These things don't suddenly disappear with the official end of the war. It's a country of a billion people, a regime change, trouble with neighbors, fight for the leadership etc. So, "X is in power all turmoil can stop now", is not really how it works.
>As for Hitler, he was not voted by a majority of Germans. The Nazis peaked at about 1/3rd of the vote.
44% actually. And by majority it means they got the most votes of any other party at the time, not that they got 51%. (Heck, the rulling parties for the last two elections in my country didn't even have anywhere near 40%).
And besides that, after Hitler was established in power, he had an almost total following from the German people, and very little (if at all) internal resistance.
Mao's government was strong enough, within just a few years, to fight the US military to a standstill in a foreign war. What's the excuse for the millions who died after that?
That will do, yes.
Although:"relative majority (Brit) - the excess of votes or seats won by the winner of an election over the runner-up when no candidate or party has more than 50 per cent.
>What's the excuse for the millions who died after that?
Political and social struggles in a huge empire state that had made a huge change in the way it has been run for millenia?
A lot of people seem to ascribe to the "cult of personality", but with or without Mao, it would have been done.
That's why it was done almost in parallel in other countries too.
Lots of people have the crazy theory that some guys, maybe because they had too much swag or because people were of lower IQ back then or something, managed to rise from nowhere and get hundrends of millions to follow them, changed their countries etc.
The real story is that the historical currents had formed to move those countries out of their aggrarian past. They had to do something or perish in the modern age, and due to mix of circumstances and need, those kind of figures emerged to deliver that change.
It was a time of huge changes all around -- the colonial struggles, WWI, WWII, communism rising, right wing dictatorships -- those things did not happen all in parallel because some guys managed to dupe billions into following them.
Russia has a long history of serfdom, an authoritarian regime, young people passionate about change, a huge territory and large population etc. China, about the same, only much larger.
In fact, if anything it's the opposite: most countries failed to ever make the transition (most of the third world for example, Africa, Asia, Latin America).
As for the Western countries that made the same transition:
a) some made it peacefully (those that were in better position to do so, namely: small and manageable, with an established social order from before, no dangerous neighbours and plenty of money rolling in).
b) others had no "starving of millions of people to death" mainly because they got a good deal out of starving millions of OTHER people to death. E.g France, Netherlands, Belgium, UK, financing their industrial age with looting and enslaving their colonies in Africa, Asia, etc.
(And we should not forget the bloody continental European wars and revolutions that got a lot of countries out of agrarian feudalism and aristocracy and into the modern type industrial republic. Millions died in the French Revolution, the Napoleonian wars and the subsequent turmoil than made France into a modern republic, and then there was WWI. The difference is that China, more slow moving, went through a similar situation well in the 20th Century).
One does not pin civil war deaths on Lincoln. But if Lincoln had led the country into ruin and mass death after the war was over, he would be blamed for those deaths, and rightly so. Thus with Mao. The People's Republic was established in 1949. The civil war at that point was over, no serious external enemies threatened, and the government's control was solid. What followed is not justifiable.
As for Hitler, he was not voted by a majority of Germans. The Nazis peaked at about 1/3rd of the vote. Hitler became chancellor through political maneuvering, not majority support. He did kind of obtain power legitimately, but don't confuse that with being voted in by a majority.