Top 10 Most Horrific Genocides In History
The term “genocide” is one of those controversial terms that can lead to all kinds of problems. The problem is that the term has been so politicized, and frequently used to attack leaders or countries that one dislikes, that it has come to mean different things to different people. For instance, the term has frequently been used to describe what white settlers did to the Native Americans over the last few centuries, when much of the indigenous population of the United States was wiped out. However, the overwhelming majority of those deaths were due to smallpox being inadvertently introduced into a native population that lacked the biological means to resist it which, while devastating, was not a genocide as it was not done intentionally.
For something to qualify as genocide, it has to be a deliberate, calculated decision by a particular ethnic or religious group, leader, or a government to exterminate, or otherwise destroy, a specific group of people for religious, cultural, racial, or political reasons. This can be done either through direct action (murder) or through indirect means (deportation or starvation). Using this general definition, then, what were the most horrific acts of genocide committed throughout history? It will always be something of an exercise in subjectivity to determine which were the worst, as how does one go about measuring such a thing? Is it a matter of sheer number of victims? Duration? Political ramifications? Nevertheless, here is my attempt to list the ten largest, most horrific, or best-known genocides in human history.
10. Genocides of the Amalekites and Midianites
Lest anyone imagine that genocide is a uniquely modern phenomena, it should be known that it was not only condoned, but even supposedly ordered by, God Himself against two of ancient Israel’s arch-enemies, the Amalekites and the Midianites—at least according to the Old Testament. While extremely localized, and probably resulting in the deaths of no more than a few tens of thousands of people over a number of decades, it does testify to the fact that the desire of one group to exterminate another for any number of reasons has been around as long as civilization itself. The only difference is that, today, humanity possesses the technology required to carry it out on a truly massive scale.
9. North Korea (1945-present)
How many people have died inside the “worker’s paradise” will probably never been known with anything approaching certainty, but the fact is that Pyongyang has been at war with its own people since “The Great Leader”, Kim Il-Sung, first assumed power in 1945. Certainly several million peasants have died of starvation since the mid-1990s, with aid and human rights groups charging that North Korea has systematically and deliberately prevented food aid from reaching the areas most devastated by food shortages. And of course, this doesn’t include the nearly one million people—including women and children accused of the most superficial ”crimes”—who have died in North Korea’s political prison camps over the last 65 years. Were it not being propped up by its lone ally, China, it would have likely imploded long ago. As it is, it remains a ticking time bomb, waiting to explode.
8. Expulsion of Ethnic Germans after World War II (1945)
Many scholars consider this more of a population transfer, rather than a true genocide. However, the forced displacement of some 14 million ethnic Germans and allied Slavs from Soviet Russia, from occupied areas of Eastern and Central Europe in the aftermath of World War II, has to go down as something pretty close to genocide, especially when one considers that between half a million and two million of them didn’t survive the journey. While most of these deaths were from famine and disease, many German civilians were also executed outright, or sent to internment and labor camps by the Soviets—especially those known to or suspected to have had Nazi associations. What makes it genocidal in nature was that only Germans were targeted, and that the brutal policy of forced relocation was ordered by Stalin himself, specifically as a means of retribution.
7. Partition of India (1947)
This is one of the few genocides in history that was not politically motivated nor orchestrated by any government, but rather occurred spontaneously. All of it was the result of the partition of Great Britain’s largest and most important colony, India, in 1947. The powers-that-be decided to partition the massive state into Hindu and Muslim sections (creating modern-day India and Pakistan respectively), a decision which left millions of Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs on the wrong side of the newly-formed border. This resulted in millions being uprooted from their homes and being forced to walk hundreds of miles to their new homes; during this great exodus, however (which affected upwards of 14 million people), escalating violence broke out between the various religious factions, leading to up to one million deaths (most of it centered around the densely populated Punjab region).
In effect, many Muslims were killed by Sikh and Hindu mobs, while many Sikhs and Hindus suffered at the hands of Muslim mobs in Pakistan. It’s difficult to label this a true act of genocide, however, as it was not specifically instigated by either the Pakistani or Indian governments. However, their inability to stop what was basically a spontaneous outburst of brutality on both sides contributed greatly to the carnage. This event specifically stands out as being one of the few genocides to be almost entirely religion-based, and to be engaged by several religions simultaneously.
6. The Rwandan Massacre (1994)
While we like to imagine that genocides are generally politically motivated, Rwanda is an example in which it was mostly the result of tribal differences. The short-lived killing spree, which left between 500,000 and 1,000,000 people dead, was the culmination of longstanding ethnic competition and tensions between the minority Tutsi. It seems that the Tutsi had controlled the country for centuries, lording their position of power over the majority Hutus, until they were overthrown in a 1962 Hutu rebellion. Tensions remained high after that and eventually erupted into full-blown war when, in April of 1994, Hutu President Habyarimana died under mysterious conditions in a plane crash. This elicited bloody reprisals by Hutus against their Tutsi neighbors in retaliation.
While not specifically orchestrated by the Hutu-led government, scholars maintain that the spontaneous, and violent, reaction to the assassination was encouraged by the Rwandan armed forces and largely carried out by Hutu militias, with the full knowledge and blessing of the government, making it directly culpable. Also responsible for the massacre was the unwillingness of the UN, or other western powers, to take decisive action early on. The UN even went so far as to evacuate what few troops it had in the country, to prevent harm from befalling them! President Bill Clinton has since admitted that his lack of timely action in Rwanda remains the greatest mistake of his Presidency. How different things might have been, had only the world had the backbone to have done something.
5. The Armenian Genocide (1915-1923)
While they are loathe to discuss it today, the Ottoman Turks, under the leadership of War Minister Enver Pasha (1881-1922), may have conducted the first large-scale, organized genocide of the 20th century. During and immediately after the First World War, Turkey killed, deported, and starved to death as many as 1.8 million Armenians, along with hundreds of thousands of other non-Turks. The Ottomans may have also been the first to introduce the concept of the concentration camp, though most of these camps were short-lived.
Modern Turks generally refuse to acknowledge what happened to have been genocide, considering it simply a mass deportation of people who had allied themselves with the Russians (a nation Turkey was at war with at the time), and who largely died from exhaustion or neglect during forced marches. Most genocide scholars, however, consider it to have been an orchestrated effort at exterminating an unwanted ethnic group that had lived within the borders of the crumbling Ottoman Empire for centuries. Not surprisingly, it remains a touchy subject among modern Turks to this day, not to mention angry Armenians with guitars.
4. The Killing Fields of Cambodia (1975-1978)
When the Khmer Rouge overthrew the government of Cambodia in 1975, and established a Communist “utopia” in its place, its first act was to annihilate anyone it deemed to be an “enemy of the state”. This included not only former members of the old regime and military, but journalists, teachers, businessmen, intellectuals, Buddhists, and even people who simply wore glasses! While the total number of people who died in this short-lived, but grisly, purge will never be known, it is estimated that no fewer than two million people (nearly 20% of Cambodia’s population) died at the hands of the Khmer. Had it not been for a Vietnamese invasion in 1979 that toppled the Khmer and sent them into hiding, the toll would undoubtedly had been higher still. You know you’re bad when your government is overthrown by a fellow Communist regime!
3. The Holocaust (1939-1945)
No genocide is as well-known, or as carefully documented, as the efforts of the Nazis to exterminate not only the Jews from continental Europe, but millions of others it deemed “undesirable.” By the time Hitler shot himself in his Berlin bunker in April of 1945, some eleven million people—over half of them Jews—had died, either through mass extermination, deportation, or starvation and overwork in his prison camps. This was all part of a brutal policy that much of the world either refused to believe was happening, or chose to ignore until the first camps were liberated by the Allies in the spring of 1945.
What’s especially interesting in this case is that, unlike Russia and China, Germany had no history of such cruelty beforehand (at least on such a large scale), and was even considered to have been one of the most educated and cultured societies in the world at the time it fell under Hitler’s spell. This should serve as a warning that no country is immune from becoming a killing field under the right circumstances and with the right leader, as millions of Germans had to learn the hard way in World War II.
2. The Stalinist Era in the USSR (1929-1953)
While most people imagine Adolf Hitler to have been the greatest mass murderer of the 20th century (the aforementioned Mao Zedong not withstanding), the prize actually goes to Joseph Stalin, the man who turned his entire nation into one massive prison camp and extermination center. How many died under his direct instructions, or merely as a result of his failed agricultural policies, will never be known with certainty, but some estimates put it as high as twenty million. The Soviet elimination of a social class, the Kulaks, and the subsequent killer famine among all Ukrainian peasants, killed at least two million alone, while Stalin’s notorious 1937 Order No. 00447, that called for the mass execution and exile of “socially harmful elements” as “enemies of the people”, decimated the military and intelligentsia of Russia, leaving hundreds of thousands dead, and millions more languishing in Stalin’s massive gulag.
Had he not had the good manners to die in 1953 before he could institute another purge of Jews and other “enemies of the State,” the numbers of death would have swelled even more. Curiously—and despite all of this—the man was much admired by people who lived outside of Russia during this time, and the always-smiling and benevolent-looking “Uncle Joe” even made it onto the cover of Time magazine no fewer than eleven times.
1. The Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution in China (1949-1976)
While it’s almost impossible to determine precisely how many people died at the hands of the Communists when they came to power in 1949 and in the decades that followed, estimates range anywhere from 45 to 70 million people, depending on whom you ask. While some of these occurred when Communist forces finally vanquished the Nationalist Army of Chang Kai-Shek, most of them took place later and came largely in two main waves; the first was during the “Great Leap Forward”, when China’s leader Mao Zedong’s attempt at agricultural modernization and social engineering led to mass starvation between 1958 and 1961, and the death of many former land owners. While not a specific effort to eradicate a population, what made it genocidal in nature was the fact that Mao continued his policies long after they were obviously proven to be disastrous, thereby dooming millions of peasants to starvation.
The second great genocide was a result of what was called the “Cultural Revolution” of 1966 to 1976—a bloody purge of “anti-government elements” that left millions dead or languishing in prison camps throughout China. It was only upon the death of Mao that the worst of the killings ended, though the brutal crushing of the Tienanmen Square protesters in 1989 demonstrated that Beijing’s violent tendencies did not entirely die with the man.
Other Noteworthy Examples: The Destruction of Carthage during the Third Punic War (146 BCE) is often considered the first historically recorded genocide in history; The forced repatriation of the Cherokee Indians from Florida in 1830 resulted in the death of some 4,000 Indians out of 17,000 who made the trip during the famous Trail of Tears incident; Genghis Khan’s Mongol horsemen of the 13th century were well-known genocidal killers, known for wiping out entire nations in their quest to expand their empire; German General Lothar von Trotha wiped out some 100,000 native tribesmen in Southwest Africa (modern Namibia) between 1904 and 1907 in what is often considered the first organized state genocide; and Saddam Hussein’s efforts at exterminating the Kurds during the 1980′s, which included using chemical agents against Kurdish towns.
Jeff Danelek is a Denver, Colorado author who writes on many subjects having to do with history, politics, the paranormal, spirituality and religion. To see more of his stuff, visit his website at www.ourcuriousworld.com.
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Good, well researched list. One correction that I am aware of is the reference to the first use of concentration camps by the Ottomans shortly before WW1. I don’t know if it was the first but concentration camps were used by the British against the Afrikaaners during the Anglo Boer War (1901).
Whilst not defending them, they weren’t concentration camps in the sense we think of them today. They were an effort to cut the boars supply lines by removing the farmers and farm that the guerrillas relied on. The fact many died in them was less to do with an attempt at ethnic cleansing and more to do with military incompetence. The British held an inquiry called the Fawcett Commission that criticized the conditions in the camps and lead to improvements that at least cut the death rates. The camps also became public knowledge in the UK causing a widespread revulsion.
Very informative list. I’ve always researched wars and battles and I’ll admit I have learned a lot from this. Greatly researched and layed out.
China currently have the biggest population, and it was during Mao’s era that a massive population boom occured in China.
Logic dictates that only stupid brainwashed westerners can believe that Mao attempted a massacar. When clrarly, in Mao’s era, the population of China increased dramatically, as well as the average life expectancy, and the educated populace.
Clearly you like Mao. However, he list is still true
All Chinese people… well, most, understands that it was because of Mao, China manage to do quite good, although there are negative sides (such as taking money from the rich), the positive sides outweighs the negatives.
For example, my grandfather (on my mother’s side) was tricked off a contract and his land was taken, only to be distributed, however, there was no “killing” and he was not “thrown into pirson”. Thus, when the economy is back up and wealth are being generated, the percentage of lower class is dramatically decreased. Obviously, if you attempt to overthrow him and start another rebellion when Mao have so many supporters and China is already recognised as the sick man of Asia, that is extensively stupid.
Now if “45 million – 70 million” are killed, how exactly do you think China managed to obtain the largest population in the entire world? Which is four times larger than the population of USA, where no massacars have ever take place, supposedly, a very wealthy country with a very high average life expectancy, adding to the fact that there was a huge wave of immigrations in the 1900′s.
Good point. Couldn’t agree more.
At junior high, my history book tell lots of bad thing about dictator mao. But in geography subject, statical data and graphs shows the increased wealth and life expectacy are a lot better than most of asian country. And everytime I see mao on documentary film, it seems like his people loves him very much.
… are you people above (not Martin Fierro) dense, or just completely indoctrinated? Please, get a clue.
Have you ever actually spoken to a Chinese person about this?
When they say that 45-70 million people died, they’re not just using the general census. These are town records kept away from the public eye. These are reports from people actually living in specific communes. Many people lost their lives and it was reported in documents and records that many people were ‘punished’ with their lives for stealing just a simple potato or a handful of grain.
Not only that, many people lost all of their life savings and ended up with nothing. My grandparents lost their entire fortune because of Mao’s policies. Many of my friends have had relatives who’ve lost their lives because of the torture in the hands of red guards, or they’ve committed suicide because it was too much to handle.
If you go and ask a Chinese person right now, what they think of the policies placed in the Great Leap Forward or the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, they’d tell you how messed up it was. My grand aunt literally said that “everyone there was crazy, and even if you weren’t, you’d have to pretend to be or they’d accuse you of being a traitor or having ‘black’ blood.”
The people loved him because he projected himself as a god. His cult of personality was so great that if people didn’t own a ‘red book’ of his quotes, they could be killed on the spot.
So yes, for a while, maybe some of them were richer because they had their own land, but if you ask around, most people would say their condition of life turned for the worse.
and let me remind you that many of these ‘statistics’ given out by China were falsified. It was common for people to exaggerate what they had. For example, in the Great Leap Forward, each commune was supposed to make a specific quota of goods, but many could not meet it, and they still had to make it seem as if the idea was working or they’d be killed. If you didn’t make it seem as if Mao’s idea was working, there was a probability that you would be persecuted.
Just keep that in mind.
You must be kidding with number 8! You call the withdrawal of invader an “Expulsion of Ethnic Germans”? What about holocaust? 6 million people were murdered by these poor ethnic Germans. What kind of journalism is it?!!
Actualy, most of the ethnic Germans were NOT involved and any that were, were arrested (if men) or their heads shaved (if women) and I hardly believe that ethnic German children should be blamed for this. It was the German/Nazi army that was to blame and they got the punishment of burying all the people they had killed into a mass grave before getting arrested and/or shot.
The Holocaust is there, yes, but there’s two sides to every story. Just because the Jewish (and others) population suffered greatly, doesn’t mean the ethnic German population didn’t suffer as well. I’ve talked to someone who survived the Nazi concentration camps and even he doesn’t blame the German civilian population for this.
War isn’t good for anyone as it ruins lives for innocent people on both sides. Remember that.
Not “Nazi” but German concentration camps. Nazi were not aliens in Germany. Nor were German soldiers. They were Germans. I observe that the notion of “Nazis” is abused and overused. It leads a public opinion to believe that there were those nasty Nazis and poor Germans, the latter having nothing in common with the former. Nazis were Germans, moreover they were given power in democratic elections, which is a clear indication, that German population did not oppose Hitler’s ideology too strongly.
Most of German civilians didn’t condone of the concentration camps so it’s generally regarded as a Nazi-controlled concentration camp (despite that being a good piece of logic too). No, the Nazi’s weren’t aliens they were all of German/Austrian blood mainly but even the German population of today don’t want to be associated with them for obvious reasons. Yes, Nazi’s is overused as they weren’t the only facist country/army of that era as there were also Mussolini and King Franco and maybe some others afterwards. Also, due to Hitler wanting to be a dictator he did the smart/stupid thing of forcing the hand. Most people were bullied by Hitler’s right hand man to vote for him and no one could do anything about it. The point I was trying to make is don’t point the finger at the German civilians and say “they deserve it”. That’s really ignorant. Kids can’t vote. Are you saying it’s their fault? They deserve to die? I don’t think so. Don’t be to quick to judge what you don’t know. You weren’t there were you? Remember this: All school history books have some prejudice/propaganda and bias in them.
@Seascorpius
You’ve had some good points. You are definitely right, that man cannot punish children for sins of their fathers. Also the point “You weren’t there were you?” seem to make sense at first glance, but it applies to anyone discussing historical events older then 100 years. I am assuming it applies to you as well. So in longer term it makes no sense.
I did study some history of pre WWII Germany. It is a longer discussion of why NSDAP has won elections, but people were definitely not forced to give their votes on them. Once NSDAP grabbed the power – then, yes, they started to bully their opponents in Germany.
I do not stand on a position that Germans are genetically murderous nation. Nor I stand on a position that they were in a large group fooled and bullied by very narrow group of Nazis. First of all, Nazis were not such a narrow group. Secondly, recent researches seem to prove, that reputed as army-of-people-of-honour Wermaht also committed many crimes on civilians and POWs.
Germans were not expelled because they had German gens. As I said many of them were fleeing themselves, to avoid justice.
And first of all – level of suffering, level of received cruelty and number of killed people (killed during expulsion, not all Germans killed during WWII) by no mean can be compared with that applied to nations enslaved by Germans.
Once again – it is not about denial of suffering of German civilians. It about the fact, that substantially, Germans should not be on the list before their victims. And Jews were not the only, and not the biggest victim.
I agree. Number 8 “Expulsion of Ethinic Germans” should not be here. Although I have different reason on this. Number 8 is just part of 2: “The Stalinist Era in USSR (1929-1953)”. The expulsion of Germans wasn’t just a genocide of Germans, but it was a result of Stalin’s policy to many nations, and was mostly just an expulsion. In that area (and times) many nations were suffering (killing/starvation/bad conditions). There were other nations that suffered even more than Germans from Stalin’s policy, e.g. Ukrainians, Poles, and even Rusians. And some of the actions agains some other groups/nations was “true” genocide (killing by order, in case of German it was mostly starvation/bad conditions/incidental actions of demoralized soldiers). According to the text, half million of 14 milions was dead, which is 3.5% of population. This is clearly less than, for example, man-made famine (Terror-Famine) in Soviet Ukraine in 1932-1933 – the death toll is estimated as between 2 and 8 milion people. Why not put on the list the Ukrainian Terror-Famine instead of the German Expulsion (death tall 2-8 milion vs. 0.5 milion)? They both are the part of Stalinist Era. This should be just “One of biggest Expulsions” (in hard times/bad conditions) – not genocide.
I guess we will FINALLY have to let the German and Japanese people off the hook…
All my life I have heard about how it was right to hold the German and Japanese people en masse responsible for the atrocities of WWII because they did NOTHING to stop the criminals running their respective states.
Well, Americans, apparently NOW owe these people a massive apology for our self-righteous moralizing that has lasted for decades.
For even as we sit here American Military Personnel are performing the VERY acts for which we HANGED German and Japanese Military Personnel — including torture; mass executions; reprisals, show trials kidnapping, assassinations, secret prisons, etc.
And, the American populace daily cheers for aerial blitzkrieg bombing of civilians much as the “but I was not a Nazi” German population did…
And what about the sanctimonious carping about how the German people should have known about the Nazi Death Camps???
How do YOU know that the Guantanamo “detention camp” is NOT an Auschwitz?? Or are you applying a double standard that holds the German people responsible for believing THEIR criminal government; but YOU can be forgiven for believing YOURS??
WELL????
Let’s hear those apologies you self-righteous hypocrites – unless you are from the might-makes-right group that REALLY believes the ONLY German and Japanese real war crime was losing the war!
I think that placing expulsion of Germans on the list is a rather risky decision. First of all, significant amount of Germans were not expelled. It was their decision to flee. And the reason for this flee was obvious. Many Germans wanted to avoid responsibility and justice for all the crimes they committed. Undoubtedly, there were also Germans who were just victims of the fact that the borders between countries has moved. But still, many of Germans actively participated in genocides of other nations (Ukrainians, Poles, Jews, Gypsies). Many “innocent” German farmers migrated to countries conquered by Germany to take over conquered farms, animals, equipments and use inhabitants as slaves.
Germans suffered after the WWII, no one denies that. But they definitely did not suffer as much as the nations, which they enslaved and exterminated. Especially Slavic nations and Jews, which Germans considered animals, not deserving human treatment. Therefore, what has happened to Germans after WWII should find its place on the list of genocides. However it definitely does not deserve to make it in the 1st 10, secondly by no means it should appear before genocides, which Germans applied to other nations.
All is quite fine, except number 8. “Pretty close to genocide”. Hilarious. Why not Texas chainsaw massacre?
8. Expulsion of Ethnic Germans after World War II (1945)
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Somebody was avoiding history lessons… Dear journalist at first google ‘holocaust’ and then find out why Germans were asked to leave occupied and destroyed by them country.
What about native americans?
That is in the Other Note Worthy examples after #1
What about Hiroshima and Nagasaki? What about Indians? hipocrits
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not attempts to wipe out the Japanese Race. In fact, one could argue that the reason the bombs were dropped was to save Japanese lives by forcing a quick surrender.
The Indian Wars also were not attempts to wipe out the Indian race, although there were admittedly some who wanted to do so.
How many people must die to called it genocide?
Btw if Indian Wars weren’t genocide and Hiroshima bombing too why #8 appears?
and #10 WTF? A lot people are saying that Bible is BS but when deaths appears in this book they shout it’s genocide! :/
The Indian case is much closer to genocide than #8, you can find it even in wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history
H&N – a lot of people died or suffered serious illness after the explosion
oh well if Wikipedia says so…
The whole top 10 doesn’t look right to me; What about 6 milion of Poles (incl. 3 milions of Polish Jews), who lost their lives as effect of German occupation started in 1939 until 1945?? Sonder Aktion Krakau, Palmiry Forest, Warsaw Uprising alone (200k civilians murdered!) and many more; Poland is now estimated to have lost between 4.9 and 5.7 million citizens at the hands of the Germans. Between 150,000 – 1 million more died at the hands of the Soviets.In total, right about 6 million Polish citizens lost. (just Imagine, proportionally losing 30 million US citizens or ~ 12,000 citizens/a day – wouldn’t you call that a Top Ten genocide?)
The vast majority were civilians. _The daily average in Polish lives was 2,800_ as the war continued until May 2 1945. Poland’s professional classes suffered higher than average casualties with Doctors (45%), lawyers (57%), University professors (40%), technicians (30%), clergy (18%) and many journalists.
Doesn’t that qualify to be one of the most horrific atrocities committed to a single nation?!
Germans suffered mainly as effect of hostilies started by their own government! Please, read some more decent history sources (Timothy Snyder, Norman Davies, Ian Kershaw, Anthony Beevor) before putting anything of that kind on websites risking it being flawed.
If the expulsion of Germans is a genocide, so what is this ? (Warsaw in 1945 on the picture):
http://naszastolica.waw.pl/images/fot-arch-muranow/fot-9.jpg
Also, what about millions of Poles murdered by Germans during WWII ?
I think both comments about nr 8 are too calm. You just can’t write such things unless you’re a complete political-historical novice/ignorant or a relative to a german WW2 nazist or neonazist (like those “scholars”). Describing invaders (settlers of the NAtionalsoZIalismus) as victims is a crime on common memory and …common sense. It’s not about the balls to make such “risky” judgments, it’s about breathtaking arrogance and conceit. Shame!
The Reservations in the United States could logically be considered concentration camps. Often the land was extremely poor and placing hunter/gather societies onto small areas of land without educating them about agriculture led to starvation. And of course waging germ warfare with smallpox laden materials certainly can be considered active genocide. There has been thoughts that before European settlement in the Americas the native population was on par or even in excess of that of Europe. Within 200 years estimates of up to 90% of the native population were wiped out due to war and illness.
By the way, do we think about the same “many” “scholars”?, any names, please?, and for the readers – in Germany it’s a strictly political issue, read about bloody nazi judge Hans Krüger – first chairman (1959–64) of the Bund der Vertriebenen (since 1998 – Erika Steinbach) and Rudi Pawelka from Preußische Treuhand (two biggest advocates of this issue). – What they want?, what are their political purposes? – Pawelka wants actually …money, Steinbach wants to soften german responsibility for a war atrocities, you know.. “we were not the only bad guys”, etc… – So, Jeff Danelek, a Denver, Colorado author, you have been manipulated into a real political struggle that has nothing to do, sorry to say this, with the real history. Bad thing is that you probably won’t edit your top ten – and lie will win, the reality will be dimmer and more deceitful.
And last thing, as an American, you should consider as a genocide – the “job” Planned Parenthood is doing (you know – “helping women”), ‘cuz of them all – there is no bigger and most horrific holocaust – than that done – on children conceived. (Just look for the numbers.. then add numbers from the other countries).
Yea!
Oh please enough of this crap about Planned Parenthood – your ignorance is sad to see. Millions of women receive all kinds of health care through Planned Parenthood, 3% receiving safe AND legal abortions. Take your religious bigotry elsewhere… it’s been the cause of the death and suffering of millions for centuries.
A few points.
1. Several of these really aren’t genocides per se. They may have resulted in the killing of a lot of people, but they weren’t the deliberate and systematic attempt to wipe out a targeted group of civilians. #’s 9, 8, 7, and 1 were all terrible situations, but not true genocides. I would also add the maltreatment of the American Indian to this list of terrible situations that resulted in a lot of death, but not true genocide. Ditto with things like the Nanking Massacre.
2. In the attempt to add some of these mass killings, you’ve ignored some impressive genocides that would’ve made excellent additions. The attempted genocides during the Bosnian War of the 1990′s. More recently, the ethnic cleansing in Darfur. Saddam Hussein’s attempts to wipe out the Kurds. The Indonesian campaign in East Timor. Etc.
East timor?
Dude, the only reason indonesian came to timor is to block communism. It was know by both british and u.s leader of the time.
As far as I know, indonesia gave timor special otonomi to rule himself (what natural resouces can you expect from timor compared to money spent to establish civilization there and rebuild things that crushed during the civil war between communist and democratic party when portuguise leave without building a decent goverment)
Indonesia rule timor fo about 20 years, and give referendum that finally liberate timor. No communism and australia can wash their hands and act as hero.
So where the genocide came from?
It’s just a matter of typing: German crimes against ethnic Poles in your google desktop. Over 6mi deaths, average 2,800/day. More than 50% of upper and professional class of the society killed. If these numbers don’t make it a one of the top ten genocide and the number 8 that you put still does, then I’d call the whole list utterly flawed.
What no Belgium! King Leopold and his lackies killed MILLIONS. This picture sums up the horrors of the Belgians:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nsala_of_Wala_in_Congo_looks_at_the_severed_hand_and_foot_of_his_five-year_old_daughter,_1904.jpg
What about RU 486?
Number 8 seems to be kind of joke. Yeah. some may say that ordinary german families vere not Hitler supporters by 1945. But 10-15 years before, their chosen Hitler to be their chancelor. Germans were responsible for II WW. Yes, they were dying while being transported ot the west after the war, but the numbers given here are cited after some German activist (Erica Steinbach) who want to clear their responsibility for II WW and greatly enlarge number of casualties.
BTW. Did you hear what Americans and allies did to Drezden in 1945, when almost only civilians were there? Please read “Soughterhouse no. 5″ by american WW II veteran and SF writer Kurt Vonnegut. There were more causalties, than from your nukes in Japan…. It was you – american who killed innocent German families and it seems there was nothing wrong about it. While after war all the people were dying because of hunger and sickness – not only Germans. And you say that it was a genocide in case of Germans, who are responsible for II WW?
For me, Polish, a citizen of country that lost 6-10 mln people during II WW(20-30% population) and 40% of medics, 33% of tteachers, 30% of scienits and then in 1944 in Jalta sold to Stalin by Churchil and Roosvelt, for another 44 years of communist terror, for me this 8th biggest genocide is a bitchslap. Please, reconsider this selection.
“The Killing Fields” is a great drama that takes place in Cambodia during the Khmer regime.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Killing_Fields_(film)
WHat about the most recent? the ethnic cleansing of muslims from burma. the horrific murders of not only men but women and children. i encourage you to research it. it was recent, around june 2012.
I am appalled by the omission of the genocide of Native Americans. It is unconscionable to look at modern history and ignore this tragedy of the population of the two entire continents. Native American population was ruthlessly exterminated over many decades. This shameful crime was methodically carried out by the U.S. military and culminated with effective destruction of the Native American culture, expulsion of survivors from their land and their total humiliation. The fact that to this day there is no official recognition of this crime and not even a mention of the admission of responsibility is even more tragic. Shame!
#8 8. Expulsion of Ethnic Germans? Misteake.
What about Katyn? What about great hunger on Ukraine 1932/33?
Your list sucks
Where is Darfur!? Not even an honorable mention!?
You gotta be kidding, right? This is a JOKE of a list. Expulsion of Germans?? Medi-whosits?? Not even ONE mention of any Native American genocides….and did you ever hear of these really bad hombres from a few hundred years ago called the Mongols?? Their genocides were of such epic proportions in some cases they changed the very direction of civilization ITSELF. (Read Iraq)
In a perfect world, you would be banned from ever writing another list anywhere ever, and at best, even holding a semi-sharpened pencil for all the thought, care or research you devoted to this so-called “list”.
There are many genocides perpetrated through out history.
the discovery of america both north and south and the centuries of oppression that followed to the the natives including the greatest civilizations known to man on that continent.
how the colonial era of late 19th century the death toll could be bigger than many of the ones listed here.
Weren’t most of the deaths actually from diseases they had no immunity from, and later on, from alcoholism? That would make the death toll tragic, but not genocide.
There’s a really fascinating book called “1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus” that makes the point that North America was not this pastoral wilderness the settlers found. The Native Americans had much more impact on their environment than was previously understood, including clearing out huge swatches of forest so that the wildlife they hunted would have more grassland and be easier to hunt and kill. Our ancestors went west and found the wilderness and teeming wildlife as it was because so many Indians had already died off from diseases and the land had reverted back to its primeval, mostly human-free state.
You missed two big ones, the Mongul Conquests and the killing off of Native Americans.
I’ve always considered Julius Caesar’s “Conquest of Gaul” a particularly nasty genocide toward the Celtic peoples of Continental Europe. Any thoughts or comments?
Why don’t you like Nazis?
Wengerocracy is a form of government where the people watch the ruler entirely amongst their reign. Wengerocracy prevents the leader of a country from covering up unlawful behavior going on.
Why aren’t Germans writing and publishing books on the importance of instating wengerocracy after the holocaust?
Why aren’t Germans writing and publishing books on the importance of instating wengerocracy before pol pot takes power?
Why aren’t Germans writing and publishing books on the importance of instating wengerocracy in Cambodia?
Why didn’t Germans write and publish books on the importance of instating wengerocracy before khmer rouge?
Why don’t I like Germans?
I buy into “genocide” for the Germans expelled at the end of World War 2 for two reasons:
1) they were expelled for being German, which fits the criteria for genocide: “the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group” (Wikipedia again), and
2) this definition has nothing to say about whether the ethnic, racial, religious, or national group in question deserved to die, in your opinion or anybody else’s.
They were Germans, and Stalin, among others, was happy to assist in the extermination of a huge number of Germans at the end of WW2, because they were the evil, hated Germans. All groups that are treated thus are the evil, hated fill in your blank here. This is genocide.
I thought that genocide means “killing” not “expulsion”. The deaths were mostly the result of starvation and diseases.
Mayby it is a kind of genocide. But it should be #800 not #8.
Should have looked look up the definition of genocide before compiling the list.
Yeah, if number 8th are Germans maybe you should put there also extermination of Persians at Thermopiles? These blood-thirsty Spartans killed so many of them there… In comparison to whole world population, or regular army size in these time it was a real genocide…
So where is Palestinian genocide by the Israeli? After WWII simply stating an opinion about Israeli crimes makes you “Antisemitic”. This is insane. Israel has been murdering Palestinian civilians, most of them children, in a daily basis for tor than a half century.
“unlike Russia and China, Germany had no history of such cruelty beforehand”
That’s not true. Germans committed similar acts of genocide in their African colonies during the nineteenth centuries.
How can you not mention the Genocide on the Native Americans??? That’s typical US (better: not all US citizens, of course, but the typical stupid white christian rednecks that love their guns…), always busy pointing their fingers on others but systematically hushing up their own countless crimes. How the US treated the Native Americans was the inspiration for Hitler, btw.
And making a Top 10 of Genocides is quite tasteless I think.
If you read the first two paragraphs, you will see that there is a clear explanation of why the treatment of the Indians at the hands of Euro-American immigrants was not included in this list. To begin with, although the arrival of Europeans in North America may have resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of Indians, most of those deaths were the result of the accidental introduction of European diseases to which Indians had no resistance.
Of course, there were cases of diseases being introduced intentionally, such as the British purposefully giving the Ottowa people Smallpox infected blankets during Pontiac’s rebellion. However, no one at the time could have possibly anticipated how rapidly those diseases would spread, or how devastating they would be.
Aside from disease, the next largest culprit in the deaths of all those tens of millions of Indians was also not overt violence, but was instead the result of starvation resulting from the mass expropriation of Indian land by the governments of Canada and the United States of America.
A key distinction is that the massive numbers of white settlers who displaced the Indians and settled on Indian lands didn’t do so purposefully in order to purposefully kill the Indians through starvation. To the contrary, they did so merely in order create better lives for themselves. The mass starvation of the Indians was just an unfortunate byproduct of it, and not an intentional result thereof.
Of course, this shouldn’t be interpreted as suggesting that every single white man, or white woman for that matter, who emigrated to the Americas and moved west, was innocent. Right from the start there were certain white people [Christopher Columbus being a notable example] who saw genocide and slavery as being the only suitable means of dealing with indigenous peoples.
[Interestingly, from what I've read, Columbus and his men were all quite hated back in Spain as well. While the Spanish crown expended massive amounts of money, and massive numbers of Spanish soldiers died, in the reconquista of Spanish lands which had been seized by the Islamic caliphate in the middle ages, Columbus embezzled massive amounts of money, spent it on himself, and was also horrifically cruel to the Spanish peasants.]
Despite a popular misconception, people in Europe had known since the time of the ancient Greeks that the earth was round, and approximately what its circumference was. However, after the fall of the Byzantine empire to the Ottoman Turks, Europe was cut off from its previously lucrative trade routes to East Asia.
At the time, most scholars in Europe knew the approximate size of the earth, and knew that East Asia was too far away from Europe to get to by sailing west. However, Columbus did his own calculation of the size of the earth, and dramatically miscalculated. He thought the earth was much smaller than it really was, and that it would therefore be possible to get to Asia by sailing around the opposite side of the world.
Now, the Spanish monarchy hated Columbus because he was so corrupt, and so when he presented his plan to the king and queen of Spain, they saw it as a convenient way to get rid of him. [They didn't actually expect Columbus to survive the journey.]
So, they gave Columbus three of the smallest ships they could find, gave him a crew of thieves, murderers and rapists from the local jail [people they also never wanted to see again] and sent them on what was, as far as I know, the longest voyage in history at that time, [and yes, I've heard about the voyages of the eunuch admiral Zheng He].
At the time, nobody in Spain knew that the Americas even existed. Essentially, Columbus and his men were a motley crew of worthless criminals who were crammed onto boats and sent out to sea in the hope that they would never return. They were thieves, murderers and rapists back in Europe, and when they arrived in the Americas, they continued to be thieves, murderers and rapists.
Later, when other people in Spain realized that what Columbus had discovered was an entirely new world, and when they heard about all of the terrible thing which Columbus did there, Columbus was banished from the Spanish colonies in the Americas.
The early period of European colonization of the Americas was largely characterized by people like Columbus enslaving and mass-murdering American Indians entirely to satisfy their own greed. However, if you read the actual historical accounts written by white settles during the period of westward expansion, most do not express the sort of seething, genocidal hatred which typically characterizes events such as the Nazi holocaust or the Rwandan genocide.
In many of the original historical accounts written by European settles, [for instance: the Little House series] the writers express a certain amount of sympathy for the plight of the American Indians, and a certain amount of regret that the westward expansion of Euro-American civilization was causing so much suffering on the part of the indigenous people.
In fact, from what I have read, it would appear that throughout the eighteen-hundreds it was primarily the white women, rather than the white men, who regularly advocated the mass-murder of the Indians. [Tell that to a typical feminist!] Nonetheless, the overall attitude of the white man toward the Indian during that period appears to have been primarily a combination of regret and stoicism, rather than of true hatred.
Unfortunately, even though the vast majority of white settlers who migrated westward did not do so specifically in order to cause suffering to indigenous people, the continuous westward expansion of white settlers did nonetheless cause terrible suffering, largely due to starvation resulting from the expropriation of Indian lands, on the part of indigenous people.
Unfortunately, this widespread starvation and suffering often led to immense hatred, on the part of the Indian, toward the white settlers. This frequently led to acts of horrific violence on the part of the Indians, toward the white settlers. Among such acts of violence were things such as the indiscriminate killing of white settlers, the mutilation of the genitals of the white settlers after they had been killed, the cutting open of the bellies of pregnant white women, the removal of their unborn children, the nailing of those unborn children to trees, and countless similar things.
It is important to note that the Indian nations as a whole did not only do these things to white settlers. They had been subjecting one-another to similar atrocities since time immemorial, and they also subjected countless African-Americans, both slave and free, to the same sort of cruelty. [Many Indian nations practiced the enslavement of African-Americans as well.]
Unfortunately, this widespread retaliatory violence on the part of American Indians toward white settlers continuously fed hatred and resentment on the part of white settlers toward American Indians, which probably would not have existed otherwise.
Unfortunately, this hatred and resentment on the part of white settlers toward American Indians further led to sporadic killings of American Indians by settlers, militiamen, and after the illegal creation of the United States Army during the American civil war, by federal soldiers as well. Although most of these settlers, soldiers and militiamen were white men, some of them were also freed black men who either had joined the US army or a state militia, or else migrated westward to escape racial prejudice.
Unfortunately, the frequent and barbaric violence perpetrated by American Indians upon white settlers perpetually fueled an ever deeper and deeper, and ever more and more bitter, hatred of American Indians by many white men and women, which was compounded in each successive generation by the continued violence.
The vast majority of deaths of American Indians during the period of westward expansion were not the result of any concerted effort on the part of the white man to exterminate the Indians, but were merely an unintended consequence of the accidental introduction of European diseases, and of the perpetual theft of Indian lands.
However, in the later half of the nineteenth century and throughout most of the twentieth century, the aforementioned hatred of American Indians, fueled by the aforementioned retaliatory violence, on the part of American Indians, toward white men and women, gave rise to numerous policies which were explicitly genocidal toward the Indians.
Among these were practices such as the mass killings of herds of American bison [not "buffalo"] in order to purposefully reduce the populations of the Sioux tribes through starvation; the offering, by the US postal service, of bounties on the scalps of Indian children; the utterly appalling abuses [murder, rape and torture, forced lobotomies, electroshock therapy, surgical sterilizations, forced abortions and other medical experiments, and countless other atrocities] perpetrated upon indigenous children in the residential schools in the US and Canada during the twentieth century [I think Australia might have done the same things to their indigenous children, but I would have to look it up to be sure.]; and the involuntary surgical sterilizations of numerous Indian women during the nineteen-sixties and nineteen-seventies. [That's right, the NINETEEN-sixties and NINETEEN-seventies!]
Here’s a question for you:
What do the American abortion industry, the Catholic sex-abuse scandal, and racism toward American Indians, all have in common?
The answer:
The American abortion industry started out as a way to prevent American Indian teenage girls from giving birth after they were raped [real rape, not phony statutory rape] and impregnated by Christian priests in the residential schools, in an attempt to cover up the abuses which were occurring there. Remember that next time someone tells you that abortion is about a woman’s “right to chose”!
In summary, although the vast majority of deaths of American Indians due to European colonization of the Americas were not the result of any concerted effort on the part of the white man to exterminate the Indians, but were instead merely an unfortunate byproduct of the aforementioned colonization, the conflict between the Indian and the white man did eventually give rise to numerous individual acts on the part of white men and women which were explicitly genocidal towards American Indians.
Furthermore, although none of those individual genocidal acts may have occurred on anywhere near the scale of something such as the Nazi holocaust, the cruelty and callousness with which they were perpetrated was in most cases as terrible if not more so than anything which the author listed in this article.
In particular, although the abuses in the Indian residential school system may not have affected nearly as many people as many of the events listed in this article, in terms of pure hatred and cruelty, I would consider it to be by far the single most despicable act which any civilization has ever committed.
The victims the residential school system were not dangerous criminals, thieves or murderers. Rather, they were the most innocent of children, totally undeserving of what was done to them. The Indian children did not live separately from their abusers as did the Jews in Auschwitz, Dachau or Treblinka. Rather, they lived in close proximity. Their abusers knew their names and their faces, and yet still they were brutally tortured and killed.
The torture and murder was not carried out indirectly by cold, unfeeling machines such as the Nazi gas chambers, to spare the abusers the guilt which might arise from seeing their victims’ humanity. Instead, the torture and murder was intimately hands on, and face-to-face. It was not a sudden, uncontrolled outburst of violence such as in Rwanda. Rather, the horrific tortures and killings of Indian children in the residential school system were frighteningly well-planned and well-orchestrated, and continued for decades.
The perpetual rape, torture and murder was not the fault of only a few evil persons perpetrating such abuses on their own initiative and without the knowledge or sanction of their superiors. On the contrary, the abuses in the residential school system were orchestrated and sanctioned at the absolute highest levels of the governments of the nations in which they occurred.
Although other individuals have attempted to apologize by proxy for the abuses which were committed, it does not appear that any of the specific individuals responsible for those abuses has ever expressed any remorse therefore. [At least some of the guards at Nazi death camps were sorry for what they did!]
Lastly, although a small number of the individuals responsible for some of these abuses are currently in the process of being held legally accountable, it is unlikely that the vast majority of persons responsible for those abuses will ever be held accountable for their actions, especially since many of them have long since died.
For these reasons, I consider the abuses in the Indian residential school system to be overwhelmingly the most vile and despicable act ever perpetrated by any civilization in history.
Congratulations, you have published the longest comment in history of TopTenz.net (2,158 words), which is longer than 99% of our posts.
I have to disagree with your comment about the Native American genocide. I’ve had the opportunity to read about the “trail of tears” and many other tricks that the white settlers did to the Native Americans. It was all about greed, they wanted what the Natives had and that’s all there is to it. They forced hundred of Natives to walk over 800 miles from their land to have them settle in an area in which they were not familiar and thats only part of it. They consistently were lied to the Natives saying that if they sign a treaty they will be taken care of. They were also killed if they were Native and another interesting piece of fact was that they were stripped of their culture. I don’t know about you but I think if another society came here and tried to change everything that we are I would have a problem with that. Genocide is a horrible thing to do to any group of people no matter what the situation is.
No.1
Srebrenica, (Bosnia and Herzegovina), 1995.
It is true that most of the deaths of Natives were caused ny disease, but after the small pox epidemic the colonial empires and the US killed natives until 1918 with a death toll of 50 million and the killing cuntinues in Latin America and the Amazon with a death toll in the hundreds of thousands so yes, that is genocide.
No it is not 75-90% of the deaths were do to small pox which the Europeans did not intentionally bring over
Surely the atlantic slave trade has to come at the top of this list: sure, it’s hard to quantify how many died or were displaced as a direct or indirect result of slavery, and it doesn’t often figure in this list because it happened over 400years, but it was a type of genocide. Genghis Khan (14th century) probably killed more than Stalin but slightly less than Zedong (40 million). Some maintain that more Native Americans died in the colonisation of north America than in the holocaust. A bit of a dubious list.
The bloodiest civilization/nation in history is…. China. few people know that. It had large scale armies, disastrous dynastic turnovers that killed millions, even in ancient and medeval times.
Modern Humans started with the Neanderthal Genocide. Killing is in our DNA!
” The universe is hostile. so Impersonal. devour to survive.
So it is. So it’s always been.”
(Tool 2006)
What about the 1984 genocide planned by the Indian Government against Sikhs in India. Thousands of Sikhs were killed by organised mobs of Hindus and justice is yet to be served despite annual protests and marches from the Sikh community all around the world.
Your initial comment claims that the small pox epidemic that killed such a huge number of Native Americans was “unintentional.” It is unfortunate that you are perpetuating a lie. There are U.S. congressional records clearly promoting and outlining the shipping of infected blankets collected from eastern locations (where Native Americans were dying from an outbreak of small pox) and shipped out west and given to Native Americans there – given under the guise of ‘donations’ or as part of treaty obligations meant to compensate these people for being moved off their traditional lands. Shame on you! Shame! You are a genocide denier.
“However, the overwhelming majority of those deaths were due to smallpox being inadvertently introduced into a native population that lacked the biological means to resist it which, while devastating, was not a genocide as it was not done intentionally” Another apologist who claims to decry the crimes of others but wants to hide the dirty hands of their own country.
How quaint. the slave trade isn’t mentioned once in this list. From 1452 to 1807, European nations carried out an intentional and relentless attempt to subjugate or annihilate all nonwhites/nonchristians IN THE WORLD. But I guess that just doesn’t count, despite resulting in 355 years worth of deaths from abuse, disease, malnutrition, exposure, et al.
What about the on-going genocide of Afrikaners in South Africa?