Hitler and Stalin: Ideas or Personality Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), who ruled Germany from 1923 to his death, began the war in 1939 that resulted in the deaths of 40 million people. More than six million of these were European Jews and other systematically exterminated in what we call the Holocaust. Joseph Stalin (1879-1953), sole ruler of the Soviet Union from 1929 to his death, forced millions of peasants off their private land and into large, inefficient, state-run farms in …showed first 75 words of 837 total…

…showed last 75 words of 837 total…both states were ruled by a single political party, tried to control the social and intellectual as well as the political lives of their citizens, and used terror systematically to do this. When we look at what they did and try to understand what motivated them-consciously or unconsciously-to do it, it is, hard to imagine. Even harder to explain than what they did is to why so many sane, sensible people let them do it.