http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/...alin-combined/
Snyder informs us that historians of many countries now agree that the Germans killed about 11-million non-combatants, roughly the figure accepted in the standard histories. And since, by his estimate, only about 6-million civilians died under Stalin ? far below the 20-million often cited before the archives were finally examined ? ?we know now that the Germans killed more people than the Soviets did.?
Snyder believes, Moscow?s motives for killing were as evil as Berlin?s. Soviet mass murder often involved ethnic motives that seem close to Nazi intentions. When the great famine of 1930?1933 killed 3.3-million Ukrainians, they were ?victims of a deliberate killing policy related to nationality.?
Dikötter, a Dutch-born historian who chairs the humanities department at the University of Hong Kong, begins his book with this sentence: ?Between 1958 and 1962, China descended into hell.? Nothing in the 420 pages of his text softens that judgment. He believes at least 45-million people died under Mao?s direction in those years ? far more civilian victims than Hitler and Stalin combined