Hitler and Stalin entered into a non-aggression pact in 1939,carved up Poland between them. Indian Communists then called the defence of UK and France to Germany’s attack ‘Imperialist War’. Then Hitler attacked USSR in 1941 and the war overnight became ‘People’s War’ to CPI.
In genocide Stalin surpassed Hitler. The starvation deaths in ‘Holodomor’,the man-made famine of 1932-33 caused by Stalin,numbered 3-12 million,mostly in Ukraine. The deaths in Stalin’s purges (1936-38) and the Katyn Forest massacre (1940) numbered up to 1.2 million and 22,000
Stalin famously said,”One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic”. His purge was directed at ensuring that no remote competitor of his survived. Tukachevsky,his best General,was shot. Even a Bengali researcher Abani Mukherjee,who had made USSR his home,was shot.
Communism and Fascism are just two sides of the same coin. Neither can survive without massacres,direct or indirect. Hitler’s and Stalin’s are too well known. Mao killed 18-45 million in the famines his ‘Great Leap Forward’ caused. His Cultural Revolution killed up to 20 million
Pol Pot killed 1.2-2.8 million in Cambodia,abt 30% of the country’s population. The Kim dynasty of North Korea killed 0.24-2.5 million in famines. In fact the father of the word ‘Fascism’,dictator Benito Mussolini of Italy,is not credited with any genocides (other than in war)
