Pass Labs

That is because of the huge numbers killed by Stalin and Hitler in their massacres. If memory serves Stalin alone killed 30 million (average of estimates). Official estimate of total civilian deaths alone in WW II is 50-55 million. China alone reported 20 million deaths. If you throw in war related disease and famine the estimates get up around 80 million.

It’s always been astonishing to me how Joseph Stalin gets a pass (relatively speaking) historically. He and Mao tse tung (China) were diabolical communist totalitarian mass murders of the first degree. Geoff your figures are correct, utterly atrocious.
Charles

How did we get from Nelson Pass to Joseph Stalin!

Stalin, Mao and Hitler were all mass murderers, but there is an important distinction.  Stalin and Mao both won and Hitler lost.  Germany was utterly destroyed at the end of WW2 with 8 million dead and another 1.5 to 2 million to die in the immediate post war era.  Upon his death Stalin left the Soviet Union as the second largest economic and military power in the world.   Mao took a nation that had been totally shattered by decades of civil war and Japanese invasion/occupation and turned it into a productive, nuclear armed power.  Essentially he laid the groundwork for China's explosive economic growth in the 80s and after.  History "likes" winners.  Was Julius Caesar any less of a mass murderer than these guys?