Should Stalin and/or Hitler be a leader in Civ?

[Alexander I]

You know, I actually thought about bringing up "Old Nap," but figured we'd just cross that bridge when we came to it.

[armchairknight]

Cross that bridge? You and Napoleon, too. Napoleon's rather large brain just never could figure out water. And he was an islander! Go figure.

[Alexander I]

Originally posted by armchairknight
Cross that bridge? You and Napoleon, too. Napoleon's rather large brain just never could figure out water. And he was an islander! Go figure.

Maybe Napoleon though the Saint-Bernard was a river.

[Urban Ranger]

FWIW, Alexander* was rather nasty in his own ways as well.




* No relation to the poster above me

[CerberusIV]

Very few of the leaders in vanilla Civ 4 have clean hands. Mostly because autocrats want to do things and don't consider who will get hurt in the process. Whether it was persecution of catholics by Elizabeth I, Ghengis Khan's warriors making pyramids of skulls, Catherine and Frederick drenching european battlefields with blood or Isabella purging non-catholics from Spain they weren't people you would want to be annoyed with you.

The problem with leaders in a WW2 scenario is that it is still recent history and is more personal for many people so provokes fiercer debate. It is easier to dismiss what leaders did more than a century ago because it is outside living memory and can be labelled as a product of "uncivilised" times.

Because it is so recent it is difficult to know whether WW2 leaders will, in time, be judged as sufficiently important to be in a game like Civ. As for a scenario rather than the main game I don't see much choice. The game requires leaderheads. A WW2 scenario has to feature the main nations so FDR, Churchill (firebombing German cities?), Stalin, Tojo (hanged as a war criminal) and Hitler have to be in. You can't have a german civ in a WW2 scenario and not have Hitler as leader.

The question is whether there should be a WW2 scenario at all. If so, then should all the civs (and their leaders) be playable or should Hitler and Stalin just be AI bad guys?

[Willem]

Originally posted by CerberusIV
If so, then should all the civs (and their leaders) be playable or should Hitler and Stalin just be AI bad guys?

Some people like playing bad guys, just like some people prefer evil characters in RPGs. Why should a game be whitewashed for the sake of political correctness, especially one that deals with historical settings.

[Zoid]

Originally posted by player1

It's not "kill count" that matters. But that Hitler plan was to eradicate one ethic group (Hebrews) from the face of the earth using any means necessary.

That can't compare to failed communist reforms, that led to death of many by Stalin, even if led to more death people overall (nor starvation could compare to a "slaughter" which Nazi gas chambers really were).

How about the Gulag? They were death camps in all but the name, ok they weren´t killing people in an industrial fashion but does that really matter?

And while we´re at genocide, let´s not forget the armenian genocide comitted by the Ottoman Turks. 1.5 million armenians were slaughtered between 1915 and 1923. And the Ottoman Turks were included in Civ3 without as much as a raised eye brow.

The question is why are some genocides worse than others? Time must surely be a factor here IMO and sympathy from other ethnic groups than the one suffering the genocide. For example, in the confict in Rwanda in 1994. 800,000 Tutsis were killed by the Hutus in 100 days, that´s a daily slaughter of 8,000 people!! But who cares about two black tribes in Africa? We don´t even care why it happened, we just shrug it off and put it down as a tribal conflict...

[johnmcd]

I think there probably is an ethical question. At some level someone is making a profit from the reputation these men forged by the most inhuman activities ever carried out.

Our culture broadly sees nothing wrong with this though. 'True crime' fiction where individuals and businesses prosper by entertaining their customers with the horrors that others have suffered. TV mini serials and films that serve up the worst excess of human life as spectacle, from the simple horror of a Sophies Choice to the grand procession behind Schindler's List. Our video games regularly invite us to live out even recent atrocities - all the while we pay and people earn because of our willingness to treat these people and their actions as simple entertainment.

Bottom line, this ethical choice has been made over and over again and when it is (infrequently) discussed the media it is normally reduced to a simple balance between severity and distance (time, geography) and played up as a matter of taste - more about choosing wallpaper than moral rectitude.

If anyone is seriously offended by the inclusion of Hitler or Stalin they need to ask why Ghenghis or Montezuma does not trouble them. They should probably also consider the other games on their shelf and the films they have watched. The whole debate is full of hypocracy.

[potoroo]

Originally posted by Cartimandua


For those of you living in an alternate universe, this is a GAME. Politics shouldn't even be an issue in a game about world history. Every civilization has had its villians. Should we overlook them because the atrocities they have committed were not politically correct? Maybe we should eliminate the American civ for its attempt to eradicate Native Americans and their use of Africans as slaves?

History is history and rarely (if ever) is it politically correct.

Using "politically correct" as a sneer phrase merely demonstrates the paucity of your argument. No atrocity is ever "politically correct" nor does that have any relevance to the point.

[padillah]

Well, for what it's worth I see no reason Hitler should not be inculded as a playable leader.

Maybe it's my Protestent American upbringing but I find it very difficult to be offended by a "game". Even when they have been "directly linked" to shooting deaths in my own country, I can't find an impetus behind computer code.

To me it's like the "evils of rock", if you can be told to kill and you actually DO it, you weren't that stable to begin with.

If Hitler, as opposed to Stalin and the others mentioned, offends you on sight, you've got other problems that need dealing with.

AND, by the same token, if you feel compeled to add him you may want to look into why. The only compeling argument so far is a WW2 scenario. There's really no other reason. We have all conceded that this is not an historically acurate game and as such should not (in fact CAN NOT ) include all leaderheads that everybody felt were important.

Maybe offer him as a "plug-in". Those that feel they can deal with it, or want to play him out of sheer bloody-mindedness, can. Others will just plod merrily along.

Tom P.

[Alexander I]

Once again, I say I dislike the double standard.

Either Stalin, Genghis, Napoleon, Alexander and all the others should be removed along with Hitler, or they all stay.

Hypocrisy has no place in civ.

[sabrewolf]

Originally posted by player1
It's not "kill count" that matters. But that Hitler plan was to eradicate one ethic group (Hebrews) from the face of the earth using any means necessary.

That can't compare to failed communist reforms, that led to death of many by Stalin, even if led to more death people overall (nor starvation could compare to a "slaughter" which Nazi gas chambers really were).

in what way is "killing by race" worse than "killing by intellect" (pol pot) or "killing by political stance" (stalin)? i believe that indeed the body count DOES matter, regardless of the motivation.
of course in the eyes of shockingly many westerners the value of 1 "western" life (be it europe, north america, israel (i'm including hebrews in this assumption)) is more worth than 1 life in africa (eg. genocide in rwanda), asia (pol pot) or sovjet organised murderings.


to bring my post back on topic:
YES, i think even the most evil big leaders should be in the game because they actually affected the world more than "good" leaders. would the mongols even be in the game if it weren't for the incredible massacres the mongol hordes committed under genghis khan and his successor(s)?

but NO, none of the mentioned leaders will ever be in the game, just because the outcry would be waaaay too large and prosecution-happy interest groups would bring down firaxis and take2games.

edit: oops, sorry for replying to such an old post, i thought it was one of the last

[Rommel2D]

Leaderheads are one of a few areas of the game that are distinctly historic in nature. As such, Hitler doesn't belong with the other leaders in the game. For all the 'bad' qualities the other leaders possessed, they remained in a position of leadership and were a direct force in shaping their people's culture over a lifetime. Hitler had a decade or two of direct influence before being forcefully removed, and his greater impact has been how people have reacted to him in his absence. In this scope, he doesn't fit with any of the others (unless there's someone slipping my mind? Even Napoleon left a legacy that managed to survive in a political guise).

That said, WWII Europe would be one of the most obvious choices for a scenario, and Hitler would be the central character in that...

[Alexander I]

Originally posted by Rommel2D
Hitler had a decade or two of direct influence before being forcefully removed, and his greater impact has been how people have reacted to him in his absence.

Hatshepsut and Saladin only reigned for "a few decades" each; George Washington was only preisdent for a brief period (compared for example to FDR's 4 terms), and before that he was a mere general of a small rebel army needing French aid. Who's even heard of Huayna Capac? Alexander's conquests took place in a brief period and his greater impace was in his absence.

One need not rule for a long time to have a profound impact. Abraham Lincoln was only president for 5 years.

[swat-spas2]

Originally posted by Willem

It took Hitler several years to kill 6 million or so Jews.

If my memory serves Hitler is still close on the rates here; they weren't just killing Jews, but also: Russian POWs, Poles, Gypsys, the mentally retarded or physically disabled (eg, blind, deaf, etc), Communists, homosexuals, et al. In all there are ~10 (this figure varies very widely) million more people who weren't Jewish exterminated by Hitler over a shorter time period.

This is a semantic point; Stalin is still a paranoid psychotic slaughtering his own people by the millions, even to the point of saying "Death solves all problems - no man, no problem." But I don't think we should cheapen Hitler by simply giving him credit for only one group. If you did the same with Stalin and the Ukrainians, you'd be saying he ONLY killed 7 million.

As far as the game goes, I'm not troubled by this hypocrisy. These people, no matter how evil they are in intent and scope, are our history. The leaders of aggressive empires throughout history have often made "bloodthirsty" decisions (Alex, Nap, Genghis, etc). The reason Stalin and Hitler are singled out is twofold, one more recent history. People are still alive who remember firsthand. Nobody is seriously going to bring Pol Pot (2mil out of 7 mil in the country) into the game for the same reason. Or Tojo for that matter (the Japanese killed 5-6 million Chinese civilians/POWs in WW2, lest we forget). Second, they committed on an industrial scale mass atrocities against their own people. The numbers are so much greater and make it easier to single it out. Is it hyprocritical, perhaps. But it is not troubling because it is so massive and so near to our present that it would be more offensive. These others are so far removed from our time that we are able to divorce emotionally from the massive atrocities of that time. We aren't there yet from WW2.

Relgious persecution and the mass slaughters perpetrated by conqueroring armies; these pale in comparison by the numbers but were commonplace for centuries. It was essentially standard military practice to take out aggressions on the civilian population once a siege was completed. That doesn't make it right, but if its standardized, its going to happen over and over, differing only in the numbers of dead and with dozens of different cultures at the either end of the sword. What are we to do, play with only leaders like Gandhi? It's not like nearly every "great" leader in history hasn't perpetrated some sort of abomination which is offensive, though not to the extent, upon their people or their enemies, particularily during war-time. FDR imprisoned the Nisei and America/Britain were busy bombing civilian cities throughout the war in the name of victory. It would be easy to look at that from the opposite side with a degree of enmity. Many Japanese history books don't cover Pearl Harbor for example, but offer large sections on Hiroshima.
(Disclaimer: I'm not saying FDR is Hitler, merely that there are things that happen in history that are bad, and virtually everyone has some dirt by necessity of action at times. If you don't happen to live in America it's easy to view those same actions as evil acts inconsistent with our established values.)

The difference with these two is significant because it is so out of place with the "minor" atrocities committed by other Russian or German leaders. How would you even have the Mongols or Aztecs in the game without a controversial bloodthirsty conqueror at the helm, and if so, would we commonly associate such a clean imaged person with the height of their power and influence? You can have a German leader like Bismarck or Frederick, who while not entirely clean, feels cleaner for only being widely-known as a conqueror or more pridefully as the creator of a unified German state. Or a Russian leader like Peter or Catherine who established a cultural link with Western Europe and brought reforms to Russian aristocracy and arts. You can overlook their misdeeds because there is something positive resulting to attach to it. "Uncle Joe" has been in Civ games (civ 1, remember) before. I'm not troubled by his inclusion then although I would argue that he was certainly not the greatest Russian leader in history, but the most feared. I'd put St. Vladimir, or Rurik, Nevsky..etc (and Lenin for that matter, who perhaps should be in the game already). before I put Stalin in.

In short, I'd say the "double standard" is applied largely because the leaders who have it applied are superceded by more comfortable and more broadly effective leaders in the history of those countries. There are other Greek leaders we could use (Pericles, Leonidas, Ulysses) but Alex ander is by far the greatest, had the most influence on human events, and did no worse in his actions by slaughtering and pillaging unsubjugated cities than they. The same cannot be said of Hitler or Stalin.