Mao Zedong didn't actually kill people outright; he did make a lot of bad choices which led to millions of deaths, like when he caused some famine which led to the death of people by asking to kill an entire species of annoying birds, though. And it seems like he didn't care much about the said deaths, he called them "collateral damage". yet it is still different than systematic elimination under Staline and Hitler.

To begin with, Hitler & the Nazis were Christian. As a matter of fact it was a requirement to be Christian to be a member of the Nazi party.

You won't want to read this.

In the Americas (North and South) you murdered between 50 and 100 million. The biggest genocide ever.

And it's still going on!

I can't remember anyone declaring they killed in the name of atheism. If someone has it's news to me.
Now, if you take that same statement and apply it to religion it becomes much different.

Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were fascist tyrants, which had nothing to do with their religious beliefs. Also, Hitler was Catholic. Atheism isn't a cause and has no ideology or rules. A lack of belief doesn't drive people to be evil dictators.

Here is one article that might be helpful. [skeptical-science.com]

Also, there's overwhelming evidence that religion does not make a person moral since religion has been the cause of a multitude of wars and atrocities. The Christian bible is chocked full of immorality... from allowing slavery, justifying murder and rape, to misogyny and cruelty.

The idea that these men were atheists is not quite right. Each was actually the head of his own religious type movement. They each was his own god in a sense.

Their statements are absolutely false. Hitler never claimed to be an atheist. He was simply a an egomaniacal sociopath. Lenin, Stalin, and Mao all swapped a religious total system ideology for a political one -- communism. At total system ideology is one which purports to include and explain everything. All total system ideologies -- political and religious -- are deeply flawed and have a history of persecuting non-believers. Christians have slaughtered tense of thousands of people in pogroms, crusades, religious wars, and inquisitions. Their religious hands are not clean.

Hi,

There are several ways to respond to the argument you've been presented with. It just requires a good amount of knowledge, I think.

For Hitler:
How come the Nazis signed one of their first treaties with the Catholic church? It's called the Reichskonkordat.
How come Hitler, in Mein Kampf, sites how he believes he is acting in accordance with the Almighty Creator?
How come the Nazi forces wore belt buckles that said Gott mit us (God with us)?

For Stalin: this one is a bit harder to explain and I know it through my parents and friends who lived in the USSR and through studying Russian history.

Essentially before the time of the USSR, a lot of people hated organized Orthodoxy religion because it was used as a spy agency by the czars to opress ordinary people and control them. Then when Lenin and Stalin rolls around, religion is outlawed, lots of people like it because of how the czars misused religion, but a lot of people stay religious and go underground. Underground churches were a real thing. Then add to the fact that Stalin manipulated the system to make a cult of personality of himself and rise to god-like status.

For Mao: I can't say anything because I haven't studied the history surrounding that figure or the country. Nor have I spoken to people who actually lived during his time in China.

TL;DR: Simplistic statements by theists about Stalin/Mao/Hitler and their supposed atheism do not show an adequate understanding of the various backgrounds and nuances that happened in reality

Here are a couple articles I found which should be of relevant use . < [thoughtco.com] , [thoughtco.com] >