History's most Brutal Dictators?

[Julian Delphiki]

I vote for Hitler. He killed-starved, labor camps, gas, freezing and so on-about 30 million Jews. I have a friend who is a Jew, and Jews are some of the nicest kind of people. Hitler, evidently not content with such a massive number, proceeded to kill about seventy-five million Russian P.O.Ws.
I hate him beyond...beyond.

Your figures are way too high.. where did you get 30 million Jews & 75 million Russian P.O.W's? Estimates of Nazi casualties are about 6 million Jews & possibly as high as 3 million P.O.W's -- 75 million would be about 2.1~ times number of people who served at Red Army during the WW2.

 

[ParkCungHee]

I vote for Hitler. He killed-starved, labor camps, gas, freezing and so on-about 30 million Jews. I have a friend who is a Jew, and Jews are some of the nicest kind of people. Hitler, evidently not content with such a massive number, proceeded to kill about seventy-five million Russian P.O.Ws.
I hate him beyond...beyond.

Wow, 30 million Jews. Thats a pretty impressive feat. Hitler not only killed all of the Jews in the world, but then proceeded to kill additional, non-existant Jews, until he reached 30 million?

Untop of that, Russia managed to field such a large percentage of its population that 60% of the COuntry was POWs? Assuming no one in the war in the east died in combat, and the Germans killed no civilians, and factoring in the Soviets own killings, they must have bounced from 125 million, down to 30 million, and back up to 130 million people in just the course of sixty years!

 

[Traitorfish]

History being what it is, it's perfectly conceivable that the Scots will redefine their history in some other way and make "the Auld Alliance" count for something again as well.

Some already have- some pro-EU Scottish nationalists sometimes use it as a sort of precedent for co-operation with the continent as way of maintaining independence from England.

 

[Soaring Tiger]

I was really tired when I posted that. I must have accidently added a place value or two

And I learned all those numbers involving World War 2 when I was eight!

 

[Infantry#14]

I voted for Stalin, but others are really closed.

I remembered Stalin once said, "One man's death is a tragedy, a million's death is a statistics."

 

[cybrxkhan]

I remembered Stalin once said, "One man's death is a tragedy, a million's death is a statistics."

althuogh it can be interpreted as actually words of great wisdom: that sometimes, it takes one death for people to see the true scope of a tragedy; really, like these days, when schookids read in history, "Mao, Hitler, and Stalin combined killed more than 100 million people", they're like, "Oh, yeah, too bad, whatever". sometimes one death, of a loved one, can really be more overwhelming than one million souls you never knew.

of course, i'm not sure if Stalin was going towards that, but...

 

[Adler17]

I do very much doubt that...

Adler

 

[Joseph Stalin]

"One man's death is a tragedy, a million's death is a statistics."

that's one of his best quotes

but it doesn't beat this one:

“Death solves all problems - no man, no problem.”

pure genius

 

[FoxURA]

How come Saddam isn't on the list? That guy had rape rooms in which the rapes were videoed for the future entertainment or him and his sons, human grinders, gas chambers, vats of acid that people were slowly lowered into, he used nerve gas on his own people, got to power through intrigue and murder, killed entire Kurd villages and placed them in mass graves, and the list goes on.

He may not have had the chance to get around to it in terms of taking human lives compared to a lot of other past dictators but he would have eventually gotten there if he had the chance. That's why in my book Saddam was the most brutal dictator in history.

 

[Joseph Stalin]

Saddam is on the list, you know saddam hussein :S im not gone call you a ****** because that would make me look bad.

and the vats of acids human grinders :S come on its not a movie or do you have actual proof of these construction ever been used. because it would seem to me that the US would probably send out thousands of photo's of these contraptions just to make the war seem more just. But (i could be wrong) i don't really know of any one of these accusations (exept the gas chambers and nerve gas usage, and although the rape rooms existed i dont really know if they where for his entertainment because he would have bookshelfs full of tapes that haven't been found yet)

 

[skallben]

How come Saddam isn't on the list? That guy had rape rooms in which the rapes were videoed for the future entertainment or him and his sons, human grinders, gas chambers, vats of acid that people were slowly lowered into, he used nerve gas on his own people, got to power through intrigue and murder, killed entire Kurd villages and placed them in mass graves, and the list goes on.

He may not have had the chance to get around to it in terms of taking human lives compared to a lot of other past dictators but he would have eventually gotten there if he had the chance. That's why in my book Saddam was the most brutal dictator in history.

Listen to propaganda less. He was an "average" dicator at best. There are worse in power on several places in the world today.

 

[cybrxkhan]

How come Saddam isn't on the list? That guy had rape rooms in which the rapes were videoed for the future entertainment or him and his sons, human grinders, gas chambers, vats of acid that people were slowly lowered into, he used nerve gas on his own people, got to power through intrigue and murder, killed entire Kurd villages and placed them in mass graves, and the list goes on.

the Japanese have been accused of doing at the very least things just as bad as that during World War II (and before). although, I woldn't place Hirohito 100% to blame. and one probably couldn't place his highest generals and ministers to 100% blame, though a lot of blame should be put on them.

 

[Traitorfish]

I remembered Stalin once said, "One man's death is a tragedy, a million's death is a statistics."

But that's not a sign of brutality or evil in itself, it's merely an observation on humans and their ability to deal with large-scale events. The fact that he exploited this is what (among other things) made him evil, not the fact that he recognised it.

 

[cybrxkhan]

^exactly

thats why its one of my favorite quotes. because, seriously, people like Gandhi, Buddha, Jesus, etc. etc. would almost certainly agree with it. its just they'd agree with it in a different perspective.

 

[FoxURA]

Saddam is on the list, you know saddam hussein :S im not gone call you a ****** because that would make me look bad.

and the vats of acids human grinders :S come on its not a movie or do you have actual proof of these construction ever been used. because it would seem to me that the US would probably send out thousands of photo's of these contraptions just to make the war seem more just. But (i could be wrong) i don't really know of any one of these accusations (exept the gas chambers and nerve gas usage, and although the rape rooms existed i dont really know if they where for his entertainment because he would have bookshelfs full of tapes that haven't been found yet)

So I just glanced through the list expecting to see his first name. You know, the one that just about everyone else in the world calls him by.

BTW. I heard a few news reports right after Baghdad fell and the US soldiers started to explore his palaces and prisons... That man did some disgusting and disturbing things to people... I wasn't joking about the human grinders and vats of acid stuff...


Anyway, in response to the quote by Stalin... Say what you want about that guy but you can't say that he wasn't smart... He understood how peoples' minds worked and knew how to play them very well.

 

[luiz]

Saddam was a pretty bad dictator for his day and age, though he is not on the same league as Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot or Stalin.

Saddam was worse than Napoleon or Mussolini, however.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Saddam was a pretty bad dictator for his day and age, though he is not on the same league as Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot or Stalin.

Saddam was worse than Napoleon or Mussolini, however.

Somes it up pretty much. Saddam was bad, but you could find dozens of two-bit dictators who were just as bad. If not for the 2003 invasion, he would be a footnote in history in another hundred years.
Hitler will be remembered MUCH longer then that.

While we're asking for people who should make the list, what about Chiang Kai-Shek? As bad as Mao is, Chiang still ranks the forth largest comitter of Democide in the 20th century.

 

[Traitorfish]

If not for the 2003 invasion, he would be a footnote in history in another hundred years.

Only if you ignore the Iran-Iraq war, which, frankly, is setting the bar rather high for historical significance.

 

[LightSpectra]

Somewhat unrelated question, but who was more evil: Hitler or Goebbels?

 

[luiz]

Somewhat unrelated question, but who was more evil: Hitler or Goebbels?

They agreed on pretty much everything. So the real question is, who was more insane? Many people say that Hitler was crazy while Goebbels was a cold calculist, and hence Goebbels was the worst. But he always striked me as a fanatical loony on the same league as Hitler as far as dementia goes.