Who was the worst?: Hitler, Mao, Stalin

[keirsey]

As an introduction to discussing the temperaments of bad guys, it is important to consider culture and historical trends surrounding them, before one starts to understand an individual’s temperament. Context: the culture is the other side of temperament. For example, the most influential person on the peaceful ending of the Cold War, Mikhail Gorbachev is not popular in Russia.

We might want to ask, who was the worst? Mao, Stalin, or Hitler: the three biggest political murderers in modern times. Who was the most evil and nasty? Were these guys Evil? Depending on different criteria, one could make the case on each being the most evil. On the other hand, what is evil? What is bad? China, Germany, and Russia were countries that had seen a lot of death and misery already. Similar leaders in their countries were not nice either. The Kaiser Wilhelm, Tzar Nicholas II, and Chiang Kai-Shek weren’t exactly viewed as nice and warm and fuzzy people either. Consider the fact, Mao Zedong is still revered in China (although mostly in rural areas).

Mao: A Life, Philip Short
Stalin: Edvard Radzinsky
Adolf Hitler: John Toland

We all know that most of us can do bad things. Stanley Milgram showed us that. Again, I think that the book Mistakes were made, but not by me, is an important book to read, to better understand ourselves and how we self-justify our actions.

But getting back to the “baddies,” it has been estimated that Mao Zedong was responsible for more deaths than Stalin or Hitler. On the other hand, Mao had more to “work with.” We, course of, cannot be precise in these matters. As Stalin said “A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.”

Stalin was the only one of the three that actually started out personally killing others. He served as provocateur, a revolutionary terrorist against the brutal Tzarist regime in Russia, and later became an enforcer for Lenin. Mao Zedong was a student getting his teaching degree, when he started seriously getting political; China had been, to some degree, in chaos for sometime before Mao entered the fray. Hitler was a corporal in WWI, then, within the chaos of Munich during the Weimar republic, he got political in the beer halls.

So violence and death was more of a norm when these guys got started, but they, in some sense, took that tradition and habit for killing in their countries to the extremes.

What were each of the three driving for? Mao was a true revolutionary – he believed in “constant” revolution. Once he obtained power, he continued the revolution. All of his family and most of his children had died in revolution or war. He really didn’t have much to lose by the time the Cultural Revolution occurred, except his legacy. Hitler wanted to purify Germany: make it great or die. Stalin was out for himself; he wanted control; he liked killing. He made sure that there was no possibility anybody else could amass enough power to challenge him. He would have those who killed for him be killed, he would have those who killed the killers, killed. He would have those who killed the killers of ….

I would say the Stalin was the most evil, but all three were evil and bad. However, all three were quite different in Temperament and their actions. All three were political geniuses, and they obtained power in powerful countries to do major evil in the world.

[Lord Vetinari]

Which temperament was Hitler? I assume Promoter Artisan...

[The Grey Badger]

I'd say damaged Idealist of some sort.

[ENFP123]

Performer would be my guess

[mkb32]

Hitler = INFP

Check out Keirsey's achived blogs for more info.

[Lord Vetinari]

Hitler a Healer!

[Goodrum]

Mkb32:

Hitler = INFP

Lord Vetinari:

Hitler a Healer!

Crikey-well, this is the dark side, the ying and the yang...very interesting read and study of these people, it's kind of taking this trail down a path of getting some understanding, some crazy sense of chaos, but at the end of the path utter, absolute devastation and destruction.

[The Grey Badger]

The power to heal is the power to hex. The power to bless is the power to curse. Yes - he was. A Twisted Healer, but it makes perfectly good sense.

[Goodrum]

There was a really interesting, (in depth), interview with Pyschologist Philip Zimbardo on our ABC tv...(Andrew Denton's "Enough Rope") a few weeks ago.

Mostly about an experiment done quite some time ago:

"Twenty-four undergraduates were selected out of 70 to play the roles of both guards and prisoners and live in a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. Those selected were chosen for their lack of psychological issues, crime history, and medical disabilities, in order to obtain a representative sample. Roles were assigned based on a coin toss.[1]

Prisoners and guards rapidly adapted to their roles, stepping beyond the boundaries of what had been predicted and leading to dangerous and psychologically damaging situations. One-third of the guards were judged to have exhibited "genuine" sadistic tendencies, while many prisoners were emotionally traumatized and two had to be removed from the experiment early. After a graduate student Zimbardo was dating objected to the inhumane conditions in the prison, and realizing that he had been passively allowing unethical acts to be performed under his direct supervision, Zimbardo concluded that everyone including himself had become too absorbed in their roles and terminated the experiment after six days."

as per:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

(Through listening to the interview, then reading up some more, I learnt about Stanley Milgram's experiment).

As individuals, as a small group of people, as a large group, as a country? do we even know honestly what we maybe capable of? Where is the vast and unlimited capacity of love, respect and empathy for humankind in these situations? Where did it go? The fact that it steamrolled, gained so much momentum...like it did with Rwanda? And many other genocide attempts? My Lai, in Vietnam?

Society, or parts of it, people, we seem to have some kind of tipping point.

[ShayShay]

Hitler = INFP

Check out Keirsey's achived blogs for more info.

I won't believe it till I see it. And I can't find it.

NFs search for unity. How in the world could Hitler be an NF? He divided the world, not unified it.