from the germans. Stalin ordered that everyone in Stalingrad, including civilians, had to fight the german forces.
This isn't true. Stalin had a policy of "not one step back" but this only applied to the soldiers in the Red Army. This act showed the desperate situation for the USSR.
Civilians were actually told to evacuate through the Volga though. However there was a civilian militia that was formed which consisted of voluntary men and women who wanted to fight. Even they were poor equipped with arms from WW1. I don't see why Stalin would order civilians not to leave the city, given that they could not be armed.
7. You count everyone who died in WWII as a victim of Hitler. This is so stupid. Would you say Russian civilians who died in Stalingrad who could've escaped to safety but weren't allowed are victims of Hitler rather than of Stalin?
As said, that wasn't the case. But even so, there is a great fault to Hitler.
Did he not willingly invade the Soviet Union with a huge army and bomb just about every city in Eastern USSR daily?
The deaths of the 20 million residents of the USSR were the fault of Hitler. If he had not invaded the SU, it would not have have happened.
He was directly involved. Did he expect differently than for thousands to die when he ordered hundreds of planes to fly over a city and drop bombs?
And how is it fair that Stalin is blamed for just about every death in the USSR? His blamed for deaths in Gulags, famine and disease but yet Hitler is not to be blamed for deaths which he had great influence over?
Hitler targeted specific groups while Stalin's killings were often random acts of paranoid violence. Not always though. Stalin targeted for example gypsies and cossaks.
And racially targeting specific groups is somehow more justified than killing random groups? And Im not sure how valid of a statement it is to say that Stalin targeted gypsies and Cossacks.
You just said his violence was random acts of paranoia, not targets.
And I believe Hitler targeted gypsies along with homosexuals and jews.
Stalin wasn't a communist and Hitler wasn't a socialist.
Stalin was a communist, though not a good one.
As of Hitler, he never meant to be a socialist. National socialism is another name for fascism, it really has little to do with socialism.
Socialists are actually very much against fascists.
And for the record, Stalin cost more people their lives than Hitler.
I already made my case against this. Death counts for Hitler are too lenient and too harsh on Stalin.
It makes sense, once Nazi Germany was over with, anti-communist propaganda only ceased to exist.
It only made sense to deflate Nazi Germany's deaths so you could show how communism was so much more evil than Hitler's regime and how gulags were worse than Hitler's gas chambers.
After the estimation of 6 million Jews killed by Hitler, Robert Conquest, a major anti communist historian, actually inflated his estimate of 5 million dead in the supposed Ukrainian genocide to 14 million to make the "genocide" of Stalin be worse than that of Hitler.
