EPILOGUE AND CONCLUSIONS
Pages 514-515
However retrospectively revealing the parallels between Germany and Russia,
for most people in the 1930s the differences between the situations in
the two countries seemed more important than the similarities. The Bolsheviks
broke promises and violated legality at every turn, rapidly losing much
of their initial even them limited support. The held on to power through
terror. Between 1917 and 1921 tens of thousands died in Russia as a direct
result of measures taken by the Cheka, while hundreds of thousands, finally
millions, perished in less direct ways (imprisonment, starvation, homelessness,
or decease in battles between Red and White armies). in contrast, Hitler
came to power in a legal manner and operated in way that gave an appearance
of respecting constitutional restraints. He and his lieutenants could
plausibly boast, by the end of 1933, that the Nazi revolution was actually
a humane one; it had cost the lives of fewer people than any revolution
in history, several hundred at most - whereas the Bolshevik Party and
the Cheka, in the hands of fanatical Jews, had heartlessly murdered millions.
Bloodshed in Germany remained relatively minor until the eve
of World War II, whereas repeated waves of mass murder rolled over Soviet
Russia. In 1917 Lenin came to power in a poor, illiterate, industrially
backward country devastated by war and revolution; the first years of
Bolshevik rule seemed only to worsen Russia's backwardness, poverty, and
economic isolation. In contrast, Hitler became the leader of a country
that although weakened by depression enjoyed one of the highest races
of literacy in the world and was one of the riches and most industrially
advanced. Under Nazi rule Germany's economy revived. The Bolsheviks destroyed
the existing Russian state, murdered the tsar and his family, and killed
or forced into exile thousands of the members of the old ruling elites.
[...]
Although the Nazis assumed a number of leading positions in the German
state, conservative elites continued to predominate in most of the governmental
bureaucracies.
[...]
Hitler became incomparably more popular than Lenin or any other Bolshevik.
It is indeed likely that Hitler enjoyed a broader, more fervent popularity
by the mid-1930s than any politician in the world