THE MESSIANIC ADVANTAGE:

But while there were many differences between Hitler and Stalin, they shared one vital quality: they actually believed in something outside themselves and sought to create a new world. They weren't even similar to the religiously driven European monarchs of the past who had faith in a Christian god. On the contrary, both of the dictators abhorred Christianity. In private, Hitler remarked that "Christianity is an invention of sick brains" - though, for pragmatic reasons, he largely concealed his true opinion on the subject from the German public.

They were both profoundly post-Enlightenment figures. They believed not only that God was dead, but that he had now been replaced by a fresh, coherent ideology. And millions of those who followed the two dictators also subscribed to this new reality.

Hitler and Stalin, of course, believed in different things. The belief that Hitler proselytised was most certainly not the same as the one Stalin lived by. Equally, neither originated the ideologies that they thought revealed the truth about the nature of life; both adapted them from the work of others.

For Hitler, the starting point was to recognise the crucial importance of "race", an idea he developed from a whole series of writers who had gone before him. The core of his belief system was the assertion that the way to assess people's value was by examining their "racial heritage". And it was this conviction that helped fuel his murderous anti-Semitism. For there was to be no place in Hitler's utopia for a whole host of people whom he considered to be "racially undesirable" - the Jews in particular.

In keeping with his belief that his racial hatred was based on modern thinking, Hitler often expressed his prejudice using pseudo-scientific terms. "The Jew," Hitler wrote in his autobiography Mein Kampf in the early 1920s, "remains the typical parasite, a sponger who like a noxious bacillus keeps spreading as soon as a favourable medium invites him."

Like Hitler, Stalin had also been convinced by the work of others. The most influential was Karl Marx. It was primarily Marx's teachings that had drawn him into the world of revolution. According to Marx, working people - whom he called the "proletariat" - were alienated from productive life. Instead of work being, as it should be, a way for people to feel fulfilled, life in the grim factories of the 19th century was destructive to the human spirit.

The trouble was that, while Marx was brilliant at analysing the problem, the solution he proposed was not necessarily so convincing. One difficulty was that he asserted that history was destined to move through certain phases. For instance, there was an imperial phase, a feudal phase, a capitalist phase, a socialist phase and a communist phase. But this formulaic approach could prove problematic when applied to a wide variety of different countries and cultures.

Arguments raged among followers of Marx about exactly what the great man had meant by certain theories, and what was the best way of implementing them. Marxist followers denounced each other for corrupting Marxist teachings, much as medieval Christians had attacked each other for heresy.

There was thus an obvious gulf between Hitler and Stalin in the way that each viewed the world. One was a devout racist, the other a man who thought the environment primarily shaped individuals. One was a believer in the laws of "Nature", the other a dedicated follower of Karl Marx. What was more, they each passionately hated the other's belief system. Hitler feared and despised Bolshevism, and Stalin detested Nazism.

Similarly, there was a chasm between the two dictators in terms of their ultimate goals, with the communist aim of a stateless society presenting a sharp contrast to Hitler's idea of a giant empire based on violent racism. This clear distinction informs how the two ideologies are perceived today. The type of racial hatred that was at the core of Hitler's thinking is rightly condemned - indeed, expressing such beliefs is illegal in many countries - whereas there are still a number of people who proudly proclaim they are Marxists. But, in the context of Stalin's leadership, there is a problem with this analysis, because the harmonious goal of the Bolsheviks - of a state in which government "withered away" - was not realistically achievable under Stalin. And even Stalin came close to admitting as much.

In his address to the 18th Congress of the Communist party in March 1939, Stalin confessed that Marx and his collaborator, Friedrich Engels, had not always been right. Specifically, when Engels had said that once "there is nothing more to be repressed" then the state "withers away", he had failed to mention the "international factor". The problem, said Stalin, was that because other countries were not on the road to communism, the Soviet Union needed "at its disposal a well-trained army, well-organised punitive organs, and a strong intelligence service" to defend itself. In other words, expect the "well-organised punitive organs" to stay put, because there was no prospect of them leaving unless the whole world went communist, and who seriously thought that would happen in the foreseeable future?

Nonetheless, both Hitler and Stalin offered a vision of a future utopia. They were different utopias, of course, but utopias nonetheless. The road to get there would be hard - even, as Stalin admitted in 1939, taking longer than people could possibly imagine - but a wonderful goal lay ahead regardless. Both of these utopian visions offered a purpose in life, in a world that could seem meaningless without religious belief.

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