Top 10 Villanous Rulers
Throughout the history of mankind there have been some rulers that use fear and terror to gain control of their people. They rule with an iron fist and an unrelenting thirst for power and recognition. Unfortunately for society there was too many for them all to fit on the list, so here’s the worst of the worst.
10. Attila the Hun
Widely known as The Scourge of God, Attila ruled the Hunnic Empire with his brother, Bleda from 434 until he murdered him in 445. After Rome refused to pay him tribute, he attacked a stretch of land along the Danube. The Balkans and Greece were his next targets, with each victory weighing heavily on the Roman treasury. Before he left for Gaul, Western Emperor Valentinian’s sister, Honoria offered herself to Attila and he accepted demanding half of the Western Roman Empire as her dowry, which was refused. After the defeat to King Theodoric in Gaul, he turned his army on Italy in an attempt to reclaim Honoria as his bride. Disease stopped Attila’s advance and with Pope Leo I acting as a middle man, he negotiated a peace treaty with Valentinian. In the midst of preparing an attack on Constantinople, and while celebrating his marriage to Ildico, he suffered a severe nosebleed and choked death. However, legends suggest that he was murdered, possibly by his new bride. While some consider him a great ruler, most people consider him a ruthless barbarian warlord.
9. Ivan the Terrible
Born in 1530, Ivan was taught by his boyars how to be the Grand Prince of Moscow, a title he was given after his father’s death in 1533. In 1547, Ivan crowned himself the first Czar (God’s anointed) of Russia. He set into motion a number of reforms including lessening the boyars’ power, confirming the position of the church and restricting the mobility of peasants with new laws. In 1565 Ivan formed the Oprichnina, a section of Northeast Russia that was ruled solely by him and policed by the Oprichniki. In the latter part of his reign, he was desperate for his realm to reach the sea and launched Russia into the 24-year Livonian War against Swedes, Lithuanians, Poles and Livonian Teutonic Knights. After drought, famine, and an epidemic of the plague that killed between 600-1000 people daily in Moscow alone, Ivan became mentally unstable and his Oprichniks got out of hand and quickly became incredibly violent. In 1581 in a fit of rage he killed his eldest son and heir, Ivan by striking him in the head with his pointed staff. He died in 1584 while playing chess, a later examination of his remains found that he was poisoned with mercury.
8. Benito Mussolini
Known to many as Il Duce (the Leader), Mussolini’s political career began in 1900 when he became a member of the Socialist Party. After serving in WWI, he formed the National Fascist party in 1919and advocated for aggressive nationalism and forcible restoration of order as well as ruthlessly opposing Communists and Socialists. He was elected to Parliament in 1921 and the next year he sent Fascists to march on Rome and Mussolini was granted joint leadership with King Victor Emmanuel III. He transformed Italy into a dictatorship, taking total control of all spheres of political, social, economic and cultural life, and executed his opposition with the help of the secret police and Fascist party militia. Despite his distrust in Hitler, he aligned himself with Germany during WWII. Hitler pressured Mussolini into adopting an Anti -Semitic policy in Italy which along with the previous wars against Ethiopia and Spain, led to widespread unpopularity. He was dismissed by the King in 1943 and was imprisoned until he was rescued by German troops. While trying to escape to Switzerland in 1945, he was captured by Italian partisan troops and shot. His body (and the bodies of other Fascists) was dumped on the ground of the Piazza Loreto in Milan where it was shot, kicked and spat upon before being hung from meat hooks at a gas station and stoned by civilians.
7. Mao Zedong
Commonly referred to as Chairman Moa, he began his career as a soldier during the 1911 Revolution, after which he returned to school. In 1921 he attended the National Congress of the Communist Party of China and in 1923 he was elected as a commissar of the Central Committee. In 1931 he was elected as chairman of the Soviet Republic of China and in 1934 he led the Red Army on the long march which pushed him to the forefront as the most important Communist leader. After the second Sino-Japanese War and a civil war, he continued his leadership of the new People’s Republic of China. In an attempt to revive the Chinese economy, Mao established the Great Leap Forward, a program that favored industry over agriculture. The result was a famine that killed between20 and 30 million people. The failure of the Great Leap Forward led to Mao being replaced as chairman of the central government council in 1959 by Liu Shaogi, however he remained chairman of the Communist part. He reasserted his power in his last years with the Cultural Revolution which purged all capitalist and elitist culture.
6. Idi Amin
Beginning his military career as a private of the British Army in Uganda in 1946, Amin quickly rose through the ranks. After charges of brutality, the British tried to get Prime Minister Obote to prosecute him to no avail, and when Uganda became an independent nation, Amin helped Obote to create army training camps. In 1971 he staged a coup and became President of Uganda. He was a charismatic man that immediately gained popularity with the common people, but this didn’t last. He ordered the execution of 600 troops who were loyal to Obote and purged entire ethnic groups from within his army. With three separate security organizations (the military police, the Public Safety Unit (PSU) and the State Research Center.) He consolidated power by giving them the power to arrest and execute citizens and seize properties at will. During his rule he killed between 100,000 and 500,000 mostly innocent citizens, tortured thousands more and looted Uganda’s treasury. After a war with Tanzania, he was forced into exile first in Libya then in Saudi Arabia where he died of hypertension and kidney failure in 2003.
5. Leopold II of Belgium
Born in 1835 to King Leopold I, he grew up as heir to the Belgian throne. He became a member of the senate in 1855 and instantly began to push for colonization in Africa and Asia. When he became king, and with the help of explorer Henry Morgan Stanley, he organized the International Association for the Exploration and Civilization of the Congo and at the Berlin Conference of 1884-85, the Congo Free State was established with Leopold as its ruler. He amassed a huge personal fortune by exploiting the Congolese people through forced labor, especially in the rubber industry. Enslavement and mutilation ran rampant with an estimated death toll between two and 30 million. When news broke of his atrocities in 1905, British and American pressure forced Leopold to hand over the Congo to the Belgian government and thus became the Belgian Congo.
4. Joseph Stalin
Born in 1894, he first turned his attention to theological study before converting to Marxism and joining the Social Democratic party. He fought his was to power by pushing out his rivals and former allies, eventually becoming the dictator of the USSR. In 1928 he began his Five Year Plans, aggressive industrial and agricultural programs which left thousands of peasants dead as well as getting rid of his political opposition through purge trial and secret execution. This was a part of the Great Purge that was aimed at members of the Communist party who were accused of sabotage, terrorism and treachery and at this time he was also deporting ethnic minorities. He began WWII allied with Nazi Germany but when Hitler turned on him, he took control of the military and sided with Britain and the United States. After the war, he consolidated his power in the Soviet Union against capitalist threats. He became paranoid in his later years which led him to persecute his closest collaborators. Stalin died in 1953 of a cerebral hemorrhage, and after his death, Nikita Khrushchev and other Soviet leaders accused him of tyranny, terror, falsification of history and self-glorification, in a period called de-Stalinization.
3. Queen Ranavalona I of Madagascar
Also known as the Mad Queen of Madagascar, Ranavalona I seized power in 1828 after her husband Radama’s death (and some even say she poisoned him). At the beginning of her reign, she promised to restore customary rites and old beliefs as well as giving control back to priests, judges and slave merchants. Paranoid of European colonization, she persecuted and expelled all foreigners. This led to her violently persecuting native Christians and when it didn’t eradicate Christianity, she had everyone who owned a Bible executed. The executions were less than successful and she retaliated by dangling 15 Christian leaders 150 feet above a rock-filled ravine and when they refused to denounce Christ and pray to her idols, and when they refused, their ropes were cut and they fell to their deaths. Slaves were completely disposable to Ranavalona and more than one million were killed in ritual executions, including ten thousand in a single week during her buffalo hunt. And they weren’t just killed they were tortured, usually by throwing them repeatedly from hilltops, boiling them alive or sewing them up to the neck in a freshly slaughtered buffalo hide and either left to rot or fed to wild dogs. She died peacefully in her sleep in 1861 after a terrifying 33-year rule.
2. Vlad Dracula
Also known as Vlad the Impaler, the Prince of Wallachia was born in 1431 at a time when his lands were under the control of the Ottoman Empire and as his father’s second he was held hostage as a boy with his younger brother Radu. After the deaths of his father and older brother he took the throne at the age of 17. The beginning of his rule was spent ridding Wallachia of those who were threats to his power. His favorite means of execution was impalement in which a stake is inserted into the body and left upright until the stake makes its way through the body, a slow and painful death that could last for days. While accounts vary, the amount of people who suffered by his hand range between 40,000 and 100,000 (most were tortured in some form) and it is said that when an invading Ottoman army found the forest of corpses outside Targoviste they turned and fled. Vlad died in a battle near Bucharest in 1476 and was buried at Snagov Monastery, although archeologists have been unable to find his burial site. A strict defender against Turkish rule, even today Vlad is considered a hero to the people of Romania. In 1897 he was immortalized as a blood sucking vampire in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
1. Adolph Hitler
Born in Austria in 1889, in his early years he worked as a painter before becoming a Bavarian soldier in 1914. After World War I, he became a member of the National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) party and in 1921 he became the chairman. With hyperinflation, political chaos and the possibility of a Communist takeover that happened afer the war, Hitler offered solutions and he took control of a coalition government in 1933 and later was given dictatorial powers. At the beginning of his Third Reich, he murdered political opposition and bullied smaller nations into giving him land. He began World War II when he aligned with the USSR and invaded Poland. His need for the expansionism of Germany drove him to attack or bully Austria, Czechoslovakia, France, Great Britain, Greece, Yugoslavia, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium and eventually his ally, Russia. Driven by his Anti- Semitic views, Hitler sought to create a perfect Aryan race by eliminating Jews. He stripped the Jews of the right to be a part of society and set up concentration camps where they were either brutally used as slave labor, gassed or shot. The Holocaust is one of the worst atrocities in the history of mankind and it killed more than six million Jews and millions of Roma (Gypsies), communists, political leaders and intellectuals. Facing defeat, Hitler and his wife Eva Braun committed suicide on April 30, 1945.
You have Stalin listed as killing only thousands???? Have you never heard of the Holodomor, which killed MILLIONS of Ukrainians? Stalin killed more people than Hitler.
I quote “Hitler started World War 2″ that in itself killed way more then benito.
By the way, despite my earlier correction, it’s a great list! Very informative.
I am greatly offended at the errors in this list. First that you have Hitler placed at number 1 instead of Mao. Hitler is responsible for the deaths of around 12million. Joseph Stalin is responsible for at least 70million. He is responsible for a intentional famine in the Ukraine which in one winter killed 7 million. and Mao Tse-Tung is responsible for the deaths of 100 Million during just the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution
THAAAANK YOU!!!!
um mao and stalin killed waaayy more people than hitler did, I mean if this in order and mao is only in seventh that’s ridiculous
nahh . you are just ignorant ,read more books and you are not supposed to teach history
Although Spencer made a good point about the poor ordering in this otherwise interesting list, his statistics are inaccurate. (BTW – I am a professor of history).
Current thought holds that Stalin killed between 30-40 million people during the course of his reign, and Mao in the neighborhood of 50-60 million.
The 100 million figure is often a point of confusion, as The Black Book of Communism uses that figure for all communist leaders and governments, not individuals.
It is no surprise that Hitler is placed at #1, because his efforts were aimed at liquidating an entire race of people (along with the Romani, alcoholics, homosexuals, the chronically unemployed, the mental and physically handicapped…). The current tally for deaths in the Holocaust are approximately 10 million: 6 million Jews, and 4 million “others”. Thus Hitler’s aims are often considered when placing him in the company of fellow mass murderers, because neither Stalin nor Mao had the desire to wipe out an entire race of people.
Well actually Stalin was about to start a pogrom that would have deported and exterminated the Jews in the USSR which would have been worse than the Holocaust, but he died before it could be carried out. Also I think its worse when u are Anti-Human as opposed to simply racist. Because then your targets for mass murder are unlimited as opposed to objectively limited.
I am glad that you included Vlad III the Impaler, although I am surprised that he was ranked # 2, when Stalin was credited with a higher genocide count. Hitler came very close. I am not nit picking. This is just a personal observation, I think that all these peoples were monsters! Anyway, I wonder if the only way to objectively determine who is the most evil ruler is by their body count they leave behind. It’s a sad concept but an accurate approach to answer the question.
Vlad Tepes (in english the Impaler) was a monster for all the criminals, thefts, all those who wanted to conquer our country!
For Romanian people he was a hero! Who was standing before the armies of turks defending the christianism and he’s people is called a hero!
i dont believe in the Mao’s part very much … he was a giant ruler but without fear and terror, and i dont think it’s a problem that billions of chinese would care . the truth has been proved and this ruling policy worked … personally , the U.S is ruling the middle east with fear and terror ( Iraq and afganistan war )
so you think sacrificing in tens of millions is acceptable? when it comes to others yes but not when it comes to your own life… no one has to right to take anyone’s life….
you obviously dont know chinese history very well , i think Mao’s generally good ,there’s a saying here that Mao is 70% honored while 30% in mistake, he was taken advantage of by the Gang of Four in last years of his life (when he was disconscious), all the chinese people are somehow victims (my older generation is no exception) but the cultural revolution is definitely not villanous ,we were always republic and even up to this moment , Mao is still admired as a legend in this nation’s history
um … i hate to burst your bubble but there was massive amounts of terror under Mao’s rule. it was communist. It can’t exist without an atmosphere of an all pervasive and ineffable and debilitating terror
as i’ve said above, Mao was taken advantage of during cultural revolution , actually he was the one that wanted democracy in civil war , there’re massive people living in this country, 100% democracy doesnt work all the time ,that was still not villanous my older generations were somehow victims though
What, no mention of the Kims? I’m a little dissapointed…
What about Pol Pot, whose Khmer Rouge wiped out over 20% of Cambodia’s population and essentially set the country’s development back by over 10 years?
I’m surprised Pol Pot isn’t included on this list. I also agree with others who commented about Hitler being too high on the list, especially when Stalin and Mao are also included. I would have placed him at #3 with Stalin at 2 and Mao at number one (but that’s just me of course). Other than this, I really enjoyed the list.
Thank you TBear. That is exactly what I was thinking.
Leopold’s partner in crime was Henry Morton Stanley, not Henry Morgan Stanley
Actually Vlad Tepes is not an evil ruler and shouldn’t be on this list at all. In Romania he is regarded as one of our most successful medieval rulers. He kept the invading ottoman armies from overrunnig the country as well as the rest of Europe.
His evil side is just a popculture joke made famous by Stoker’s novel. Vlad’s ties to all things demonic is just a figment of mr. Stoker’s mind so that the story had some nice pseudo history to rely on.
And btw the whole east-European vampire thing comes from a Hungarian dutchess who bathed in virgin blood to keep young.
So next time before posting something on a site that many ppl see and enjoy please have the decency to actually research what ur putting up.
Bravo Andrei! Well said!
The fact that Hitler was placed as number one is due the fact he was seen as the main evil of WW2.
Even that position became fixed since he was a great scapegoat for allies. As stated before here, Mao and Stalin were responsible for more deaths than Hitler. Also, Hitler did not consider Jews nor other minorities as something to be eliminated at the beginning of his reign, they became a scapegoat for Germans for the situation of their country.
And like the Andrei said, Vlad Tepes was not a evil ruler like he is portrayed in mainstream media. There’s too much focus on his method of executing peoples: The impalement to see his true deeds.
And no, there will not be american presidents here on the list, since they consider themselves righteous in their deeds on maintaining “world peace”, even if they have to use nuclear devices on foreign grounds (Hiroshima and Nagasaki).
Most of listing is due to the mainstream images given to each person, not as much of their true deeds. Don’t believe all the information and propaganda you come across the internet or the news, afterall it’s all manmade info, true or false. Guess who were men also? Yuh, that’s right, the top 10 you read off here.
i am surprise that there is no picture of American president JORGE W BUSH in this list
dear all do u forgot his countless killing thought. so kindly change the numbering and give Mr. bush The first Rank Plz
Bush,Cheney,Lindon Johnson,Kissinger, the Secretary of State who nuked Japan, twice,the many Bilderbergers,CFRs,Trilaterals,Club Of Romers,Clinton etc cannot be ignored.
Unfortunately, history is not mathematics. It’s subject to bias and limited to perspective so the positions are arguable. The impact of Hitler’s deeds only seems to be greatest because it is more recent, but at the same time its account has a higher chance of being more accurate. Having said that, his transparent hatred and intentions of the mass murders still places him near or at the top of the list. I think the intentions, the inhumanity, or the vileness of the ruler’s actions should be taken more into consideration than the estimations of the number who have died or suffered from their regime. The ranking of some of the rulers are questionable due to differing perspectives. For example, the historical account of Attila as a ravaging barbarian is flawed, because it mostly comes from Western Europe and the Church’s accounts which would have painted its feared enemy as the cruelest of the cruel. Other accounts write of him as a noble and merciful ruler. There’s no telling who would have been right.
I understand that this list is supposed to be about villianious behaviour, not the most barbaric leaders, but unfortunate it seems the authour forgot that.
I do not know why the internet has a massive fascination with Hitler; his acts of villianee have been grossly blown out of proportion. Yes, he was the driving force behind the Holocaust, yes he essentially started World War 2, though if not for his loyal alliance with the MUCH WORSE Japanese, this would not have probably effected America – he went to war with America because of Japan’s pre-emptive strike on Pearl Harbour.
That aside here’s some crib notes;
10) He was normal for the time. And he’s only more infamous then the half dozen warlords stomping around the region at the time because he destroyed the ‘civilized’ Romans. Rome was a barbaric nation that set the world back 1500 years in science and technology and ensured that the ignorance of relgions, a concept that would have died out naturally in the next four hundred years if Rome hadn’t adopted Christianity and transmuted it to the lords and barons emerging from the empire’s ashes.
9) Again, normal for the time.
7) This guy should not be seventh. He should be first. He slaughtered thousands of his fellow country men. He established a personality cult that influenced and drove other guerilla movements in other countries. His inept ideas were the back bone of such things as the Great Leap Forward. His reign of terror ensured that events like Tienanmen would happen long after his death. He also tried on several occasions to coerce the two Cold War super powers into open warfare against each other. He sent his legions down against the United Nations in North Korea and almost had the whole peninsula enslaved in inept Communist rule; South Korea could be vastly different today. AND as a kicker, he helped the North Vietnamese successfully defeat the South and Americans, then turned on them not four years later. If they hadn’t interfered and funded the people they would later be killing, South Vietnam might be a progressive place much like South Korea. But nope, number 7 Mao didn’t do enough to be higher then Idi ‘only famous cause I’m in a movie’ Amin.
6) Why is he here? He was villainous but he was normal of Africa for the time. Does the authour know who Theoneste Bagosora is? Obviously not, by this poor list. He is one of the chief engineers of the Rwandan civil war and genocide. He was extremely disturbed, did not want the Arusha (Peace) accords to go through, and went back to Africa to await the apocalypse. He had his followers attack civilians and peacekeepers all while the walls were falling down. He is a much more villainous leader, and he is a part of our generation. But since the authour obviously only gets their inspiration from Hollywood and other top ten lists, they wouldn’t know this.
5) Leopold? Oh jeez. Gotta have the white, monarch/capitalist who ‘exploits’ (forced development is a word that doesn’t often grace lists like these) a continent that was still living in the stone age. Yep, he’s evil ahead of Mao and comparable to Hitler. In fact, its because of him that the Congo STILL isn’t a nice place to live. Yep. There are absolutely no internal ethnic tendencies and a complete lack of interest in development by the indigenous population that is really the reason why Africa is the worlds punchline. It’s the fault of rich, white people.
4) Yes, Stalin. One of the worst (Modern men). Yet he’s only 4, and the facts about him are grossly played down. Stalin was WORSE then Hitler. Go search Holodomor. The Ukrainians suffered more IN PEACETIME ALONE then the entire Jewish, Gypsy and Mentally challenged demographic that was made up the Holocaust. But that’s okay, because World War 2 happened and eventually the Ukrainians were freed and allowed to live securely in their own land! Oh wait, that’s right, Stalin continued to persecute them and the Soviet Union ruled them until 1990. By that time the Holocaust inspired Israel had already slaughtered the British (See the Haganah for more villainy the internet doesn’t seem to care about) and committed the same crimes against the Palestinians that the Nazi party had perpetrated against them. Yet we absolutely worship the Holocaust and consider it the single greatest crime in history. Stalin committed a half dozen of these from the late 1910’s to his peaceful death in bed in the early 1950’s. If the world would have been obliterated in a Nuclear War it would have been because of this man. He manipulated every ally he had in WW2; he fought for the Nazi’s until they pre-empted him. Then he refused to help the USA with their war against Russian until the last few weeks when he gobbled up Manchuria.
Stalin only fought the German’s, never offering supplies or men other theaters outside of Russia. He had parties and fancy suppers while his men died by the tens of thousands and his people starved. He constantly gutted his military of competent leaders, ensuring that Russian military tactics would be wasteful, human wave affairs. People who fell out of favour with him were obliterated – they even went so far as to doctor them out of old photos.
This list is stupid and wrong. I don’t know why the internet has a fascination with Hitler but Stalin was a thousand times worse. Anyone whose done more then two minutes of studying Wikipedia knows this.
Most of the people on this list don’t deserve to be on here (Being normal for the time) or deserve to be higher or lower. In fact, most of the people on here are only mentioned because they were in movies.
The authour has obviously learned their history and knowledge from Hollywood.
Where is Napolean? The man who turned a Democracy into an Empire, created one of the greatest military’s of the time, was exiled and came back and was defeated in a battle that was unbelievable in scale and execution? His history is far more interesting and brutal then half the people on this list.
And I actually agree with GWB being on here. This isn’t Bush bashing. This is a guy who bungled handling the single greatest terrorist attack in American history and used it’s tragedy in order to launch an invasion of an uninvolved country. 4000 young men and women have died for absolutely nothing, with more being permanently maimed and injured, in addition to the mental injuries. He constantly ranted about the evils of other countries and held expensive parties with equally diabolic men (Who ran business empires) while New Orleans sunk and the people sat on roof tops waiting for rescue. He supported the death penalty – coming from being governor of a state with the highest executions. His dad ran the country’s secret service (CIA) and was leader before him. GWB single handedly destroyed the economy, made America the single most hated nation on Earth, got thousands of his country’s young men and women killed.
And got away with it clean. He served his two terms, was never impeached, and is now living comfortably. He doesn’t deserve to be first, but he deserves to be high on here. There is no comparable first world leader of the time. The closest comparison could only be made with Putain, and that’s terrible.
And what about Emperor Hirohito? He was the driving force behind Imperial Japan. He knew about the atrocities his men were committing against civilians and prisoners of war. He knew about his men being slaughtered needlessly by overwhelming American firepower. He knew about his abandoned men, screaming his name and rotting on bypassed islands with no resources. The war in the Pacific was lost at Midway – and most Imperial officers knew this. The only reason it was perpetrated for that much longer was because of the ’sanctity’ of the Empire and the Emperor. It was his own apathy that caused the United States to bomb Japan with the nukes. The Japanese knew they were finished by the time Okinawa was won but the Emperor was refusing to surrender. Several of his advisers tried to get him to surrender, but he made it clear that he would only consider it if the Americans invaded. If they had, thousands of Japanese and hundreds of Americans would have died, not the million casualty fairy tale that some American commanders were predicting, but it would have been a brutal one month campaign.
And what happened to him? He got to live out the rest of his days in luxury – even denying decisive defeat because the Americans used a super weapon and did not take them out like true Samurai. He never had to take responsibility for the war crimes or for his own mens deaths.
Those three were much more villanous, with a books worth of atrocity and ineptitude and history behind them. Instead we get some Hollywood stories and a lot of generalized facts.
Authour has failed big time.