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Originally Posted by MRM

Stalin was a master mainpulator and dictator, but he was mere Bagatelle compared to Mao.

But he still was a second rate politician compared to Churchill FDR, Ike, and Reagan. For starters, Churchill, Truman and Ike let Stalin have eastern Europe because they weren't willing to shed blood for it and Stalin was, and they bet that over time they could defeat the SU without fighting. And the doctrine of containment was born.

Less than a lifetime later, Reagan and Bush, both of whom wore uniforms during WWII, came along and defeated the Soviet Empire without firing a shot. That Churchill and FDR were able to look forward 50 years and Reagan was able to fullfill their plan while Stalin's vision of the world was tossed onto the scrap heap of history without so much as a ripple on the pond of time demonstrates their mastery of politics vis a vis Stalin.

Now Mao, he kept power far more ruthlessly, longer, and with greater success than Stalin. And his vision for government still controls the largest single population in the world, albeit evolved to be a stronger but more flexible power center that the Party was under Mao.

Oh, and any reading list of WWII history is incomplete without Herr Speer's Inside the Third Reich.

Your revisionist history lacks something...credulity