Besides, Godwin's law states that pro-death-penalty lost that argument anyway...

@ Spell of Wheels:
what are you trying to say here - that I have to either want to execute Hitler or I am categorized as a Hitler-sympathiser :) - have you been listening to Palin too much? :)

And I don't get this about executing Hitler after the Nurnberg trial:
1. He died months before the trial :)
2. What good would it do to execute him afterwards? Save 50 million people, stop the war? :)

And, I'm sorry for saying this - but the "communist are coming" argument was the main reason Hitler came to power in the first place. Surely there must be other alternatives to putting a dictator in power to stop the 'commies' :) - this has been tried on numerous occasions since - and it clearly does not work that well.

You can;t have an 'extrmist liberal'!!

You Americans just have such a warped sense of the political spectrum!

Is it better than the alternative though? Argentina's dictators treated their people better than thei Soviet and Cambodian counterparts. They may have been fascists but they did move the country forward.

Maybe I'm a little weird for saying this but I'd rather 6 million people be ethnically cleansed as part of a transition in one country than to be forced to live in a specific place with no freedom to succeed after an even bigger war.

Something to remember is that in Germany the communists were actually a majority for much of the time. If Hitler wasn't there the Nazis wouldn't have had a charismatic enough figurehead and wouldn't have been able to take power - the void would have been filled by the communists. Probably leading the Russo-Germany alliance to be much stronger.

The way I see it Hitler had his part to play. It put him on the path to be villified (and rightly so) for centuries to come but it needed to happen to prevent something worse. Dictators suck bur Communist dictators suck harder.

To make my point crystal clear - the communists were THE alternative to the Nazis. There wasn't a 'we-want-a-western-democracy-that-will-be-typical-in-30-years-party'. If the Nazis weren't in power the communists would have been.

It's been a while since I've studied the factors leading to the rise of the Nazi's and I never really studied it in much depth, so I won't go too much into that, I do recall the communists were pretty big in Germany. That being said... I'm not sure I agree that a communist Germany, even one allied with the Soviet Union, would likely be worse than Nazi Germany. It certainly could be that that would have been worse, but it's also possible, and I think maybe even likely that it would have been better...

As horrible as things were in the Soviet Union, Hitler deliberately executed about 9 million people, for no reason other than who they happened to be, (6 million jews, but there were also about 3 million other people executed in the concentration camps if I recall correctly, gypsies, homosexuals, people with mental disabilities, and many many others) and started a war that led to the deaths of many many millions more. I think it's pretty hard to argue that almost anything would be worse than that.

I realize it's a counter-factua, and there's no way to know how things would turn out, and so yes, I'll concede maybe the world is better off than it could have been had the communists taken power in Germany rather than the Nazi's, but I'm not sure it's as likely as you are presenting it. Perhaps a Communist Germany would have provided a balance and tempering influence on the Soviet Union. Maybe things would actually have been better in both Germany and the Soviet Union if the communists had won? (Surely they would still have been bad, but maybe not as bad. Maybe Stalin wouldn't have had as much influence, or maybe Stalin would have gotten jealous and they'd have found themselves going to war with one another, without involving the whole of the rest of the world. Who knows.) Sure East Germany wasn't much more than a puppet of the Soviets, but perhaps a united Germany, not devastated by a war would have been strong enough to assert themselves.
Or maybe Germany would have been in communist control for some time and then would have reverted to another system. Maybe we'd have ended up with more or less our current Germany, and Europe, but with a lot less turmoil and bloodshed. There's just no real way to know.

All of that having been said, I do really enjoy counter-factual's with history, I think they're interesting to explore and think about, I'm just trying to point out different that the results of Hitler not coming to power aren't nearly so clear as you have presented them. Since none of this DID happen, there's no way to know what would have happened.

Also, really, it's just hard not to at least play devils advocate with someone arguing that Hitler coming to power was a good thing... ;)

I don't know. If there was no Hitler Germany would have been communist, and a truly international communism with two very powerful nations would have been unstoppable. The Holocaust was horrible, but World Communism would have been just as bad.

So I guess the evil breaks even.

"world communism would have been just as bad", sometimes its very painful reading posts here. Also just because Stalin did some unspeakable things as the leader of a "communist" country doesnt mean that communisim is a bad idea, (and before anyone lays in to me i know it will never work in practice), so saying world communism would have been just as bad as the holocast is almost one of the most stupidest things i have ever heard. The most stupidest thing i have ever heard just as a matter of fact is that dinosaur bones were put here to test us!

"Wrong. It means that you know what human rights are and how they work in terms of legal implementation."
Also wrong, what we really have is a misunderstanding of what law is.
Law, by definition, is a social agreement to give up certain rights in exchange for security. It is understood that certain rights are lost as a consequence of breaking laws.
Do you not consider liberty a basic human right? Yet you have no problem with incarceration.
Your accuse him of not caring for human rights as an extension of supporting the death penalty. That's about as fair as him accusing you of being an anarchist as an extension of doing away with law.

What we are really seeing is a struggle in the delicate balance between anarchy and over-legalism.
When we are forced to draw a line, it will ALWAYS come down to moral principles.

"The most stupidest thing"
you lost your right to call others stupid right there

Communism has killed 100 million people in the twentieth century. The Holodomor in Ukraine killed 10 million people, and other famines in the Soviet Union killed 40 million. Add on all the purges and gulags, and the fact that the communists would be emboldened without an existential threat from the Nazis, and you're got yourself a pretty awful system.

"Also just because Stalin did some unspeakable things as the leader of a "communist" country doesnt mean that communisim is a bad idea..." Try using that logic about Hitler and Nazism.

It doesn't diminish the crimes of the Nazis to say that there were others just as bad. Glossing over the horrors that occurred in the Soviet Union is revisionist history, which smells a lot like 1984. Stalin and Hitler were both really, really bad men who did really, really bad things. Stalin gets a better wrap just because he was on our side in the war.

"Most stupidest" is incorrect and redundant, by the way.

before it gets attacked...
*doing away with a single law

communism did not kill those people, tyrants killed those people. Im not glossing over what happened in the soviet union at all, im just trying to get you to understand it didnt really have that much to do with communism at all, communisim in theory is the best, most peaceful solution but it does never work. But saying communism is all bad is just silly, and its not like capitalism hasn't killed millions of people world wide!I really dont care about grammer, spelling etc as i have expalined before

Stalin, Zedong and Pol Pot all instituted horrific human tragedies upon coming into power. I believe that the things that come along with a Communist State naturally end up forming 'Big Brother Governments' for at least a few decades. Its been argued that there never has been a true communist state but name one of the many that have existed that would suggest they're ideal. None have existed so far without wide-spread political suppression and unimaginable human-rights abuse. Why would we expect a communist Germany to be any different?

The 'Big Brother' state also comes a long with large numbers of political executions and I'm guessing that if Germany had become a communist state Britain, France and Italy wouldn't stand a chance against a successful Russia-Germany alliance that would have been possible with a communist Germany. I think that the additional lives lost and the personal freedoms abolished in those conflicts would outweigh the losses of WWII and the Holocaust.

Ultimately, my point wasn't really that the world would become Communist without Hitler - it was that death shouldn't be dealt in judgement. Do we really know what would have happened if Hitler didn't exist? It is feesable that we would have ended up with a series of communist dictatoriships throughout the world's most prominent powers. Its why I don't believe in the death penalty and that I don't believe that going back in time to murder someone that will do something horrible in the future should be seen as moral even in fiction.

I realize you weren't replying direclty to me, but I'm certainly not trying to minimize the horrors of the Soviet Union, especially under Stalin. I'm just trying to point out that the alternatives aren't as clear as they have been presented. Perhaps a Communist Germany would have been run in a more reasonable and less bloodthirsty way, maybe it would have provided an example for some in the Soviet Union to reign in, or even overthrow Stalin. Perhaps without so much of a threat from "The West" Stalin wouldn't have been so influential, and we'd have had a somewhat "kinder and gentler" set of Communist nations, still probably pretty bad, but perhaps not so bad as the ones we had, and without the need for WWII. It's also not difficult to imagine Germany, starting out with a bit more developed set of resources and knowledge (Russia was a pretty undeveloped, and unsophisticated nation when it went to the Bolsheviks), would have done a better job and wouldn't have made so many huge mistakes in their agriculture and such. Maybe they'd have shared their knowledge with and/or provided a better example to the Soviets. It's entirely possible that having a Communist Germany might have led to a better Soviet Union. Again, still probably pretty bad in both countries, but I'm just trying to point out ways in which things might not be quite so bad as you're arguing. Perhaps the world as a whole would actually have been better off.

Also, again, perhaps Germany wouldn't have stayed communist for long, or maybe Germany and the Soviet Union would have ended up at war with one another, without involving the rest of the world. There's just no way to know. I'm just trying to point out that just becuase Germany likely would have gone communist in the 30's without Hitler, the more you try to extrapolate out from that the harder it gets to say with certainty what would have been better or worse for the world.

"What's to stop a homeless man from murdering then?

If he gets off, he can collect insurance or some other benefit, and if he doesn't he's just got life in prison.

They've got nothing to fear."

Is this an argument for the death penalty or against socialism or both?
The fact that is that in socialist countries with no death penalty you'll find there are very few murders let alone murders by the homeless who feel they can get away with anything and exploit the system.

Though I will say that in many socialist countries theft is disproportionately high because of the people who want to go to jail for a comfortable life. That's not to say they don't have to work in jail, but they have a more secure way of life.

If the communists didn't try to artificially restructure society through collectivization those deaths would not have occurred. If the communists didn't need to hold onto power without the popular will they wouldn't have needed the purges.

Peaceful? The dialectic needs a revolution. It needs a violent overthrow of the "bourgeoisie" to give power to the "proletariat". And then ALL property is to be held in common. When something belongs to everyone it belongs to no one. Like a public toilet.

Two Russians were walking in the Kremlin. The first says to the other, "Has the Revolution been successful? Have we reached full communism here in the Soviet Union?"
His comrade turns to him and says, "Oh no, it's going to get much worse."

@Chrispminis - I don't know exactly if 'typical' theft (like shop-lifting and pickpocketing) is much higher in the European countries but burglaries (Out of someone's house) definitely are. IMO because people don't have guns and it isn't hard for a few thugs to break into someone's house even while they're inside and steal stuff. I don't think that this outweighs the 8x as many assault-murders in countries with few gun regulations.

@Archonix - First off, you're right, I had forgotten the original context of your counter-factual, and I see that really you're arguing essentially the same point I am, that we have no idea what happens when history is changed. You are absolutely right, if someone somehow went back in time and killed Hitler or whatever, it is entirely plausible that the world would be much worse off. And i generally agree with you on the death penalty. I'm not completely on either side, but in general I am against the death penalty (though not really for the reason you're arguing here).

And just because I can't help but nit-pick/play devils advocate ;), I would point out that if I'm not mistaken, in every example of a horrible communist regime you gave (and they were all HORRIBLE), they all came to power through revolution/war rather than through any sort of democratic or really even popular process. Might it not be reasonable to think that if the Communists came to power in germany through democratic means they might be a bit less bloodthirsty and vengeful? If they were elected it would presumably be because they had the support of a majority of the people, so perhaps there would be less need for that sort of thing? (Yes I realize the irony of arguing that, since Hitler came to power originally through democratic means, but just had to point it out as a difference between the fictional Germany we're talking about and the real world examples you pointed to, it's entirely possible it wouldn't make any difference and they'd have been just a vicious as the other examples we see in the real world).

I love this argument over the fictional Hitler-less Germany. Its actually really fun :P

I do think that its important to point out that the worst attrocities of the communist regimes that I mentioned were not during or directly after the revolution. The 'crimes' of Stalin, Zedong and Pol Pot were committed after they had established their power. Mao didn't really go batshit until after the hundred flowers campaign (10-15 years after coming to power). Pol Pot's politically motivated executions and murder of intellectuals happened when he saw his power as under threat, not directly after coming to power. Stalin was of course not the leader of the revolution and Russia was already established. I can't see a communist Germany being any different - even if democratically elected. The Gestapo would be directly parallel to the KGB.

If you mean something like the a German Popular Front being in power then I agree it would almost certainly have been less violent. That doesn't get over the waste and inefficiencies of hard left ideologies in general, though, so a severe famine could still have happened. In fact, one did in the twenties in Germany.

But inevitably a dictator, whether a left-wing wiener or right-wing nut job, would have risen in Germany, so I doubt there could have been a happy scenario for Europe in that time period.

Again, it's impossible to say for sure, though. What we do know is both Nazism and Communism don't work and have caused far too much damage to the world to still be legitimate political forces. If only everybody could see that.

The Gestapo might even have been called the same. Gestapo is an anachronim for "Geheime Staat Polizei" or secret state police.

@Invictus: I would point out that Marx actually believed that the US and possibly the UK were societies that could actually become communist without the need for a violent revolution. So it's not like even he thought violence was actually NECESSARY in an abstract sense, though you are right he generally did feel it was necessary to change the societies he saw around him.

I'd also point out that if we're going to take Marx at his word, Russia, and actually the majority of nations that went communist, weren't really the right places to be doing so, since they were generally undeveloped largely agricultural societies, and he felt an industrial society was what would lead to communism, and indeed were a necessary condition.

Finally, it's not like the Soviet Union was always doing horribly, during much of the Great Depression, many people were actually pretty worried, because the Soviet Union was doing (relatively) well. Now of course relatively well for a country like Russia, is a different thing than relatively well for other countries, but they did seem to actually be making progress at that time, so had more reasonable people been in charge, they might have managed to make collectivized farming ( if done right I would imagine something essentially like today's commercial farming, which is, manifestly, pretty efficient at making a lot of food (at least for now, there is certainly an argument to be made that we're hitting the limits of that, and indeed may actually not be able to continue farming the way we are for much longer)).

All of that being said, I agree that "Communism" with a capital C has shown itself not not really work/be possible, and I'm certain that almost no matter what a communist Russia, and likely a communist Germany would have been a pretty bad place to live. I'm just trying to say that with somewhat better leadership, things might not have been AS bad, and depending on how things went, might have been preferable for the world as a whole to the rise of Hitler and Nazi Germany. (Again I'm also perfectly willing to concede that it is at least as likely that things would have been worse).

Damn my slow typing! Now everything seems completely out of context!

Archonix, I agree, I am actually enjoying this discussion quite a bit.

You make a good point about these leaders having already consolidated their power when they committed the worst of their atrocities. I guess it just seems to me that maaaybe the sorts of people who come to power through democratic means and with the support of the general population, and those who came to power through war/revolution, might be somewhat different and the former might have a little bit less chance of going crazy and abusing power than the latter (maybe because they had to at least pay lip service to the process that brought them there to start with, when you take over through the barrel of a gun, what you say pretty much goes. Again, Hitler is a good counter-example, so perhaps that's not as much of an assurance as it might seem on the surface) That being said, it is also entirely possible that they would also have done horrible things with their power. Either way... it never happened, so, we'll never know.

Yeah, it might not have been too bad. Like Zambia's a better place to live than Zimbabwe. You make a solid point.

If you look a little into the arcane scholastic theory behind communism there;s this doctrine of the dialectic. It basically says that there is a thesis and antithesis, these clash, and a new synthesis is created. That is the new thesis which clashes with another synthesis. The dialectic can be applied to anything, from subatomic particles to macroeconomic trends, according to Marxism. The clash in a society would be the Revolution. While it might not be meat packers workers flying the Red Flag in the Chicago Stockyards, something dramatic has to happen in communism to change things.

Sorry in my second to last post the word "work" should have been after the word "collectivized farming" just before the parentheses. so it should have read "...they might have managed to make collectivized farming work." Though looking at that now I'd probably qualify that by saying "work BETTER." As I doubt, especially at that time, they'd have ever made it work all that well.

My first paragraph isn't supposed to be sarcastic. I just looked at it and it bites of it.

"That is the new thesis which clashes with another synthesis."

Should be another antithesis. But I guess you assumed as much.

@Invictus I can't actually tell if you're being sarcastic at the start there, but I don't think I ever said "it might not be TOO bad." I was simply pointing out that maybe, just maybe, it would/could have been BETTER, than what actually happened. So I would argue I came closer to saying "it might not be AS bad."

Oh I'm well aware of the academic theory behind Marx and Engles theories, they're really based on a flipping of the cause and effect in Hegel's ideas about history, and really are fairly interesting to read from an academic perspective, especially in the context of other philosophies and ideas that influenced it.

All I was trying to say was that your argument that communism requires bloodshed, which seemed to be based on your reading of Marx's theories, isn't necessarily correct. But regardless, either way, I think the specific details of Marx's theories, especially about the forces of history, have been fairly well discredited and ignored by most everyone anyway, even those who do still advocate for socialist or communist economic systems, so I think basing an argument on that, and on those aspects is fairly pointless.