By Frank Kamuntu
Even though terrible leaders have existed throughout history, these individuals stand out for their savagery.
An old saying goes, “One man’s tyrant is another man’s hero.” No matter how a historian attempts to justify it, ordering living men to be heaped and mortared together to build a tower is incredibly cruel.
The following is a list of the most brutal leaders in history:
10. Augusto Pinochet
Chile’s government was overthrown by Pinochet in 1973 with the aid of a US-backed coup. According to reports, 35,000 individuals were tortured and many people “disappeared” under the rule. Pinochet passed away before he could be tried for alleged violations of human rights. All of the individuals on this list had power before 1980. On the list, there were no actual living people.
9. Idi Amin
Idi Amin was from an ethnic group named Kakwa located in the northwestern part of Uganda. Idi Amin received minor education and became part of the King’s African Rifles of the British colonial army in 1946 as an assistant cook.
Although he said that he fought in Burma [Myanmar] during World War II [1939–45], but records show that his military services began in 1946. Idi Amin continued to progress in ranks and served in the British action against the Mau Mau revolt in Kenya between 1952 and 1956. Only a few soldiers from Uganda rose from officer rank before Ugandan independence in 1962 and Idi Amin was one of these soldiers.
He grew close to Milton Obote, the president and prime minister of the new country. He was appointed Army and Air Force chief (1966–70). But as tensions with Obote grew, Amin planned a successful military takeover on January 25, 1971. Field Marshal in 1975, President for Life in 1976, and President and Chief of the Armed Forces in 1971.
He frequently displayed excessive nationalism. In 1972, he ordered the expulsion of all Asians from Uganda, which caused the country’s economy to collapse. He also publicly insulted numerous world leaders, including the leaders of Great Britain and the United States. He was a Muslim who broke Uganda’s friendly ties with Israel and made allies with Libya and the Palestinians.
In July 1976, he participated directly in the hijacking of a French airliner bound for Entebbe. Due to his cruelty, Amin earned the nickname “Butcher of Uganda,” and it’s estimated that during his administration, some 300,000 people were either killed or tortured.
8. Mao Zedong
The People’s Republic of China was established by the communist leader Mao Zedong. He was in charge of the disastrous “Great Leap Forward” and “Cultural Revolution” initiatives.
Mao was born to a peasant family on December 26, 1893, in Shaoshan, Hunan Province, central China. He moved to Beijing and began working at the university library after completing his teacher training. He started reading Marxist literature about this period. He founded a branch in Hunan as a founding member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1921.
The Kuomintang (KMT), a nationalist party, joined forces with the CCP in 1923 to overthrow the warlords who ruled most of northern China. Then, in 1927, Chiang Kai-shek, the KMT leader, began a purge of communists.
Communists like Mao and others fled to southeast China. Mao led his supporters on the “Long March,” a 6,000-mile march to northwest China to create a new stronghold, in 1934 when the KMT surrounded them.
During the eight years of hostilities with Japan (1937–1945), the Communists and KMT once more formed a temporary alliance, but soon after the end of World War Two, civil war broke out between them. Following the Communists’ victory, Mao proclaimed the establishment of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949. In order to escape, Chiang Kai-shek went to Taiwan.
Chinese society was to be transformed by Mao and other Communist leaders. State control of industry and the formation of collectives among China’s farmers were two developments. The opposition was brutally put down. Although the Soviet Union first provided tremendous assistance to China, ties soon deteriorated.
Mao started the “Great Leap Forward” in 1958 in an effort to impose a more “Chinese” version of communism. This aims to mobilize large-scale labor to boost industrial and agricultural production. Instead, a drastic decrease in agricultural output and subpar harvests caused starvation and the deaths of millions of people. Mao’s status deteriorated when the policy was abandoned.
In an effort to regain control, Mao started the “Cultural Revolution” in 1966 with the goal of ridding the nation of “impure” elements and reawakening the revolutionary spirit. An estimated 1.5 million people perished, and a significant portion of the nation’s cultural legacy was destroyed. Mao sent the army in to bring order in September 1967 when several cities were on the verge of anarchy.
Mao seemed to have won, but his health was getting worse. In his later years, he made an effort to forge relationships with the US, Japan, and Europe. US President Richard Nixon travelled to China in 1972 and met Mao.
On September 9, 1976, Mao Tse-tung passed away. Guys I have a joke for you, What is the name of Mao’s funny little brother? Lmao.
7. Adolf Hitler
By the end of 1941, nearly every nation in Europe and a sizable portion of North Africa were a part of Hitler’s German Third Reich empire (and Axis). He came up with a plan to exterminate Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, homosexuals, and political opponents by forcibly transporting them to concentration camps where they were tortured to death in order to produce his ideal “master race.” Approximately 11 million people were reportedly slaughtered by the Nazis under Hitler’s rule.
6. Joseph Stalin
The Soviet tyrant Joseph Stalin arguably had more political influence in the quarter century before his death than any other historical person. Stalin helped defeat Germany between 1941 and 1945, industrialized the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, forcibly collectivised its agriculture, solidified its position via intense police brutality, and expanded Soviet rule to include a band of eastern European governments.
He was the chief architect of Soviet totalitarianism and a brilliant but astonishingly ruthless administrator who destroyed the last vestiges of individual freedom and failed to advance individual prosperity, but who nevertheless built a powerful military-industrial complex and guided the Soviet Union into the nuclear era.
5. Vladimir Lenin
Lenin, who orchestrated the Bolshevik takeover of power in Russia in 1917 and served as the USSR’s first president, was one of the most important political figures and radical thinkers of the 20th century.
On April 22, 1870, Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov was born into a well-educated family in Simbirsk on the Volga River. He attended law school after achieving academic success. He was exposed to radical ideas in university, and the murder of his older brother, a revolutionary group member, also had an impact on his opinions.
Lenin, who was expelled from his university for his radical ideologies, earned his law degree in 1891 while enrolled as an external student. He relocated to St. Petersburg and developed into a career revolutionary. He was detained and sent into exile in Siberia, where he married Nadezhda Krupskaya, like many of his contemporaries.
Following his exile in Siberia, Lenin—the pseudonym he chose in 1901—spent the majority of the next 15 years in Western Europe, where he rose to prominence in the global revolutionary movement and took control of the “Bolshevik” wing of the Russian Social Democratic Worker’s Party.
1917 saw Russia ready for change after being worn out by World War One. Lenin came home and began working against the temporary administration that had replaced the tsarist regime with assistance from the Germans, who believed he would harm the Russian war effort. He finally took the helm of a coup d’état that would later become known as the October Revolution. Thereafter, a civil war lasted almost three years.
After winning, the Bolsheviks took complete control of the nation. Lenin showed a chilling disregard for the suffering of his countrymen during this time of revolution, war, and famine. He also mercilessly put down any opposition.
Lenin was brutal, but he was also practical. When his attempts to convert Russia’s economy to a socialist one failed, he instituted the New Economic Policy, which allowed some private enterprise once more. This policy persisted for a number of years after his passing. Lenin was seriously injured but managed to escape an attempted murder in 1918.
Long-term health issues led to a stroke in 1922 from which he never fully recovered. In his later years, he expressed alarm over the bureaucratization of the government as well as the rising influence of his future successor Joseph Stalin. On January 24, 1924, Lenin passed away. His body was embalmed and interred in a mausoleum on Red Square in Moscow.
4. Queen Mary (aka Blood Mary)
Mary gave a stirring speech that inspired hundreds of people to support her. Mary married Philip, reinstated the Catholic creed, and reinstituted the laws against heresy when Wyatt was defeated and put to death. For three years, heretics were mercilessly put to death, with about 300 being burned at the stake, and rebel remains hung from gibbets.
From that point on, the queen, now known as Bloody Mary, was despised, her Spanish husband was mistrusted and defamed, and she was held responsible for the heinous massacre. England lost Calais, its final foothold in Europe, in an unpopular, fruitless war with France in which Spain was an ally of England. She was still childless, sickly, and grieving when a string of false pregnancies added to her depression.
3. Timur
Many conquerors and warlords throughout history amassed horrifying body counts while fighting to enslave or kill as many people as they could. The most dreadful of these warlords was a guy by the name of Timur. It’s likely that you’ve heard of Timur by one of his other names, but there’s no denying that he had a significant impact on world history.
Continue reading to learn more if you’re not completely up to speed on Timur’s life narrative and the numerous terrible deeds he perpetrated. Timur’s cultural background was quite varied. His ancestry was a mixture of Persian, Mongol, and Turkish. This was caused by the Mongols who had assimilated into the Turkish population in western Asia, especially the Golden Horde. Timur, who referred to himself as “the Sword of Islam,” was a devoted Muslim throughout his life.
Amir Husayn, who was also his brother-in-law, was one of Timur’s supporters and comrades early in his military career. But as their riches and influence grew, their relationship quickly turned into a savage competition. The devotion of the populace turned out to be the deciding factor. Timur’s generosity to his followers led to an overall rise in his favorability. Husayn, on the other hand, was viewed as self-centred because of the high taxes he levied on his area and the extravagant buildings he built with the money.
Husayn finally saw his support base shrink and he threw himself at the mercy of Timur.
If Amir Husayn had ever imagined that Timur would cling to the past and show mercy to his defeated opponent, he was gravely mistaken. Soon after Husayn’s surrender, Timur had him killed while also claiming Husayn’s ex-wife for himself. It’s important to note that the wife in question was Saray Mulk Khanum, a descendant of Genghis Khan. Timur was able to officially conquer the Chagatai Khanate thanks to this marriage.
After a disagreement with Sultan Bayezid I over territory in Anatolia, Timur conducted a huge campaign against the Ottoman Empire at the end of the 14th century. The primarily Christian provinces of Armenia and Georgia were the first parts of the empire to experience Timur’s fury. In addition to the deaths, Timur also sold over 60,000 of their citizens as slaves.
2. Genghis Khan
Before he united the Mongol tribes and went on to conquer a sizable portion of Central Asia and China, Khan worked as a slave during his teenage years. His approach is described as brutal, and historians claim he massacred civilians in large numbers.
1. Attila the Hun
Attila took control of the Hunnic Empire, centered in modern-day Hungary, after slaying his brother. He enlarged the empire to include modern-day Ukraine, Germany, Russia, and the Balkans. He remarked about his rule, “There, where I have passed, the grass will never grow again.”
In an effort to regain control, Mao started the “Cultural Revolution” in 1966 to rid the nation of “impure” elements and reawaken the revolutionary spirit. An estimated 1.5 million people perished, and a significant portion of the nation’s cultural legacy was destroyed. Mao sent the army in to bring order in September 1967 when several cities were on the verge of anarchy.
Mao seemed to have won, but his health was getting worse. In his later years, he made an effort to forge relationships with the US, Japan, and Europe. US President Richard Nixon travelled to China in 1972 and met Mao.
On September 9, 1976, Mao Tse-tung passed away. Guys I have a joke for you, What is the name of Mao’s funny little brother? Lmao.
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