Ten (10) cruellest leaders in history
3rd of January 2022
The world has always had a really dark history with cruelty and all things manslaughter and genocide due to some really cruel people who got into power by some really dubious means. In this article we are going to explore based on my opinion the top 10 cruellest people in history. Things are about to get really dark, but regardless of how dark it may seem, it is important that we learn from history so we wouldn't be doomed to repeat it.
1. Osama bin Laden
Having Osama-bin Laden has number one simply means this list is going to be brutal. I'm just saying the light at the end of the Osama bin Laden tunnel is that he was stopped before he had the chance to truly actualize his plans. those plans that he didn't act were abominations, and he did manage to orchestrate the biggest terror attack on American soil, lighting the path for other extremist organizations such as Isis.
Osama founded Al Qaeda in 1988, Al Qaeda is a radical Islamic group who've sought terror across the globe. To put it simply, Al Qaeda wants to create a Muslim organisation free of foreign influence and believes that Jews and Christians are plotting together to destroy Islam. In order to stop this, Al Qaeda wanted to attack the West and other ethnicities that disagree with their ideology.
Masterminded by Osama, they were behind the 1998 U.S. embassy attacks, the 2001 9/11 attacks and the 2002 Bali bombings. Now the death toll as a result of Islamist control and Al Qaeda is quite small, ultimately calculating to around 10,000 people. However, attacks have been largely targeted at civilians which is undoubtedly cruel. Osama bin Laden
2. Kim-ll sung
Kim-Il-sung with supreme leader of North Korea from 1948 until his death in 1994. During which time he managed to kill between 1.6 and 3 million people but due to the number of missing people it's hard to give an exact number. He approved the invasion of South Korea in 1950 and he purposefully starved his people. Yusei set up concentration camps across the country and arrested his uncle and his stepmother.
Thousands of people simply went missing during his rule and without access to North Korea even today it's hard to know exactly what went on. Kim-II sung
3. Attila the Hun
Attila the Hun was a barbaric and ruthless leader, and presided over the Hunnic Empire between 434 to 543 AD. The Huns were Eurasian nomads, I guess a little bit like the wildlings from Game of Thrones. It was the most feared enemy of both the East and Western Roman empires, he invaded the Balkans, he devastated many Italian provinces and generally went about being both rampant and bloodthirsty.
Legend has it that he would tear his enemies limb from limb and then drink their blood, it's also thought that he killed his brother in order to assume power. Attila wanted to marry Saint Ursula but when she refused, he killed her and 11,000 of her followers.
It is thought that during his time he killed around 2 million people as he pillaged, invaded, raped and murdered his way across Europe which actually was a whole load of people back in the 400s, the population back then was thought to have been below 300 million.
4. Pol Pot
Pol Pot was the leader of the Khmer Rouge Communist Party in Cambodia between the years of 1963 to 1997. He ruled the entire country as well for four years, at this time the Cambodian population was around 8 million and Pol Pot managed to murder around 25% of the entire population. Report suggests around 2 million people lost their lives as a result of his orders.
As part of the communist regime, Pol demanded urban dwellers live in the countryside and unsuccessfully tried a policy of agricultural reform basically demanding that everyone be able to maintain total self-sufficiency. This meant that they were denied medicines to curable illnesses like malaria. During his reign many people simply starved to death.
You may have heard of the Cambodian killing fields- for those that are unaware of the atrocities, Pol Pot and his party organized mass genocide of almost one and a half million people. Following the downfall of his regime in 1979, 20,000 mass graves were discovered with thousands of bodies in every single one of them. Many of these people were from religions banned by the Crimea rouge regime such as ethnic Chinese, Vietnamese people, Muslim Cham and twenty other minorities also murdered with those that threatened the regime's ideology. Pol Pot
5. Leopold II
Leopold II was the king of Belgium between 1865 and 1809, and he managed to cause a ridiculous amount of devastation during that time. Although his destruction was by and large far from home.
Harem explorer Leopold paid to establish a colony and what was then known as the Congo Free State. He managed to convince the colonial nations of Europe that was actually doing work to help improve the lives of people living in the Congo, subsequently he didn't have to pay trade tax and was left alone for many years to pillage ivory and rubber from the locals. Not only did King Leopold force many people of the Congo Free State into slave labour, he also tortured and killed those who resisted.
There are wildly varying reports of the death toll at the time, but many say it's between 2 to 15 million people.
6. Ivan the 4th
Ivan the 4th earned himself the nickname Ivan the terrible and was known as a vicious murderer. Ivan was the grand duke of Muscovy from 1533 to 1547, and he was the first Tsar of Russia.
During his reign he invaded Crimea, Turkey, East Europe, Siberia, and was even known to fry his enemies in large frying pans and would often enjoy impaling people. It is reported that he would gather around a thousand peasants a day and torture them as his son watched on. He then beat his son's wife so badly that she had a miscarriage and then he killed the very same son heir to his title in a fit of rage.
It is unknown exactly how many people Ivan the 4th killed but it is thought to be close to a million, although he only admits to killing over three thousand.
The extent of his depravity was crazy he used to throw animals out of the window just to watch them die.
Ivan the 4th- Ivan the terrible.
7. Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan was the founder of the powerful Mongol Empire and by the end of his rule he had almost conquered most of Central Asia. The Mongol Empire began as a result of Khan's power play in 1206 after which he sent invaders in every direction.
Under his rule Iran was practically destroyed as was Kiev and Kazakhstan. His people killed without mercy, and it is reported that between 10 to 15 million people lost their lives as a result of his rule.
8. Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin was a Bolshevik revolutionary who helped overthrow the Russian government in the 1917 revolution. Stalin manipulated his way to power after the death of communist revolutionary Lenin and named himself premier of the Soviet Union in 1941.
Stalin was a brutal man who purposefully allowed Ukrainians to starve as a cheaper way to orchestrate mass extermination. Source
Stein was also a jealous and paranoid man which made him quite the murderous megalomaniac. He created Soviet and forced labour camps called gulags which saw the death of millions.
It is difficult to calculate the exact number of deaths as a result of Stalin's fierce rule but historians pitch at around 20 million although some say the numbers could be as high as 40 million deaths.
9. Adolf Hitler
Pretty much all of us know the story of how Adolf Hitler gradually manipulated his way to power from the mid-1920s, thus becoming the Chancellor of Germany in 1933 and the first and only Fuhrer in 1934. His 11-year reign as leader of Germany was relatively short compared to a few on the list but his devastation was widespread.
Hitler believed in creating an Aryan race of purebred Germans which sparked his social and ethnic cleansing programs. Hitler hated the Jews seeing them to be money-grubbers, he set up the first Jewish concentration camps in 1942 where initially many was sent into forced labour but ended up being gassed and killed in what was known as the “final solution”.
A reported six million Jewish people were killed in the Holocaust, but they weren't the only ones murdered at the hands of Hitler in the Nazi Party. Hitler also killed many other people during his rise to the top including friends, foes, homosexuals, those he considered to be underman, many people with disabilities and more ultimately 11 million people lost their lives under his regime with some attributed 30 million deaths to Hitler following the war that he sparked.
10. Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong was the founding father of the People's Republic of China which was achieved in 1949 after a brutal civil war during which the Communist Party overthrew the government. The Civil War alone killed between two to three million people and Mao was heavily involved in the Communist fighting.
Mao was also working with another crew leader earlier on this list Joseph Stalin. The crux of Mao's cruelty came as he defiantly pushed the Great Leap Forward policy which aimed to change China from a Hungarian society to a society of that of a socialist open market which focused on industry. Unfortunately, this radical shift led to a food shortage sparking the great Chinese famine. During this famine between eighteen and thirty million Chinese people starved to death.
It is documented that Mao knew this was happening as the rice yield was not big enough to sustain the population. He is reported to have said that it was better for half the population to die so the other could thrive.
Mao regularly killed counter revolutionaries and landlords with many others dying in enforced labour camps. Ultimately his rule led to the collective untimely deaths of up to forty-five million people. This was ultimately due to the famine and corrupt practices he used to obtain and maintain his power. Mao Zedong
This is a list of the top ten cruellest leaders based on my opinion and should be considered subjective, as there are many more people who caused devastation in the world. The events mentioned above are really sad, but it is very important to know what went on in the world to be able to recognize the cruelty signs and others who could have the same devastating effects.
All images used have been sited above
I don't know why buhari of Nigeria isn't here😪😪