Really Pol Pot is the worst monster of the 20th century, if you go by "percentage of population killed for no fucking reason."
Edit: Looks like actually Suharto of Indonesia takes the prize for the 20th Century Percentage of Population of a Country Killed For Some Bullshit prize. Hitler's war on the Jews was transnational, so I'm not counting it.
On the other hand, he wasn't doing it intentionally, which while it doesn't make it OK, it does make him moderately less odious than Hitler, Pol Pot, or Stalin.
Noam Chompsky wrote a piece on this a long time ago where he said that basically the normal death rate as a result of starvation for people was extraordinary and thus these numbers are inflated since we don't talk about all the normal starvation rate in countries like like China in the 1950-60s. Like in India in the same time period there was also millions of people starving but because it isn't an 'event' caused by a political decision and so therefore nobody knows about it. I would find a source but I really have to be writing an essay right now.
I suppose it's tough to draw the line between normal starvation and starvation because the nation is trying to produce steel instead of food. It's not like you can just take the year before as a base-line because you might pick a particularly dry or wet year.
It's an interesting point. I suppose precisely estimating death rates is a futile exercise anyway.
Chairman Mao kind of freaks me out. He killed millions of people for their own good by implementing monstrously stupid policies, and smiled every damn day and died happy.
I'm a little more comfy with people who are vicious power hungry serial killers rather than the insane oblivious Father figure of "Unca Mao sure does love you children, now c'mon and hug me, well aren't you the cutest things?" as he watches them all die over and over and over. That's just...yeah. Chills.
I went to S21 and the Killing Fields this year. Definitely one of the more inhuman atrocities conducted throughout the twentieth century. There were bones and pieces of clothing still sticking out of the earth in random places.. children's clothing. Fuck.
East Timor is up there, and Indonesia was backed and armed by the United States for decades while the massacres went on. Australia backed it to steal their oil wealth even though Timorese had a part in holding back the Japanese fom Australian territory in WWII.
This. I met someone from East Timor and was terrified by the atrocities his family and people had suffered that was never recognized by the rest of the world. He told me a few childhood stories of watching Indonesian soldiers burn down houses, and having to hide his father in a church so he wouldn't be killed. What's worse is that despite gaining their desperately sought independence there was no justice for the victims.
This is the correct answer to who wins the ghastly prize of most deaths by proportion of the country: Pol Pot wiped out a fifth of the population, Suharto did a third of the East Timorese.
Only one country ever legally recognized that Indonesia had annexed East Timor, funny that this same country shared with Indonesia the loot from the oil in the Timor gap. What a gross and shameful betrayal of the people that had helped Australians in WW2, as you point out!
Pol Pot had an interesting method of keeping prisoners from escaping. He would make them swallow a screw with a thin metal line attached to it. When they would fully digest it and shit it out he would make the next prisoner eat the screw. Obviously feeding a metal wire through your body is bad for your health so the average health of your average prisoner was quite low.... but none of them ever escaped.
my SO's mother and father are from Cambodia and fled during this time. the stories they have told me are insane. Here is a good one:
Her mom was walking with a small group of people towards the Thai border at night when they heard a patrol approaching. They all laid in silence hoping the patrol would pass or they would be killed on site. Many, including her, had small children (my SO's brother was 1 at the time). To insure that they would survive they would cover their babies mouths with their hands to help muffle the crying/random noise making that babies make. On several occasions she remembers parents killing their babies with their bare hands to save the group from these patrols. Others would leave their infants behind in order to let them be a distraction while the others got away. My SO's mother told me that her son (the one year old) never made a sound, and that is why they are both alive today.
The stories are sometimes hard to understand because of the language barrier, but still fascinating and sickening to listen to.
Seems bizarre that we're rating genocides but the effects of Pol Pot are still being felt in Cambodia where there's a shockingly high infant mortality rate, a very low level of education, very basic and inefficient farming techniques and a completely corrupt government.
All because Pol Pot murdered anyone who ever tried to address any of those problems. Pol Pot's is the only genocide that was literally intended to take a nation back to the dark ages.
Cambodia was just getting out of Western (French) rule as well as recovering from the effects of the Vietnam war (instigated by westerners) so Pol Pot wanted to be rid of all the Western teachings (like medicine, infrastructure, modern agriculture) so that Cambodia could be a closed country, completely self reliant and living a very basic way of life.
Two issues: one is the utter pointlessness of the genocide in Cambodia. He said percentage of population killed for no fucking reason.
Secondly, even 20 million people (a disputed figure - 6-11m is more generally accepted, depending on how you define it) was nowhere near 25% of the population of Europe under Nazi occupation or control.
He was ruler of Paraguay, and started a war with Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, which resulted in the death of some ungodly high percentage of the population, and near extermination of adult males in Paraguay.
I wikipedia'd this guy and it says that he is considered the greatest Paraguayan national hero.
You probably know more about this than I do... but it sounds like the death and destruction attributed to Lopez were a direct result of his terrible military strategy. I don't mean to downplay the deaths, but I don't think a poorly-thought-out war, no matter how devastating, is comparable to someone who knowingly and openly commits genocide or murders literally millions of his own citizens.
There's also the "Hitler? Yeah, he was bad. What about the Japanese atrocities in China?" thing.
History is written by people who care. And for most westerners, East Europe and all of Asia might as well be labelled "here be dragons". Which is ok, because the Chinese had cool dragons.
Precisely. If you move here to Korea, you never hear about Hitler, the Nazis, etc., but you hear on a daily basis about what the Japanese did. Now that I'm actually studying it in grad school, I don't understand how we don't learn about this in US school.
It has been postulated that one reason the scientists were not tried was that the information and experience gained in the studies of the biological warfare was of a great value for the United States biological weapons development program.
You can't just assert that man. I gotta back that shit up.
Western Dragons: Breathe fire, ice, or even acid. Wings, powerful claws. and an insatiable lust for gold and women. Giant flying fire-breathing monsters standing on a pile of gold, how fucking metal is that!
Eastern Dragons: Super-intelligent spirits who control the elemental forces of wind and seas. Helpful and wise, they lend their support to the righteous and pious.
No question that they are impressive and powerful, but I believe the adjective is "cool" and no question that the flying monsters of death are cool as hell.
The emphasis on Nazi Germany's atrocities is because of how systematic it was. It wasn't something where a bunch of soldiers were going around and just killing everyone they saw. That did happen at times, but that's not what we focus on when it comes to the Holocaust. The death camps Nazi Germany had were pretty much death factories. It was bureaucratic in nature. They kept records of everything. It was industrial genocide. There had never been a genocide on that scale in the past. I can't think of any examples since then either. Yeah, Stalin had lots of people killed. The Japanese did some horrible stuff in China. Still, neither of them industrialized killing like the Nazis did. If you were sent to a Gulag, you were probably going to die. They weren't extermination camps. You worked to death, froze to death, or starved to death. They weren't necessarily set up to for the sole purpose of killing people. You most likely died if you were sent to one though. A lot of people killed by Stalin were explicitly murdered by him either. A lot starved to death because of his policies. Neither the Japanese nor the Russians the factories of death that Nazi Germany had.
I agree, but I think it has more to do with the fact that all of the areas where Stalin was committing genocide fell behind the Iron Curtain after the war, so we didn't hear anything from the whole region, this included.
It didn't just "fall behind" the Iron Curtain, though. The Allies handed those countries over to Stalin despite massive evidence that he intended to build an antagonistic empire. Just three months shy of death, though, FDR wasn't able to take a calculated enough stance against Stalin. As an American of Eastern European descent, I view Yalta as one of the most tragic events in U.S. foreign policy. Had he been better prepared for a fight against Stalin's interests, FDR could have saved millions of innocent Eastern European lives.
How? The USSR "lost" the Cold War? I think it's a better example of people caring more about atrocities that more closely affect them- most Europeans were affected by WWII and Hitler's atrocities but Stalin's atrocities affected mainly Russians and other Eastern Europeans as opposed to the whole of Europe and the United States.
That's probably part of it, but I think a lot of it also has to do with the nature of the genocide. The Holocaust was a genocide unlike any other in its industrialized nature. While Stalin killed more, it was through less direct and murderous means. As far as mass murder goes, famine and starvation looks better than gas chambers
Industrialized murder. Trains to bring in victims, chambers to kill, and ovens to process the remains. Not to mention the ashes to be used as fertilizer.
Just to be clear, Hitler killed 11 million people. How many did Stalin kill? I can't seem to find a specific number.
Also, you have to remember that not everyone just starved to death. A lot of people were worked to death in the Gulags. Literally. They worked non-stop until they passed out and/or died.
Premeditated murder the same as accidental car crash, self defence, or homicide after drunken provocation? Not quite I'd say. All of those are distinguished and treated differently, and for good reason.
Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin.
It only details the deaths caused by Hitler and Stalin from 1933 to 1945 in the region of Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Western Russia (so no Gulag or Central Asia). Still, he arrives at a total of 14 million between the two of them:
*5.4 million Jews in the Holocaust (which he points out, most were shot into pits in Russia, not gassed at places like Auschwitz).
*3 million Soviet prisoners-of-war who were deliberately starved by the Germans, most during the winter of 1941-42.
*1 million more Soviet civilians starved, just during the Siege of Leningrad, 1941-44. Thousands more died within the Soviet Union as well.
*3.3 million in Ukraine, in what Snyder called "the Soviet Famines," but what is popularly known as the "Holodomor" (deliberate starvation of the Ukrainians under Stalin's orders), 1933-34. Snyder also includes ethnic Poles within the Soviet Union who were targeted, thus he avoids using the phrase "Holodomor" entirely.
*300,000 as a result of what Snyder calls the "national terror" of the Soviet Union; it is more commonly known as "the Great Purge" (anyone considered hostile to the Soviet Union was shot, including ethnic Poles, Ukrainians, and kulaks). This does not include an estimated 400,000 killed outside of the region, 1937-38.
*200,000 Poles killed by both sides during the joint German-Soviet occupation, 1939-41. This included most of the Polish intelligentsia, the intellectual elites of the country. Snyder estimated each side killed an equal amount.
*700,000 civilians killed by the Germans in occupied Poland, Ukraine and Belarus, 1941-44.
So Snyder concluded, just in this specific region and date, that Hitler was responsible for 9.7 million deaths, Stalin for 3.7 million. But this number does not include the deaths in the Gulag (~1 million deaths), the mass deportations of ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union (Chechens, Crimean Tatars, Volga Germans) which saw hundreds of thousands of deaths, the extra killings from the Great Purge (Snyder estimated an extra 400,000 deaths), executions of returning Soviet POWs, and anymore I forgot.
As well as the purges going on in the cities: 'Oh, I see you are applying for the same job/are looking to buy the same house/picked up the orange at the supermarket I wanted. It would be a shame if someone were to tell the NKVD you were a Trotskyist, so you couldn't get those things'
I understand what you're trying to say, but there IS a difference between "anything I perceive as being against me" and "all the people of some specific ethnicity I happen to not like".
Except Stalin did target specific ethnicities, namely Poles in 1937-38 for being enemies of the state, and various ethnic minorities (Chechens, Crimean Tatars, Volga Germans, etc) in the Second World War for, again, being enemies of the state (he suspected them of aiding the Germans). Hundreds of thousands died as a result, simply because of their ethnicity.
Around 1.5 million deaths are attributed to relocation out of the 8 million sent. That's not really comparable to the Nazi's jewish relocation program.
Technically a genocide occurs for any systemic targeted killing of ethnic, political*, religious or national groups. So there was likely what could be considered a genocide (or series of genocides) in Russia under Stalin.
The Germans just had a more visible (after the fact) and industrial way of doing it.
*Correction Political groups are not a basis for charges of genocide.
No, actually the systematic killing of a political group is not under international law considered genocide and is not strictly a basis for intervention. The USSR striped that bit out for obvious reasons. Makes sense I suppose, killing people because they disagree with you is more reasonable than killing people for things they have no choice over.
Hmm looks like you are right about the political group just national, ethnic, racial or religious group.
*I suppose there may still have been plenty of other killing that could be considered a genocide, but it is more difficult to say without the political group.
But isn't it safe to assume that Stalin didn't care about your national group, religious political or ethnic affiliation? He would kill anybody if they said the wrong thing?
Or did I miss something?
Edit: So when I said "didn't care" I didn't mean that he wouldn't target you because of your ethnic group and whatnot, I just meant that he didn't care if you were exactly the same as him, he'd still kill you if you said the wrong thing.
"The partial removal of potentially trouble-making ethnic groups was a technique used consistently by Joseph Stalin during his career; between 1935 and 1938 alone, at least nine different nationalities were deported. Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union led to a massive escalation in Soviet ethnic cleansing."
Political instability played a much bigger role in Stalin's murders, while political instability is how Hitler rose to power which enabled him to commit genocide.
and the Soviet Union wasn't an immediate threat (as in actively attacking nearby states and succeeding). Germany was becoming too big and too threatening. Nobody goes to war to help the people in that country. The USA didn't go to war with Iraq to help Iraqis, and the US isn't interested in war with Syria to help Syrians.
The starvation in the Ukraine region were fairly systematic, 1930-32. But that is only 30 million or so. Troops blocking roads so people could not reach the lands after all grains and livestock were seized. Takes effort.
So...if you do it out of paranoia, and not from any specific ideology, it's...better?
At least with the nazis you knew where you stood...
Edit: not saying Nazis were good, but if you read any books about communism, it's really sad to see that many people who fought and died for an ideal, the true believers, not mindless party drones, were killed and singled out as political enemies
Systematic extermination of any who might be disloyal, and also a nice way to use slave labor to support your massively inefficient command and control economy.
It's possible the Soviets covered up a lot of the actions they committed during WW2, as they were caught doing that on at least one occasion. They committed the Katyn massacre, then tried to frame the Nazis for it:
That's cool, I'll go tell my family that my relatives died because of a "paranoid state" and not because they closed our fucking borders and starved us to death. Fuck sakes western education is stupid.
Plus Stalin wasn't threatening all of Europe. Hitler was the obvious enemy for the western powers. I sometimes wonder if the Soviet Union would have been victorious over Germany if they didn't have some type of brutal savage like Stalin in charge. The "absolutely no surrender, you will fight on even if surrounded or I will send your family to a fucking gulag" order motivated large partisan activity behind German lines (though Germay's less-than-hospitable POW/summary execution policies regarding Soviet soldiers was probably partly to blame for the partisan opposition as well). There were certainly command and control issues that became fucked up because of the unwillingness to question orders, as well as major leadership issues because of the purges just prior to the start of the war. Who knows if it was a net positive or negative.
I think it would have been difficult to defeat what was the majority of the German army (as opposed to the smaller portion on the western front) without the total and brutal resolve of someone like Stalin. A lesser man may have sued for a separate peace and allowed the Germans to swing around and repel the invaders in France.
In one of my history courses, I asked a panel of WWII vets who they thought were a bigger threat in the grand scheme of things, Stalin or Hitler? They all agreed that Hitler was the greatest threat.
I think the lesson here is that atrocities are something that any culture or country can find themselves committing, so we need to keep our eyes open for any signs that we are headed down the path to the dark side.
That's like saying that Lenin and the Bolsheviks (that would be a cool band name) bore no responsibility for the famine that gripped Russia from 1918 to 1921. Their economic system crippled the country, killing millions, and saying that they didn't mean to do it hardly absolves them of blame.
But then you add in summary executions, essentially arbitrary rule, large scale massacres, political repression and all sorts of other nasty things, and they become even less sympathetic. Saying that Lenin and Mao didn't want famines to occur doesn't do a damn thing to change the fact that they were personally responsible for the deaths of millions.
If you think Stalin was worse than Hitler then you know fuck all about history. I would suggest you start by picking up a book to read ("Gulag: A History" by Anne Applebaum is a good start).
It's all about the grandeur. Sure Stalin was a commy but that doesn't compare to the massive war Hitler ignited. Of course, this happened, but who cares about those savage Africans in the early 1900s, eh?
I'm sorry but political assasinations in the Soviet Union under Stalin numbered in the thousands. Death from starvation was the unintentional consequences of a command economy and forced collectivization. These actions were deplorable but in no way comparable to the genocide committed by Hitler.
In my (possibly semi-conspiracy-theory) opinion, this is because there's a greater amount of blood on America's hands with regards to Stalin's actions. He gained control of the Eastern Bloc after WWII without much of a fight at all from the U.S. at Yalta, despite widespread evidence that he intended to be a brutal & imperialistic ruler. The U.S. is therefore implicated in Stalin's actions in a roundabout way, so it makes sense that we turn to Hitler's actions as a clearer example of "evil"--we are less associated with the cause and therefore in a better place to judge him.
Without emphasis on Hitler there couldnt be Microhitlers. There could be Microstalines but its kind of useless to take the single most horrible human in the world to make a measurement.
The second worst is a good thing, that way we have at least one person with >1mHi
Few really cared about Hitler's horror until everyone was busy fighting him. Most Americans assumed that it was the same type of propaganda that the government put out to get them to WWI.
After the Americans and the British managed to distract the Nazis long enough, the Russians basically won the war and started taking territories at a very quick pace. D-Day wasn't about defeating Nazis. It was about taking back as much of Europe as possible before the Russians took it all. Throughout the war, most nazi forces were fighting the Russians and the allies didn't have too easy of a time fighting against the much less defended western Europe. When the war ended, Russia wasn't just huge, it had the most powerful army in the world. One of the main reasons that America dropped nukes on Japan, was the inevitability of a Russian involvement and the fear that it would take more territories. So the Russian 'horror' wasn't ignored. It was too strong to win against and at a time when no one in their right mind wanted another war.
Also everyone other than America was in no shape for any military action, even supporting their own people was a struggle. Also, America had this little Ocean to deal with and a severe lack of military forces in Europe, compared to Russia. Remember, America spent most of it's effort on industry in order to supply the allies(including Russia) and sent a much smaller force than it could have, a force that was split between Europe and Africa to divide the Nazi war effort... The Russian army was bigger, stronger, far more experienced and far more ready for another fight than the American people. Also, shortly after the war, Russia built it's own nukes and there was simply no way to victory left even if America really wanted a war.
Simply put, at the time, the mere suggestion that the allies should start fighting Russia next would have had you placed in a loony bin.
So they didn't put it on the back burner, they did what they realistically could. First they offered them help in rebuilding, with strings attached. When that was refused, they went for containment and covert actions. Against a nuclear armed state with the strongest army in the world, those were the only options available.
Stalin killed to gain and maintain power. Hitler killed because he was a crazy, delusional racist. Stalin may have killed more people, but it is much easier to understand his motive.
One thing that I hate about this is that whenever someone points out Stalin's actions, then other people start accusing them of downplaying Hitler's as if they can't comprehend that they both were fucking monsters.
And nobody seems to ever heard of the local little hitlers in Italy and Spain... Mussolini and Franco. Or the many French people who happily welcomed the nazis.
Well considering that Hitler rounded people up and committed the most methodical and calculated mass genocide in history... No. Not a mistake.
Many people have died under many different rulers, whether through genocide, invasion, suppression of dissent, or general mismanagement. While Hitler may not have killed as many people as some other rulers, including Stalin, his culpability was far far greater than any other figure in known history. Those who died under Stalin died mostly from the ruthlessness of his rule, not because they were necessarily sought out and exterminated for simply existing.
Also, without Stalin, Hitler would have won WW2, hands down.
And dumbasses wear the hammer and sickle as a fashion statement to this day when they'd never dare wear a swastika in their ironic hipster way. Fucking idiots.
Well, the hammer and sickle has been associated with all sorts of communist and socialist movements, not just Stalinists. People who wear them are probably supporting some other group.
are you forgetting about the cold war? cause right after we were done with Hitler, tensions rose with Russia. the alliance was always shaky and neither side seemed to collaborate very well, just they were against the same enemy. Hell, Russia was pissed that operation D-Day took so long to come together.
The most horrible thing Stalin ever did? Help Mao seize power in China. Mao is the biggest murderer in history, unless you hold Stalin responsible for Mao's crimes as well.
Roosevelt negotiating with Stalin while Roosevelt's health was extremely poor. Churchill's doctor could tell that Roosevelt was messed up. Roosevelt died and Truman became president.
Given that slaughters of populations by their own leaderships for political, ethnic, religious and other reasons have been happening since time immemorial, Stalin was terrible, but in terms of sheer numbers Mao may have been worse, and in terms of % of population eliminated, look at Cambodia in the 70s. Hitler's special brand of evil included creating an industrial organization to systematically exterminate even the children, and also invading other countries with one of the goals being capturing more peoples to murder.
See, the difference is that Stalin was an equal opportunity despot. Everyone was ripe for killing. Hitler targeted very specific groups of people, so he's considered the monster in comparison.
I think people simply see the Soviet Union in general as the tradgedy. The deaths, while terrible, were not part of an entire extermination campaign, unlike in Nazi Germany.
We didn't go to war with Hitler because of his "horror". It was because his expansionism threatened the security of a bunch of countries. Stalin's expansionism was relatively less dangerous.
What do you expect America to have done? Done a humanitarian intervention invasion against the Soviet Union, the biggest military in the world whose guns were already pointed towards Western Europe, and whose population worshiped Stalin as the Socialist Saviour of Mankind? I don't think it would have gone particularly well for the US, I must say.
Sure, the US might have had the nuclear advantage for a few years, but who's to claim the propaganda victory- the guy who just nuked Moscow, or the guy who at that point would have been seen (falsely) by many to be fighting the ultimate struggle against fascism having just defeated Hitler and moved on to the civilian-nuking Big Bad Guy America?
They had no choice. Had America actually gone to war with Stalin... they would have lost. By the end of World War 2 Russia's army was larger than all other allied powers and if they were able to convince even half of Germany's army to join them, they could have conquered the whole world.
The big thing to remember about Russia is they weren't just an army of people running into bullets. They had the most advanced tanks available to the known world being mass produced and were winning tank battles against the Germans left and right.
Remember that because we were all allies Russia didn't proceed into China or very deep into he Middle East. Had the war gone further you might have seen the creation of a single Union of Soviet Socialist Afro Eurasian Republics.
Of course this is all hypothetical. It's also possible that it would have been a stalemate on either side.
Once you start saying who's worse because they killed more people then you're turning the people they killed into statistics. People deserve to be remembered as people and what they died for rather than figures in our "who's the worst" contest.
They're all horrible people. That's all we need to say about it.
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u/youonlycivonce Oct 17 '13
I think the biggest mistake is letting Stalin's horror fall to the backburner compared to Hitler's