Because for me personally if both sides are doing the same shit it defaults into a grey VS grey. I rarely go above that when its two sides with the same morals except for extreme circumstances.
The overton window shifted so fucking far to the right due to their opponents is the main reason reason. Think of it this way basically, WW1 was a bunch of people with various crimes to their names fighting, some may have been worse than others but they were all basically the same level of crime. WW2 another fight from mostly the same people. Some of the group from the either still doing those same crimes or starting to try and reform while the rest have become the world's most wanted criminals for having committed some of the most deplorable acts possible. The "good guys" in the second are still basically the same from the first but things shifted so far towards the dark with the rest it made them lighter in comparison.
First off I would argue it was a civil war to determine which was the real government, of course who won said war depend on who won WW2 as a whole. Second off France arguably did the most against it's collaborators and the Vichy Government. If Wikipedia is correct they sentence 6,763 people to death and while only in the end only 731 were actually executed IIRC it was most of the big names. Petain only escaped death because the man basically saved the French Army during WW1. As is if you were to press me on who I thought was the legitimate government I would go Free France and the French Resistance.
That's a very interesting take, because that allows you to exonerate all those French politicians and generals that served in WW1 that went on to side with the Axis. You can't declare France "light grey" when the majority of the population, military, and government signed a ceasefire and sided with the Axis. You hold Free France to be the legitimate government because it allows you to whitewash the crimes of the French Empire as the actions of fascists and collaborators, perpetuating the self serving myth De Gaulle put forward that "everyone was in the Resistance."
Do you know who was the strongest faction in the resistance was? The communists, whom you've described as "very dark grey" because they are Marxist-Leninists.
If you grade on a curve then in moral relativeness, why are the Soviets "very dark grey" compared to the Western Allies? You said you rank it relative to their opponents, well, the Soviets fought the Nazis, who literally wanted to enslave and genocide them, and suffered the second highest causalities out of any country in the war. If you're marking "greyness" on a curve, by that virtue the Soviets should at the very least be "light grey" given that they fought the Nazis and Axis, and suffered mass death.
Why are the Western Allies "light grey" for fighting the Axis, but the Soviet Union is "very dark grey" for fighting the Axis? This is an arbitrary double standard.
See I consider the Soviets the second biggest blight because they were the second biggest threat to Europe. I don't mean that in by being Communist themselves were they a threat. I mean in that they were the next biggest military threat towards Europe alongside the ones with the potential to kill the most people both internally and externally. Yes the others were shit but they weren't militarily a threat to the rest of Europe. So yeah when calling the Soviets the second biggest blight I'm not just talking about their internal action but how much of an actual threat they could pose to the rest of Europe both military and on the populace.
This is moving goal posts. You didn't say they were the biggest blight because they were a threat. You said "under Stalin I'm sorry but yes they were the second biggest blight on Europe
morally at the time." Emphasis mine to highlight that you made a
moral judgement about their political system under Stalin, rather than a statement about their military power.
Furthermore, why is the Soviet Union possessing a military a bad thing? If they didn't posses a large military they'd have been rolled by the Nazis, and hundreds of millions of people would have been
murdered by the Nazis. That's bad obviously and I'm aware you aren't endorsing General Plan Ost. You are however, painting a narrative that states that if the Nazis didn't exist, then the Soviet Union would be the greatest "threat" to Europe. Threat to whom? The people or ruling class?
It also sounds like what you're saying is if the Nazis didn't exist, the Allies should have built a network of alliances to contain the Soviets or perhaps even declared war on the Soviet Union to remove them as threat. Which is rather ironic because such thinking guided Allied appeasement in the 30s.
Edit: The remark that the Soviets had the "potential" to kill the most people sort of falls flat on its face, when Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe didn't result in mass death or genocide. It was the fascist and far right powers that killed the most people, including their own civilians. You may dismiss the Axis as a gaggle of blundering third rank military powers, but they actually butchered millions of people.
Why are you placing the Soviet Union higher on the "could commit more genocide" list than the Iron Guard, Arrow Cross, Ustase, or Bulgarian Legionaries? The size of Romania, Hungary, Croatia, and Bulgaria's militaries were all smaller than the Soviet Union, but they're the ones that
actually committed genocide. That doesn't even touch on Mussolini, who was already establishing concentration camps for political dissents and "anti-social" people well before Stalin ever took power. He gassed people in Libya, Ethiopia, Greece, and Slovenia using chemical weapons, yet he ranks lower on the Soviet Union on your "harm potential" list? Why?
