Stalin

[TheReal_ND]

The main reason Stalin gets such a bad rap is because he killed more jews than Hitler ever did. And jews pretty much dominate our academics now as well as popular media. This largely due to them fleeing here after stalin started purging the jewish bolshevik ranks. Of course this quickly bit him in the ass when, it turns out, a lot of his generals that he just liquidated had more experience than those he replaced them with. The story of him getting his ass handed to him by finnish peasants is more one of ineptitude than any kind of heroism. The entire osfront is just a never ending stream of ineptitude on the Russian's part until stalingrad where only Hitler could out match his marshal ineptitude. The osfront is a giant comedy really. Of course our jewish financiers and government bureaucrats made sure to supply Russia because at this point it was all win win for them. All the jews fled to Israel or America already after Stalin's purges so the last thing to do of any real significance was make sure to erase german pride permanently and entrench themselves into the burgeoning globohomogayplex that is modern American hegemony over the whole world.

Oh and as far as Maow goes. Jews backed him. The Americans initially backed the other guys but because FDR had such a hard on for communism and his entire cabinet was a bunch of jews they ended up pulling support for his opposition. Not entirely sure what the point of that was tbh.

[C-Mag]

I disagree with you Nuke.
Stalin's punished of Jews has been hidden more than anything. Stalin gets a bad rap because he fucking deserves it. He was a brutal fucking tyrant. He's a perfect poster boy for Communism. He didn't care who the fuck he killed or sent to the gulag, it was anyone who pushed back against his Communist dogma.

[TheReal_ND]

His brand of communism wasn't even that dogmatic. I dont mean to imply he wasn't a brutal dictator just that a lot of all the anecdotal stuff you hear could be very well made up by butt blasted jews.

[GloryofGreece]

Hopefully some on here will be proud of their resident Civics teacher. I got some students that wanted "extra" credit to write an essay on who was worse, Stalin or Mao.

Mao and Stalin were at least as bad as Hitler. There are leftist professors and tumblrites that disagree, but some honest reflection about the realities of the Great Leap Forward or Holdomor would cause them to lose their tenure. There is a great book you might enjoy called the Black Book of Communism that discusses the worldwide atrocities that this secular religion is responsible for. It is long, but it is really really good. Also, have you read Simon Sebag Montefiore's Stalin biography? It is a truly horrible and bizarre account of what it was like to live under and around him. I have not read anything else by Montefiore, but I think he also wrote about Stalin's life when he was a bank robber and revolutionary. I was not aware of Kotkin before this thread, but it seems like he is doing the same thing Ian Kershaw did with Hitler.

Thanks for the book suggestions. I'll look into it. Have you read Kershaw's biography? I read his shorter book on the end of Nazi Germany. I have the audible on Hitler but its daunting no more than Kotkins Stalin but still a bit much really. I also had an actual heart arrhythmia last year while studying/reading about Stalin and Hitler. Luckily it got better but not until being electrocardio converted.

What were two things Mao did during the "great leap forward" that stick out as particularly gruesome? Myth of the 20th century had a good two hour podcast on the subject but other than that and reading a few entries here and there on China's communism I don't know fuck all about that area of the world.

[heydaralon]

Hopefully some on here will be proud of their resident Civics teacher. I got some students that wanted "extra" credit to write an essay on who was worse, Stalin or Mao.

Mao and Stalin were at least as bad as Hitler. There are leftist professors and tumblrites that disagree, but some honest reflection about the realities of the Great Leap Forward or Holdomor would cause them to lose their tenure. There is a great book you might enjoy called the Black Book of Communism that discusses the worldwide atrocities that this secular religion is responsible for. It is long, but it is really really good. Also, have you read Simon Sebag Montefiore's Stalin biography? It is a truly horrible and bizarre account of what it was like to live under and around him. I have not read anything else by Montefiore, but I think he also wrote about Stalin's life when he was a bank robber and revolutionary. I was not aware of Kotkin before this thread, but it seems like he is doing the same thing Ian Kershaw did with Hitler.

Thanks for the book suggestions. I'll look into it. Have you read Kershaw's biography? I read his shorter book on the end of Nazi Germany. I have the audible on Hitler but its daunting no more than Kotkins Stalin but still a bit much really. I also had an actual heart arrhythmia last year while studying/reading about Stalin and Hitler. Luckily it got better but not until being electrocardio converted.

What were two things Mao did during the "great leap forward" that stick out as particularly gruesome? Myth of the 20th century had a good two hour podcast on the subject but other than that and reading a few entries here and there on China's communism I don't know fuck all about that area of the world.

Yes. He wrote a two part bio on Hitler. They are a bit of a slog, but they are exhaustive. A lot of people's conceptions about how Hitler came to power are incorrect. In fact, Kershaw talks about how Hitler viewed himself as a John the Baptist like figure, a drummer for the real savior of Germany. There is plenty of evidence that he intended Ludendorff to fill this role. Ludendorff was probably far more involved in the Beer Hall Putsch than is traditionally acknowledged. The first book basically shows how Hitler's rise to power was very scattered and random. He had amazing rhetorical and oratory skills, but he also caught a bunch of lucky breaks and historical advantages. There were actually many guys like Hitler in Germany at this time. It will take awhile, but read the book.

I'm sorry to keep slamming you with titles (read this book! Read that book!). You are busier than me, and I'm not trying to cram this shit down your throat. I do like discussing it with you though.

As far as Mao goes, Frank Dikotter wrote a trilogy on him that goes from the Chinese Civil War to the Cultural Revolution. I have only read the second volume, which is on the famine. It is as bad as anything you will read about in holocaust books, with a far higher body count. Leftist academics made it seem like these Marxist induced famines were these accidental things that could not be helped, not deliberate evil coercive societal destroying events.This is bullshit. I cannot express how grotesque this viewpoint is.

So first of all, a big reason that this famine started was Mao wanted to catch up in Steel production to the west. After attacking Taiwan and militarizing his society, he started imposing harsh collective policies and made villagers create backyard furnaces that would make steel. The villagers would have to melt down their own pots and pans (in rural China these were often the most valuable possessions they owned by far) and smelt steel. Of course, these furnaces produced shitty pig iron that was worthless. In the meantime, because farmers were being diverted from harvesting the fields to industrial projects were becoming fallow and the famine was about to start. A little known fact about this is that while Mao was doing all this and laying the foundations for his own people to starve, he was exporting millions of tons of China's grain and livestock to Russia to pay back a loan ahead of schedule. The Russians did not put pressure on him to pay it back quickly and there was no reason for him to do it like this in light of his domestic problems.

Many of China's rural population was also put on collective farms, instead of their private plots, which meant that they had no incentive to work harder, as the surplus was also confiscated anyway. The central planners didn't have a good sense of agriculture, so there were widespread shortages of food, and any hiding of food was punishable by death. There are many accounts of parents being forced to beat their own toddlers to death with iron bars for stealing grains of rice from the collective larder. People were eating bark and dirt and shit like that because they could not get nourishment elsewhere. Women would often make nice with the communist enforcers monitoring the local villages, whoring themselves out to these sadistic men for a larger portion of rice. Additionally, this famine tore apart families and left psychological scars for life on children. Often parents had multiple children, and they had scarce resources. Rather than feed each kid a small amount of food, they banked on one kid surviving and the other dying, so they only fed one of their children and let nature take its course with the other. There are countless accounts of this. Sometimes, both children survived, and the child consigned to death had vivid memories of how his own family treated him.

Also little known were the horrific public works projects that Mao built during this time. Millions of peasants were sent off to build mines and dams. The working conditions and caloric input were horrible, so many thousands of peasants died and were mangled by machinery during the construction of these projects. Also, since the dams were built like shit, many of them only lasted a few decades or less and then flooded the area, drowning tens of thousands of people. The Chinese communist party was well aware of how badly they were built during the Great Leap Forward, and did not bother to repair them until after they broke.

All in all, the absolute lowest estimate of deaths during this several year campaign is 37 million. Even that number is verging on dishonesty and ideology. Dikotter thinks it was around 45 million at least. Some have proposed up to 70 million. For Mao's entire time in power, I have seen numbers as high as 100 million.

Jung Chang's Mao also discusses the tyrant's life in depth. It basically dispells all the Marxist bullshit narrative surrounding the guy. Even his long march for thousands of miles during WW2 is horsehit. The guy was carried on a litter. He liked to swim and fuck lots of women while his countrymen were eating bark, and he never brushed his teeth either. There is not a single redeeming characteristic of this guy, and he should be near the top of any discussion of the worst human being who ever lived.

[GloryofGreece]

Mao and Stalin were at least as bad as Hitler. There are leftist professors and tumblrites that disagree, but some honest reflection about the realities of the Great Leap Forward or Holdomor would cause them to lose their tenure. There is a great book you might enjoy called the Black Book of Communism that discusses the worldwide atrocities that this secular religion is responsible for. It is long, but it is really really good. Also, have you read Simon Sebag Montefiore's Stalin biography? It is a truly horrible and bizarre account of what it was like to live under and around him. I have not read anything else by Montefiore, but I think he also wrote about Stalin's life when he was a bank robber and revolutionary. I was not aware of Kotkin before this thread, but it seems like he is doing the same thing Ian Kershaw did with Hitler.

Thanks for the book suggestions. I'll look into it. Have you read Kershaw's biography? I read his shorter book on the end of Nazi Germany. I have the audible on Hitler but its daunting no more than Kotkins Stalin but still a bit much really. I also had an actual heart arrhythmia last year while studying/reading about Stalin and Hitler. Luckily it got better but not until being electrocardio converted.

What were two things Mao did during the "great leap forward" that stick out as particularly gruesome? Myth of the 20th century had a good two hour podcast on the subject but other than that and reading a few entries here and there on China's communism I don't know fuck all about that area of the world.

Yes. He wrote a two part bio on Hitler. They are a bit of a slog, but they are exhaustive. A lot of people's conceptions about how Hitler came to power are incorrect. In fact, Kershaw talks about how Hitler viewed himself as a John the Baptist like figure, a drummer for the real savior of Germany. There is plenty of evidence that he intended Ludendorff to fill this role. Ludendorff was probably far more involved in the Beer Hall Putsch than is traditionally acknowledged. The first book basically shows how Hitler's rise to power was very scattered and random. He had amazing rhetorical and oratory skills, but he also caught a bunch of lucky breaks and historical advantages. There were actually many guys like Hitler in Germany at this time. It will take awhile, but read the book.

I'm sorry to keep slamming you with titles (read this book! Read that book!). You are busier than me, and I'm not trying to cram this shit down your throat. I do like discussing it with you though.

As far as Mao goes, Frank Dikotter wrote a trilogy on him that goes from the Chinese Civil War to the Cultural Revolution. I have only read the second volume, which is on the famine. It is as bad as anything you will read about in holocaust books, with a far higher body count. Leftist academics made it seem like these Marxist induced famines were these accidental things that could not be helped, not deliberate evil coercive societal destroying events.This is bullshit. I cannot express how grotesque this viewpoint is.

So first of all, a big reason that this famine started was Mao wanted to catch up in Steel production to the west. After attacking Taiwan and militarizing his society, he started imposing harsh collective policies and made villagers create backyard furnaces that would make steel. The villagers would have to melt down their own pots and pans (in rural China these were often the most valuable possessions they owned by far) and smelt steel. Of course, these furnaces produced shitty pig iron that was worthless. In the meantime, because farmers were being diverted from harvesting the fields to industrial projects were becoming fallow and the famine was about to start. A little known fact about this is that while Mao was doing all this and laying the foundations for his own people to starve, he was exporting millions of tons of China's grain and livestock to Russia to pay back a loan ahead of schedule. The Russians did not put pressure on him to pay it back quickly and there was no reason for him to do it like this in light of his domestic problems.

Many of China's rural population was also put on collective farms, instead of their private plots, which meant that they had no incentive to work harder, as the surplus was also confiscated anyway. The central planners didn't have a good sense of agriculture, so there were widespread shortages of food, and any hiding of food was punishable by death. There are many accounts of parents being forced to beat their own toddlers to death with iron bars for stealing grains of rice from the collective larder. People were eating bark and dirt and shit like that because they could not get nourishment elsewhere. Women would often make nice with the communist enforcers monitoring the local villages, whoring themselves out to these sadistic men for a larger portion of rice. Additionally, this famine tore apart families and left psychological scars for life on children. Often parents had multiple children, and they had scarce resources. Rather than feed each kid a small amount of food, they banked on one kid surviving and the other dying, so they only fed one of their children and let nature take its course with the other. There are countless accounts of this. Sometimes, both children survived, and the child consigned to death had vivid memories of how his own family treated him.

Also little known were the horrific public works projects that Mao built during this time. Millions of peasants were sent off to build mines and dams. The working conditions and caloric input were horrible, so many thousands of peasants died and were mangled by machinery during the construction of these projects. Also, since the dams were built like shit, many of them only lasted a few decades or less and then flooded the area, drowning tens of thousands of people. The Chinese communist party was well aware of how badly they were built during the Great Leap Forward, and did not bother to repair them until after they broke.

All in all, the absolute lowest estimate of deaths during this several year campaign is 37 million. Even that number is verging on dishonesty and ideology. Dikotter thinks it was around 45 million at least. Some have proposed up to 70 million. For Mao's entire time in power, I have seen numbers as high as 100 million.

Jung Chang's Mao also discusses the tyrant's life in depth. It basically dispells all the Marxist bullshit narrative surrounding the guy. Even his long march for thousands of miles during WW2 is horsehit. The guy was carried on a litter. He liked to swim and fuck lots of women while his countrymen were eating bark, and he never brushed his teeth either. There is not a single redeeming characteristic of this guy, and he should be near the top of any discussion of the worst human being who ever lived.

That is so terrifying about the famine years. I know more about Holdomor but all in all its just so damn evil its difficult to wrap my mind around it really. Why even bother with fiction, right? This hellhole is every bit the nightmare at times and in specific areas for sure.

Have you ever read any of Hitler's Table Talk book? Fascinating read really. Have you read or know whether he really took a bath 2-3 times a day? Those types of biographical idiosyncrasies are a big part of what makes "history" interesting.

[heydaralon]

Thanks for the book suggestions. I'll look into it. Have you read Kershaw's biography? I read his shorter book on the end of Nazi Germany. I have the audible on Hitler but its daunting no more than Kotkins Stalin but still a bit much really. I also had an actual heart arrhythmia last year while studying/reading about Stalin and Hitler. Luckily it got better but not until being electrocardio converted.

What were two things Mao did during the "great leap forward" that stick out as particularly gruesome? Myth of the 20th century had a good two hour podcast on the subject but other than that and reading a few entries here and there on China's communism I don't know fuck all about that area of the world.

Yes. He wrote a two part bio on Hitler. They are a bit of a slog, but they are exhaustive. A lot of people's conceptions about how Hitler came to power are incorrect. In fact, Kershaw talks about how Hitler viewed himself as a John the Baptist like figure, a drummer for the real savior of Germany. There is plenty of evidence that he intended Ludendorff to fill this role. Ludendorff was probably far more involved in the Beer Hall Putsch than is traditionally acknowledged. The first book basically shows how Hitler's rise to power was very scattered and random. He had amazing rhetorical and oratory skills, but he also caught a bunch of lucky breaks and historical advantages. There were actually many guys like Hitler in Germany at this time. It will take awhile, but read the book.

I'm sorry to keep slamming you with titles (read this book! Read that book!). You are busier than me, and I'm not trying to cram this shit down your throat. I do like discussing it with you though.

As far as Mao goes, Frank Dikotter wrote a trilogy on him that goes from the Chinese Civil War to the Cultural Revolution. I have only read the second volume, which is on the famine. It is as bad as anything you will read about in holocaust books, with a far higher body count. Leftist academics made it seem like these Marxist induced famines were these accidental things that could not be helped, not deliberate evil coercive societal destroying events.This is bullshit. I cannot express how grotesque this viewpoint is.

So first of all, a big reason that this famine started was Mao wanted to catch up in Steel production to the west. After attacking Taiwan and militarizing his society, he started imposing harsh collective policies and made villagers create backyard furnaces that would make steel. The villagers would have to melt down their own pots and pans (in rural China these were often the most valuable possessions they owned by far) and smelt steel. Of course, these furnaces produced shitty pig iron that was worthless. In the meantime, because farmers were being diverted from harvesting the fields to industrial projects were becoming fallow and the famine was about to start. A little known fact about this is that while Mao was doing all this and laying the foundations for his own people to starve, he was exporting millions of tons of China's grain and livestock to Russia to pay back a loan ahead of schedule. The Russians did not put pressure on him to pay it back quickly and there was no reason for him to do it like this in light of his domestic problems.

Many of China's rural population was also put on collective farms, instead of their private plots, which meant that they had no incentive to work harder, as the surplus was also confiscated anyway. The central planners didn't have a good sense of agriculture, so there were widespread shortages of food, and any hiding of food was punishable by death. There are many accounts of parents being forced to beat their own toddlers to death with iron bars for stealing grains of rice from the collective larder. People were eating bark and dirt and shit like that because they could not get nourishment elsewhere. Women would often make nice with the communist enforcers monitoring the local villages, whoring themselves out to these sadistic men for a larger portion of rice. Additionally, this famine tore apart families and left psychological scars for life on children. Often parents had multiple children, and they had scarce resources. Rather than feed each kid a small amount of food, they banked on one kid surviving and the other dying, so they only fed one of their children and let nature take its course with the other. There are countless accounts of this. Sometimes, both children survived, and the child consigned to death had vivid memories of how his own family treated him.

Also little known were the horrific public works projects that Mao built during this time. Millions of peasants were sent off to build mines and dams. The working conditions and caloric input were horrible, so many thousands of peasants died and were mangled by machinery during the construction of these projects. Also, since the dams were built like shit, many of them only lasted a few decades or less and then flooded the area, drowning tens of thousands of people. The Chinese communist party was well aware of how badly they were built during the Great Leap Forward, and did not bother to repair them until after they broke.

All in all, the absolute lowest estimate of deaths during this several year campaign is 37 million. Even that number is verging on dishonesty and ideology. Dikotter thinks it was around 45 million at least. Some have proposed up to 70 million. For Mao's entire time in power, I have seen numbers as high as 100 million.

Jung Chang's Mao also discusses the tyrant's life in depth. It basically dispells all the Marxist bullshit narrative surrounding the guy. Even his long march for thousands of miles during WW2 is horsehit. The guy was carried on a litter. He liked to swim and fuck lots of women while his countrymen were eating bark, and he never brushed his teeth either. There is not a single redeeming characteristic of this guy, and he should be near the top of any discussion of the worst human being who ever lived.

That is so terrifying about the famine years. I know more about Holdomor but all in all its just so damn evil its difficult to wrap my mind around it really. Why even bother with fiction, right? This hellhole is every bit the nightmare at times and in specific areas for sure.

Have you ever read any of Hitler's Table Talk book? Fascinating read really. Have you read or know whether he really took a bath 2-3 times a day? Those types of biographical idiosyncrasies are a big part of what makes "history" interesting.

No I haven't. Is it literally just a collection of Hitler's talk at the table with his peers and dinner guests? I have not heard of this. It sounds pretty interesting. As far as I know, Hitler never kept any journals (at least none that survived) and he had this kind of inner wall that guarded his psyche. Even those close to him seem to feel that despite his charisma, behind his eyes he was sort of empty. Like, he was passionate enough to start a continental war, but he had something severely lacking. Much of his supposed hypnotic connection with others was simply performative (he would rehearse speech and movements by himself for hours), and he was pretty much asexual. I don't fully understand his relationship to his niece Geli Rabaul, but some folks have made the case that she was the only person Hitler really connected with. The reason I bring this up is because I have read article after article, source after source, of Hitler's peers and guests mentioning this vacuum. Its like he was an empty shell that took on various forms depending on what suited him, without having a permanent default form beyond a strong sense anti-semitism* and anti-bolshevism. I wonder what Hitler's personality type (INTJ, ENTP etc) was. At first glance you would obviously think he was an extrovert, but based on what I wrote I could see him as being an introvert. Many performers who can entertain a crowd of 10,000 people are actually quite withdrawn off stage. Who knows.

Out of every other person on this forum, you and I probably have the most aligned reading interests and enthusiasms. Its kind of weird lol. Pretty much every thread you make about history or ideas is something I have a deep interest in (though often not a very good understanding). I don't have any friends or coworkers that give a rat's ass about any of this stuff which really sucks, but these threads are always gold for me.


*Even this is weird and not set in stone. While living in Vienna before WW1, Hitler was planning on going into business with a Jewish guy in an attempt to sell his art. Depending on who you believe, I have read they were on very cordial terms and may have even been friends, assuming that was possible with Hitler. Personally, I think WW1 was what really set Hitler over the edge and ruined his mind in terms of the Jews. In Mein Kampf he discusses the Jews of Vienna with contempt, but the evidence I mentioned makes me doubt a lot of his personal narrative.

[heydaralon]

Also, those heart problems are scary shit. Do you take bayer aspirin for that condition? My mom has gone to the hospital for heart palpitations and we thought she was having a heart attack. Don't fuck around with that dude. Take care of your body and mind. Sorry you had to deal with that horseshit.

[GloryofGreece]

Yes. He wrote a two part bio on Hitler. They are a bit of a slog, but they are exhaustive. A lot of people's conceptions about how Hitler came to power are incorrect. In fact, Kershaw talks about how Hitler viewed himself as a John the Baptist like figure, a drummer for the real savior of Germany. There is plenty of evidence that he intended Ludendorff to fill this role. Ludendorff was probably far more involved in the Beer Hall Putsch than is traditionally acknowledged. The first book basically shows how Hitler's rise to power was very scattered and random. He had amazing rhetorical and oratory skills, but he also caught a bunch of lucky breaks and historical advantages. There were actually many guys like Hitler in Germany at this time. It will take awhile, but read the book.

I'm sorry to keep slamming you with titles (read this book! Read that book!). You are busier than me, and I'm not trying to cram this shit down your throat. I do like discussing it with you though.

As far as Mao goes, Frank Dikotter wrote a trilogy on him that goes from the Chinese Civil War to the Cultural Revolution. I have only read the second volume, which is on the famine. It is as bad as anything you will read about in holocaust books, with a far higher body count. Leftist academics made it seem like these Marxist induced famines were these accidental things that could not be helped, not deliberate evil coercive societal destroying events.This is bullshit. I cannot express how grotesque this viewpoint is.

So first of all, a big reason that this famine started was Mao wanted to catch up in Steel production to the west. After attacking Taiwan and militarizing his society, he started imposing harsh collective policies and made villagers create backyard furnaces that would make steel. The villagers would have to melt down their own pots and pans (in rural China these were often the most valuable possessions they owned by far) and smelt steel. Of course, these furnaces produced shitty pig iron that was worthless. In the meantime, because farmers were being diverted from harvesting the fields to industrial projects were becoming fallow and the famine was about to start. A little known fact about this is that while Mao was doing all this and laying the foundations for his own people to starve, he was exporting millions of tons of China's grain and livestock to Russia to pay back a loan ahead of schedule. The Russians did not put pressure on him to pay it back quickly and there was no reason for him to do it like this in light of his domestic problems.

Many of China's rural population was also put on collective farms, instead of their private plots, which meant that they had no incentive to work harder, as the surplus was also confiscated anyway. The central planners didn't have a good sense of agriculture, so there were widespread shortages of food, and any hiding of food was punishable by death. There are many accounts of parents being forced to beat their own toddlers to death with iron bars for stealing grains of rice from the collective larder. People were eating bark and dirt and shit like that because they could not get nourishment elsewhere. Women would often make nice with the communist enforcers monitoring the local villages, whoring themselves out to these sadistic men for a larger portion of rice. Additionally, this famine tore apart families and left psychological scars for life on children. Often parents had multiple children, and they had scarce resources. Rather than feed each kid a small amount of food, they banked on one kid surviving and the other dying, so they only fed one of their children and let nature take its course with the other. There are countless accounts of this. Sometimes, both children survived, and the child consigned to death had vivid memories of how his own family treated him.

Also little known were the horrific public works projects that Mao built during this time. Millions of peasants were sent off to build mines and dams. The working conditions and caloric input were horrible, so many thousands of peasants died and were mangled by machinery during the construction of these projects. Also, since the dams were built like shit, many of them only lasted a few decades or less and then flooded the area, drowning tens of thousands of people. The Chinese communist party was well aware of how badly they were built during the Great Leap Forward, and did not bother to repair them until after they broke.

All in all, the absolute lowest estimate of deaths during this several year campaign is 37 million. Even that number is verging on dishonesty and ideology. Dikotter thinks it was around 45 million at least. Some have proposed up to 70 million. For Mao's entire time in power, I have seen numbers as high as 100 million.

Jung Chang's Mao also discusses the tyrant's life in depth. It basically dispells all the Marxist bullshit narrative surrounding the guy. Even his long march for thousands of miles during WW2 is horsehit. The guy was carried on a litter. He liked to swim and fuck lots of women while his countrymen were eating bark, and he never brushed his teeth either. There is not a single redeeming characteristic of this guy, and he should be near the top of any discussion of the worst human being who ever lived.

That is so terrifying about the famine years. I know more about Holdomor but all in all its just so damn evil its difficult to wrap my mind around it really. Why even bother with fiction, right? This hellhole is every bit the nightmare at times and in specific areas for sure.

Have you ever read any of Hitler's Table Talk book? Fascinating read really. Have you read or know whether he really took a bath 2-3 times a day? Those types of biographical idiosyncrasies are a big part of what makes "history" interesting.

No I haven't. Is it literally just a collection of Hitler's talk at the table with his peers and dinner guests? I have not heard of this. It sounds pretty interesting. As far as I know, Hitler never kept any journals (at least none that survived) and he had this kind of inner wall that guarded his psyche. Even those close to him seem to feel that despite his charisma, behind his eyes he was sort of empty. Like, he was passionate enough to start a continental war, but he had something severely lacking. Much of his supposed hypnotic connection with others was simply performative (he would rehearse speech and movements by himself for hours), and he was pretty much asexual. I don't fully understand his relationship to his niece Geli Rabaul, but some folks have made the case that she was the only person Hitler really connected with. The reason I bring this up is because I have read article after article, source after source, of Hitler's peers and guests mentioning this vacuum. Its like he was an empty shell that took on various forms depending on what suited him, without having a permanent default form beyond a strong sense anti-semitism* and anti-bolshevism. I wonder what Hitler's personality type (INTJ, ENTP etc) was. At first glance you would obviously think he was an extrovert, but based on what I wrote I could see him as being an introvert. Many performers who can entertain a crowd of 10,000 people are actually quite withdrawn off stage. Who knows.

Out of every other person on this forum, you and I probably have the most aligned reading interests and enthusiasms. Its kind of weird lol. Pretty much every thread you make about history or ideas is something I have a deep interest in (though often not a very good understanding). I don't have any friends or coworkers that give a rat's ass about any of this stuff which really sucks, but these threads are always gold for me.


*Even this is weird and not set in stone. While living in Vienna before WW1, Hitler was planning on going into business with a Jewish guy in an attempt to sell his art. Depending on who you believe, I have read they were on very cordial terms and may have even been friends, assuming that was possible with Hitler. Personally, I think WW1 was what really set Hitler over the edge and ruined his mind in terms of the Jews. In Mein Kampf he discusses the Jews of Vienna with contempt, but the evidence I mentioned makes me doubt a lot of his personal narrative.

Yea the book is a running transcript of all his after dinner conversation from roughly 1941-1943 I believe. His personal secretary was transcribing them. Albert Speer also references them a lot as well. The whole inner circle thing dictators have is fascinating. The power dynamics of the Third Reich was well devious for sure. And a lot of those dudes were weird as hell.

I think Hitler was highly orderly, diligent, perfectionist, narcissistic, interested in ideas and aesthetics, assertive, and plagued by negative emotion. I think he was at least average in extroversion.

I don't have many coworkers or friends that I can talk to about anything of any significance. Whether metaphysical, spirituality, religious, political, or cultural in nature. Its kind of sad really but Im grateful I have a decent paying job and I get to talk about History kind of...

[GloryofGreece]

Why Does Joseph Stalin Matter?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhi2icRXbHo