ABSTRACT
After several years of neglect, one issue that has recently resurfaced is the retrospective question of whether Hitler or Stalin was ‘worse’. This chapter will not address that question.
The focus of this chapter is the question of the different treatment of Nazism and Communism since World War II. The answer to that question may appear blindingly obvious: Nazism and Communism were differently received because they were different, because they advocated such different things. Another facile and true answer is that Nazism and Communism were differently received because it was dazzlingly evident that the Communists had won and the Nazis had lost. But such explanations fail when they are applied to the question of why the Nazis have become much more central in our cultural self-understanding than the Communists. Admittedly, the perception that the West feels itself more affected by Nazism than by Communism may also be temporary, but it nonetheless requires an explanation. It is not true that losers always have more historical influence than winners.
