Elisabeth, we are close agreement once again. However I was talking about methods, not reasons. I never got into the psychology of either of them. Frankly, I did not care. My assignment was to present an argument for defense. Hitler fancied himself a warlord, sort of like Frederick the Great. Stalin manipulated his minions with sheer fear. Hitler had extreme loyalty. Devotion even. He was never the gangster that Stalin was. Personally, I do not think he had the mindset for that. He thought of himself as an artist, and fantasied retiring in his showplace in Linz.
Whereas Stalin knew the street thoughts, since that was where he came from. Hitler catered to the money that people had. [aristos & industrialists, even Jews!] Naturally, those sorts were long gone from Soviet Russia so Stalin simply used terror & fear.
I am not defending either one of them. They were both incredibly vengeful for whatever their reasons were.
Also, Stalin was adamant in maintaining the Soviet Union, whilst Hitler was trying to expand the 3rd Reich. Both did a fairly fine job- while it lasted.
Sorry, Elisabeth, if I mis-attributed the gangster bit.
And, yes, TimM. I know about the Katyn massacres.
Robert, I will persist in my belief that both Stalin
and Hitler were gangsters. Hitler might have, in fact certainly did, fancy himself an artist (and who knows how many millions of lives might have been saved if he'd simply been given an art gallery in which to display his work), but I've just finished reading the first two volumes of Richard Evans's masterful trilogy on the Third Reich,
The Coming of the Third Reich and
The Third Reich in Power (the third volume will be
The Third Reich at War). I can assure you that, based on these two volumes, but especially the second, the Third Reich was an utterly criminal regime from its very inception. Corruption, embezzlement, illegal confiscations, political violence, etc., etc., were all endemic from the beginning - and such criminal violations of the rule of law were not merely directed against minority populations like the Jews. Illegality quickly became ubiquitous in Germany after March 1933, with Hitler's appointment as chancellor.
Also, I disagree with you that Stalin was not worshipped. His charisma was not of the same type as Hitler's, not as overt or orgiastic, that's all. But it was still charisma, and he received not only the adulation of his fawning courtiers but also of millions of Soviet citizens, especially women, who wrote him the most embarrassing letters of praise you could possibly imagine. Not all of these letters or even most of them were necessarily prompted by the political necessity of survival. Most of Stalin's fellow Bolsheviks and their wives (especially their wives) remembered Stalin in the 1920s as extremely charming and affable - in fact, after Lenin's stroke and during his declining years, Stalin basically won the popularity contest against Trotsky, his only real rival for power, simply because he was perceived by his peers as genuine and down to earth, whereas Trotsky was seen as grandiose and insufferably arrogant.
