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Essay about Evaluating the Historical Comparisons of Hitler and Stalin

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Evaluating the Historical Comparisons of Hitler and Stalin “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, great men almost always are bad men.”

Lord Acton 1887

No other men could fit this description of power and corruption more perfectly than Hitler and Stalin. Throughout history they have been both idolised and demonised leading to the overwhelming fascination the world has with them. Both successfully rose to heights of power in their own countries which was unprecedented, they were able to manipulate the public, had strong ideologies and regimes and between them they were responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent people. Although on the surface these two men were …show more content…

After this it became clear the true extent of the crime which was committed under Stalin. As a result there was a flood of historical comparisons made of the two by leading historians such as Ernst Nolte, Allan Bullock, Ian Kershaw and Richard Overy to name but a few. They all similarly focus on key issues such as their rise to power, ideologies, propaganda, education, art and culture, terror regimes, violence and mass murder. Although there are clearly many similarities between Hitler and Stalin and their regimes, historians in more recent years have attempted to turn this view on its head by claiming that the comparison argument is misconceived because there are more dissimilarities than similarities.[1] Historical studies along this scholarly line was extensive throughout the end of the 20th century and now into the 21st century proving that Hitler and Stalin are still two major figures in history that require continued exploration and investigation in order to understand why two men and regimes which were polar opposites were in fact fundamentally similar.

To evaluate and understand the historical comparisons of Hitler and Stalin awareness of the origins of this fascination is required. The earliest attempt to compare the two is believed to have originated from the work of Hannah Arendt who in 1951

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