Reply #99: Sure, but it doesn't really matter.

[Deep13]

Stalin: probably an atheist to the degree that he did not believe in god, which is the accepted definition. He did believe in the irrational ideology of what has become know as Stalinism of which nonbelief in god was usually (though not always) part. At least he claimed to believe it. More likely he used Marxism to sell his own absolute dictatorship. In any event, Stalin's mandatory state-imposed atheism is not what prominent skeptics are talking about when they criticize religion or advocate discarding it. They are talking about skepticism which demands evidence and rationality to support belief (and public policy.) I can't speak for everyone, of course, but for the most part N. American and European atheists tend to support religious freedom even if they don't agree with the opinions being expressed. Likewise, we generally do not want to see a dictatorship where atheism or anything else is imposed on the public through force. Anyway, the submissiveness of the Soviet people after centuries of church-supported imperial autocracy made a fertile field for the seeds of dictatorship to be sown.

Pol Pot: I don't know enough about his personal views to comment much, except I understand that like Stalin, he espoused a kind of state-imposed accept-atheism-on-faith, which is antithetical to skepticism. I seriously doubt that any Western atheists think we should kill off the best educated third of our population in order to impose an agrarian utopia. If it turns out that Pol was executed by his captures, then no one at Nuremberg deserved it more.

Hitler: Hitler was a Roman Catholic, albeit a heretical one. He believed in is own divine destiny and often spoke of it. More importantly, his supporters believed it too. Hitler had a friendly working relationship with the Vatican and with at least the major Protestant churches of Germany. His racist campaign against all things Jewish is based on Christian theology which blames Jews for betraying Jesus and made Jews the scapegoats for everything bad that happened from the Romans to the surrender at the end of WWI. Again, as far as I know, present day atheists are not Nazis.