Atheist warmongers?

Everytime a letter to a newspaper comments on the way that religion is so often the focus and origin of conflict, someone replies giving a list of atheist warmongers. The list seems always to consist of Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot. Though the replies come from (seemingly) different people, I am struck by their similarity. Are they the same person using different names, or are they different people repeating the same message?

I haven't got a clue about Pol Pot's view of religion, but to include Stalin and Hitler is - at the very least - open to argument. Stalin actually studied to be a priest and though he tried to suppress the church, that does not mean that he wasn't strongly influenced by religion. Hitler proclaimed that he was and always would be a Catholic ... and he often had the support of religious leaders.

Looking at things from a different angle, one could say that Nazi Germany and Russia under Stalin were themselves two examples of religions. Their "god" wasn't the god of Abraham, or the gods of the Hindus, or Romans ..... Stalin and Hitler were treated as all-powerful and, in the case of Stalin, omnipresent and the obeisance which was made to them had religious overtones. A similar situation prevails today in North Korea.