As late as 1997, however, when some French authors published The Black Book of Communism , some leftists reacted vehemently, since the book pointed out that Stalin and Mao had caused more than 100 million deaths and that both communism and Nazism are evil. These leftists could not bring themselves to equate Stalin and Mao with Hitler and refused to mention fascism and communism in the same breath, even though the latter had caused far more deaths.