10.
Pol Pot
Pol Pot was a Cambodian communist
and leader of the Khmer Rouge from 1963 to 1997. He was also the leader of
Cambodia for four years, ruling as a totalitarian dictator. During his radical
rule, an estimated 1 to 3 million people died due to his policies (out of a
population slightly over 8 million).
He attempted to “cleanse” the
country with a highly questionable policy called agrarian civilization, where
he forcibly moved city folk to the countryside to work in forced labor projects
at collective farms. Combining his executions, malnutrition, poor medical care,
and forced labor, Pol Pot caused the deaths of approximately 25% of the
Cambodian population.
9.
Attila the Hun
Attila the Hun is considered the
epitome of a cruel and ruthless leader. He was the ruler of the Hunnic Empire
from 434 to 453, and he was known to be bloodthirsty and barbaric. He is best
known for his attacks on Rome, where he was known as the Scourge of God, but he
really ravaged the provinces of almost all of Europe, creating an empire that
stretched from Central Europe to the Black Sea and from the Danube River to the
Baltic.
It is speculated that he killed his
brother Bleda to keep the throne for himself, as well as his son. He marched
through France and Italy and killed hundreds of thousands, and he invaded the
Balkans twice. It is said that he would tear people limb from limb and would
drink people’s blood. When Attila found the perpetual Virgin, Saint Ursula, and
wanted to marry her, she refused, and he proceeded to kill her and her 11,000
companions.
8.
Tamerlane
Tamerlane (aka Timur) was a
Turko-Mongol leader who ruled Central Asia from 1411 to 1449. He aligned his
vision with that of Genghis Khan (who he believed he was a descendent of), and
wanted to restore the Mongol Empire to its former glory. While he was a patron
of the arts, he is best known as being the most powerful and feared ruler in
the Muslim world after defeating the Mamluks, the Ottoman Empire, and the
Sultanate of Delhi.
Massive parts of Asia, Africa, and
Europe were laid to waste during his military campaigns. He would kill
surrendered soldiers and civilians, decapitate thousands, and even force entire
cities to jump from very high walls to their deaths. Scholars estimate that he
caused the deaths of around 17 million people, about 5% of the world population
at that time.
7.
Vlad Tepes
Vlad III was the Prince of Wallachia
and known as Vlad the Impaler (can you guess why?). He ruled from 1456 to 1462
and was highly feared during his tenure. He was also the inspiration behind the
vampire Dracula. His exceedingly cruel punishments included disemboweling,
rectal and facial impalement, skinning, burying alive, and cutting off the
sexual organs of people he didn’t like.
One popular story tells of when Vlad
refused to pay taxes to the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Mehmed II. Legend has
it that Vlad invaded Bulgaria and impaled 23,000 Turks. Mehmed raised an army
to conquer Wallachia, but Vlad’s forces killed many Ottomans during night
attacks, angering Mehmed. The Sultan marched to the Wallachian capital of
Târgovişte, only to discover a forest of 20,000 impaled Turkish skeletons.
Horrified, the Sultan and his troops fled. It’s estimated that 40,000 to
100,000 people were tortured by Vlad the Impaler.
6.
Ivan IV
Ivan the Terrible was the Grand Duke
of Muscovy from 1533 to 1547, and the first ruler and proclaimed tsar of
Russia. He was described as intelligent, yet given to bouts of rage and mental
illness. He is known to have burned thousands of people in frying pans, impaled
people, and he actually built walls around his city to keep people from
leaving.
He launched Russia into the
24-year-long Livonian War against Sweden, Lithuania, and Poland. After drought,
famine, and a plague epidemic, he became mentally unstable and violent. He
persecuted the nobility and peasantry. One story says that Ivan would gather
between 500 and 1,000 peasants everyday and then torture and kill them while he
and his son watched. He also later killed that same son.
5.
Leopold II
Leopold II was the king of Belgium
from 1865 until his death, and he is best known for creating the Congo Free
State, which was a private project undertaken to extract ivory and rubber from
the Congo region of central Africa. He claimed a land plot in the Congo 14
times the size of Belgium, and then ruled with an iron fist. The Congo Free
State relied on forced labor, enslavement, and mutilation, and resulted in the
deaths of approximately 3 to 15 million Congolese.
4.
Genghis Khan
Temujin, better known as Genghis
Khan, was the founder of the Mongol Empire, which would become the largest
contiguous empire in history after his death. Although he is known as a great
military commander, a revolutionary of trade, for encouraging religious
tolerance, and as a hero to Mongolia, his conquests vilified him throughout
most of history.
Khan killed his brother when he was
10 for stealing a fish he caught. He is known for many wholesale massacres
of civilian populations, one of which resulted in the deaths of over 1 million
civilians in a single day. The sacking of Urgench, as it is known, was
considered one of the bloodiest massacres in human history: He killed three
quarters of the population in the Iranian Plateau (10 to 15 million people),
destroyed most of the Middle East, and annihilated all of the major cities of
Eastern Europe. It’s terrifying to think just what he would have been capable
of if he had the killing technology we do today…
3.
Mao Zedong
Chairman Mao was the communist
leader and founding father of the People’s Republic of China. After founding
the Red Army, he solidified his control by introducing radical land policies
against “counter-revolutionaries,” landlords, and perceived enemies of the
state. In 1957, he launched the Great Leap Forward campaign in an attempt to
rapidly industrialize the country and transform China’s economy. This campaign
led to the deadliest famine in history, killing between 20 and 30 million
people.
Mao later initiated the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution, where he purged all elitist and capitalist
culture, killing millions in a violent class struggle, and destroying much of
China’s cultural artifacts. While he is officially held in high regard in the
People’s Republic of China – thanks to his building the nation into a world
power, promoting the status of women, improving education, healthcare, and
housing – in death toll alone Mao Zedong is one of the most ruthless rulers of
all time, contributing to the deaths of 40 to 70 million people through starvation,
forced labor, mass murder, executions, and democide.
2.
Joseph Stalin
These last three spots are very hard
to organize, as any of them could take the number one spot. Stalin was the
Premier and dictator of the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1953. He started as a
Bolshevik revolutionary in 1917, and exercised great political power after
that. In 1928, he launched his Five Year Plan, an aggressive industrial and
agricultural program which left hundreds of thousands of peasants starving or
dead.
He got rid of all of his political
opposition through a Great Purge (or “Great Terror” depending who you talk to),
aimed at his rivals through trials and secret executions. In Ukraine there is a
dark period known as Holodomor, where his policies caused a famine and killed
between 2.5 to 10 million people – citizens that he simply let die in order to
depopulate the country. Stalin killed more of his own people than possibly
anyone else in history (except maybe Mao Zedong). Through massacres, famine,
Gulag camps, executions, policies, and military campaigns, it is estimated that
Stalin is responsible for the deaths of between 15 to 30 million people.
1.
Adolf Hitler
While Stalin might have let his
people die (which some would consider worse), Hitler actively pursued the
genocide of entire people. This man was the fuel and fire behind the most
infamous and vile genocides in history, The Holocaust. Nazi forces under his
Third Reich systematically murdered up to 17 million civilians – six million of
whom were Jewish – during his time as dictator.
By the end of World War II, Hitler’s
policies, territorial conquests, racial subjugation and concentration camps
caused the death and destruction of much of the world: Adolf Hitler can
certainly be considered the most ruthless and evil ruler in history.
credit: therichest
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