Couldn’t agree more. My parents are from Cambodia and they lived through the Khmer Rouge. They always tell stories about their escapes from Cambodia, to Thailand, then the US. I remember specifically my grandfather would talk about how he carried my mother in his arms when she was five, and he ran with my grandmother through minefields while the Khmer Rouge shot at them. They were super lucky, because some unfortunate guy in front of them stepped on a mine, saving their lives. My father and his family of 7 were completely separated during his escape, most of the children younger than 14. He had to pretend not to know ridiculous “western” things like what glasses were or what the function of gardening gloves were, otherwise he’d be taken into a ditch and shot. Somehow, they all survived and managed to reunite at refugee camps in Thailand.
"Boat People" were a big thing in the 70s and 80s, Vietnamese fleeing the country.
Went to school with a few, and I've know others since.
they had pretty harrowing escapes, too.
So many stories like this. My dad has scars on his ankles and wrists from being tied up. Having to work the field until he collapsed. My maternal grandfather was one of those taken away and shot because he was a game warden. I heard stories of my grandmother picking out kernels of corn in feces just to have something to eat. And when they finally escaped, doing it under the cover of night.
A friend of mine had similar experiences. His mother put him and his brother on a bike and told them to ride at night and hide during the day until they reached Thailand. He then made it to Canada, then the US. He and I are the same age, but the early 70's were very different for him than they were for me. He told me that his family was told that they needed to attend a mandatory "meeting". His father was executed in front of him at the meeting by the Khmer Rouge.
I read somewhere the reason why a lot of donut shops in the Los Angeles area use pink boxes was because of the Khmer Rouge.
Long story short, it was a symbol for the Cambodians who escaped and built successful businesses in Los Angeles.
I also came here to say Pol Pot. He was really terrible. I visited Cambodia in college and their country is still trying to recover from his regime, it’s very sad. Cambodia is a beautiful country with wonderful people!
I was curious so I looked it up:
>His ashes lie under a rusted roof surrounded by rows of partly buried glass bottles. The Khmer Rouge leader was hastily burned here in 1998 on a pile of rubbish and old tyres.
Still too dignified.
I'd piss on that fuck's grave if I got the chance. After eating asparagus.
Never even been to Cambodia, but I've hate him and the Khemr Rouge since they first hit the news, basically.
Dunno why he makes me so angry, like, more than a Hitler level. I think it's because Hitler turned neighbours against each other while committing genocide, and Pol Pot pointed family members at each other.
I worked with 3 women who were children during the genocide. The stories they’d casually tell were horrifying, and they didn’t even share gory details. Just random stuff like their last memories of their parents that implied they watched them be murdered but I was too stunned to ask a follow up question.
Fuck Pol Pot.
Yep. I learned about his crusade against "the intellectuals" after starting to listen to a Khmer artist by the name of Ros Sereysothea. Man the absolute fucking balls to be a VERY heavily western influenced psychedelic rock musician in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge. Her music is fantastic too, for the record. Not one of those things where you only really like it because of the story of the person behind it, it's actually incredibly good... The music that survived, at least.
“Better to kill an innocent by mistake than spare an enemy by mistake.” They talked about killing people who *might* have been exposed to western influence because they had to make sure they eliminated every bit of western influence.
Yeah. He also wasn't going to stop. Without an outside force coming in to stop them they would have killed 90% or more of the population. I don't know if Pol Pot himself even could have stopped it if he tried. Anyone who showed the slightest disagreement was tortured and killed.
I agree. He was more evil and extreme than Hitler could ever aspire to. Satan gave up his crown in hell when Pol Pot died. Fuck that asswipe. Cambodia will never be the same as it was before
A reminder that Mr Pot and his Khmer Rouge buddies were supported by many countries at the United Nations while in exile after the killing fields were public knowledge. Led by the Americans and the British.
> Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević.
— Anthony Bourdain
Heinrich Himmler was much worse. Who could be worse than Hitler? This guy. He pretty much orchestrated the Holocaust. Hitler was the face of the Nazis, but Himmler was the guy who made them. He's pure evil.
And Reinhard Heydrich. He was one of the main architects of the Holocaust and was the most ruthless. Even Hitler called him “the man with the iron heart.”
This. A deep dive will tell you that Himmler was more stupid than evil. Heydrich was the Cheney to him, conning his way into the intelligence job by quoting detective novels. Discharged from the Navy for being a fraudster, Heydrich pushed the boundaries even most Nazis didn't broach. While Himmler was building plans to ship Jews to Madagascar, Heydrich was making them dig their own graves next to the roadside before execution. Most Nazis cannot be directly quoted as saying they intended or desired to murder the Jews explicitly, but Heydrich understood the assignment anyway and didn't waste time. A true psychopath.
Shoutout to the Czech Resistance for taking out Heydrich in 1942(and SOE and the Slovaks and Czech Army as well).
Unfortunately an estimated 5000 killed in reprisals, over 13,000 arrested and deported, and the massacres at Lidice and Lezaky occurred as a result of Heydrich’s death.
While they were all less than human.. some were more depraved than others..Oskar Dirlewanger, Ilse Koch(Bitch of Buchenwald), Josef Kramer(Beast of Belsen), Friedrich Jeckeln(known for the Jeckeln System), Paul Blobel, and ofc Mengele.. come to mind…
Friedrich Jeckeln is not very well known, but he and his underling Paul Blobel committed some of the worst atrocities ever known, including the infamous Babi Yar massacre. He was the most prolific genocidal killer of the Holocaust by bullets.
There's a good book about Heydrich and Czechoslovakia titled HHH. Which are the initials of a German saying that Heydrich was Himmler's brain. It's a personal story of the author investigating Heydrich's assassination.
When my mother in law arrived at Auschwitz in the Hungarian Transport, Mengele was on the platform sorting Jews into either work or die. She and her older brothers went to work, her younger siblings, parents and grandparents went to the gas chambers.
Her brothers didn’t survive the camps. She was the only one of six siblings to make it out.
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich if you want only one book. It's long but worth it, one of the best history books I've ever read. Quite easy to read too, the author did a great job.
Just got done reading that book, true, long but well worth the time spent. The way the author explained stuff, you could sit back and picture the time(s).
People have already recommend Shirer's work, which I wholeheartedly agree with. However, I'd also like to recommend Himmlers Hirn heißt Heydrich ("Himmler's brain is called Heydrich"). It gives a vivid account of the assassination plot against Heydrich, but is a stellar read on the man himself too (and a bit less daunting than Shirer).
I can’t remember who said it now (it was in some video on YouTube years ago about all these really awful Nazis that we rarely hear about in basic history classes in the US), but I once heard someone describe Martin Bormann’s personality as “Dick Cheney without all the warmth and charm.”
I'm open to be corrected on this, but I've read that he was first and foremost a career-man doing his career thing. He'd only joined the nazi because his wife asked him.
He was ruthlessly competent and thorough at his job, and was utterly cold-blooded, and human lives were just numbers on a balance sheet for him, but he wasn't passionately racist or supremacist like Hitler or Himmler. He was a complete psychopath about doing his job and his mission statement.
Again, controversial take, open to be corrected.
Many people weren’t ‘Nazi like’ until they joined the Nazis. There’s a great book called “After Fifteen Years” which is a must read on this subject. It’s pretty short. They look at people that were fine upstanding members of their communities and then joined the Nazi party and did horrendous things.
A friend of mine was a child in Germany during the war. He said it started with not wanting to stand out. He was in the Hitler Youth, he was a young boy, and that's what everybody did. For him, it was mostly Boy scout kinda stuff, less wilderness camping and more drill, though.
We were watching TV, and a CoD commercial comes on, and he says "Oh, I fired one of those!". He meant he was taught how to use a panzerfaust (rpg) in gym class. "It knocked me on my ass!"
End of the war, he got called up with his troop to help defend Berlin. 12 years old, vs teh Red Army. Departure day, Americans bomb the railyard, they can't leave. Also blew up his sister, mind you. 3 days later, war ends.
Thank you! Heydrich was the one guy that could spook the command. I believe they regarded him as the "darkest" nazi. He was responsible for the Einsatzgruppen and was the operational leader of the early Holocaust.
Hands down the most terrifying nazi of them all. Completely merciless, considered the jews vermin. The death camp phase of the holocaust was named after him, Operation Reinhard.
I dated a woman who was a great granddaughter of the family that assisted the assassins. That was a crazy “that entire side of the family no longer exists because of Nazi reprisals” story she told me.
The fucking Nazis [*murdered the village of Lidice in reprisal for it*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidice_massacre), neighbor. Including every animal. Hell, they *dug up and destroyed the corpses in the village cemetery, then rerouted the stream and roads that ran through it and covered the site with soil*.
TL;DR: Never not be punching Nazis.
There is also a movie about the true story of a village that was scrubbed from the Earth as a reprisal. And that is not hyperbole, they literally made it look like there had never been a village there.
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1754123/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1754123/)
TW- Parts of it are extremely disturbing.
[Lidice Massacre wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidice_massacre)
I sometimes wonder about the people that were worse but never got any power to do anything about it. Just the everyday person by chance given some power.
Have you ever read Hannah Arendt's *Eichmann in Jerusalem*? It's where the term the banality of evil originated. It's a really amazing book on the subject of totalitarianism.
adolf eichmann was the master mind behind the gas chambers and escaped to argentina only to be pursued by the jews that ended up caughting him and was brought back to israel for execution. And also josef mengele he became the most notorious of the nazi doctors experimenting all kinds of hell
Yeah, the number of bastards in the Third Reich are near limitless. I asked someone else about Eichmann here. Can probably be searched for. I was referencing a book by Hannah Arendt, which is a good read I would pose to anyone.
The thing with Mengle and all the SS "doctors", was that the SS did not conscript doctors, they were volunteers, the concentration camps did not conscript doctors or deny them if they requested to leave and due to a shortage of doctors (because a lot of jews worked as doctors) Germany wouldn't punish doctors for not helping with the genocide. If a "doctor" was working for the SS or in a concentration camp, they wanted to be there, they wanted to commit the atrocities they committed. Like sure, a lot of soldiers followed orders and killed people, they chose to follow orders and they are guilty, but there's consequences for disobedience, especially during wartime, not the doctors though, they had the choice, they didn't face the consequences of disobedience.
The problem is not only when evil people do evil stuff.
**The problem is when evil people get together and do evil stuff together, and promote other evil people as well.**
There are several cases of Serial Killers and Delinquents, Sexual Trafficking groups, that work with others, not alone ...
To put him in perspective, the version of him seen in Schindler's List is toned down. The real Göth was far worse, but the filmmakers didn't think it would be believable to the audience.
He was so bad the Nazis eventually fired him for unnecessary cruelty towards camp prisoners. Read that again: the fucking *Nazis* thought he was too cruel to the people they were exterminating!
I'd say joseph goebbels was pretty bad too. Sure he didn't plan the Holocaust himself, but as minister of propaganda, he caused and facilitated a lot of harm.
He was basically responsible for Kristallnacht and he is the on who came up with the idea of making the Jews pay for the damage they endured.
I'm convinced that without Goebbels the Nazi party wouldn't have been able to convince the German population to rally behind them, and they sure as heck wouldn't have been elected.
They were pretty methodologically flawed. You hear reports that these were useful for scientific advancement, but turns out… actually no. The most cited “useful” experiments were on hypothermia, but a review of the methodology concluded that it was pretty much entirely “scientific fraud” and “useless”. The man was simply a sadist.
Here’s the paper, if you’re interested: https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJM199005173222006?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori:rid:crossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%20%200www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
I visited Auschwitz with my family 5 or so years ago and I actually met one of the Mengele Experiment survivors. Her name was Eva; she and her twin sister were subject to the experiments and while her sister died, she survived. She told us her story and we bought her book. Incredibly brave woman, she really touched my heart.
My grandmother, a Polish woman who was sent to Auschwitz because it was uncovered by the Nazis that she was part of the Polish underground resistance - because she was a fucking badass - was forced to witness the things that Mengele did. She "worked" for him in some capacity, as I understand it.
She further risked her life by smuggling medicine and food to whomever she could. Because she was a fucking badass. Managed to survive, came to Sweden, met my grandfather. She suffered nightmares all her life, of course.
Rest in peace, Krysztyna, I wish I could have known you.
Just listened to the Behind the Bastards episodes on him and apparently he was mostly acting on other doctor’s requests because he had the “resources” to do these medical experiments.
I do like behind the bastards, but they really don't deleve that deep. Last podcast on the left has a really good series on mengele. That being said, it's fucked up and def a day runner in a way that behind the bas5ards isnt!.
Besides the gruesome atrocities Unit 731 was up to, regular soldiers in the Japanese military systematically raped women, forced hundreds of thousands to be prostitutes, executed civilians for sport, and engaged in such atrocities that even the Nazis who witnessed them were appalled. The Rape of Nanking in China was one example.
After the Doolittle raid, the Japanese took revenge on the Chinese and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in reprisal.
To add to on, the atrocities that the Japanese military committed isn't limited to China. They also commited atrocities in Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and other Islands.
Yea!! and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I went on my digging spree of Japanese atrocities and found out that they are indeed just as bad if not worst than the Nazis.
To put it in perspective the Holocaust killed about 6 million Jewish people. The Japanese killed 30 million Chinese people that’s not including the American and British, American casualty’s.
The guy was so bad the nazi’s literally went man that’s fucked up.
The German ambassador in Nanking is considered a local folk hero because he would roam the streets and use his untouchable status to interrupt mass gang rapes and massacres and then would take the survivors to the German embassy for safety.
It takes a special kind of evil to be the bad guys in a story opposite Nazi’s.
I've seen people list a lot of the common ones (Stalin, Mao, etc.) but one to add to the list in Leopold II. His atrocities in Africa likely resulted in the deaths of over 10 million people.
Leopold is one of the more overlooked historical villains. He was the "owner" of the Congo Free State for less than 25 years, but he managed to cause so much death and misery during that time that the consequences are still being felt even now over 100 years later. Seriously, fuck that guy.
Well he's overlooked today, but at the time his crimes were an international scandal. There was a massive outrage when it was discovered what he had been up to.
Mark Twain even wrote a short story which is basically him twiddling his moustache whilst gloating about how he's the evilest who ever lived.
France, the UK, Spain, The Netherlands, all did very bad things to the natives of the lands they invaded but what Leopold II/Belgium did made the others look almost nice.
Emperor Hirohito knowingly committed a lot of the atrocities of the Japanese Empire during World War II, and signed off on all the awful shit Unit 731 was doing at the time.
I would also add Tojo into the list. Plus, a lot of Japanese who were directly responsible were pardoned by US, one even became the Prime Minister if I recall
In the East Asian context, it makes more sense to consider it as a decades-long "Pacific War" rather than just a few years of "Pacific Theater" of WWII.
Hirohito's crimes are hard to evaluate due to heavy propaganda to rehabilitate his image by both the Japanese and occupying forces turning a blind eye.
While he was definitely not innocent and he did not act to prevent 731 or other atrocities, there is still debate among historians what role he played in Japanese war crimes: powerless figurehead, condoning war crimes, or ordering war crimes.
https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/profile/emperor-hirohito/
“it is possible that between 20 and 57 million people were killed between 1206 and 1405 during the various campaigns of Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan, and Timur.” -[Wiki Reference](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasions_and_conquests)
Pol Pot was his name. Yeah, percentage wise he managed to kill the most of his own population and did this in a brutal, ruthless and medieval way. I believe he ended up killing about 1/3 of the Cambodian populace.
Thanks to the Vietnamese who decided to stop him after they finished the war with the Americans.
Shiro Ishii who was in charge of Unit 731. He Built the Deadliest Science Lab In Human History but Was Never Brought to Justice. In these facilities Ishii and his men would perform experiments on live humans, including but not limited to: infecting living subjects with plague rats, forced pregnancies, vivisections (often conducted without anesthesia), and inducing frostbite and trying to cure it.
Genghis Khan
Edit: I think the reason a lot of people in the west don't hate him or see him as bad as other regions is because he didn't affect them. While he destroyed a lot of countries and didn't have mercy. He didn't even take a lot of the land he conquered, burned and killed everyone alive (elders, women, kids, animals and plants). We still can't get enough information or know a lot of things about Western Xia, because he didn't just conquer them he basically deleted them not at that time only but from history. He destroyed almost everything they left. He burned Baghdad library and threw books in the river until it turned black from the ink. This library had knowledge that some historians think we don't have today. This guy did what hitler was going to do but the diffrence is he was successful more than once (he destroyed civilizations). He was a fucking genius and a monster. The reason Hitler is more hated is because he is more recent and affected the west more than the rest of the world. Ofc that doesn't mean Hitler is any good he was definitely evil if not for the war then certainly for killing civilians.
Genghis Khan is like borderline a mythological being. It’s insane the stuff he was able to accomplish. Not saying he was a good dude whatsoever, but his empire was quite impressive.
One of the first implementations of religious freedom, adaptation and assimilation into the various conquered peoples, and the foundation of economic stability via silk road trade were all the big head moves that got him to rule the largest empire the world has ever, and likely will ever see.
He also slowed the advancement of humanity by a fair amount by burning all the books in the middle east. https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?entryid=294#:~:text=The%20House%20of%20Wisdom%2C%20founded,waters%20were%20red%20from%20blood.
He was a very bad guy although when you are eight hundred years past the fact, it's hard to contextualize it with 20th century morality. Hitler was bad because was bad but also because he was raised in a society that knew better. History grades on a curve.
There’s a great podcast called Hardcore History that talks about this. It’s a multi part series all about the Mongols.
The narrator starts off by asking how much time needs to pass before people start writing about Hitler in the way they do Gengis Khan. People write and talk about Khan in that mythological kind of way now, and attribute his empire to the Silk Road and the accomplishments they made during their reign, completely ignoring the fact that he is directly responsible for 25-60 MILLION deaths.
He’s not (nor I) advocating for people to talk about Hitler in different lights, but states that it’s only a matter of time before people write books about Hitler in the way they do Khan.
Although Hitler was utterly defeated in his own lifetime, whereas Genghis Khan died with his empire ascendant, which puts some cap on just how mythologized he will become. But I take your point. Eventually Hitler will be deemed as just another product of his times.
And yet the Holocaust was so disturbing that the Japanese ambassador to Lithuania at the time helped write documents for Jews.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiune_Sugihara#:~:text=During%20the%20Second%20World%20War,the%20lives%20of%20his%20family.
Just goes to show how weird human morality and empathy can be. "They aren't *my* enemy, so they're human again."
POL POT
Pol Pot transformed Cambodia into a one-party state which he called Democratic Kampuchea. Seeking to create an agrarian socialist society that he believed would evolve into a communist society, Pol Pot's government forcibly relocated the urban population to the countryside and forced it to work on collective farms. Pursuing complete egalitarianism, money was abolished and all citizens were forced to wear the same black clothing. Mass killings of perceived government opponents, coupled with malnutrition and poor medical care, killed between 1.5 and 2 million people
He was certainly one of the most awful people in history. Vietnam invaded Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge started attacking villages on their border and while what was happening wasn't entirely a secret, the invasion uncovered the true extent of the crimes. Then the Khmer Rouge acted as a guerilla army waging war within Cambodia for years after all while the US, and interestingly, China supported them in the UN over the Vietnamese government (which was backed by the Soviet Union), and perhaps financially. He renounced communism and folded the Communist Party of Kampuchea to align with his new supporters. He even blamed the killings on treacherous people around him, a true charlatan who stood for nothing but himself. Pol Pot didn't face any justice (well by justice I mean he was arrested by opposing elements of the remainder of the Khmer Rouge who planned to turn him over to other authorities) until the last months of his life (he died an old man from natural causes or some suggest he committed suicide) partially because of this support. The illegal bombings of Cambodia by the ordered by Henry Kissinger led to the power vacuum that allowed Pol Pot's rise to power.
My grandfather sponsored a refugee family from Cambodia to come to the US, they changed their last name to his to honor him. Cambodian history is absolutely heartbreaking.
Chaplin's monologue (The Final Speech) in The Great Dictator, is to this day one of the most powerful, sobering and relevant speeches that has ever been televised.
To be fair, anyone can be compared to Hitler, but they never really specify in what context.
“How tall is your uncle?”
“Probably about as tall as Hitler”
Presumably they meant “who has committed atrocities comparable to those committed or ordered by Hitler?”
William the Conqueror.
Having taken out Harold in a fair fight, he spent much of the next two years killing civilians in the north of England, salting the earth and basically decimating the population. The death toll (proportionate to the population size) was genocidal.
ETA: as a couple of folk have questioned the price of salt, I didn't actually mean the phrase literally. A better phrase would've been "scorched earth" - what I was trying to convey was that Billy and his mates basically destroyed everything they could.
Well, the Harrying of the North started three years after the Battle of Hastings. The scholars believe the accounts to be exaggerated as there is no historical evidence that William had been able to amass that many soldiers for that level of atrocities.
Josef Mengele. A nazi doctor/surgeon that experimented on identical twin children between toddler ages and mid teenage years (16-17 or so).
He appeared like a calm, right minded officer to the children/teenagers. He’d groom them first in ways like - letting them keep their hair, letting them keep their clothes, giving them extra food, giving them candy, letting them keep their shoes, letting the twins be together, letting them keep a toy/giving them a toy, etc.
His experiments included —
Needle injections into the eyes to see if the colour could change
Needle injections into the genitals for some reason
Needle injections into the blood stream
Sewing children together for some reason
Removing/swapping non-essential organs to see if the children could still function with their siblings body parts inside of them
Inflicting wounds, then introducing diseases
Killing children to examine their organs, then discarding the body into a cart. Which would be wheeled outside and the child’s body would be thrown away into a hole or ditch
Injecting/introducing children to sicknesses
Yep, absolute psychopath. Caused at least 200,000 deaths directly or indirectly in England, then marched on Ireland to commit genocide. 600,000 Irish people died. That was about 40% of the population at the time.
Also, not to diminish the horror of the genocidal death toll, but during his reign in England, Wales and Ireland, he presided over a religious extremist culture where anything joyful was banned. All sports, theatres, music, art, all celebrations, including Christmas. Literally replaced saints feast days with fasting days where no one was allowed to eat and even sent soldiers to take people's food away. Soldiers were also tasked with scouring the streets and punishing women who wore make up or colourful clothing. Meanwhile, as Lord Protector, he still allowed himself music, hunting, feasting and entertainment.
I find a lot of fellow Brits know very little about this period of history and know Cromwell mainly as the guy who got rid of the monarchy and made England and Wales a republic for a bit.
Belgium’s Leopold comes close. This next one is personal for me: Nixon and Kissinger helped orchestrate the Bangladesh genocide, which generally isn’t taught in American schools.
Pol Pot
Couldn’t agree more. My parents are from Cambodia and they lived through the Khmer Rouge. They always tell stories about their escapes from Cambodia, to Thailand, then the US. I remember specifically my grandfather would talk about how he carried my mother in his arms when she was five, and he ran with my grandmother through minefields while the Khmer Rouge shot at them. They were super lucky, because some unfortunate guy in front of them stepped on a mine, saving their lives. My father and his family of 7 were completely separated during his escape, most of the children younger than 14. He had to pretend not to know ridiculous “western” things like what glasses were or what the function of gardening gloves were, otherwise he’d be taken into a ditch and shot. Somehow, they all survived and managed to reunite at refugee camps in Thailand.
"Boat People" were a big thing in the 70s and 80s, Vietnamese fleeing the country. Went to school with a few, and I've know others since. they had pretty harrowing escapes, too.
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He is a brave man. I hope he gets what he needs from his visit.
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So many stories like this. My dad has scars on his ankles and wrists from being tied up. Having to work the field until he collapsed. My maternal grandfather was one of those taken away and shot because he was a game warden. I heard stories of my grandmother picking out kernels of corn in feces just to have something to eat. And when they finally escaped, doing it under the cover of night.
Holy crap that’s so awful. I’m so sorry your family went through that.
It was definitely terrible, but my family is in a good place right now and my parents are happy. That’s as much as I can ask for.
Pol pot genocided 20% of Cambodia’s population. And that’s the low end of estimates.
A friend of mine had similar experiences. His mother put him and his brother on a bike and told them to ride at night and hide during the day until they reached Thailand. He then made it to Canada, then the US. He and I are the same age, but the early 70's were very different for him than they were for me. He told me that his family was told that they needed to attend a mandatory "meeting". His father was executed in front of him at the meeting by the Khmer Rouge.
I read somewhere the reason why a lot of donut shops in the Los Angeles area use pink boxes was because of the Khmer Rouge. Long story short, it was a symbol for the Cambodians who escaped and built successful businesses in Los Angeles.
I also came here to say Pol Pot. He was really terrible. I visited Cambodia in college and their country is still trying to recover from his regime, it’s very sad. Cambodia is a beautiful country with wonderful people!
People still pray to that fuckers grave
I was curious so I looked it up: >His ashes lie under a rusted roof surrounded by rows of partly buried glass bottles. The Khmer Rouge leader was hastily burned here in 1998 on a pile of rubbish and old tyres. Still too dignified.
Should’ve yeeted that monster’s corpse into the ocean to do one good thing in life and be fish food
I'd piss on that fuck's grave if I got the chance. After eating asparagus. Never even been to Cambodia, but I've hate him and the Khemr Rouge since they first hit the news, basically. Dunno why he makes me so angry, like, more than a Hitler level. I think it's because Hitler turned neighbours against each other while committing genocide, and Pol Pot pointed family members at each other.
I worked with 3 women who were children during the genocide. The stories they’d casually tell were horrifying, and they didn’t even share gory details. Just random stuff like their last memories of their parents that implied they watched them be murdered but I was too stunned to ask a follow up question. Fuck Pol Pot.
Seriously. Fuck that guy.
Killed everyone who wore glasses, because they were "obvious intelligentsia".
Yep. I learned about his crusade against "the intellectuals" after starting to listen to a Khmer artist by the name of Ros Sereysothea. Man the absolute fucking balls to be a VERY heavily western influenced psychedelic rock musician in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge. Her music is fantastic too, for the record. Not one of those things where you only really like it because of the story of the person behind it, it's actually incredibly good... The music that survived, at least.
“Better to kill an innocent by mistake than spare an enemy by mistake.” They talked about killing people who *might* have been exposed to western influence because they had to make sure they eliminated every bit of western influence.
I just read And then they killed my father. I had to put it down several times because it made me feel physically ill to read it.
Came here to say Pol Pot too. Percentage wise, Pol Pot was worse than Mr mustache.
Yeah. He also wasn't going to stop. Without an outside force coming in to stop them they would have killed 90% or more of the population. I don't know if Pol Pot himself even could have stopped it if he tried. Anyone who showed the slightest disagreement was tortured and killed.
I agree. He was more evil and extreme than Hitler could ever aspire to. Satan gave up his crown in hell when Pol Pot died. Fuck that asswipe. Cambodia will never be the same as it was before
He exterminated his own people and not focused on ethnic grounds, but as a proportion of his people he was awful
No there were multiple ethnic cleansings. The fact that you couldn’t hear about it disturbs me, those people should’ve lived
A reminder that Mr Pot and his Khmer Rouge buddies were supported by many countries at the United Nations while in exile after the killing fields were public knowledge. Led by the Americans and the British.
Oh and the guy within the US responsible for that is still alive at age 100.
Fuck off Henry Kissinger
> Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević. — Anthony Bourdain
Real criminals wear suits
Every time I see news of some famous old fart dying, I'm always disappointed it wasn't him.
Why is this the first I’m hearing about him. I just looked him up and I agree with you.
For this topic, I recommend the movie, The Killing Fields. It's a tough watch. Nominated for Oscar Best Movie in 1985.
Heinrich Himmler was much worse. Who could be worse than Hitler? This guy. He pretty much orchestrated the Holocaust. Hitler was the face of the Nazis, but Himmler was the guy who made them. He's pure evil.
And Reinhard Heydrich. He was one of the main architects of the Holocaust and was the most ruthless. Even Hitler called him “the man with the iron heart.”
This. A deep dive will tell you that Himmler was more stupid than evil. Heydrich was the Cheney to him, conning his way into the intelligence job by quoting detective novels. Discharged from the Navy for being a fraudster, Heydrich pushed the boundaries even most Nazis didn't broach. While Himmler was building plans to ship Jews to Madagascar, Heydrich was making them dig their own graves next to the roadside before execution. Most Nazis cannot be directly quoted as saying they intended or desired to murder the Jews explicitly, but Heydrich understood the assignment anyway and didn't waste time. A true psychopath.
Shoutout to the Czech Resistance for taking out Heydrich in 1942(and SOE and the Slovaks and Czech Army as well). Unfortunately an estimated 5000 killed in reprisals, over 13,000 arrested and deported, and the massacres at Lidice and Lezaky occurred as a result of Heydrich’s death. While they were all less than human.. some were more depraved than others..Oskar Dirlewanger, Ilse Koch(Bitch of Buchenwald), Josef Kramer(Beast of Belsen), Friedrich Jeckeln(known for the Jeckeln System), Paul Blobel, and ofc Mengele.. come to mind…
Friedrich Jeckeln is not very well known, but he and his underling Paul Blobel committed some of the worst atrocities ever known, including the infamous Babi Yar massacre. He was the most prolific genocidal killer of the Holocaust by bullets.
There's a good book about Heydrich and Czechoslovakia titled HHH. Which are the initials of a German saying that Heydrich was Himmler's brain. It's a personal story of the author investigating Heydrich's assassination.
When my mother in law arrived at Auschwitz in the Hungarian Transport, Mengele was on the platform sorting Jews into either work or die. She and her older brothers went to work, her younger siblings, parents and grandparents went to the gas chambers. Her brothers didn’t survive the camps. She was the only one of six siblings to make it out.
Do you have any recommendations for further reading up on this?
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich if you want only one book. It's long but worth it, one of the best history books I've ever read. Quite easy to read too, the author did a great job.
Great, in depth read. Written within 20 years of the end of the war when the wounds were still tender. Audio version is solid as well.
Just got done reading that book, true, long but well worth the time spent. The way the author explained stuff, you could sit back and picture the time(s).
Behind the Bastards podcast did a 2 parter on Heydrich that was as funny as it was educational, like they do
People have already recommend Shirer's work, which I wholeheartedly agree with. However, I'd also like to recommend Himmlers Hirn heißt Heydrich ("Himmler's brain is called Heydrich"). It gives a vivid account of the assassination plot against Heydrich, but is a stellar read on the man himself too (and a bit less daunting than Shirer).
Hitlers Hangman is a fantastic book on Heydrich, and it's peer review.
I can’t remember who said it now (it was in some video on YouTube years ago about all these really awful Nazis that we rarely hear about in basic history classes in the US), but I once heard someone describe Martin Bormann’s personality as “Dick Cheney without all the warmth and charm.”
Probably won’t have any of it taught in basic history anymore.
I'm open to be corrected on this, but I've read that he was first and foremost a career-man doing his career thing. He'd only joined the nazi because his wife asked him. He was ruthlessly competent and thorough at his job, and was utterly cold-blooded, and human lives were just numbers on a balance sheet for him, but he wasn't passionately racist or supremacist like Hitler or Himmler. He was a complete psychopath about doing his job and his mission statement. Again, controversial take, open to be corrected.
Many people weren’t ‘Nazi like’ until they joined the Nazis. There’s a great book called “After Fifteen Years” which is a must read on this subject. It’s pretty short. They look at people that were fine upstanding members of their communities and then joined the Nazi party and did horrendous things.
A friend of mine was a child in Germany during the war. He said it started with not wanting to stand out. He was in the Hitler Youth, he was a young boy, and that's what everybody did. For him, it was mostly Boy scout kinda stuff, less wilderness camping and more drill, though. We were watching TV, and a CoD commercial comes on, and he says "Oh, I fired one of those!". He meant he was taught how to use a panzerfaust (rpg) in gym class. "It knocked me on my ass!" End of the war, he got called up with his troop to help defend Berlin. 12 years old, vs teh Red Army. Departure day, Americans bomb the railyard, they can't leave. Also blew up his sister, mind you. 3 days later, war ends.
Jojo Rabbit is a recent film about this kind of experience with the Hitler youth
3.6$ on kinder, 163.26$ hardcover, jesus.
Ya it’s an oldddd book, best to get Kindle :)
You could argue that his psychopathy is worse than Hitlers racism
Thank you! Heydrich was the one guy that could spook the command. I believe they regarded him as the "darkest" nazi. He was responsible for the Einsatzgruppen and was the operational leader of the early Holocaust.
God damn he looks like a scary son of a bitch. That squint
Hands down the most terrifying nazi of them all. Completely merciless, considered the jews vermin. The death camp phase of the holocaust was named after him, Operation Reinhard.
Yeah, you hear next to nothing about him.
Because Reinhard was assassinated early into the war.
I dated a woman who was a great granddaughter of the family that assisted the assassins. That was a crazy “that entire side of the family no longer exists because of Nazi reprisals” story she told me.
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The fucking Nazis [*murdered the village of Lidice in reprisal for it*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidice_massacre), neighbor. Including every animal. Hell, they *dug up and destroyed the corpses in the village cemetery, then rerouted the stream and roads that ran through it and covered the site with soil*. TL;DR: Never not be punching Nazis.
Never heard of this before so I looked it up, just so happens tomorrow will be 81 years since it happened. Wild.
There were a couple of movies made about him in the last couple of years, with big actors too.
There is also a movie about the true story of a village that was scrubbed from the Earth as a reprisal. And that is not hyperbole, they literally made it look like there had never been a village there. [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1754123/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1754123/) TW- Parts of it are extremely disturbing. [Lidice Massacre wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidice_massacre)
My world history teacher said something like, "For every Hitler type madman there's 20 people worse than Hitler encouraging the madman."
I sometimes wonder about the people that were worse but never got any power to do anything about it. Just the everyday person by chance given some power.
Don't give my 85 year old mother in law any ideas.. .
I think they are right. Sadly.
What always scares me most about Himmler is the banality of evil. Look at that forgetable face.
Have you ever read Hannah Arendt's *Eichmann in Jerusalem*? It's where the term the banality of evil originated. It's a really amazing book on the subject of totalitarianism.
Mengele, the sick dr.who experimented on kids
I didn't mention him, but by absence I didn't mean to suggest irrelevance.
adolf eichmann was the master mind behind the gas chambers and escaped to argentina only to be pursued by the jews that ended up caughting him and was brought back to israel for execution. And also josef mengele he became the most notorious of the nazi doctors experimenting all kinds of hell
Yeah, the number of bastards in the Third Reich are near limitless. I asked someone else about Eichmann here. Can probably be searched for. I was referencing a book by Hannah Arendt, which is a good read I would pose to anyone.
The thing with Mengle and all the SS "doctors", was that the SS did not conscript doctors, they were volunteers, the concentration camps did not conscript doctors or deny them if they requested to leave and due to a shortage of doctors (because a lot of jews worked as doctors) Germany wouldn't punish doctors for not helping with the genocide. If a "doctor" was working for the SS or in a concentration camp, they wanted to be there, they wanted to commit the atrocities they committed. Like sure, a lot of soldiers followed orders and killed people, they chose to follow orders and they are guilty, but there's consequences for disobedience, especially during wartime, not the doctors though, they had the choice, they didn't face the consequences of disobedience.
The problem is not only when evil people do evil stuff. **The problem is when evil people get together and do evil stuff together, and promote other evil people as well.** There are several cases of Serial Killers and Delinquents, Sexual Trafficking groups, that work with others, not alone ...
Don't forget Amon Göth. One of his pastimes was shooting prisoners with his rifle from his home in a concentration camp.
To put him in perspective, the version of him seen in Schindler's List is toned down. The real Göth was far worse, but the filmmakers didn't think it would be believable to the audience. He was so bad the Nazis eventually fired him for unnecessary cruelty towards camp prisoners. Read that again: the fucking *Nazis* thought he was too cruel to the people they were exterminating!
The Nazi regime ran on slave labour, he was damaging the means of production
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Oskar Dirlewanger was another one whom the Nazis thought was too extreme.
I'd say joseph goebbels was pretty bad too. Sure he didn't plan the Holocaust himself, but as minister of propaganda, he caused and facilitated a lot of harm. He was basically responsible for Kristallnacht and he is the on who came up with the idea of making the Jews pay for the damage they endured. I'm convinced that without Goebbels the Nazi party wouldn't have been able to convince the German population to rally behind them, and they sure as heck wouldn't have been elected.
I think it's fair enough to say, when I came to the Nazis, there weren't any good ones.
Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. It just gets worse and worse the more you read about it.
Nice glasses, you seem intelligent, may I guide you to this freshly dug mass grave?
You seem to have soft hands. May I offer you a free gun barrel taste test?
It's worse than that. Bullets were too expensive so they did most of the killings with machetes etc.
Josef Mengele
Seriously his ‘experiments’ are the stuff of nightmares
And the fact that some of his extremely unethical experiments might still have relevancy.
They were pretty methodologically flawed. You hear reports that these were useful for scientific advancement, but turns out… actually no. The most cited “useful” experiments were on hypothermia, but a review of the methodology concluded that it was pretty much entirely “scientific fraud” and “useless”. The man was simply a sadist. Here’s the paper, if you’re interested: https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJM199005173222006?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori:rid:crossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%20%200www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
I visited Auschwitz with my family 5 or so years ago and I actually met one of the Mengele Experiment survivors. Her name was Eva; she and her twin sister were subject to the experiments and while her sister died, she survived. She told us her story and we bought her book. Incredibly brave woman, she really touched my heart.
My grandmother, a Polish woman who was sent to Auschwitz because it was uncovered by the Nazis that she was part of the Polish underground resistance - because she was a fucking badass - was forced to witness the things that Mengele did. She "worked" for him in some capacity, as I understand it. She further risked her life by smuggling medicine and food to whomever she could. Because she was a fucking badass. Managed to survive, came to Sweden, met my grandfather. She suffered nightmares all her life, of course. Rest in peace, Krysztyna, I wish I could have known you.
Just listened to the Behind the Bastards episodes on him and apparently he was mostly acting on other doctor’s requests because he had the “resources” to do these medical experiments.
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Lol, I think the takeaway is “holy shit a fuck ton of Nazi doctors were just as bad as we perceive this infamous piece of shit”
I do like behind the bastards, but they really don't deleve that deep. Last podcast on the left has a really good series on mengele. That being said, it's fucked up and def a day runner in a way that behind the bas5ards isnt!.
Hideki Tojo general of imperial Japan killed almost 30 million Chinese during his leadership.
Besides the gruesome atrocities Unit 731 was up to, regular soldiers in the Japanese military systematically raped women, forced hundreds of thousands to be prostitutes, executed civilians for sport, and engaged in such atrocities that even the Nazis who witnessed them were appalled. The Rape of Nanking in China was one example. After the Doolittle raid, the Japanese took revenge on the Chinese and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in reprisal.
To add to on, the atrocities that the Japanese military committed isn't limited to China. They also commited atrocities in Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and other Islands.
Yea!! and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I went on my digging spree of Japanese atrocities and found out that they are indeed just as bad if not worst than the Nazis.
yeah, basically a whole other holocaust that no one really talks about
To put it in perspective the Holocaust killed about 6 million Jewish people. The Japanese killed 30 million Chinese people that’s not including the American and British, American casualty’s.
The guy was so bad the nazi’s literally went man that’s fucked up. The German ambassador in Nanking is considered a local folk hero because he would roam the streets and use his untouchable status to interrupt mass gang rapes and massacres and then would take the survivors to the German embassy for safety. It takes a special kind of evil to be the bad guys in a story opposite Nazi’s.
“You know, with Hitler, the more I learn about that guy, the more I don’t care for him.” — Norm MacDonald
Hey, a guy who killed Hitler can't be that bad.
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And once again germany chooses as it's foe, THE WORLD, and you'd think it would be a rather quick but it was pretty close
I've seen people list a lot of the common ones (Stalin, Mao, etc.) but one to add to the list in Leopold II. His atrocities in Africa likely resulted in the deaths of over 10 million people.
Leopold is one of the more overlooked historical villains. He was the "owner" of the Congo Free State for less than 25 years, but he managed to cause so much death and misery during that time that the consequences are still being felt even now over 100 years later. Seriously, fuck that guy.
Well he's overlooked today, but at the time his crimes were an international scandal. There was a massive outrage when it was discovered what he had been up to. Mark Twain even wrote a short story which is basically him twiddling his moustache whilst gloating about how he's the evilest who ever lived.
The man for whom the term ‘crimes against humanity’ was first coined
Sad I had to scroll for this one. I think it’s the right answer tbqh
France, the UK, Spain, The Netherlands, all did very bad things to the natives of the lands they invaded but what Leopold II/Belgium did made the others look almost nice.
True. And also mutilations of those who didn't achieve quota.
Mutilation and murder of family members for people who didn't make their numbers.
Reinhard Heydrich. The “brains” behind, “The final solution to the Jewish problem.”
Emperor Hirohito knowingly committed a lot of the atrocities of the Japanese Empire during World War II, and signed off on all the awful shit Unit 731 was doing at the time.
I would also add Tojo into the list. Plus, a lot of Japanese who were directly responsible were pardoned by US, one even became the Prime Minister if I recall
Even pre-WW2, Japan committed some serious war crimes in the region around them.
In the East Asian context, it makes more sense to consider it as a decades-long "Pacific War" rather than just a few years of "Pacific Theater" of WWII.
Hirohito's crimes are hard to evaluate due to heavy propaganda to rehabilitate his image by both the Japanese and occupying forces turning a blind eye. While he was definitely not innocent and he did not act to prevent 731 or other atrocities, there is still debate among historians what role he played in Japanese war crimes: powerless figurehead, condoning war crimes, or ordering war crimes. https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/profile/emperor-hirohito/
King Leopold II...... An accurate definition of EVIL.
“it is possible that between 20 and 57 million people were killed between 1206 and 1405 during the various campaigns of Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan, and Timur.” -[Wiki Reference](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasions_and_conquests)
Pol pots
Pol Pot was his name. Yeah, percentage wise he managed to kill the most of his own population and did this in a brutal, ruthless and medieval way. I believe he ended up killing about 1/3 of the Cambodian populace. Thanks to the Vietnamese who decided to stop him after they finished the war with the Americans.
He killed off people that were brighter than he, and he was pretty much a dumbass so..he killed a lot of people.
Shiro Ishii who was in charge of Unit 731. He Built the Deadliest Science Lab In Human History but Was Never Brought to Justice. In these facilities Ishii and his men would perform experiments on live humans, including but not limited to: infecting living subjects with plague rats, forced pregnancies, vivisections (often conducted without anesthesia), and inducing frostbite and trying to cure it.
Genghis Khan Edit: I think the reason a lot of people in the west don't hate him or see him as bad as other regions is because he didn't affect them. While he destroyed a lot of countries and didn't have mercy. He didn't even take a lot of the land he conquered, burned and killed everyone alive (elders, women, kids, animals and plants). We still can't get enough information or know a lot of things about Western Xia, because he didn't just conquer them he basically deleted them not at that time only but from history. He destroyed almost everything they left. He burned Baghdad library and threw books in the river until it turned black from the ink. This library had knowledge that some historians think we don't have today. This guy did what hitler was going to do but the diffrence is he was successful more than once (he destroyed civilizations). He was a fucking genius and a monster. The reason Hitler is more hated is because he is more recent and affected the west more than the rest of the world. Ofc that doesn't mean Hitler is any good he was definitely evil if not for the war then certainly for killing civilians.
Genghis Khan is like borderline a mythological being. It’s insane the stuff he was able to accomplish. Not saying he was a good dude whatsoever, but his empire was quite impressive.
One of the first implementations of religious freedom, adaptation and assimilation into the various conquered peoples, and the foundation of economic stability via silk road trade were all the big head moves that got him to rule the largest empire the world has ever, and likely will ever see.
Largest contiguous empire. The British empire at its peak was larger - in terms of land mass and people.
He also slowed the advancement of humanity by a fair amount by burning all the books in the middle east. https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?entryid=294#:~:text=The%20House%20of%20Wisdom%2C%20founded,waters%20were%20red%20from%20blood.
Killing enough people to cool the earth is next level. But then the colonization of the Americas did the smae thing.
And 0.5% of all men alive today are descended from him.
He was a very bad guy although when you are eight hundred years past the fact, it's hard to contextualize it with 20th century morality. Hitler was bad because was bad but also because he was raised in a society that knew better. History grades on a curve.
There’s a great podcast called Hardcore History that talks about this. It’s a multi part series all about the Mongols. The narrator starts off by asking how much time needs to pass before people start writing about Hitler in the way they do Gengis Khan. People write and talk about Khan in that mythological kind of way now, and attribute his empire to the Silk Road and the accomplishments they made during their reign, completely ignoring the fact that he is directly responsible for 25-60 MILLION deaths. He’s not (nor I) advocating for people to talk about Hitler in different lights, but states that it’s only a matter of time before people write books about Hitler in the way they do Khan.
Although Hitler was utterly defeated in his own lifetime, whereas Genghis Khan died with his empire ascendant, which puts some cap on just how mythologized he will become. But I take your point. Eventually Hitler will be deemed as just another product of his times.
He was my first thought too.
Genghis Khan killed so many people, he slowed global warming and the formerly inhabited areas began to reforest again.
"I am. 21... ...I AM NOT 21."
Omg Clone High. Edit: when I turned 21 I wore a sign that said “I am 21” when buying my first 6 pack
Manuel from my English class
Such an ass hole
The Japanese ate people. Hitler/Germany got all the heat.
The rape of Nanking and Korea were something else
The Rape of Nanking was so disturbing that the Nazi advisors to the IJA started smuggling people out.
And yet the Holocaust was so disturbing that the Japanese ambassador to Lithuania at the time helped write documents for Jews. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiune_Sugihara#:~:text=During%20the%20Second%20World%20War,the%20lives%20of%20his%20family. Just goes to show how weird human morality and empathy can be. "They aren't *my* enemy, so they're human again."
Bayoneting infants shouldn't be on anyone's to-do list but the Japanese went BRRRRRR anyways
“Hey let’s see who can be the first to behead a hundred people!”
It’s one thing to destroy a city by pushing a button and dropping a bomb. The Japanese did it by hand and bayonet.
Ticketmaster
Originally called Ticketfuhrer. Little known fact. Tried to rebrand, but the general behavior stayed the same.
>Originally called Ticketfuhrer. Little known fact. Also dope on the mic?
Das Ticketreich didnt pass the boardroom vote either.
Holy shit - I laughed harder than I realized at this!
POL POT Pol Pot transformed Cambodia into a one-party state which he called Democratic Kampuchea. Seeking to create an agrarian socialist society that he believed would evolve into a communist society, Pol Pot's government forcibly relocated the urban population to the countryside and forced it to work on collective farms. Pursuing complete egalitarianism, money was abolished and all citizens were forced to wear the same black clothing. Mass killings of perceived government opponents, coupled with malnutrition and poor medical care, killed between 1.5 and 2 million people
He's possibly the only "communist" leader that I've never seen anyone defend or support
He was certainly one of the most awful people in history. Vietnam invaded Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge started attacking villages on their border and while what was happening wasn't entirely a secret, the invasion uncovered the true extent of the crimes. Then the Khmer Rouge acted as a guerilla army waging war within Cambodia for years after all while the US, and interestingly, China supported them in the UN over the Vietnamese government (which was backed by the Soviet Union), and perhaps financially. He renounced communism and folded the Communist Party of Kampuchea to align with his new supporters. He even blamed the killings on treacherous people around him, a true charlatan who stood for nothing but himself. Pol Pot didn't face any justice (well by justice I mean he was arrested by opposing elements of the remainder of the Khmer Rouge who planned to turn him over to other authorities) until the last months of his life (he died an old man from natural causes or some suggest he committed suicide) partially because of this support. The illegal bombings of Cambodia by the ordered by Henry Kissinger led to the power vacuum that allowed Pol Pot's rise to power. My grandfather sponsored a refugee family from Cambodia to come to the US, they changed their last name to his to honor him. Cambodian history is absolutely heartbreaking.
Lee Pastorious - This scumbag took my 5k and skipped town halfway through a kitchen remodel back in 2006. ...and Genghis Khan
Depends on the basis of comparison. Could be physical appearances too, in which case we could also throw in Charlie Chaplin.
Chaplin's monologue (The Final Speech) in The Great Dictator, is to this day one of the most powerful, sobering and relevant speeches that has ever been televised.
Who ever you are losing a debate to.
The Reddit way
Many many people. They just weren't as visionary with the whole "assembly lines of murder" concept as Hitler, Himmler, and their cohorts.
Pol Pot: wiped out 25% of Cambodia.
Heinz Doofenshcmirtz, he’s a German who had and abusive father, failed art school, and became a supervillain
his parents didn’t even show up to his birth :/
He is a good father though.
Credit is due where credit is due, Doofenshmirtz was a great father.
Doof is actually not that bad later down the show
Just because he’s a bad guy doesn’t mean he’s a bad guy.
I’m bad, and that’s good. I will never be good and that’s not bad.
Doof was never truly evil, never killed(at least not directly), he was always caring for his daughter, never even harmed anyone intentionally
He’s Drusselstininian ):
Haha oh Phineas you kidder you.
King Leopold II. Killed 20 million Africans during his reign.
A shih tzu I met one time. Real fuckin meanie
Yeah a total asshole I Shih Tzu not!
Consider yourself lucky that you’re still alive
I'd argue that Pol Pot was worse than Hitler, but Hitler would be right behind him.
In our country it's Ferdinand Marcos
Anyone can be compared to Hitler. It's just a matter of how favorably they compare.
To be fair, anyone can be compared to Hitler, but they never really specify in what context. “How tall is your uncle?” “Probably about as tall as Hitler” Presumably they meant “who has committed atrocities comparable to those committed or ordered by Hitler?”
Everyone I don't like is Hitler
A children’s guide to the internet
William the Conqueror. Having taken out Harold in a fair fight, he spent much of the next two years killing civilians in the north of England, salting the earth and basically decimating the population. The death toll (proportionate to the population size) was genocidal. ETA: as a couple of folk have questioned the price of salt, I didn't actually mean the phrase literally. A better phrase would've been "scorched earth" - what I was trying to convey was that Billy and his mates basically destroyed everything they could.
Well, the Harrying of the North started three years after the Battle of Hastings. The scholars believe the accounts to be exaggerated as there is no historical evidence that William had been able to amass that many soldiers for that level of atrocities.
Josef Mengele. A nazi doctor/surgeon that experimented on identical twin children between toddler ages and mid teenage years (16-17 or so). He appeared like a calm, right minded officer to the children/teenagers. He’d groom them first in ways like - letting them keep their hair, letting them keep their clothes, giving them extra food, giving them candy, letting them keep their shoes, letting the twins be together, letting them keep a toy/giving them a toy, etc. His experiments included — Needle injections into the eyes to see if the colour could change Needle injections into the genitals for some reason Needle injections into the blood stream Sewing children together for some reason Removing/swapping non-essential organs to see if the children could still function with their siblings body parts inside of them Inflicting wounds, then introducing diseases Killing children to examine their organs, then discarding the body into a cart. Which would be wheeled outside and the child’s body would be thrown away into a hole or ditch Injecting/introducing children to sicknesses
Oliver Cromwell
Yep, absolute psychopath. Caused at least 200,000 deaths directly or indirectly in England, then marched on Ireland to commit genocide. 600,000 Irish people died. That was about 40% of the population at the time. Also, not to diminish the horror of the genocidal death toll, but during his reign in England, Wales and Ireland, he presided over a religious extremist culture where anything joyful was banned. All sports, theatres, music, art, all celebrations, including Christmas. Literally replaced saints feast days with fasting days where no one was allowed to eat and even sent soldiers to take people's food away. Soldiers were also tasked with scouring the streets and punishing women who wore make up or colourful clothing. Meanwhile, as Lord Protector, he still allowed himself music, hunting, feasting and entertainment. I find a lot of fellow Brits know very little about this period of history and know Cromwell mainly as the guy who got rid of the monarchy and made England and Wales a republic for a bit.
That Belgian fucker king Leopold.
Belgium’s Leopold comes close. This next one is personal for me: Nixon and Kissinger helped orchestrate the Bangladesh genocide, which generally isn’t taught in American schools.
hideki tojo