Holodomor was a bigger genocide than the Holocaust, committed by a major world power

Obviously they are.

famine will never been as scary or shocking to the human conscience as a systematic effort to exterminate a group. famine is a part of human history and isn't seen as a direct assault on a person. it just doesn't have the same evolutionary, psychological, or emotional impact

a better example is the Armenian genocide, b/c that was much more deliberate, systematic, and involved direct murder

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famine will never been as scary or shocking to the human conscience as a systematic effort to exterminate a group. famine is a part of human history and isn't seen as a direct assault on a person. it just doesn't have the same evolutionary, psychological, or emotional impact 

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Stalin's gulag camps and murders of political enemies were also as extensive and moreso in many respects to Hitler's but because class, ideology, and control were the motivating factors as opposed to the ethnic motivations of Hitler, they are generally less publicized and sensationalized. Beatings, torture, imprisonment, slave labor, and outright murder were rampant in Stalin's USSR for decades and throughout the war and though much was kept hidden behind the shielding of the Soviet curtain, much was known as well. It's also clearly known today but still fails to garner anywhere near the attention in popular culture and education as Nazi atrocities. Most people are still largely unaware of the scale, brutality, and horrors of the Bolshevik regimes and it's unfortunate because they are every bit as terrifying and historically important as what happened under the Nazis. Stalin also sent millions of ethnic Germans who were settled along the Volga to the gulags shortly after the German invasion, so there was an ethnic component to the Soviet crimes as well.

It's a bit of an embarrassing inconvenience for the Western democracies and the prevailing portrayal of the Second World War however.

Very weird thread.

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Alan kors, upenn professor

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Nailed it.

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Hitler is far behind Mao and Stalin on the killing scoreboard, but he always gets the most attention.

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A lot of that's because of the way he went about it is simply revolting to western sensibilities. Hitler built a large, efficient bureaucracy, effectively industrializing genocide. This adds a certain chilling quality that the Chinese and Soviet purges don't have. The Nazis actually researched how to kill and dispose of people as efficiently as possible.

What also makes it different from Stalin and Mao was that in their case, it was a means of consolidating power rather than something they wanted done out of hatred. It was about killing or silencing people who were deemed a threat to them or the system, not exterminating an entire race. Even as the allies closed in with the result of the war a foregone conclusion, the Nazis ramped up their efforts to kill as many Jews as possible.

Finally, regarding the Holodomor, there's the question of whether or not it was even intentional or the result of commies fricking things up with poorly thought out economic transfer, so it's not exactly a good comparison.

But it shouldn't be a competition. All were crimes on such a scale that the concept of bigger becomes kind of meaningless.

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there's the question of whether or not it was even intentional or the result of commies fricking things up with poorly thought out economic transfer, so it's not exactly a good comparison.

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Nobody close to the matter actually thinks this.

Killing millions of people is not because of "ill thought out policies" or else the policy would have stopped after the first thousand people starved.

This is what annoys so many people who were either victims of or related to victims of communism: the beasts that committed the atrocities are relieved of their blame by western scholars blaming it on policy mistakes.

The killing fields in cambodia did not come about because of flawed economic policy, the gulags did not either. The fact of the matter is that the people who brought us communism had as much hatred in their hearts as hitler and the nazis.

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Ethnic Ukrainians don't control the media

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There's THAT, and there's the fact that American GIs defeated Naziism. That's a big deal for us considering it was our grandparents.

Hold the Door was easily the most upsetting massacre.

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Nobody close to the matter actually thinks this.

Killing millions of people is not because of "ill thought out policies" or else the policy would have stopped after the first thousand people starved.

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Yes, they do. It's universally considered a crime against humanity, but there's an ongoing scholarly debate on whether it could be considered genocide. Indeed, the argument for a terror famine seems to hang entirely on supposition. If it was, it was a very poorly targeted one. The same thing at the same time was occurring at Volga, Kazakhstan and other areas in the USSR.

Hell, if you define the Holodomor as genocide, Sir Robert Peel could reasonably be considered the most genocidal maniac this planet has ever seen.

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This is what annoys so many people who were either victims of or related to victims of communism: the beasts that committed the atrocities are relieved of their blame by western scholars blaming it on policy mistakes.

The killing fields in cambodia did not come about because of flawed economic policy, the gulags did not either. The fact of the matter is that the people who brought us communism had as much hatred in their hearts as hitler and the nazis.

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You'll get no argument from me regarding their myriad atrocities, but economic incompetence can just as easily kill millions as a purge.