These are the top 10 bad guys of the modern world, ranked by how many people they killed.
Chairman Mao
Mao Ze-Dong killed an estimated 49 million people in China and Tibet.
Josef Stalin
Josef Stalin killed 23 million of his people. He purged them, and starved them.
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler killed 12 million in his concentrations camps, and civilians in his war on the world.
Leopold II of Belgium
Leopold II of Belgium killed 8 million of his slaves in the Congo, not to mention the other millions he mutilated, tormented, and raped.
Hideki Tojo
Hideki Tojo killed almost 5 million civilians during his war against the world.
Ismail Enver
Ismail Enver killed around 2.3 million Armenians 350,000 Greek Pontians, 480,000 Anatolian Greeks, 500,000 Assyrians in FIVE years.
Pol Pot
In order to create a new culture, Pol Pot disposed of 1.7 million of his citizens so he could start afresh.
Kim Il Sung
This man, worshiped as a deity in his country, killed more than 1.6 million of his citizens (purges & concentration camps). This genocide is still going on.
Mengistu
He shouted “Death to counterrevolutionaries! Death to the EPRP!” Thousands of young Ethiopian men and women turned up dead in the streets of the capital and other cities in the following two years. One and a half million people were dead by the end of his Reign of Red Terror
Yakubu Gowon
Responsible for the lgbo genocide in Biafra/Nigeria. Deaths: 1 million
There are many bad men out there. Instead of creating things in this world, they’ve destroyed it. I believe they are receiving justice for what they’ve done.
blessedby19
/ November 9, 2011Interesting that I don’t even know of most of these evil men and their atrocities toward their people…
EllieAnn
/ November 9, 2011I didn’t know quite a few, either. Though these countries are still shaken to the core by what these men did to them.
Stacy Green
/ November 9, 2011Wow. I didn’t know a lot of those men. Interesting how they’re all men, too. And I’ve never seen that picture of a young Stalin. What a cruel man he was. Hitler is still the one that stands out the most for me. I’ll never understand how a short, brown-haired man with a funny mustache managed to convince people that blonde hair and blue eyes were superior without getting his butt handed to him.
Spectra
/ November 9, 2011Stacy, that very fact has always mystified me, too. I already knew about Mao killing @ 50 million in China, through starvation. And that the Russians had murdered 15 million of their own and brightest under communism. What possesses these men? They are a recipe for evil – and I bet none of them actually wanted to be killed or die, themselves. They are insane.
EllieAnn
/ November 9, 2011I think it’s interesting that it’s all men, too. And gangs are men as well. As are most violent criminals and serial killers.
I wonder if it was their utter disdain for human life that made them crazy, or if they were crazy because they had utter disdain for human life?
Tori Nelson
/ November 9, 2011Oh this makes me sad and uncomfortable being a human being. I’d like to think I’m not in the same species as these monsters.
EllieAnn
/ November 9, 2011One choice leads to another….they didn’t start out as monsters.
susielindau
/ November 9, 2011This is so disturbing and horrible. I hope they rot in hell or come back as lab rats!
EllieAnn
/ November 9, 2011They will certainly receive justice, of that i am sure.
lynnkelleyauthor
/ November 9, 2011I hadn’t heard of some of these evil men. It’s truly mind boggling that one man can be responsible for the deaths of millions. True life horror. Thanks for this post, Ellie.
educlaytion
/ November 10, 2011I teach about a bunch of these guys. Your comment about choices is true. Ideas also matter. They have consequences. A lot of the ideas of the 19th century gave birth to the death of the 20th.
Renée A. Schuls-Jacobson
/ November 17, 2011I often think about how many people have died (or have come back ruined) right here in the United States. They just haven’t died under one leader. We have sent hundreds of thousands of troops into battle to fight in wars that could be considered on the moral compass.
The United States just has the “good sense” to change up its leaders frequently so there is never one pin-up face for these atrocities.