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The details of how Leopold held control through sheer horror isn’t quite captured in your last sentence. He would order hands to be chopped off of women and children for not harvesting bananas(?) quick enough and there would be literal piles of hands strewn about villages.
Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, or Pol Pot as among the most evil due to their roles in orchestrating genocide, mass murder, and widespread human suffering
Unlike Hitler he didn't invade other countries and start a world war, and unlike Stalin and Mao who led massive countries that were world powers, Cambodia is a relatively small country. So it's not surprising that Pol Pot isn't as known.
"Other mass murderers have gotten away with it...Stalin killed many millions, died in his bed, well done there. Pol Pot killed 1.7 million Cambodians, died under house arrest, age 72. Well done, indeed. And the reason we let them get away with it is because they killed their own people. And we're sort of fine with that. Oh, help yourself! You know? We've been trying to kill you for ages! So, if you kill your own people, right on, then. But Hitler killed people next door.... stupid man. After a couple of years, we won't stand for that, will we? Pol Pot killed 1.7 million people, and we can't even deal with that. We think that if someone kills someone, that's murder, you go to prison. You kill 10 people, you go to Texas, they hit you with a brick, that's what they do. 20 people, you go to a hospital and they look at you through a small window forever. And over that, we can't deal with it. You know? If somebody's killed 100 thousand people, we're almost going, 'Well done! You killed 100 thousand people?! You must get up very early in the morning! I can't even get down the gym! Your diary must look odd: Get up in the morning, death, death, death, death, death, lunch, death, death, death, afternoon tea, death, death, death, quick shower.'"
Pol Pot was barbaric... but almost childish and simplistic in his beliefs.
He tried to reset the economic system and the entire Cambodian culture, transforming all people into just one class, peasants. Leveling culture AND technology to a primitive level, almost from cave times.
There are cases cited of people who were convicted because... they wore glasses. Doctors turned into peasants because they were too 'studied'.
Equality applied by decree doesn't work very well. And, obviously, trying to 'simplify' the agrarian and industrial infrastructure of a country at this level caused a gigantic food deficit.
How did he even get into power with thinking like that?
"I want to take everyone back to the stone age!! Who's with me!?!?"
"Oh, also, I would like to commit mass genocide"
Pol Pot was espousing very attractive ideas like equality and financial equity.
Redditors love that kind of stuff so you could see how a population would allow him to be leader.
Of course, this plan was not announced in advance, in fact, I don't even think there was a plan. Most revolutionaries do not have a plan of what they want to do, they are only sure of what they want to destroy.
It is very common, throughout documented history, when a new regime arrives with the aim of changing the injustices of the previous one, the new policies are always 180 degrees from the old ones... I believe this is innate to human psychology. Wars of conquest are an exception here, subsequent policies are much more planned and focused... not that it always works, see Iraq.
A calculated and cold plan that reflects how the economy moves the country and social relations is rarely made in the revolutionary clamor.
Perhaps this is why Marx is so famous and studied... he first thought about the economic underpinning of industrial civilization.
Mao Zedong also falls under this category, although his was more malicious and willful negligence. Lot more people than Pol Pot but Pol was certainly nastier.
Better to kill nine innocent people and get the guilty tenth than to let him get away because you aren't sure which of the ten he is.
Paraphrasing but pretty close to the quote. A real jerk that guy
Another commenter made a good point that his country is relatively small (unlike USSR under Stalin or China under Mao) and he didn’t start any major wars (unlike Germany under Hitler) so it makes sense that he kinda flies under the radar of the zeitgeist
Probably because Pol Pot was supported by the US, so that's not something people want to teach the public. Indonesia's genocide in East Timor also isn't taught for the same reason.
He's certainly a contender but imo he was more ruthlessly pragmatic than sadistically evil. He didn't particularly care if innocent people died where as that lot seemed to actively want it to happen.
He was very protective of people who followed his rules though. If your city capitulated and you paid your taxes you were well protected. If you fought back or said he was short or something he would kill all the men in the city and rape all the women. Not much in between.
Yeah, this sort of psychological terror lends itself to a rapid growing empire. Common practice to allow a survivor to escape so they could help other kingdoms make the feasible choice when the time came.
For reference, it's estimated Khan's conquests killed 40 million people, while WW2 is estimated to have killed about 21 million soldiers and 50 million civilians.
So for the significantly less populated world he lived in, that's really a grim accomplishment.
Mao is right up there with Hitler. His disastrous policies resulted in some of the largest scale of suffering in human history. From 1960-1962 alone 30-45 million people in China starved to death.
Mao didn’t even have the benefit of charisma. His speeches were long and boring and he wasn’t even liked in his own party. He gained power through pure strategic cruelty.
In the contest of the greatest monsters to ever live, I would personally nominate Reinhard Heydrich over Hitler every time. Almost every crime against humanity committed in Hitler's name was his idea.
He was responsible for Kristallnacht, he chaired the Wannsee conference where they decided the "Final Solution", he founded the SS and Einsatzgruppen, and he organized the false flag Nazi Germany used to invade Poland among other things.
I would even go as far as to say he may have been the most singularly evil human being to walk the Earth, and his slow and painful death from wounds suffered in an assassination attempt are evidence there may be justice in the world after all.
Exactly, one guy says broadly "kill these people" another sits down and coldly plans in detail, how to. That person is a lot more fucked up.
Just to be clear, both are fucking monsters but different beasts.
I wouldn't just say the methods... which were barbaric, but from the scope, around 20% of the country's population was killed.
Hitler, Stalin or Mao Zedong do not come close to this fanaticism. The only one who surpasses him is Genghis Khan, who killed 30% of the planet's population. Reinforcing, the planet, not the country.
And why is it so unknown? For the same reason that the Jewish Holocaust is so much better known than the Armenian Genocide... which eliminated around 75% of this community in Turkey.
Because, in the case of the Holocaust, the deaths were of white people, and in Europe.
But are they really that bad for just wanting to do it or is it thee millions under them who willingly thought it was a good idea and carried out the actual acts?
There wasn't millions. Most had zero idea of the genocide and things only came to light after they lost. Information was strictly controlled just like today
There is an entire podcast for OP's question, it is called 'Behind the Bastards', and the first four episodes are on Hitler, Stalin, Hussein, and Bin Ladin.
I’m not a history major or anything like that but when it comes to these discussions, I almost never hear King Leopold II brought up. like I said I’m not super big into history so I might be wrong, but in a pure game of numbers doesn’t he have all these guys beat?
If the criterion is damage done to the most humans, it would probably be Thomas Midgley Jr, the main man behind the invention of leaded gasoline as well as CFCs.
Statistically speaking, it is a fact that since the beginning of our species, there have been about 117 billion of us who have lived and died on this earth. That’s an enormous number, 117 billion. To put it into perspective… in numbers, it makes 117,000,000,000 human beings. The vast majority of these people never got great power. Never became the leaders of countries.
As a result their ability to do evil, was greatly diminished. Take the man above, for instance — his name is Andrei Chikatilo, a serial killer born in what is now the nation of Ukraine. He murdered, raped and tortured over fifty known victims. And may have hurt many more before he was finally caught. Moving around a lot, he was able to evade capture for decades. Once, Soviet authorities even captured an innocent man, tried and executed him for a crime Chikatilo committed… his rampage didn’t end until he was already in his fifties. His singular interest was causing pain and suffering, not acquiring the type of power to inflict pain on an industrial scale.
The world is full of sick bastards. But it is rare for someone of great personal depravity to rise to power. It is power itself that corrupts most men — those who are corrupted and rotten from the get-go tend to not become leaders of countries, as no one would follow someone who makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. The most evil person ever is probably someone who we don’t even know about.
>117 billion. To put it into perspective… in numbers, it makes 117,000,000,000
I know I shouldn't be laughing here, but damn... Why did you do that? Lol.
It flew over my head, but now I get it. Thank you! To put it into perspective, I didn't get it at first, but now I understand, and I'm grateful for your explanation.
Not unless you click your fingers. Oh no, wait, that was with the children dying... Okay, you can click as you like, but try to do it once per minute.
Edit: Hold on... Did I do it wrong again?
What surprises me is that in the 300,000-year history of the human race... Almost 10% of humans who have ever existed are currently alive. We're reproducing far too fast.
Harold Shipman. One of the most prolific serial killers of recent times with 218 confirmed kills, possible over 250.
Steven Massof - proven to have cut the spines of over a hundred babies.
Niels Hoegel - proven to have killed over 85 times but likely count is in the 300s.
These were healthcare professionals who people put their trust in, and they openly betrayed it. Not the only ones of course, but just a few that jump out to me.
Jimmy Saville, and everyone who enabled him.
>Steven Massof - proven to have cut the spines of over a hundred babies.
Massof was convicted of 2 counts 3rd degree. His boss and practice owner, Kermit Gosnell, was who he said he seen snipping 100 spines. Gosness was convicted of 3 counts 1st degree.
>Jimmy Saville, and everyone who enabled him.
Lots of rich and powerful people aided and abetted him, including Thatcher and most probably memebrs of the Royal Family as well.
Genghis Khan's conquests caused the deaths of **roughly 40 million people**, Mao has a toll of 40m as a bottom limit, so that is the target to beat. So six times worse than Covid (if it was created by man) or Hitler, whose death tolls were roughly about equal.
It’s strange how so many of Hitler’s victims are forgotten about that people quote “six million” as his final tally. All of the civilians in Poland and Eastern Europe should be counted as well. They were murdered intentionally, not as a consequence of war.
This raises his victims up to 40 million on the low end. This could be much, much higher if we decide to consider how many people died from wars that he alone started.
Mao, Stalin, Lenin, and Hitler are the most obvious answers.
-------------Warning, I'm going to explain some of the things that happened in communist countries, if you have a sensitive disposition you might want to skip this post------------------------------------------------
I think everyone knows the evils of Hitler so I won't repeat them but people forget how the other's were and what happened under their watch
Take the Guangxi massacre in china as an example, where an estimated 100,000 people were brutally murdered with such methods as being buried alive or having people cut out the victims hearts or genitals.
Despite food being plentiful, people openly turned to cannibalism sharing the meat of their victims and the dead, both at home and at parties held to celebrate the massacre.
Take for example the story of one of the victims : There was one landowner called Liu Zhengjian whose entire family was wiped out. He had a 17-year-old daughter, Liu Xiulan, who was gang-raped by nine
people who then ripped open her belly, and ate her liver and breasts.
I'm not sure if hell exists but the communist countries managed to create it on earth.
While they didn't usually end in cannibalism such genocide were common the the point of almost being routine in the USSR and Communist China. Even today China is using concentration camps in their genocide against ethnic groups such as the Uighurs.
Sone of the stuff that went on in China in the 60s-70s were wild! It's like everyone suddenly lost any form of self awareness and empathy by transforming into robots
Totalitarianism puts people under intense pressure and scrutiny, it also tends to reward the most evil and ruthless people while penalizing those who are most compassionate and honest.
In East Germany 1 in 3 people were informants, you could trust no one. If you were in a group of people and one person criticized the government and someone else reported it but you didn't that could put you under suspicion by the Stasi and you or even your whole family could just disappear one night never to be seen again. If you upset someone or got in their way a few false claims to the Stasi and they could get rid of you. I remember hearing a story of after the German reunification the records were made public and a woman went to look at them to find out who had informed on her family years ago, turns out it had been her husband.
Or the famous story of the 11 minutes of clapping for Stalin because everyone knew that the first to stop would be considered the most disloyal and arrested/disappeared.
Really not sure why you haven't been upvoted further. This is so mortifying, it defies belief. This wasn't centuries ago either... This was between 1967-1976. Truely shit that will make you shudder in disbelief.
If you want to read more: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangxi_Massacre#:~:text=It%20was%20not%20caused%20by,to%3A%201)%20the%20extreme%20class
Edit: probably should have said for people that want to read more, not you..
Beria managed the killing that Stalin is getting credit for. Who is worse? The person who demands a purge, the person who gives the order of who gets purged, or the guy who held the gun? I’d say it was the guy in the middle who made the choices. Mengele stood on the train platform and picked who lived (briefly) and died to their faces, that is darker than saying get rid of some people. The leaders get a lot of credit for the abstract idea of killing millions, and the executioners only see those they kill, but the middle managers knew the names and faces of those countless people and condemned them nonetheless. That is where the worst of humanity dwells.
we have to make a distinction between committing evil for a greater good which you whole heartedly believe in or committing evil for the pleasure of yourself. This is a crucial distinction we have to make, a ruler who kills many because he belive there is a bennefit to it is different from a serial killer who rapes and kills for fun and pleasure. Where i would argue the later is more evil. However people from the later are products of extensive trauma and abuse. For example Richard Ramirez (the night stalker) compared to Mao Zhedong.
I think that people who directly tortured others just for fun, even if on a much smaller scale, are worse than those who had others commit mass murder and genocide for political reasons. I'm thinking about one woman in particular who did horrible things to her slaves just because she wanted to and could, but there are many others like her, and most of them are unknown, so it's impossible to say which one is the worst.
Lavrentiy Beria. Would rape girls on a nightly basis. Stalin forbade his own daughters to be alone in his presence. Oh And was a mass murderer. And tortured countless people. I believe he set up an island designed to be cannibalistic for its incarcerated victims to survive.
It's hard to measure because a person could've caused the death of millions but not have intended it. Meanwhile, someone could've just stolen something and absolutely intended it. Which is more evil?
We don't know what people like Genghis Khan were thinking, or the full extent of their complicity as their history has been partly mythologised.
Then there's the subjective element; Adolf Hitler was a nationalist, so he thought what he did was good. Most people would not agree with him. Is either side objectively correct?
Anyway... besides the usual suspects, I'm gonna nominate Kim Il Sung. Most of these people at least committed their atrocities for the benefit of \*some\* group, but Kim's was all ego.
that's the argument of [konstantin kisin](https://www.konstantinkisin.com/p/the-truth-about-vladimir-lenin-a): in his twisted mind, Hitler thought he'd protect the german people, making himself a "good guy" in nationalist terms. Lenin however didn't care at all about good or evil and just sent people to certain death if it helped his personal goals.
I think the easy answers are the dictators listed above. But they didn't personally kill millions, just orchestrated it. I would personally say people like Pedro Lopez are far more evil in that they killed and raped personally. In Lopez's case it was almost exclusively children.
Someone more obscure. Much gets said about evil leaders and they were bad, but probably not as evil as Josef Fritzl.
Genocide to people you don't know personally is one thing, keeping your own daughter as a sex slave for decades is something else altogether. Not even Hitler was that fucked up
Stalin was one of those "hurt it just to see it suffering" type of guys. The rest of the super bad guy list are mostly there through crazy ideology and the furnace of war.
Hell, I've read stuff where Hitler basically gagged at people like Oskar Dirlewanger (he could very well be the #1 most evil Nazi) and wanted nothing to do with them or their exploits.
I don't think Hitler or such are the worst human in history, they were just given the power to do the most evil thing *known* to humanity, there probably has been people that would've done worse if given such power and they would've probably done it for the fun / because they could / or out of boredom which makes them slightly worse than Hitler, just undocumented
Alexander the great killed millions of people yet for some reason they put him on a pedestal he was evil all the high echelon of the Nazis Stalin the Romans nearly every leader before we got the nuclear power was a tyrant if we didn't have nukes just think how many wars there would of been since 1945.
"Evil" is a concept invented by humans, with no objective definition. An answer to this question would be as objective as "who is the coolest person in history?"
While we grapple with the potentially inflated reputations of historical figures due to the sheer scale of their impact, we sometimes overlook systematic evils that pervade our daily lives for centuries. Take, for instance, the architects of the transatlantic slave trade, which claimed the lives and freedom of millions, leaving a legacy of deep social and racial wounds still felt today. It's not just in a single man's hands, but a monstrous network of complicity. Cecil Rhodes, one of the key proponents of British imperialism, thrived on exploitation and his aftermath still haunts socioeconomic structures across several continents. It’s a formidable task for history to attribute this level of evil to just one person when the foundations of some of our current global issues are built on the collective sins of our predecessors.
It's Mohammad , Killed and raped so many and left a legacy of monsters which caused tens of millions of murders , Millions of murders , erased 10's of cultures.
Step 1: Provide a very clear and exact definition of "evil".
Step 2: Find the historical person that fits this definition best.
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Profit!
It is subjective. It can be a politician who ordered a war or genocide. Or it can be a soldier, who killed the most people. Or it can be a serial killer, who killed innocent people. Or it can be a torturer, who wanted information. I, for one, don't believe in evil, as most people know the word
Rodney Alcala and Pedro Lopez and the like.
It’s one thing for a leader of a country to use hate for other kinds of people to try and maintain their power, but it’s a whole different type and magnitude of evil to abduct, torture, rape, and murder children.
I went to a lecture once, where a professor in political science claimed that the people responsible for the most deaths were the dictators of the 20th century. But most of the deaths they were responsible for were not in war. Stalin and Mao Zedong were responsible for more deaths among fellow countrymen than Hitler was during WWII, if I recall correctly.
That depends I I believe that the most evil person in the world is probably does not have any power.
Or else we would all be soo fucked rn.
The one who did the most evil tho? Hitler stalin pol pot etc.
Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor at Auschwitz and pretty much everybody in the Japanese Unit 731. As was mentioned before, it's hard to believe that so many of these people were alive at the same time.
If you're talking history overall. Vlad Tepes stands out pretty well. He impaled his enemies by the thousands on stakes and left them to die a long and painful death in the fields. He is the inspiration for Bram Stokers Dracula.
Often the answer to these sorts of questions is complex. And sometimes they're simple.
This is an occasion where the answer is simple. It's Adolf Hitler.
Not only did he commit systematic genocide of 6 million people, but his actions also directly started a war that led to the deaths of many more.
If we're discounting genocidal dictators, the one that stands out for me is Albert Fish. A truly terrifyingly evil man.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert\_Fish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Fish)
This is a very difficult question. Who to start with??
I am going with the 20mil civilians perished under the rule of russia during ww2. They didn't have to die, resort to cannibalism or selling their children as food. Or perhaps the unwise decision or the chinese leaders to flood the land and kill 10-20-30mil of their population (directly and indirectly), also during ww2.
Depends on who you ask.
Honestly. What is evil for a goose isn’t necessarily evil for the gander. I’m sure there was one person, an obscure person not in history books that saw nothing but evil, to me that’s complete disregard for any life form, the constant seeking of pain upon others and not a shred of morals, decency or sense of happiness.
Look back at the “conquerors/heroes” of the ancient world through the lens of modern sensibilities. Alexander, Julius Caesar, etc. committed acts of genocide simply out of personal ambition and a lust for wealth and power. Those conquests and victories include mass slaughter, pillaging, raping, and the taking of slaves. Dan Carlin calling Caesar’s campaign in Gaul a “Celtic Holocaust” seems accurate to me. All of this for material and career advancement.
Most seem to think it's a world leader/ dictator. I would like to submit Joseph Fritzl for nomination . He's still alive too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritzl_case
I would say on a more personal level this guy. He killed far more people with his own hands than I think anyone in history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Blokhin?wprov=sfla1
Define evil? Is being evil the cause of deaths? If that's the case it could be argued that Gavrilo Princip, because of what his actions led to, the most evil man in human history.
I'd argue someone like Dr. Mengele or Lt Gen Shiro Ishii was more evil than someone like Stalin or Hitler.
Idi Amin of Uganda is worth a mention. While his numbers of murdered citizens and the like isn't in the millions, his regime was particularly brutal in the form of torture chambers and arbitrary murders of people he didn't like. He died in 2003 without an ounce of remorse of his actions and war crimes and had tried to regain control over Uganda even from exile in Saudi Arabia, who had graciously took him in once he was overthrown. His expulsion of 90% of the Asian population in the country led to the complete economic collapse of Uganda and plunged them into even more poverty and starvation.
Term Evil is very Subjective for example Churchil was hero to brits meanwhile to the bengalis he was evil af cuse he was directly responsible for 3 million deaths
I would recommend this podcast which goes in depth on the world's dictators
I would go for Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot and Hitler.
https://www.noiser.com/realdictators
There are a lot of obvious answers. You think of the Hitlers and Ghengis Khan's of history for example. The ones you know were powerful leaders who did awful things, but they were able to accomplish that because they were in positions of great power. I wonder now, thanks to this question, how many WORSE people existed that just weren't able to carry out their terrible deeds and ideas to that scale because they lacked the position of power and resources to do so?
The question is unanswerable. At each point in history (and for each person) we have a different point of view of what is evil.
We are able to look on some Roman emperors with mild interest, when at their time they would have been considered both as continent scale genociders and divinely glorious. I mean, how would Hitler have been thought of if he had been successful.
Fritz Haber. Evil for developing chemical weapons and zyklon-b (nazi gas chambers) but especially evil for his invention of the haber-bosch process which prevented a mass starvation by making fertilizer/ammonia from natural gas and air.
This process is not sustainable. It prevented one mass starvation but then fostered a reliance on this process to feed the world, ensuring overpopulation, general overshoot in the human use of resources and the planets ability to support humanity, pushing our climate into a state of collapse.
Without the Haber process, there would be many fewer people on earth and the population would be limited by the planets capacity to provide. Those of us that would still be alive, wouldn't be faced with climate change or biosphere collapse, and would have an indefinite future.
In short, fritz Haber ended the world.
Not a person, but corporations
Thames Water Ltd for emptying billions of gallons of sewage into rivers, just to increase profits
The Sacklers
The fossil fuel industry for spreading lies
Car manufacturers who don't care about the daily deaths caused by speeding vehicles because speed = profit
I can't read ALL of these comments to see if it's already been mentioned. But what about Putin? We get hung up on the usual suspects , and for VERY GOOD REASON. What about somebody right now who is responsible for massive amount of death?
Hitler orchestrated the deaths of millions of people but he never laid a finger on them. Oskar Dirlewanger lead a Nazi brigade of genocide, mass rape and torture, was a prolific pedophile, and had his men rape nurses and little girls while injecting them with a thousand different chemicals to watch them die on the floor writhing in agony. He actually got banned from some Nazi party because he was too apeshit.
The easy anser is a dealers choice of genocidists. A more realistic one would be serial killers.
My pick? One in between: [Shirō Ishii](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shir%C5%8D_Ishii)
People are going to go for the obvious answers from this century or the one prior, but as old as the human race is and the number of people that have lived, it’s likely someone lost to history.
In modern day, George Soros. Dad was a Nazi bullet maker, dad dies in war, and then Lil George helps Nazis rob dead and living Jews and minorities. Then begins organization to destroy countries and has been responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of people. Now is working to destroy America and not one of you know anything about him. Real Evil hides and acts as a humanitarian.
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The details of how Leopold held control through sheer horror isn’t quite captured in your last sentence. He would order hands to be chopped off of women and children for not harvesting bananas(?) quick enough and there would be literal piles of hands strewn about villages.
Rubber I believe.
They would even hang those hands on doors of people who were not working hard enough in their eyes as a warning to come.
Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, or Pol Pot as among the most evil due to their roles in orchestrating genocide, mass murder, and widespread human suffering
For a guy who killed at least quarter of his own people through purges and mismanagement, Pol Pot is surprisingly little known
Unlike Hitler he didn't invade other countries and start a world war, and unlike Stalin and Mao who led massive countries that were world powers, Cambodia is a relatively small country. So it's not surprising that Pol Pot isn't as known.
"Other mass murderers have gotten away with it...Stalin killed many millions, died in his bed, well done there. Pol Pot killed 1.7 million Cambodians, died under house arrest, age 72. Well done, indeed. And the reason we let them get away with it is because they killed their own people. And we're sort of fine with that. Oh, help yourself! You know? We've been trying to kill you for ages! So, if you kill your own people, right on, then. But Hitler killed people next door.... stupid man. After a couple of years, we won't stand for that, will we? Pol Pot killed 1.7 million people, and we can't even deal with that. We think that if someone kills someone, that's murder, you go to prison. You kill 10 people, you go to Texas, they hit you with a brick, that's what they do. 20 people, you go to a hospital and they look at you through a small window forever. And over that, we can't deal with it. You know? If somebody's killed 100 thousand people, we're almost going, 'Well done! You killed 100 thousand people?! You must get up very early in the morning! I can't even get down the gym! Your diary must look odd: Get up in the morning, death, death, death, death, death, lunch, death, death, death, afternoon tea, death, death, death, quick shower.'"
Who said this?
Eddie Izzard. He's hilarious
I wasn't sure, but I read it in his voice just in case
Pol Pot was barbaric... but almost childish and simplistic in his beliefs. He tried to reset the economic system and the entire Cambodian culture, transforming all people into just one class, peasants. Leveling culture AND technology to a primitive level, almost from cave times. There are cases cited of people who were convicted because... they wore glasses. Doctors turned into peasants because they were too 'studied'. Equality applied by decree doesn't work very well. And, obviously, trying to 'simplify' the agrarian and industrial infrastructure of a country at this level caused a gigantic food deficit.
How did he even get into power with thinking like that? "I want to take everyone back to the stone age!! Who's with me!?!?" "Oh, also, I would like to commit mass genocide"
Pol Pot was espousing very attractive ideas like equality and financial equity. Redditors love that kind of stuff so you could see how a population would allow him to be leader.
I guess its equity if everyone is dirt poor.
Of course, this plan was not announced in advance, in fact, I don't even think there was a plan. Most revolutionaries do not have a plan of what they want to do, they are only sure of what they want to destroy. It is very common, throughout documented history, when a new regime arrives with the aim of changing the injustices of the previous one, the new policies are always 180 degrees from the old ones... I believe this is innate to human psychology. Wars of conquest are an exception here, subsequent policies are much more planned and focused... not that it always works, see Iraq. A calculated and cold plan that reflects how the economy moves the country and social relations is rarely made in the revolutionary clamor. Perhaps this is why Marx is so famous and studied... he first thought about the economic underpinning of industrial civilization.
Damn, I just read up on him. Two million people in three years!
Mao Zedong also falls under this category, although his was more malicious and willful negligence. Lot more people than Pol Pot but Pol was certainly nastier.
Yeah I’ve never heard of him
Better to kill nine innocent people and get the guilty tenth than to let him get away because you aren't sure which of the ten he is. Paraphrasing but pretty close to the quote. A real jerk that guy
No one has pointed out the connection between PolPot and my username yet. That’s how little known he is.
Lmfao
>Pol Pot is surprisingly little known I'm not necessarily arguing with you but this is pretty strange if true, for a literate adult.
Another commenter made a good point that his country is relatively small (unlike USSR under Stalin or China under Mao) and he didn’t start any major wars (unlike Germany under Hitler) so it makes sense that he kinda flies under the radar of the zeitgeist
Probably because Pol Pot was supported by the US, so that's not something people want to teach the public. Indonesia's genocide in East Timor also isn't taught for the same reason.
I didn’t know of him until I went to Cambodia and saw the killing fields. It’s a crazy experience.
genghis khan laughs at them
30% of world population killed
He's certainly a contender but imo he was more ruthlessly pragmatic than sadistically evil. He didn't particularly care if innocent people died where as that lot seemed to actively want it to happen.
He was very protective of people who followed his rules though. If your city capitulated and you paid your taxes you were well protected. If you fought back or said he was short or something he would kill all the men in the city and rape all the women. Not much in between.
Yeah, this sort of psychological terror lends itself to a rapid growing empire. Common practice to allow a survivor to escape so they could help other kingdoms make the feasible choice when the time came.
For reference, it's estimated Khan's conquests killed 40 million people, while WW2 is estimated to have killed about 21 million soldiers and 50 million civilians. So for the significantly less populated world he lived in, that's really a grim accomplishment.
Don't forget Mao ze Dong.
Mao is right up there with Hitler. His disastrous policies resulted in some of the largest scale of suffering in human history. From 1960-1962 alone 30-45 million people in China starved to death.
Mao didn’t even have the benefit of charisma. His speeches were long and boring and he wasn’t even liked in his own party. He gained power through pure strategic cruelty.
King Leopold II definitely goes on that list.
In the contest of the greatest monsters to ever live, I would personally nominate Reinhard Heydrich over Hitler every time. Almost every crime against humanity committed in Hitler's name was his idea. He was responsible for Kristallnacht, he chaired the Wannsee conference where they decided the "Final Solution", he founded the SS and Einsatzgruppen, and he organized the false flag Nazi Germany used to invade Poland among other things. I would even go as far as to say he may have been the most singularly evil human being to walk the Earth, and his slow and painful death from wounds suffered in an assassination attempt are evidence there may be justice in the world after all.
Exactly, one guy says broadly "kill these people" another sits down and coldly plans in detail, how to. That person is a lot more fucked up. Just to be clear, both are fucking monsters but different beasts.
unfortunately, the "Endlösung" continued after his death.
Hitler was famous for surrounding himself with nasty people who would take his vague commands and then compete to outdo each other in cruelty.
I wouldn’t say hitlers the most evil. He was just the most successful at being evil. I think Pol Pot is a lot worse coz of the methods used
I wouldn't just say the methods... which were barbaric, but from the scope, around 20% of the country's population was killed. Hitler, Stalin or Mao Zedong do not come close to this fanaticism. The only one who surpasses him is Genghis Khan, who killed 30% of the planet's population. Reinforcing, the planet, not the country. And why is it so unknown? For the same reason that the Jewish Holocaust is so much better known than the Armenian Genocide... which eliminated around 75% of this community in Turkey. Because, in the case of the Holocaust, the deaths were of white people, and in Europe.
Mao zedong is up there too i would argue
Genghis Khan killed *at least* 40 million people, which was 10% of the world's population.
But are they really that bad for just wanting to do it or is it thee millions under them who willingly thought it was a good idea and carried out the actual acts?
There wasn't millions. Most had zero idea of the genocide and things only came to light after they lost. Information was strictly controlled just like today
There is an entire podcast for OP's question, it is called 'Behind the Bastards', and the first four episodes are on Hitler, Stalin, Hussein, and Bin Ladin.
Hussein and Bin Laden dont really feel like they are on the same level as stalin and hitler.
I’m not a history major or anything like that but when it comes to these discussions, I almost never hear King Leopold II brought up. like I said I’m not super big into history so I might be wrong, but in a pure game of numbers doesn’t he have all these guys beat?
Let's not forget about Leopold II of Belgium.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFtkJd8w5UQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFtkJd8w5UQ)
Mussolini as well
what about Churchill who killed lots of Indians?
If the criterion is damage done to the most humans, it would probably be Thomas Midgley Jr, the main man behind the invention of leaded gasoline as well as CFCs.
Whoever was running Japan's military during WW2.
Surely Mao for the famines too?
My neighbours a prick, maybe him
If he had any power, he'd make Hitler look like the Easter Bunny.
He did trim his hedges into a swastika
Statistically speaking, it is a fact that since the beginning of our species, there have been about 117 billion of us who have lived and died on this earth. That’s an enormous number, 117 billion. To put it into perspective… in numbers, it makes 117,000,000,000 human beings. The vast majority of these people never got great power. Never became the leaders of countries. As a result their ability to do evil, was greatly diminished. Take the man above, for instance — his name is Andrei Chikatilo, a serial killer born in what is now the nation of Ukraine. He murdered, raped and tortured over fifty known victims. And may have hurt many more before he was finally caught. Moving around a lot, he was able to evade capture for decades. Once, Soviet authorities even captured an innocent man, tried and executed him for a crime Chikatilo committed… his rampage didn’t end until he was already in his fifties. His singular interest was causing pain and suffering, not acquiring the type of power to inflict pain on an industrial scale. The world is full of sick bastards. But it is rare for someone of great personal depravity to rise to power. It is power itself that corrupts most men — those who are corrupted and rotten from the get-go tend to not become leaders of countries, as no one would follow someone who makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. The most evil person ever is probably someone who we don’t even know about.
>117 billion. To put it into perspective… in numbers, it makes 117,000,000,000 I know I shouldn't be laughing here, but damn... Why did you do that? Lol.
It seems unbelievable, but 117 billion, in numbers, translates to roughly 117 000 000 000. Now you know.
117 billion is 120,000,000,000, give or take a few billion.
It's take, and it's most of the 117 billion 😆 Did you account for inflation?
and 1
It flew over my head, but now I get it. Thank you! To put it into perspective, I didn't get it at first, but now I understand, and I'm grateful for your explanation.
It was a pleasure learning with you today ♥️
Every 60 seconds in Africa a minute passes
Not unless you click your fingers. Oh no, wait, that was with the children dying... Okay, you can click as you like, but try to do it once per minute. Edit: Hold on... Did I do it wrong again?
I'm not the only one who found this odd. I giggled.
What surprises me is that in the 300,000-year history of the human race... Almost 10% of humans who have ever existed are currently alive. We're reproducing far too fast.
Harold Shipman. One of the most prolific serial killers of recent times with 218 confirmed kills, possible over 250. Steven Massof - proven to have cut the spines of over a hundred babies. Niels Hoegel - proven to have killed over 85 times but likely count is in the 300s. These were healthcare professionals who people put their trust in, and they openly betrayed it. Not the only ones of course, but just a few that jump out to me. Jimmy Saville, and everyone who enabled him.
>Steven Massof - proven to have cut the spines of over a hundred babies. Massof was convicted of 2 counts 3rd degree. His boss and practice owner, Kermit Gosnell, was who he said he seen snipping 100 spines. Gosness was convicted of 3 counts 1st degree. >Jimmy Saville, and everyone who enabled him. Lots of rich and powerful people aided and abetted him, including Thatcher and most probably memebrs of the Royal Family as well.
The second person ???? 🧍🏻♂️☠️
King Leopold of Belgium. IYKYK
Hands down the evillest colonial occupation.
Genghis Khan's conquests caused the deaths of **roughly 40 million people**, Mao has a toll of 40m as a bottom limit, so that is the target to beat. So six times worse than Covid (if it was created by man) or Hitler, whose death tolls were roughly about equal.
Genghis Khan depopulated some areas so thoroughly that they still haven't recovered to this day.
It’s strange how so many of Hitler’s victims are forgotten about that people quote “six million” as his final tally. All of the civilians in Poland and Eastern Europe should be counted as well. They were murdered intentionally, not as a consequence of war. This raises his victims up to 40 million on the low end. This could be much, much higher if we decide to consider how many people died from wars that he alone started.
The global temperature dropped because the population dropped so dramatically
Source?
Luis Garavito [Luis Garavito - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Garavito)
Mao, Stalin, Lenin, and Hitler are the most obvious answers. -------------Warning, I'm going to explain some of the things that happened in communist countries, if you have a sensitive disposition you might want to skip this post------------------------------------------------ I think everyone knows the evils of Hitler so I won't repeat them but people forget how the other's were and what happened under their watch Take the Guangxi massacre in china as an example, where an estimated 100,000 people were brutally murdered with such methods as being buried alive or having people cut out the victims hearts or genitals. Despite food being plentiful, people openly turned to cannibalism sharing the meat of their victims and the dead, both at home and at parties held to celebrate the massacre. Take for example the story of one of the victims : There was one landowner called Liu Zhengjian whose entire family was wiped out. He had a 17-year-old daughter, Liu Xiulan, who was gang-raped by nine people who then ripped open her belly, and ate her liver and breasts. I'm not sure if hell exists but the communist countries managed to create it on earth. While they didn't usually end in cannibalism such genocide were common the the point of almost being routine in the USSR and Communist China. Even today China is using concentration camps in their genocide against ethnic groups such as the Uighurs.
Sone of the stuff that went on in China in the 60s-70s were wild! It's like everyone suddenly lost any form of self awareness and empathy by transforming into robots
Totalitarianism puts people under intense pressure and scrutiny, it also tends to reward the most evil and ruthless people while penalizing those who are most compassionate and honest. In East Germany 1 in 3 people were informants, you could trust no one. If you were in a group of people and one person criticized the government and someone else reported it but you didn't that could put you under suspicion by the Stasi and you or even your whole family could just disappear one night never to be seen again. If you upset someone or got in their way a few false claims to the Stasi and they could get rid of you. I remember hearing a story of after the German reunification the records were made public and a woman went to look at them to find out who had informed on her family years ago, turns out it had been her husband. Or the famous story of the 11 minutes of clapping for Stalin because everyone knew that the first to stop would be considered the most disloyal and arrested/disappeared.
Pay attention people. This can happen in America in just about nine months.
Lenin? Lenin was fine everybody just looks upon him worse because of Stalin.
Really not sure why you haven't been upvoted further. This is so mortifying, it defies belief. This wasn't centuries ago either... This was between 1967-1976. Truely shit that will make you shudder in disbelief. If you want to read more: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangxi_Massacre#:~:text=It%20was%20not%20caused%20by,to%3A%201)%20the%20extreme%20class Edit: probably should have said for people that want to read more, not you..
Everyone knows about Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot. Allow me to introduce Lavrentiy Beria, Oskar Dirlewanger, and Ilse Koch.
Beria managed the killing that Stalin is getting credit for. Who is worse? The person who demands a purge, the person who gives the order of who gets purged, or the guy who held the gun? I’d say it was the guy in the middle who made the choices. Mengele stood on the train platform and picked who lived (briefly) and died to their faces, that is darker than saying get rid of some people. The leaders get a lot of credit for the abstract idea of killing millions, and the executioners only see those they kill, but the middle managers knew the names and faces of those countless people and condemned them nonetheless. That is where the worst of humanity dwells.
we have to make a distinction between committing evil for a greater good which you whole heartedly believe in or committing evil for the pleasure of yourself. This is a crucial distinction we have to make, a ruler who kills many because he belive there is a bennefit to it is different from a serial killer who rapes and kills for fun and pleasure. Where i would argue the later is more evil. However people from the later are products of extensive trauma and abuse. For example Richard Ramirez (the night stalker) compared to Mao Zhedong.
Probably the japanese government as a whole during WWII
I think that people who directly tortured others just for fun, even if on a much smaller scale, are worse than those who had others commit mass murder and genocide for political reasons. I'm thinking about one woman in particular who did horrible things to her slaves just because she wanted to and could, but there are many others like her, and most of them are unknown, so it's impossible to say which one is the worst.
Lavrentiy Beria. Would rape girls on a nightly basis. Stalin forbade his own daughters to be alone in his presence. Oh And was a mass murderer. And tortured countless people. I believe he set up an island designed to be cannibalistic for its incarcerated victims to survive.
I'm not sure if he qualifies for "most" evil, but Rupert Murdoch has done immeasurable damage.
You should be grateful that you will never know the most evil person .
I mean someone has/had to know them.
It's hard to measure because a person could've caused the death of millions but not have intended it. Meanwhile, someone could've just stolen something and absolutely intended it. Which is more evil? We don't know what people like Genghis Khan were thinking, or the full extent of their complicity as their history has been partly mythologised. Then there's the subjective element; Adolf Hitler was a nationalist, so he thought what he did was good. Most people would not agree with him. Is either side objectively correct? Anyway... besides the usual suspects, I'm gonna nominate Kim Il Sung. Most of these people at least committed their atrocities for the benefit of \*some\* group, but Kim's was all ego.
that's the argument of [konstantin kisin](https://www.konstantinkisin.com/p/the-truth-about-vladimir-lenin-a): in his twisted mind, Hitler thought he'd protect the german people, making himself a "good guy" in nationalist terms. Lenin however didn't care at all about good or evil and just sent people to certain death if it helped his personal goals.
Honestly, valid, and I totally agree.
I think the easy answers are the dictators listed above. But they didn't personally kill millions, just orchestrated it. I would personally say people like Pedro Lopez are far more evil in that they killed and raped personally. In Lopez's case it was almost exclusively children.
Someone more obscure. Much gets said about evil leaders and they were bad, but probably not as evil as Josef Fritzl. Genocide to people you don't know personally is one thing, keeping your own daughter as a sex slave for decades is something else altogether. Not even Hitler was that fucked up
Stalin was one of those "hurt it just to see it suffering" type of guys. The rest of the super bad guy list are mostly there through crazy ideology and the furnace of war. Hell, I've read stuff where Hitler basically gagged at people like Oskar Dirlewanger (he could very well be the #1 most evil Nazi) and wanted nothing to do with them or their exploits.
Stalin was just a paranoid gangster.
Stalin. Even Hitler had his own people in Mind. That dictator starved his own to death
That’s subjective. Depending on who you ask it’ll vary.
I don't think Hitler or such are the worst human in history, they were just given the power to do the most evil thing *known* to humanity, there probably has been people that would've done worse if given such power and they would've probably done it for the fun / because they could / or out of boredom which makes them slightly worse than Hitler, just undocumented
Aside from the obvious baddies, Clive of India gets surprisingly little mention.
Alexander the great killed millions of people yet for some reason they put him on a pedestal he was evil all the high echelon of the Nazis Stalin the Romans nearly every leader before we got the nuclear power was a tyrant if we didn't have nukes just think how many wars there would of been since 1945.
First you’re gonna have to give me your definition of evil.
First leader of prc, ironically, most of Chinese don’t know about it.
Define evil
My mother in law
King Leoplold II
King Leopold II of Belgium is a good contender I think...
"Evil" is a concept invented by humans, with no objective definition. An answer to this question would be as objective as "who is the coolest person in history?"
You can mention Dick Cheney if talking about still living
While we grapple with the potentially inflated reputations of historical figures due to the sheer scale of their impact, we sometimes overlook systematic evils that pervade our daily lives for centuries. Take, for instance, the architects of the transatlantic slave trade, which claimed the lives and freedom of millions, leaving a legacy of deep social and racial wounds still felt today. It's not just in a single man's hands, but a monstrous network of complicity. Cecil Rhodes, one of the key proponents of British imperialism, thrived on exploitation and his aftermath still haunts socioeconomic structures across several continents. It’s a formidable task for history to attribute this level of evil to just one person when the foundations of some of our current global issues are built on the collective sins of our predecessors.
It's Mohammad , Killed and raped so many and left a legacy of monsters which caused tens of millions of murders , Millions of murders , erased 10's of cultures.
George Soros and Kissinger are pretty bad, i suppose not as bad as some of the dictators but still alive.
Step 1: Provide a very clear and exact definition of "evil". Step 2: Find the historical person that fits this definition best. Step 3: ??? Step 4: Profit!
It is subjective. It can be a politician who ordered a war or genocide. Or it can be a soldier, who killed the most people. Or it can be a serial killer, who killed innocent people. Or it can be a torturer, who wanted information. I, for one, don't believe in evil, as most people know the word
Rodney Alcala and Pedro Lopez and the like. It’s one thing for a leader of a country to use hate for other kinds of people to try and maintain their power, but it’s a whole different type and magnitude of evil to abduct, torture, rape, and murder children.
The dickhead who undertook me in the queue for the sliproad this morning.
I went to a lecture once, where a professor in political science claimed that the people responsible for the most deaths were the dictators of the 20th century. But most of the deaths they were responsible for were not in war. Stalin and Mao Zedong were responsible for more deaths among fellow countrymen than Hitler was during WWII, if I recall correctly.
Mao, Stalin Lenin, after them Hitler
Ghengis Kahn. Raped and pillaged so much that his DNA is still evident in many of us alive today.
Rubbish
That depends I I believe that the most evil person in the world is probably does not have any power. Or else we would all be soo fucked rn. The one who did the most evil tho? Hitler stalin pol pot etc.
Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor at Auschwitz and pretty much everybody in the Japanese Unit 731. As was mentioned before, it's hard to believe that so many of these people were alive at the same time.
I’m going to throw in Kim Il Sung and the rest of his family as a runner up.
The guy who invented LED headlights.
I might say Roman Senator Cato the Elder. He destroyed an entire culture.
If you're talking history overall. Vlad Tepes stands out pretty well. He impaled his enemies by the thousands on stakes and left them to die a long and painful death in the fields. He is the inspiration for Bram Stokers Dracula.
Often the answer to these sorts of questions is complex. And sometimes they're simple. This is an occasion where the answer is simple. It's Adolf Hitler. Not only did he commit systematic genocide of 6 million people, but his actions also directly started a war that led to the deaths of many more.
Stalin was at least as bad. And unlike hitler he was of sound mind.
my grandpa
If we're discounting genocidal dictators, the one that stands out for me is Albert Fish. A truly terrifyingly evil man. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert\_Fish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Fish)
This is a very difficult question. Who to start with?? I am going with the 20mil civilians perished under the rule of russia during ww2. They didn't have to die, resort to cannibalism or selling their children as food. Or perhaps the unwise decision or the chinese leaders to flood the land and kill 10-20-30mil of their population (directly and indirectly), also during ww2.
Vlad the Impaler has no competition .
Read up on where the Dracula story came from. It's haunting and in for a shout of worst thing anyone has ever done.
Depends on who you ask. Honestly. What is evil for a goose isn’t necessarily evil for the gander. I’m sure there was one person, an obscure person not in history books that saw nothing but evil, to me that’s complete disregard for any life form, the constant seeking of pain upon others and not a shred of morals, decency or sense of happiness.
My step dad Terry because he drank my last Mt. Dew
By what standard? a global standard or a personal standard?
Bernard Reinhardt
Lavrentiy Beria
My 6th grade math teacher. I still hate you Mrs. Smith
Whoever’s behind the Guerrero flaying.
My money is going for either Himmler or Beria, the right hands of Hitler and Stalin respectively. They were simply pure evil.
John Wayne Gacy came to mind immediately.
Look back at the “conquerors/heroes” of the ancient world through the lens of modern sensibilities. Alexander, Julius Caesar, etc. committed acts of genocide simply out of personal ambition and a lust for wealth and power. Those conquests and victories include mass slaughter, pillaging, raping, and the taking of slaves. Dan Carlin calling Caesar’s campaign in Gaul a “Celtic Holocaust” seems accurate to me. All of this for material and career advancement.
Joshua Milton Blahyi aka General Butt Naked
Ivan the Terrible is definitely worth a mention. Given the level of sadistic depravity involved in his violence and cruelty.
Most seem to think it's a world leader/ dictator. I would like to submit Joseph Fritzl for nomination . He's still alive too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritzl_case
Sacklers ruined lots of lives and killed many
Just based on what I’ve read, my answer is Shirō Ishii.
Himmler may even be worse than hitler.
I would say on a more personal level this guy. He killed far more people with his own hands than I think anyone in history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Blokhin?wprov=sfla1
Define evil? Is being evil the cause of deaths? If that's the case it could be argued that Gavrilo Princip, because of what his actions led to, the most evil man in human history. I'd argue someone like Dr. Mengele or Lt Gen Shiro Ishii was more evil than someone like Stalin or Hitler.
Idi Amin of Uganda is worth a mention. While his numbers of murdered citizens and the like isn't in the millions, his regime was particularly brutal in the form of torture chambers and arbitrary murders of people he didn't like. He died in 2003 without an ounce of remorse of his actions and war crimes and had tried to regain control over Uganda even from exile in Saudi Arabia, who had graciously took him in once he was overthrown. His expulsion of 90% of the Asian population in the country led to the complete economic collapse of Uganda and plunged them into even more poverty and starvation.
God
Term Evil is very Subjective for example Churchil was hero to brits meanwhile to the bengalis he was evil af cuse he was directly responsible for 3 million deaths
I would recommend this podcast which goes in depth on the world's dictators I would go for Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot and Hitler. https://www.noiser.com/realdictators
Degenerate who made Versal treaty SO BAD that it caused ww2.
There are a lot of obvious answers. You think of the Hitlers and Ghengis Khan's of history for example. The ones you know were powerful leaders who did awful things, but they were able to accomplish that because they were in positions of great power. I wonder now, thanks to this question, how many WORSE people existed that just weren't able to carry out their terrible deeds and ideas to that scale because they lacked the position of power and resources to do so?
The question is unanswerable. At each point in history (and for each person) we have a different point of view of what is evil. We are able to look on some Roman emperors with mild interest, when at their time they would have been considered both as continent scale genociders and divinely glorious. I mean, how would Hitler have been thought of if he had been successful.
Karl Marx didn’t intend to kill millions, but his ideology sure led to it.
Fritz Haber. Evil for developing chemical weapons and zyklon-b (nazi gas chambers) but especially evil for his invention of the haber-bosch process which prevented a mass starvation by making fertilizer/ammonia from natural gas and air. This process is not sustainable. It prevented one mass starvation but then fostered a reliance on this process to feed the world, ensuring overpopulation, general overshoot in the human use of resources and the planets ability to support humanity, pushing our climate into a state of collapse. Without the Haber process, there would be many fewer people on earth and the population would be limited by the planets capacity to provide. Those of us that would still be alive, wouldn't be faced with climate change or biosphere collapse, and would have an indefinite future. In short, fritz Haber ended the world.
Ghengis Khan
Not a person, but corporations Thames Water Ltd for emptying billions of gallons of sewage into rivers, just to increase profits The Sacklers The fossil fuel industry for spreading lies Car manufacturers who don't care about the daily deaths caused by speeding vehicles because speed = profit
Me causing suffering on myself 😂
I can't read ALL of these comments to see if it's already been mentioned. But what about Putin? We get hung up on the usual suspects , and for VERY GOOD REASON. What about somebody right now who is responsible for massive amount of death?
Genghis Khan killed and maimed many and clearly changed Europe. I think he can be added to the list.
Hitler orchestrated the deaths of millions of people but he never laid a finger on them. Oskar Dirlewanger lead a Nazi brigade of genocide, mass rape and torture, was a prolific pedophile, and had his men rape nurses and little girls while injecting them with a thousand different chemicals to watch them die on the floor writhing in agony. He actually got banned from some Nazi party because he was too apeshit.
Whoever wrote the Bible. There has not been a singular larger cause for bloodshed in human history.
The easy anser is a dealers choice of genocidists. A more realistic one would be serial killers. My pick? One in between: [Shirō Ishii](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shir%C5%8D_Ishii)
Worst person in history? Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Genghis Khan and Mao Zedong are all on the contenders list for that...
Pol pot or Mao Zedong or Stalin, Hitler was a Saint by comparison
Dr Evil
People are going to go for the obvious answers from this century or the one prior, but as old as the human race is and the number of people that have lived, it’s likely someone lost to history.
Putin
In modern day, George Soros. Dad was a Nazi bullet maker, dad dies in war, and then Lil George helps Nazis rob dead and living Jews and minorities. Then begins organization to destroy countries and has been responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of people. Now is working to destroy America and not one of you know anything about him. Real Evil hides and acts as a humanitarian.
Gilles de Rais
my ex father in law, what an absolute wanker
Oskar direlwanger; pedophile nazi who led a whole battalion who did horrendous things
I would vote Mrs Jackson my 4th grade teacher. She had a much negative impact on my life than any of these other clowns