Stephen Kotkin

He doesn't murder the Gauleiters or the Nazi party officials.

He doesn't murder the intellectuals.

Some go to prison.

Some go into exile if they're lucky.

And some definitely are executed, often for acts that they've committed, sometimes just because they had an enemy in the system who wanted to enact revenge against them.

But for the most part, Hitler is attacking what we would call his real enemies.

That is to say, people who are opposed to his regime.

either in thought or in action or both.

Stalin is attacking those people, but he's also attacking loyalists.

He's taking down in really big numbers

system loyalists, people who would walk through fire for him.

And one of the things they do is to walk through the fire of their self-immolation on behalf of the cause.

And this belief in the new world, in the better world, in transcending capitalism,

in getting peace as well as abundance on the planet, in building paradise on Earth, needs to be understood as absolutely fundamental to everything that we're talking about.

We often talk about Nazi racial ideology.

How could they believe that stuff?

That stuff is obviously ridiculous, you say, right?

Goebbels, who helped enact the regime's ideology about a master race,

had several deformities, right?

Clubbed foot, walked in a brace, and yet he's helping preside over the murder of people because they are disabled.