this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2024
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[–] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 12 points 6 hours ago

I’m not sure why people are struggling with this one. The reason Hitler is at the top of the evil ruler foodchain is because of his ideology and specific intent.

He wasn’t some common racist who thought his own race was superior and others were inferior. He specifically believed that Jews (as well as Roma people, gays and lesbians, people with disabilities and mental illnesses) were vermin. Worse than insects. He openly made it his goal the complete annihilation of all these peoples who he hated with all the virulent, vitriolic, frothing-at-the-mouth passion he could possibly muster. He engineered the industrial killing of over 11 million people.

There is no other person more deserving of the label “enemy of humanity” than Hitler. There is absolutely nothing for which any decent person can relate to him, never mind understand him.

[–] roguetrick@lemmy.world 6 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

Leopold was rightfully viewed as a monster by his racist contemporaries. I don't think anybody sane is lionizing that guy.

Edit: They do and did lionize Henry Morton Stanley who helped set up Leopold's death machine. And his contemporaries made him persona non grata over it as well, even though history somewhat gave him a pass and made movies about him.

[–] Draedron@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 10 hours ago (3 children)

The actual reason is the industrial killing. Only the nazis searched for the cheapest and most efficient way to kill as many people as possible

[–] ActualFactual@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 10 hours ago

I kinda feel like the rationing of bullets and redemption exclusively for severed human hands in would count as trying to find greatest efficiency.

In reference to King Leopold's reign in the Congo. It was.... Unbelievably brutal and quite modern in their pursuit of "efficiency".

[–] LotrOrc@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Nah Leopold and Churchill both did it too

[–] Pantless_Paladin@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

In the case of Churchill, it is more agriculture killing.

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 2 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

I think you’re right. It also wouldn’t be unfair to say that, if you’re in a european/western world country that is likely going to be mostly white and also happens to have taken a big part in WW2, that of course it will be a big part of your history. For the US, it’s our history in Europe, but we don’t seem to claim or learn much about European history elsewhere, like Leopold or Churchill’s Bengal Famine.

I think many people are familiar with at least a few mass killers. Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, maybe the Red Terror, Christopher Columbus, you could even count Khan as one of the biggest, but we might view that as a bloody past and the result of Khan’s conquest of other peoples rather than a internal conflict killing millions of a specific group. Columbus’ mass murder was partly out of ignorance when the European diseases spread in the New World, but Europeans didn’t have too much of a problem with killing natives otherwise.

Hitler, OTOH, as you said, turned mass murder into a pointless, cold, indiscriminate killing machine in a way that no other ruler did. People were warehoused until fed to the machine. The Soviets/Russians and Pol Pot (influenced heavily by Stalin) are a pretty close second, they rounded up people and shipped them off to gulags or prisons and worked them to death if they weren’t just outright killed.

[–] SpiceDealer@lemmy.world 5 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

I'll probably (and rightly) get downvoted for asking this but was Churchill's crime. Does it have to do with how he treated Ireland?

[–] LotrOrc@lemmy.world 17 points 7 hours ago

He caused massive famines across India just to fill coffers of the British empire. 6 million people at a conservative estimate

Destroyed Bengal and Bangladesh

Ask most Indians- Churchill and mother Theresa are two of the most hated people in our history

[–] dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 8 hours ago (1 children)
[–] todd_bonzalez@lemm.ee 2 points 8 hours ago

I mean, I disagree with Hitler's views too, but his views aren't really what makes us hate him universally, it was his actions.

[–] belastend@slrpnk.net 51 points 16 hours ago (4 children)

Horray, we are the point of "actually, a lot of people were as bad as Hitler".

No, you dickwads. The man murdered 11 million people in 12 years outside of combat action, most of them within the last 5 years of his terror. Thats not counting any of the victims of the war itself: You know, 900.00 People starving in Leningrad alone and so forth. Thats why he is vilified.

Dont know why this reflex to downplay his atrocities is always there.

Oh and i have plenty of hate for the other fucks on that list. And Stalin. And Mao. And Pol Pot. And Idi Amin. And Netanyahu. And Kissinger. Because some people actually managed to dislike genocide as a concept and not just when it hits the people who look like them.

[–] LotrOrc@lemmy.world 8 points 7 hours ago

Churchill caused the deaths of 6 million Indians at a conservative estimate

Leopold killed 20 million in the Congo. That's pretty equivalent numbers

[–] Jumi@lemmy.world 2 points 12 hours ago

Also he lost the war

[–] kaffiene@lemmy.world 4 points 16 hours ago

White people hardly mention Leopold at all.

[–] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 4 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Who here is downplaying any atrocities?

[–] Peruvian_Skies@sh.itjust.works 17 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Anyone who implies that all these people with astronomically lower body counts than Hitler are just as bad as him, like OOP.

[–] kaffiene@lemmy.world 11 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Leopold was responsible for 1.5 to 13 million deaths. And a slave trade that effected many many more lives than that.

[–] Peruvian_Skies@sh.itjust.works 6 points 14 hours ago (2 children)
[–] eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 12 hours ago

And every single one is due to Hitler? The Japanese men fighting American men was Hitler's micromanagement?

No one is saying Hitler was less evil, we're saying "No one cares about these people's murder because it wasn't to the normalized default of white people."

[–] kaffiene@lemmy.world 1 points 11 hours ago

So?

[–] eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

So many white people are thinking this is somehow praising Hitler for stating "Murdering millions is bad when it happens to anyone or is done by anyone, we don't see it talked about because it wasn't to Europeans."

Fuckin' bizarre. Murder is bad. When European powers did it to Africa, no one remembers who did it because everyone did it. We know Hitler because he used the same imperialist justification on Europeans. "I will improve your lives and civilize you the German way."

If Hitler did it to Africa, no one would have complained or had a leg to stand on without being hypocritical. Italy, France, England, Portugal, Denmark, all did the same heinous acts to who was justified towards.

[–] TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.works 6 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

Good time to remind everyone that the Nazis were inspired by Jim Crow laws and the poor treatment of African Americans that was prevalent for the time, especially in the southern US.

[–] starman2112@sh.itjust.works 3 points 10 hours ago

I guess Mao and Pol Pot aren't mainstream?

[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world -2 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

Yes, this is why we all adore the Japanese Empire. /s

It's fucking ridiculous that we're trying to "EVERYONE ELSE WAS JUST AS BAD" Hitler now.

"I literally see no difference between the Nazis and the anti-Nazis" - words of the fucking deranged.

[–] Honytawk@lemmy.zip 11 points 17 hours ago

No, because the Nazis are the biggest losers in History.

Their claim that their people and army were superior, while not even being able to win a single war made them so.

[–] Letstakealook@lemm.ee 29 points 22 hours ago

That is absolutely true. It's also amazing how many people are even unaware of their horrific crimes.

[–] PotatoesFall@discuss.tchncs.de 27 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

Lest I go down a reading rabbit hole I don't have time for today, what's the TLDR on churchills evils? my history education was lackluster

[–] plunged_ewe@lemmy.world 58 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

During WW2, the Bengal region of India was suffering from a poor harvest. Despite having reserves, the British did not release those thinking they may be needed for the war (they were not).

The British also did not acknowledge any famine and provided no relief.

The resulting famine killed somewhere between 800k to 3.8m (according to Wikipedia).

[–] Phineaz 59 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (5 children)

The difference being that one was an act of cruel apathy, their lives were valued less than the war effort (one could even argue that the British hoped to ultimately save lives), while the other actively reveled in and advanced the industrialised mass murder of entire peoples.

Please, do not compare these two. One is cruel and wrong, the other is unfathomable evil.

Edit: King Leopold is for some reason still respected in some places I am told, which is disgusting. But I repeat, one was done to make a profit (at the cost of inconceivable suffering) while the other wasn't even done for profit - suffering WAS the goal.

[–] ForgotAboutDre@lemmy.world 8 points 14 hours ago

Churchills attitude and comments about it suggests otherwise. He was hailed as an evil cruel racist, not in retrospect, but during the war. Churchill wasn’t well liked, as people think he was during his time. The people that think Churchill was one of Britain best PMs have only a basic understanding of British history. Churchill was immediately voted out as soon as elections resumed. When he got back in a PM his party had less votes than the opposition.

[–] dojan@lemmy.world 34 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

The difference being that one was an act of cruel apathy, their lives were valued less than the war effort (one could even argue that the British hoped to ultimately save lives), while the other actively reveled in and advanced the industrialised mass murder of entire peoples.

I think this is letting Churchill off a bit too easily.

At the time, India was under British rule. Both the British government, and the Crown knew what was going on in Bengal, and chose inaction. Churchill himself openly held anti-Indian sentiment calling them "a beastly people with a beastly religion" and that any sort of relief sent would accomplish little to nothing as as Indians are "breeding like rabbits."

This man actively chose to let people under his rule starve.

It's also worth pointing out that India was a significant presence during WWII, "By the end of the war, it had become the largest volunteer army in history, rising to over 2.5 million men in August 1945", and a significant contributor to the state of things is how hard the British colonial rule pressed the local industries for the sake of the war. The military sucked up a lot of produce leaving scraps for the domestic market, which was significantly upcharged so only the rich classes could afford anything.

In the system that the British Government used to procure goods through the Government of India, industries were left in private ownership rather than facing outright requisitioning of their productive capacity. Firms were required to sell goods to the military on credit and at fixed, low prices. However, firms were left free to charge any price they desired in their domestic market for whatever they had left over.

Further, the British government censored media, forbidding them from reporting on the famine. Things didn't really take a turn until The Statesman published photos of the famine, which made it around the world and the British government stood there with egg on their face.

Churchill on the other hand, ate well.

[–] plunged_ewe@lemmy.world 13 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

You're absolutely right. I was trying to be concise and in turn made it sound pretty accusatory.

There has been a number of investigations by both the British and Indian governments since the famine. The general consensus is that it was caused by bad management and unresolved socio-economic issues over any purposeful acts of cruelty.

I personally don't think Churchill actively encouraged the famine in India, but he was an ardent supporter of maintaining the empire by any means necessary.

Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao Zedong have all committed atrocities far worse. And I do agree that Leopold belongs on that list too.

[–] Phineaz 3 points 21 hours ago

Sorry, I just noticed it sounds like I was accusing you of comparing them. Thank you for the explanation!

[–] Not_mikey@slrpnk.net 3 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

You could make that same argument for stalin and the holodomor which is often used as the main proof of his evilness. Same with mao, most of the deaths attributed to them are from failed policies that caused mass famines. Do you think Churchill is on the same level as them? Because most of the west views the first two as mass murdering tyrants and Churchill as a hero.

You could say there worse because they ran oppressive authoritarian states, but the British empire was just as authoritarian to anyone who wasn't white.

[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Churchill was nevertheless a PoS. For example he was also responsible for the Greek civil war post-ww2

[–] Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 18 hours ago

And Gallipoli. He resigned after the bloodiest failure of WW1. Disaster or Debacle, it was bad.

[–] BrokenGlepnir@lemmy.world 5 points 21 hours ago

That's a bit less than half of the people "exterminated" (murdered) in the holocaust according to common estimates. The holocaust also does not include all of the evils committed. It doesn't include civilian slavs dragged out of their home and shot into mass graves, without ever making it to a camp for instance. I understand that there's other things Churchill did, but I think it's hard to do the level of damage hitler did without the belief that the damage was good for its own sake. I think Churchill did some bad stuff of course, but there are differences in magnitude and intent. If Churchill had meant to do the damage hitler had meant to, we'd probably have seen tens of millions of dead Indian people.

[–] Wanderer@lemm.ee -1 points 8 hours ago

There was poor information and the magnitude of the situation wasn't known till afterwards. Also there was ww2 on the go and the whole empire was on the way out from India itself to the UK, Singapore and China.

The British reduced famines, massively increased food production and increased GDP per capita in a very fast growing country. Boom and bust famines have been a big part of India history even before British rule. But somehow none of that is important.

[–] carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone 20 points 21 hours ago

hitler did to europe what europe had done to the rest of the world for centuries

[–] RecursiveParadox@lemmy.world 1 points 15 hours ago

I agree with the other commenters that Hitler was extra, super "special" evil. But Black Autonomist has a point. Popular history is a bit selective sometimes.

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