Hitler may not be the best example since it’s not obvious to me that Hitler’s death would have resulted in fewer lives lost during the genocides of the 20th century, because a universe without Hitler would have had a more powerful USSR.
I don’t think your assessment is accurate, because of the following facts:
USSR actually ended up more powerful, enlarged, and with greater prestige in 1945 -- for the exact reason that Germany, its main strategic rival, went on to pursue a suicidal attack against it under Hitler.
The German-Soviet war itself opened the opportunities for genocidal and near-genocidal campaigns by both sides, especially Germans, and it would have to have been an awfully large decrease in Soviet-perpetrated genocide to balance that.
Not counting the deaths related to the military operations, the overwhelming number of killings done by Stalin had already been finished by 1941. After that, the situation under him was of course awfully bad, but there was nothing like the enormous, Holocaust-scale mass killing projects he undertook in the 1930s.
Hitler may not be the best example since it’s not obvious to me that Hitler’s death would have resulted in fewer lives lost during the genocides of the 20th century, because a universe without Hitler would have had a more powerful USSR.
For that matter, Germany could’ve picked a different embittered, insane would-be dictator. They weren’t in short supply.
I don’t think your assessment is accurate, because of the following facts:
USSR actually ended up more powerful, enlarged, and with greater prestige in 1945 -- for the exact reason that Germany, its main strategic rival, went on to pursue a suicidal attack against it under Hitler.
The German-Soviet war itself opened the opportunities for genocidal and near-genocidal campaigns by both sides, especially Germans, and it would have to have been an awfully large decrease in Soviet-perpetrated genocide to balance that.
Not counting the deaths related to the military operations, the overwhelming number of killings done by Stalin had already been finished by 1941. After that, the situation under him was of course awfully bad, but there was nothing like the enormous, Holocaust-scale mass killing projects he undertook in the 1930s.