When it comes to regimes of mass murder, the popular imagination fingers one boogeyman to the exclusion of all others.
Are you picturing a floppy-haired Austrian raving nutcase with a funny moustache? Of course you are. Yet, while there’s no doubt that Hitler and his Nazi regime are right up there in the grimmest top 10 you can imagine, there’s a couple of murderous monsters who generally escape popular condemnation. Mostly because they’re barely taught about in school history courses, and almost never the subject of Hollywood Oscar-bait movies.
In fact, the very worst butcher of all is still revered by one of the most powerful regimes on Earth today.
BFD readers being a pretty smart, educated bunch, are bouncing in their seats with their hands in the air. Pick me, pick me! I know who you mean!
OK, OK, settle down in the front row. For the slow kids who are the product of modun edyucayshun, let’s have a bit of a history lesson first:
The Top Ten Biggest Mass Killings in History*
*A caveat: these are absolute tolls, rather than relative to the population of the day, and exclude combatant deaths in war. On a relative scale, the Mongol Conquests are estimated to have killed perhaps 10 per cent of the total world population. In today’s money, that would equate to 800 million deaths.
Taking up the 10th, 9th and 8th spots are, respectively: the Kim dynasty of North Korea, whose regime of repression has killed anywhere from 700,000 to 3.5 million people; the Young Turks Holocaust, a series of genocides, including the Armenian (710,000-1.5 million), Assyrian (150-300,000) and Greek (150-750,000); and the Khmer Rouge Holocaust, at 1.5 to three million people.
Just to prove that mass murder isn’t a boys-only club, in 7th spot is a lesser-known murderous dictator:
7 Ranavalona I of Madagascar 1829-1842
Putting an end to most foreign trade relationships, Ranavalona I pursued a policy of self-reliance.
This was made possible through frequent use of the long-standing tradition of fanompoana – forced labor in lieu of tax payments in money or goods […]
Throughout the years of military campaigns, frequent deaths among fanompoana workers and the harsh traditions of justice under Ranavalona’s rule combined had accumulated extreme death tolls.
How extreme? Somewhere in the realm of three million.
6. Congo Free State Horrors 1885-1908
Private forces under the control of Leopold II of Belgium carried out mass murders, mutilations and other crimes against the Congolese in order to encourage the gathering of valuable raw materials, principally rubber.
Significant deaths also occurred due to major disease outbreaks and starvation caused by population displacement and poor treatment.
Estimates of the death toll vary considerably because of the lack of a formal census before 1924.
However, a commonly cited figure of 10 million deaths was obtained by estimating a 50 per cent decline in the total population during the Congo Free State and applying it to the total population of 10 million in 1924.
The 5th spot goes to Imperial Japan in the years between 1895-1945. Most of the death toll is attributed to the lead-up to WWII (the Second Sino-Japanese War) and WWII itself.
These incidents have been described as an Asian Holocaust […]
It is estimated between three and 14 million civilians and prisoners of war were either directly perpetrated or condoned by the Japanese military and government.
This was executed through massacre, human experimentation, starvation and forced labor.
At the same time that Japan was carrying out mass-murder and brutal atrocities like the Rape of Nanjing, the Chinese were also copping it in the neck from their own.
The 4th-placed Nationalist government of the KMT is accused of mass deaths, mostly due to starvation and conscription to fight off both the communists and Japanese. It’s believed that between half to nearly a million civilians died in a man-made flood created by the Nationalists to try and thwart a Japanese advance.
It may come as a surprise to many of those with a modern education, but the Nazis only come in 3rd spot – and the six million Jewish dead in the Final Solution are only part of the Nazis’ non-combat death toll. Up to 11 million others died, mostly Soviet civilians deliberately starved or murdered, over three million Soviet POWs starved, executed or simply worked to death and two to three million Poles.
2. Stalinist Crimes against humanity and genocide 1922-1953
The millions murdered by the regime of Joseph Stalin by famine, purges, labor camps, population transfer, deportations and NKVD massacres.
The death toll uses the minimum post-archive calculations from after the fall of the USSR of those not killed in famine which ranged from four to 10 million.
In addition, the minimum of those killed in famine, which range from six to eight million.
Robert Conquest, writer of the book The Great Terror, started with an estimate of 30 million.
A few years later it was revised to 20 million and in his latest revision it states no less than 15 million perished.
Estimates before the release of the archives put those killed by Stalin as “low” as three million and as high as 60 million.
And the Number One mass murdering bastard of all time? None other than the still-revered Great Helmsman of Communist China. If the Chinese thought the horrors were over after the Nationalists and Japanese were driven out, they were soon brutally woken up. It was only getting started.
1. Mao Zedong Catastrophes 1946-1976
Critics of Mao Zedong have argued Mao’s China saw unprecedented losses of human life.
Zedong was responsible for the inhuman economic policies such as the Great Leap Forward, slave labor through the Laogai, violent political purges such as the Cultural Revolution and class extermination through land reform.
The minimum death toll combines the estimated famine deaths (15 million), estimated land reform dead (0.8 million), estimated Counterrevolutionaries dead (712,000) and the minimum estimate for Cultural Revolution dead (400,000).
Highest death toll estimates go up to 70 million.
About History
Indeed, it’s grimly notable that the death toll from the communist regimes in this bloodstained list outweighs all the rest combined – and even the minimum estimate of Mao’s regime of murder outstrips even the worst estimate of Hitler’s.
Yet, Mao’s visage still adorns not only propaganda the length and breadth of China, but even its currency. Imagine Hitler’s face on the Euro. Imagine left-wing students and a good slice of their lecturers adorning themselves with swastikas.
Because that’s where China and mainstream left are at, today.
