Comparison of Hitler and Stalin

During the period leading up to World War II, there were two men

who were on opposing sides, the men were Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin. These men

were each triumphant in their rise to power in their countries and they were very

comparable in the ways that they succeeded. Their success was mostly attributed to their

new ideas and their politics.

Although Hitler and Stalin hated each other, the two leaders were similar in many

ways. Hitler and Stalin each rose to the highest position attainable in their countries, and

there were three main reasons that they were able to do this. Both men were skilled

users of propaganda, each was immoral, and they both had the ambition to make

their countries powerful in the world. Since each was a skilled user of propaganda,

they could use their words to twist and manipulate the minds of people into believing that

what they were saying was the absolute truth. Using this power, they would get people to

do anything for them, which proves their immorality. Since their countries were still trying

to recover from World War I, they desired to restore the power back in to their countries.

These three reasons will prove that Hitler and Stalin were similar in many ways.

Since Hitler and Stalin were able to manipulate people with their propaganda, they

could convince people of just about anything. This proves them to be immoral. Both

would do whatever they thought was necessary to further their cause, with no remorse

about what they had done. In 1922 Lenin, the leader of the communist party had a stroke.

Overtime his condition got worse and he became less involved in the party's affairs. When

Lenin died in January 1924, it left two men in contention for the party's leadership. These

two men were Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky. The men had opposing ideas on how the

party should be run. Stalin was a more aggressive candidate, and therefore had one of his

supporters kill Trotsky. Hitler was the other example of an immoral person. He

demonstrated this after he got into power with the holocaust, but he did not foreshadow

his immorality much before he got into power. The first major victim of the Nazis was the

powerful German Trade Union movement. A week after the destruction of the Trade

Unions the Social Democratic Party suffered a similar fate, soon to be followed by the

Communists.

With Hitler and Stalin being such immoral people and willing to do anything, they

would do what they could to benefit their countries. Each of their countries had suffered

great losses in World War I and were still trying to recover when they came into power.

Stalin believed that if he forced industrialization upon Russia, that it would help the

country to rebuild. Hitler's Germany also had a lot to recover from. Hitler had plans for

Germanic unity and German living space. German unity meant the gathering together of all

Germans in Europe, one people into one empire, ruled by one leader. This involved people

living in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Danzig, Memel and other isolated pockets. Germany did

not have enough farmland to feed her population of enough raw materials to supply her

factories. New lands to the east would then have to be taken over. He hoped to take Great

Britain into partnership after settling the question of the former German colonies. He

wanted to reunite the German people. Hitler and Stalin both succeeded in making their

countries strong once again, at least for awhile.

In conclusion, Hitler and Stalin were similar in many ways in their rise to power,

however three reasons stand out the most. They were gifted in the ability to use

propaganda and brainwash people, which in turn proves that they were both unethical, and

they desired to make their countries better and stronger. Both of these men succeeded in

doing all of these things.