a list of those responsible for the greatest genocides of 100,000 deaths or more, starting in the 19th Century but not including the African Slave trade. Mao Zedong: 50 - 60 million (but the range is not definitive) (China, 1958-61 and 1966-69, Tibet 1949-50) Hitler: ~11 million (Germany, 1939-1945) King Leopold II of Belgium: 8 - 10 million (Congo, 1886-1908) Hideki Tojo: 5 million (Japan, 1941-44) Stalin: 2 - 3 million* (number revised down; see note below) (USSR, 1932-39) Ismail Enver: 2.5 million (including 1.2 million Armenians) (Ottoman Turkey, 1915-20) Pol Pot: 1.7 million (Cambodia, 1975-79) Kim Il Sung: 1.6 million (North Korea, 1948-94) Menghistu: 1.5 million (Ethiopia, 1975-78) 1,500,000 Yakubu Gowon: 1 million (Biafra, 1967-1970) 1,000,000 UNDER 1 MILLION Leonid Brezhnev (Afghanistan, 1979-1982) -- 900,000 deaths Jean Kambanda (Rwanda, 1994) -- 800,000 deaths Saddam Hussein (Iran 1980-1990 and Kurdistan 1987-88) -- 600,000 deaths Tito (Yugoslavia, 1945-1980) -- 570,000 Suharto/Soeharto (Indonesian communists 1965-66) -- 500,000 deaths Fumimaro Konoe (Japan, 1937-39) -- 500,000 deaths? (Chinese civilians) Jonas Savimbi - but disputed by recent studies (Angola, 1975-2002) -- 400,000 death Mullah Omar - Taliban (Afghanistan, 1986-2001) -- 400,000 deaths Idi Amin (Uganda, 1969-1979) -- 300,000 deaths Yahya Khan (Pakistan, 1970-71) -- 300,000 deaths (Bangladesh) Ante Pavelic (Croatia, 1941-45) -- 359,000 deaths Benito Mussolini (Ethiopia, 1936; Libya, 1934-45; Yugoslavia, WWII) -- 300,000 deaths Charles Taylor (Liberia, 1989-1996) -- 220,000 deaths Foday Sankoh (Sierra Leone, 1991-2000) -- 200,000 deaths Suharto (Aceh, East Timor, New Guinea, 1975-98) -- 200,000 deaths Ho Chi Min (Vietnam, 1953-56) -- 200,000 deaths Michel Micombero (Burundi, 1972) -- 150,000 deaths Slobodan Milosevic (Yugoslavia, 1992-99) -- 100,000 deaths Recent scholarship has revealed that the total number of noncombatants killed by the Germans—about 11 million—is roughly what we had thought. The total number of civilians killed by the Soviets, however, is considerably less than we had believed. We thought it was around 23 million. We know now that the Germans killed more people than the Soviets did. It turns out that, with the exception of the war years, a very large majority of people who entered the Gulag left alive. *Judging from the Soviet records we now have, the number of people who died in the Gulag between 1933 and 1945, while both Stalin and Hitler were in power, was on the order of a million, perhaps a bit more. The total figure for the entire Stalinist period is likely between two million and three million. The Great Terror and other shooting actions killed no more than a million people, probably a bit fewer. The largest human catastrophe of Stalinism was the famine of 1930–1933, in which more than five million people died.
Posted on: Fri, 10 Oct 2014 03:12:57 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015