by Rob Dacosta

Created on: February 12, 2007   Last Updated: May 08, 2007

Human history is littered with brutal dictators and picking the 'worst offender' among them wouldn't be easy. This short list has two elements: Number of victims, and the pure evil of the individual.

Considering victims:

Mao Tse Tung (China - 1949 to 1976) is clearly the leader in this category. Mao's "Great leap forward" was responsible for close to 30 million deaths in the greatest human created famine of history. He followed this up with the "Cultural revolution" in which millions more were imprisoned in re-education camps where they were often tortured and killed.

Joseph Stalin (Soviet Union - 1929 to 1953) began with a series of disastrous land reforms in the 1920's, followed by 'purges' during the 1930's, peaking in 1937 and ended with the forced migration of millions more (citizens and captured soldiers) to the Soviet gulags of Siberia during and after WWII of both . His reign of terror totaled 20 million causalities.

Under pure evil:

Adolf Hitler (Germany - 1933 to 1945) instituted a system so methodological, so mechanized and horribly efficient that he went after an entire race in his quest for world domination (not to mention Gypsies, Slavs, Communists, etc.). The world fought off this madman for nearly 6 years. Even Stalin was forced to fend off Hitler. By the time Hitler committed suicide the world had suffered more than 50 million casualties. The words blitzkrieg, concentration camp, wehrmacht, and SS still ring in the ears of people born generations later.

Pol Pot (Cambodia - 1975 to 1979) was responsible for the killing of up to 4 million people in a area of the world that most people hadn't even known existed. His Khymer Rouge also planted millions of land mines that kill and injure to this day - nearly 30 years after the fact. The images of his torture camps - with piles of human skulls - strike fear into the very center of one's psyche.

Other noteworthy dictators, both past and present:

Tamerlane (Mongolia 13361405)
Ivan the Terrible (Russia 1547 to 1584)
Idi Amin (Uganda 1971 - 1979)
Nicolai Ceausescu (Romania 1969 to 1989)
Papa Doc Chevalier (Haiti 1957 - 1971)

Picking the most brutal among them is hard, but if I had to choose it would be Hitler. This dictator was in a special class and I've no doubt that he services the main ovens in hell.

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