Nuremburg Trials -who wanted them

[Scott Smith]

No, he was guilty of Thoughtcrime …

No — a "Thought Crime" is being persecuted just for holding an opinion.

Streicher was a government official who advocated genocide. When that government acted upon those policies those crimes went from being "thought" to "action" and those government officials become morally culpable for the implementation of the policies they advocated.

Hate in thought is a private business. Hate in action is a crime.

You are talking about a semantical consideration of holding an opinion and voicing it. I see little distinction. Speech is not an act of violence.

There are plenty of Leftwingers, Blacks, Feminists, Jews, etc. who promote Hate speech, in addition to the usual Jerry Springer TV show guests. However, a pluralistic society must tolerate speech that the majority doesn't like. That dissembling liberals from the land of the British Empire and Jim Crow condemned Streicher to death for his views and words is the height of cant.

[demonio]

What exactly did Hess do ?

[Roberto]

No, he was guilty of Thoughtcrime …

No — a "Thought Crime" is being persecuted just for holding an opinion.

Streicher was a government official who advocated genocide. When that government acted upon those policies those crimes went from being "thought" to "action" and those government officials become morally culpable for the implementation of the policies they advocated.

Hate in thought is a private business. Hate in action is a crime.

You are talking about a semantical consideration of holding an opinion and voicing it. I see little distinction. Speech is not an act of violence.

There are plenty of Leftwingers, Blacks, Feminists, Jews, etc. who promote Hate speech, in addition to the usual Jerry Springer TV show guests. However, a pluralistic society must tolerate speech that the majority doesn't like. That dissembling liberals from the land of the British Empire and Jim Crow condemned Streicher to death for his views and words is the height of cant.

Certainly so, considering what those words and views were and the climate and circumstances in which they were uttered.

Streicher is indicted on Counts One and Four. One of the earliest members of the Nazi Party, joining in 1921, he took part in the Munich Putsch. From 1925 to 1940 he was Gauleiter of Franconia. Elected to the Reichstag in 1933, he was an honorary general in the SA. His persecution of the Jews was notorious. He was the publisher of " Der Sturmer," an anti-Semitic weekly newspaper, from 1923 to 1945 and was its editor until 1933.

Crimes against Peace
Streicher was a staunch Nazi and supporter of Hitler's main policies. There is no evidence to show that he was ever within Hitler's inner circle advisers; nor during his career was he closely connected with the formulation of the policies which led to war. He was never present, for example, at any of the important conferences when Hitler explained his decisions to his leaders. Although he was a Gauleiter there is no evidence to prove that he had knowledge of those policies. In the opinion of the Tribunal, the evidence fails to establish his connection with the conspiracy or common plan to wage aggressive war as that conspiracy has been elsewhere defined in this Judgment.

Crimes against Humanity
For his twenty-five years of speaking, writing, and preaching hatred of the Jews, Streicher was widely known as " Jew-Baiter Number One." In his speeches and articles, week after week, month after month, he infected the German mind with the virus of anti-Semitism. and incited the German people to active persecution. Each issue of " Der Sturmer", which reached a circulation of 600,000 in 1935, was filled with such articles, often lewd and disgusting.

Streicher had charge of the Jewish boycott of 1st April, 1933. He advocated the Nuremberg Decrees of 1935. He was responsible for the demolition on 10th August, 1938, of the Synagogue in Nuremberg. And on 10th November, 1938, he spoke publicly in support of the Jewish pogrom which was taking place at that time.

But it was not only in Germany that this defendant advocated his doctrines. As early as 1938 he began to call for the annihilation of the Jewish race. Twenty-three different articles of " Der Sturmer " between 1938 and 1941 were produced in evidence, in which the extermination " root and "branch" was preached. Typical of his teachings was a leading article in September, 1938, which termed the Jew a germ and a pest, not a human , being, but " a parasite, an enemy, an evil-doer, a disseminator of diseases who must be destroyed in the interest of mankind." Other articles urged that only when world Jewry had been annihilated would the Jewish I problem have been solved, and predicted that fifty years hence the Jewish graves " will proclaim that this people of murderers and criminals has after all met its deserved fate." Streicher, in February, 1940, published a letter from one of " Der Sturmer's " readers which compared Jews with swarms of locusts which must be exterminated completely" Such was the poison Streicher injected into the minds of thousands of Germans which caused them to follow the National Socialists policy of Jewish persecution and extermination. A leading article of "Der Sturmer" in May, 1939, shows clearly his aim:

" A punitive expedition must come against the Jews in Russia. A punitive expedition which will provide the same fate for them that every murderer and criminal must expect. Death sentence and execution. The Jews in Russia must be killed. They must be exterminated root and branch."
As the war in the early stages proved successful acquiring more territory for the Reich, Streicher even intensified his efforts to incite the Germans against the Jews. In the record are twenty-six articles from 'Der Sturmer ", published between August, 1941 and September, 1944, twelve by Streicher's own hand, which demanded annihilation and extermination in unequivocal terms. He wrote and published on 25th December, 1941:

" If the danger of the reproduction of that curse of God in the Jewish blood is to finally come to an end, then there is only one way-the extermination of that people whose father is the devil."
And in February, 1944, his own article stated:

" Whoever does what a Jew does is a scoundrel, a criminal. And he who repeats and wishes to copy him deserves the same fate, annihilation, death."
With knowledge of the extermination of the Jews in the Occupied Eastern Territory, this defendant continued to write and publish his propaganda of death. Testifying in this trial, he vehemently denied any knowledge of mass executions of Jews. But the evidence makes it clear that he continually received current information on the progress of the "final solution ". His press photographer was sent to visit the ghettos of the East in the Spring of 1943, the time of the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto. The Jewish newspaper, " Israelitisches Wochenblatt", which Streicher received and read, carried in each issue accounts of Jewish atrocities in the East, and gave figures on the number of Jews who had been deported and killed. For example, issues appearing in the summer and fall of 1942 reported the death of 72,729 Jews in Warsaw, 17,542 in Lodz, 18,000 in Croatia, 125,000 in Rumania, 14,000 in Latvia, 85,000 in Yugoslavia, 700,000 in all of Poland. In November, 1943, Streicher quoted verbatim an article from the " Israelitisches Wochenblatt " which stated that the Jews had virtually disappeared from Europe, and commented " This is not a Jewish lie." In December, 1942, referring to an article in the "London Times " about the atrocities, aiming at extermination, Streicher said that Hitler had given warning that the second World War would lead to the destruction of Jewry. In January, 1943, he wrote and published an article which said that Hitler's prophecy was being fulfilled, that world Jewry was being extirpated, and that it was wonderful to know that Hitler was freeing the world of its Jewish tormentors.

In the face of the evidence before the Tribunal it is idle for Streicher to suggest that the solution of the Jewish problem which he favoured was strictly limited to the classification of Jews as aliens, and the passing of discriminatory legislation such as the Nuremberg Laws, supplemented if possible by international agreement on the creation of a Jewish State somewhere in the world, to which all Jews should emigrate.

Streicher's incitement to murder and extermination at the time when Jews in the East were being killed under the most horrible conditions clearly constitutes persecution on political and racial grounds in connection with war crimes as defined by the Charter, and constitutes a crime against humanity.

Conclusion
The Tribunal finds that Streicher is not guilty of Count One, but that he is guilty on Count Four.

Source of quote:

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/proc/judstrei.htm

[Roberto]

My objection is to Raeder and Doenitz being punished at all for what Halsey and Nimitz were doing in the Pacific

They were not.

[...]In view of all the facts proved and in particular of an order of the British Admiralty announced on the 8th May, 1940, according to which all vessels should be sunk at sight in the Skagerrak, and the answers to interrogatories by Admiral Nimitz stating that unrestricted submarine warfare was carried on in the Pacific Ocean by the United States from the first day that nation entered the war, the sentence of Doenitz is not assessed on the ground of his breaches of the international law of submarine warfare[my emphasis].[...]

From the IMT's judgement against Doenitz, transcribed under

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/proc/juddoeni.htm

[...]The most serious charge against Raeder is that he carried out unrestricted submarine warfare, including sinking of unarmed merchant ships, of neutrals, non-rescue and machine-gunning of survivors, contrary to the London Protocol of 1936. The Tribunal makes the same finding on Raeder on this charge as it did as to Doenitz, which has already been announced[my emphasis], up until 30th January, 1943, when Raeder retired.[...]

From the IMT's judgement against Raeder, transcribed under

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/proc/judraede.htm

[tonyh]

Again all he seems guilty of is bad taste, but his publications did call for the outright murder of the "inferior" races and helped get the public very comfortable with the idea of mass genocide

Did it? I cannot say for definite that "Der Sturmer" did anything of the sort, neither can anyone on the board I'd say. Has anyone actually seen a copy of the magazine? And has anyone actually read a section where it calls for the extermination of "inferior races"? I wouldn't say such an article would have gone down well. even amongst a lot of the nazi party members.

If Streicher could swing for being anti-Semetic, then the arguement could be made for Ehrenburg swinging for the "anti-German" texts he published. But it was probably kosher to be anti-German and get away with it.

Tony

[Roberto]

Again all he seems guilty of is bad taste, but his publications did call for the outright murder of the "inferior" races and helped get the public very comfortable with the idea of mass genocide

Did it? I cannot say for definite that "Der Sturmer" did anything of the sort, neither can anyone on the board I'd say.

How about reading the judgement against Streicher, two posts above?

[British Free Corps]

What exactly did Hess do ?

Rudolf Hess attempted to sue for peace with Great Britain in 1941. In the early months of the year, he flew from Northern Germany to a castle in the Scottish Highlands, where he was to meet up with his British Co-operative in the matter. Hess knew that if he could keep Britain out of the war, then the chances of the USA entering the fray would be far less likely. In exchange for Germany's conquered territories in the East and the West of Europe, the Third Reich would not, in any way, interfere with realtions between Britain and her own Empire.
Many cabinet members, such as Lord Halifax, as early as 1940, decided that peace with Germany was the only available option. Without the benefit of hindsight, and the strict policy of neutrality on the part of the United States, Halifax was very well versed in his views...

After Hitler got word of Hess' excursion, he rounded up all who were associated with him and arrested them on the spot. He personally denounced Hess, who spent the rest of the war in a British prison camp.

[chalutzim]

Again all he seems guilty of is bad taste, but his publications did call for the outright murder of the "inferior" races and helped get the public very comfortable with the idea of mass genocide

Did it? I cannot say for definite that "Der Sturmer" did anything of the sort, neither can anyone on the board I'd say. Has anyone actually seen a copy of the magazine? And has anyone actually read a section where it calls for the extermination of "inferior races"? I wouldn't say such an article would have gone down well. even amongst a lot of the nazi party members.

A possible answer:

Selections from Der Stuermer,
edited by Julius Streicher

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THE MURDEROUS PEOPLE

"...The Jews are under a terrible suspicion the world over. Who does not know this, does not understand the Jewish problem. Anyone who merely sees the Jews, as Heinrich Heine (Chaim Bueckburg) described them, "a tribe which secures its existence with exchange and old trousers and whose uniforms are long noses", is being misled. But anyone who knows the monstrous accusation which has been raised against the Jews since the beginning of time, will view these people in a different light. He will begin to see not only a peculiar, strangely fascinating nation, but criminals, murderers, and devils in human form. He will be filled with holy anger and hatred against these people.

"The suspicion under which the Jews are held is murder. They are charged with enticing Gentile children and Gentile adults, butchering them, and draining their blood. They are charged with mixing this blood into their mass's unleavened bread [sic] and using it to practice superstitious magic. They are charged with torturing their victims, especially the children, and during this torture they shout threats, curses, and cast spells against the Gentiles. This systematic murder has a special name. It is called Ritual Murder.

"The knowledge of Jewish ritual murder is thousands of years old. It is as old as the Jews themselves. The Gentiles have passed the knowledge of it from generation to generation, and it has been passed down to us through writings. It is know of throughout the nation. Knowledge of ritual murder can be found even in the most secluded rural villages. The grandfather tells his grandchildren, who pass it on to his children, and his children's children, until we have inherited the knowledge today.

"It is also befalling other nations. The accusation is immediately raised loudly, anywhere in the world, where a body is found which bears the marks of ritual murder. Historically, the accusation is raised only against the Jews. Hundreds and hundreds of other races, tribes, and nations live on this earth, but no one has ever attempted to accuse them of the planned murder of children for religious purposes. All nations have hurled this accusation against the Jews, and many great men have confirmed the accusation. Dr. Martin Luther writes in his book THE JEWS AND THEIR LIES: "They stabbed and pierced the body of the young boy Simon of Trent. They have also murdered other children...The sun never did shine on a more bloodthirsty and revengeful people as they, who imagine themselves to be the people of God, and who desire to and think they must murder and crush the heathen. Jesus Christ, the Almighty Preacher from Nazareth, spoke to the Jews: 'Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning.'"


THE STRUGGLE OF Der Stuermer

The only newspaper in Germany, yes, in the whole world, which often screams the accusation of ritual murder into the Jewish face is Der Stuermer. For more than ten years Der Stuermer has led a gigantic battle against Judaism. This has caused Der Stuermer to be under constant attack by the Jews. Dozens of times it has been confiscated and prohibited. Its workers, most of all its editor Julius Streicher, have been dragged to court hundreds of times. They were convicted, punished, and locked into prisons.

Der Stuermer has come to know the Jew from the confession which Dr. Conrad Alberti-Sittenfeld, a Jew, wrote in 1899 in No. 12 of the magazine GESELLSCHAFT: "One of the most dangerous Jewish qualities is brutal, direct, barbaric intolerance. A worse tyranny cannot be practiced than that which the Jewish clique practices. If you try to move against this Jewish clique they will, without hesitation, use brutal methods to overcome you. Mainly the Jew tries to destroy his enemy in the mental area, by which he takes his enemy's material substance away and undermines his civil reputation and existence. The vilest of all forms of retaliation, the boycott, is characteristically Jewish."

Der Stuermer has never been stopped. Just in Nuremberg alone there have been fought dozens of Talmudic and ritual murder cases in the courts. Because of Jewish protests the attention of the whole world was focused on these cases. Thereafter heavy convictions followed. At first no judge had the guts to expose the Jewish problem. Finally, in 1931, in a court case lasting from October 30th to November 4th, Der Stuermer won its first legal victory. The jury found the following:

1. Der Stuermer is not fighting against the Jewish religion, but against the Jewish race;

2. The Talmud and Schulchan Aruch are not religious books. They have no right to be protected under the religious paragraphs [of the law];

3. The laws of the Talmud which are quoted and published in Der Stuermer are exact quotations from the Talmud;

4. The laws of the Talmud are in harsh contradiction to German morals;

5. The Jews of today are being taught from the Talmud.

With this verdict Der Stuermer brought about the first big breach in the Jewish administration of justice, which was given the job before the National Socialist revolution of protecting Judaism and the government. The Jews, of course, became greatly agitated about it all. But for Der Stuermer this success was an omen of victory yet to come.

Of course, Der Stuermer does not stop half way. It knows what must be done. It is our duty to frustrate the gigantic Jewish murder plot against humanity. It is our duty to brand this nation before the whole world, to uncover its crimes and to render it harmless. It is our duty to free the world from this national pest and parasitic race. Der Stuermer will fulfill its mission. It will light up the darkness with the truth which shall rule the world. And it will always direct itself according to the following proverb: "He who knows the truth and does not speak it is truly a miserable creature."

"This destiny does not tire, nor can it be broken, and its mantle of strength descends upon those in its service." - Francis Parker Yockey, IMPERIUM

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Source:

The Nizkor Project: Nizkor FTP file: antisemitism/talmud/streicher-talmud

http://www1.ca.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/antis ... her-talmud

Further info: http://www.nswpp.org


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This text is part of the Internet Modern History Sourcebook. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted texts for introductory level classes in modern European and World history.

Unless otherwise indicated the specific electronic form of the document is copyright. Permission is granted for electronic copying, distribution in print form for educational purposes and personal use. If you do reduplicate the document, indicate the source. No permission is granted for commercial use of the Sourcebook.

© Paul Halsall, July 1998
[email protected]

@ http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/stre ... almud.html

This cartoon was published five months after Hitler took power. The title is "Revenge." The Nazi who shoves the Jew over the cliff says: "Go where you wanted me to go, you evil spirit."

June 1933 (Issue #22)

@ http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/sturmer.htm (this link guides to another assortment of interesting caricatures)

If Streicher could swing for being anti-Semetic, then the arguement could be made for Ehrenburg swinging for the "anti-German" texts he published. But it was probably kosher to be anti-German and get away with it.

Tony

I guess you think the despicable, but justificable (because the germans were actually killing his countrymen and devastating Russia), behaviour of Ehrenburg has anything to do with Streicher's rabid scribbles?

[Charles Bunch]

It does happen. You are wrong.

As usual, Dan, it is you who are wrong.

A special report by Professor Daniel Bar-Tal of Tel Aviv University showed that Israeli school text books as well as children's storybooks portray Palestinians and Arabs as "murderers", "rioters", "suspicious" and generally backward and unproductive. Direct delegitimization and negative stereotyping of Palestinians and Arabs are the rule rather than the exception in Israeli schoolbooks. Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September 1999, pages 19-20.

Three words in quotation marks hardly equate to the diatribe of Streicher's I posted.

And most importantly, no suggestion of extermination is suggested.

The Professor's claim that Palestinians and Arabs are protrayed in such a way is his judgement, unsupported in anyplace I can find with the actual language itself.

Until you can present actual language used which approaches what Streicher used, you've failed to support your claim.

Let's look at some other Streicher commentary.

http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/res ... cStrei.htm

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(p. 4) Speech by Julius Streicher, September 5 1937, reported in the Fraenkische Tageszeitung:

The Jew no longer shows himself among us openly as he used to. But it would be wrong to say that victory is ours. Full and final victory will have been achieved only when the whole world has been rid of the Jews.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(p. 7) Leading article by Streicher from "Der Stürmer" No. 39, September 1936:

The continued work of the "Stürmer" will help to ensure that every German down to the last man will, with heart and hand, join the ranks of those whose aim is to crush the head of the serpent Pan-Juda beneath their heels. He who helps to bring this about helps to eliminate the devil. And this devil is the Jew.



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(p. 11) Streicher's speech in Nuernberg, April 3 1925, taken from "Kampf dem Weltfeind", p. 42:

Let us make a new beginning today so that we can annihilate the Jew.



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(p. 12) Deutche Volksgesundheit aus Blut und Boden, New Year's issue 1935:

One single cohabitation of a Jew with an Aryan woman is sufficient to poison her blood forever. Together with the alien albumen she has absorbed the alien soul. Never again will she be able to bear purely Aryan children, even when married to an Aryan. They will all be bastards, with a dual soul and the body of a mixed breed.



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(p. 19) Article signed by Streicher in "Der Stürmer", No, 12, March 19 1942, pages 1 and 2:

There were two ways which might have led to a liberation of Europe from the Jews: Expulsion or extermination! Both methods have been tried in the course of the centuries, but they were never carried to a conclusion....

The teaching of Christianity has stood in the way of a radical solution of the Jewish problem in Europe...

Fate has decreed that it was finally left to the 20th century to see the total solution of the Jewish problem. Just how this solution will be achieved has been made known to the European nations and to entire non-Jewish humanity in a proclamation read out by the Führer of the German people on the 24th February 1942:

Today the ideas of our Nationalsocialists and those of the Fascist revolution have conquered large and mighty nations and my prophecy will find its fulfillment, that in this war not the Aryan race will be destroyed, but the Jew will be exterminated. What ever else this struggle may lead to, or however long it may endure, this will be the final result.



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(p. 29) Report of Streicher's address to 2,000 children at Nuernberg, Christmas 1936, from Fraenkische Tegeszeitung, 22nd December 1936:

Two thousand children rejoiced with Julius Streicher....

The Gauleiter [Streicher] told the little ones about the terrible times after the war, when the Devil dominated mankind. "Do you know who the Devil is," he asked his breathlessly listening audience. "The Jew, the Jew," resounded from a thousand children's voices.

[tonyh]

While the above line "It is our duty to free the world from this national pest and parasitic race. Der Stuermer will fulfill its mission", can be construed as a call for genocide, it still doesn't actually "call for the outright MURDER of the "inferior" races", does it?

I certainly do not believe for a second that anyone reading the rotten and absurd screed quoted would by into it, not even in nazi Germany. Also "Der Stürmer" was a fringe publication. Its doubtful whether it reached even 1% of the German population. So it hardly constitutes "get(ing) the public very comfortable with the idea of mass genocide".

Streicher, no matter how disgusting he was, still should NOT have been hung at Nürnburg.

Roberto, I'll give the judgement against him a read when I get a bit of time. Right now "I'm up the walls" (busy) in work.

Tony

[Karl da Kraut]

Well, back to the original topic...

AFAIK it's true that the Soviets were first to insist on an inter-allied trial for the major war criminals, though they probably thought of some kind of show trial.

Still until 1945, the British preferred just executing the major war criminals without formalisms (for example both Churchill and the Labour chaqirman Attlee). According to Churchill, a list of ear criminals should be set up, and the people on the list should be shot right after being arrested. Others thought about allowing officers of a certain rank (at leat maj.gen.) to decide who was a war criminal and order an immediate execution.

Roosevelt, backed by Morgenthau, initially also prefered quick executions. However, in the U.S. administration there was a strong opposition to this atittude, the most influential objector being Truman (hasn't he been a judge earlier on?). As the campaigning for the 1945 elections required most of Roosevelt's (who was already in poor health) attention, Truman pushed his opinion through.

As both the U.S and the U.S.S.R. advocated a trial, the British finally gave in.

The decision who should be prosecuted in the major war criminals trial was of course problematic. This was necessarily a subjective and somehow arbitrary decision. First of all, only a limited number of defendants could face such a trial for practical reasons. Additionally, Hitler, Himmler, and Goebbels were already dead. Kaltenbrunner served as a "replacement" for Himmler ("Gestapo-Müller" could also have been chosen, for example), Fritzsche as a "replacement" for Goebbels. The defendants should also represent certain characteristics of the Nazi regime and the German society: Keitel and Jodel "symbolized" militarism, and Streicher anti-semitism. Alfried Krupp v. B+H "symbolized" the German heavy - and armaments industry in a later trial (1948), for instance.

[Charles Bunch]

While the above line "It is our duty to free the world from this national pest and parasitic race. Der Stuermer will fulfill its mission", can be construed as a call for genocide, it still doesn't actually "call for the outright MURDER of the "inferior" races", does it?

As Roberto has already posted:

But it was not only in Germany that this defendant advocated his doctrines. As early as 1938 he began to call for the annihilation of the Jewish race. Twenty-three different articles of " Der Sturmer " between 1938 and 1941 were produced in evidence, in which the extermination " root and "branch" was preached.

I certainly do not believe for a second that anyone reading the rotten and absurd screed quoted would by into it, not even in nazi Germany.

Well, you can believe what you wish. Making a convincing argument to that effect is something else.

Also "Der Stürmer" was a fringe publication. Its doubtful whether it reached even 1% of the German population. So it hardly constitutes "get(ing) the public very comfortable with the idea of mass genocide".

Such statistics do not define a "fringe" publication. Der Sturmer was no more a fringe publication than the London Times, which reaches less than 1% of the United Kingdom's population, or the London Daily Telegraph, which barely reaches 2%.

[viriato]

witness wrote:

No other political party in history (even the bloody Communist party in the USSR or China )succeded to accomplish murdering so many innocent people for such a short period of time of twelve years.

I believe I have to disagree with you because both the Soviets during the terriblle famine in the early thirties and the Chinese in the Great Leap Forward achieved a higher "production" of deaths. Remember that the Great Famine for instance claimed at least 6 to 7 million victims in less than two years. As to the Great Leap Forward the number of victims could well have reached 30 million in just four years!

[Roberto]

witness wrote:

No other political party in history (even the bloody Communist party in the USSR or China )succeded to accomplish murdering so many innocent people for such a short period of time of twelve years.

I believe I have to disagree with you because both the Soviets during the terriblle famine in the early thirties and the Chinese in the Great Leap Forward achieved a higher "production" of deaths. Remember that the Great Famine for instance claimed at least 6 to 7 million victims in less than two years. As to the Great Leap Forward the number of victims could well have reached 30 million in just four years!

The operative term is "murdering". The source quoted below suggests that Mao's "Great Leap Forward" doesn't qualify. But Stalin's Great Famine is certainly a contender.

Question: Who was the Bloodiest Tyrant of the 20th Century?
Answer: We don't know.
That's probably the saddest fact of the Twentieth Century. There are so many candidates for the award of top monster that we can't decide between them. Whether it's Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong or Iosif Stalin is, quite frankly, anybody's guess.

For now, let's just skip over the whole margin of error thing -- reasonable people have studied the evidence and come up with wildly differing numbers. You're free to check my sources, but for now, trust me. I've studied the matter at great length and decided that the most likely death toll for these three are:

TYRANT DEATHS
Mao 40Million
Hitler 34M
Stalin 20M

Well, that certainly looks like Mao is our man, but wait. Mao's largest crime is the Great Leap Forward, a bungled attempt to restructure the economy of China which created a famine that killed some 30M. If we confine our indictment to deliberate killings, we get this:[my emphasis]

TYRANT KILLINGS
Hitler 34M
Stalin 20M
Mao 10M

So it's Hitler, right? Except that most of the deaths on his head were caused by the Second World War. Sure, he started it, but our society does not blanketly condemn the starting of wars (after all, we reserve the right to do it ourselves in a just cause), and we certainly don't consider killing armed enemy soldiers in a fair fight to be a crime against humanity. If we therefore confine ourselves to the cold-blooded murder of unarmed non-combatants, our table rearranges itself again:

TYRANT MURDERS
Stalin 20M
Hitler 15M
Mao 10M

This brings Stalin floating to the top. So it look like once you reduce their crimes to the unjustifiably lowest common denominator, then Stalin is worst; however, you might want to argue that dead is dead so it really doesn't matter if you give your victims a chance to fight back. Fighting an unjust or reckless war is certainly a crime against humanity, so our numbers should go back to:

TYRANT KILLINGS
Hitler 34M
Stalin 20M
Mao 10M

... and these are just the problems we'll encounter if we accept my numbers without debate. If we want to use the estimates of other scholars, we can pin up to 50 million murders on Stalin, enough to push him to the top of the list regardless of definition. Or we can whittle him down to 10 million murders if we use the low end of the margin of error, and scrounge several more tens of millions for Mao, or away from him.

So, the answer to the question of "Who is roasting on the hottest fires in Hell?" is "Well, that depends..."

Source of quote:

http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/tyrants.htm

[demonio]

Hi Roberto. On a different topic you posted a link to a site called demicide or democide some time ago, but i cant find it. Can u please re post it if you get time and can still find it.

Kind Regards

Demonio