We’ve all heard of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Saddam Hussein, etc. But what about the evil men and women our history books don’t mention? Is there anyone more evil than Hitler? Is there anyone who is more cut throat (literally and figuratively) than Stalin? These men and women in this list are the people that our history books have forgotten and probably won’t appear in one in a long time.
Editor’s note: This articles contains detailed descriptions of violence that may be disturbing to some.
10. Elizabeth Bathory
Bathory was born on August 7, 1560 in Hungary and was known as a Countess. Born into a power family name in Hungary, we can probably assume she was well off in life. Bathory was already known as a cut-throat lady because of the countless deaths of peasants and servants under her authority which she got away with because of her high status. From direct orders made by King Matthias, based on his suspicions, he sent Count Gyorgy Thurzo to the Csejthe Castle. There, he discovered the viciousness of Bathory. Thurzo caught Bathory in the middle of torturing mainly young girls. Her inhumane form of torture consisted of jamming needles and pins under her victim’s fingernails and tying them down to soak them in honey so ants and bees could attack them. The Count even participated to please his lady, but when he died in the early 1600s, Bathory methods started getting worse. Bathory, along with her partner in crime (Ilona Joo, her former nurse and a witch), abducted girls and tortured them. She would bite chunks of their flesh, cook them, and force them to eat their flesh. Bathory believed that human blood made an individual’s skin look young and healthy. She killed these young girls for their blood and rubbed her body with blood to stop her from aging.
9. Queen Mary I of England
We’ve all heard of the urban myth to summon the ghost of a woman called Bloody Mary. Say her name 3 times in a mirror in the dark and BOOM she appears. Well, this myth is based on Queen Mary I. Now she does have a small portion dedicated to her in our history books, but it mainly focuses on her success as a queen. Catholics and Protestants have always had conflict between the two. During the Protestant Reformation, she killed hundreds of Protestants by burning them at the stake. In her attempt to make England become Catholic, hundreds died and her hope for a more Catholic England failed.
8. Talat Pasha
This Prime Minister to the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire was responsible for the genocide of the Armenian people. Now many Americans do not like to refer to this as a genocide because Turkey is considered our ally, but this was none-the-less a genocide. This is also the reason why Turkey can not join the EU, because the Turkish government will not admit that this was a genocide. Pasha declared more than war against the Armenians, he declared an order to wipe out the ENTIRE race. Armenians were tortured, raped, killed, and robbed of all their belongings. Pasha and his partners forced Armenians into concentration camps. Pasha made people carry heavy supplies and forced them to walk miles without any food or water. If they failed, they would be killed. Many individuals were forced to rape their family members. Armenians were killed with clubs, hammers, axes, hammers, bayonets, and saws. Pasha’s soldiers would even gash Armenians sex organs. Pasha is responsible for killing nearly 1.5 million Armenians out of 2.5 million.
7. Josef Mengele
Many say, you can’t blame those who kill people if they were ordered to under executive orders. If you have your life on the line or your family’s, you would do whatever you have to do to keep them safe; it’s human instinct to do so. Under Hitler’s order Mengele was ordered to kill the Jews. Well, why does Mengele make the list if we should pardon those who kill under executive order? Well, Mengele was a physician. He was in charge of sending the Jews to concentration camps or to be killed. He chose the people to do experiments on. His most common experiments were done on twins where he would look for the difference and similarities. He would try to change twins sexual organs, pour chemicals into their eyes, see if he could create conjoined twins, forced parents to kill their children, and torture the twins only to see how long they could survive. He killed 2,800 twins out of 3,000 and sent nearly half a million people to death camps. He then escaped Germany and went to South America where it is believed that he did medical experiments on about 90 more twins.
6. Ayatolla Ruhollah Khomeini
Khomeini had a tough childhood, losing his father at the age of 5 months and his mother and aunt (who raised him) in his teens; he grew up on his own. He then began to study Islam in depth. He personally believed that the leader of a country must be a religious role model. Instead of continuing a career into politics, he got deeper into his faith. He then became the religious leader of Iran from 1979 to 1989. He led the Iranian Revolution, which killed nearly 50,000 civilians. In the Iranian Revolution, in the name of “Allah,” Khomeini made his soldiers kill people who did not believe in Allah; if people listened to music, they would be killed or in prison; couples were lashed nearly 100 times for kissing in public. Civilians were shot, hanged, gassed, stabbed, stoned, and burned alive. The punishment for stealing was to cut your hands off. Women faces were burnt by acid. The tools used to kill civilians ranged from machine guns to clubs to acid. In 1988, Khomeini ordered his men to kill every prisoner if they did not repent of their sins. Children would be hanged from cranes. He held 52 Americans captive for over a year and some were kept for up to 6 years, all because of this man. Khomeini is responsible for the Islamic Holy War and the rise of Al-Qaeda.
5. Tomas de Torquemada
Now for those who are saying, “Islam is a religion of killing innocent people and its evil,” then this guy here is for you. Torquemada was the Inquisitor of Spain from the years 1483 to 1498. In his attempt to save the Catholic Church in Spain and in the name of God, he was responsible for the Spanish Inquisition. The Spanish Inquisition was “an ecclesiastical tribunal run” used to pick out those who threatened the Roman Catholic Church in Spain. Without evidence, Torquemada would order that Jews be tortured or killed. Reason being: he didn’t like them. Jews and many other people he thought were a threat to the church were tortured, killed and were forced to surrender their property. Children were left to starve to death. When civilians were being tortured, they were usually naked. Torquemada favorite torture methods were foot roasting and suffocation. People would be grilled, hanged and burned, Torquemada would pull people arms and legs out of sockets, he would force water down the throats and use a very tight cord to stop blood flow of his victims. He would crush people with extremely heavy weight, they would be pushed into chairs that had sharp points around the neck region, he used tools that would force their body to stretch, rip off his victims nipples, ears, tongues, and genitals, and he would skin people. His actions and ideologies influenced future queen and king of Spain, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Torquemada killed over 30,000 people.
4. Ivan the Terrible
Ivan the Terrible, also known as Ivan IV, was the Tsar of Russia from 1533 to 1584. Even as a child, Ivan was cut-throat. He abused animals such as dogs and cats and threw them from the top of buildings. He began killing people in his teenage years because it was “amusing.” As the Tsar of Russia, he was quite paranoid and believed everyone was against him. He would strip citizens of their homes and land, forcing them to be homeless. He destroyed hundreds of villages and towns. He was responsible for the Novgorod Massacre, where 60,000 people were tortured. He created his own torture chamber and sentenced entire families who he believed were enemies there. He got a bear and ordered many people to be eaten by bears and wolves. He had such an obsession with people dying that when he ordered people to be killed, he usually sat cozy and watched. Beside him were the parents watching the torture and execution of their children. Some executions lasted 15 hours… 15 HOURS! He removed people’s ribs with hot pinchers. He raped girls and used them as target practice. After being married for a day, he killed his wife. He beat his pregnant daughter-in-law because he believed that her clothes were inappropriate and killed his son by stabbing him in the head over an argument. He was a serial killer, nonetheless and deserved the name that was given to him.
3. Idi Amin
Idi Amin is what we call a politician. He promised democracy and change to the people of Uganda and to the world. Rather than changing Uganda to the promise land, he turned it into a poverty-stricken land and a killing field. He is considered the “most sadistic dictator in the 20th century.” He abused human rights, killed and expelled 80,000 Asians from Uganda, and was a political repressor. He killed hundreds of thousands of his own people. He would show live executions on television and tortured/killed soldiers, government officials, police officers, engineers, doctors, journalist, and many more. Amin torture methods ranged from burying people alive, throw people and feed their bodies to crocodiles, force people to eat their flesh, he even mutilated one of his wives by sewing her limbs upside down. He considered himself a cannibal as he ate human flesh and drank blood. Amin killed nearly half a million Ugandans.
2. Pol Pot
Pol Pot served as the Prime Minister of Cambodia from 1976 to 1979. His goal was to destroy Cambodia as a whole and later turn it into a “new age.” Pol Pot is known as the only man in history who ordered a genocide against his OWN country. His plan was to ban the Buddhist religion, possession, and money. He separated families and put people into slave labor. People died from malnutrition, terrible medical care, execution and starvation. Thousands were hanged and died from disease. During the raining season, Pol Pot would force pregnant women, children, and the elderly to work on canals with water at neck level; if they failed to work, they would be killed. If you could not work because of an illness or just were not physically capable to, you would not be fed or you would be killed. If a civilian made a mistake in their job, they would be whipped to death or shot. Cambodians had no right to eat under Pol Pot. If people were caught eating when they weren’t allowed to, they would be buried alive. Pol Pot hated Vietnamese and aimed to kill any Vietnamese that came to his sight. If you weren’t Vietnamese, but looked like one, you would be killed. Prisoners of Cambodia were forced to drink urine and were beaten with hammers and axes. Pol Pot kept the skulls of some of the people he killed. He killed nearly 3 million of his own people. Pol Pot is the closest thing to Stalin, if you asked me.
1. King Leopold II of Belgium
Although he was the king of Belgium, he ruled over the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908. King Leopold is considered the greatest manipulator in politics. He made the world believe he was helping the Congo for the best, but in reality, he was ruling by using force labor. Under his ruling, the Congo was subject to a horror regime. The relationship between the Congo and King Leopold is considered the greatest political scandal in history. His men tortured and slaughtered about 10 million Congolese. Congolese were killed if they didn’t bring enough goods, many of their villages were destroyed, natives would be thrown into jungles, natives were raped by Leopold’s men, millions died because of starvation, and nearly half a million died because of diseases. Under Leopold’s reign over the Congo, he killed nearly 50% of the population. If Pol Pot is considered the Stalin of this list, King Leopold II most resembles Hitler.
Why these men and women are hardly mentioned in our history books astounds me. Some would even consider these men/women in this list to even be more evil than Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong, and other evil rulers. There will always be evil men and women; the most important question is how will we stop these men and women from taking over.
11 Comments
Rios Montt from Guatamala should be here. He presided over the most violent 3 years of the Guatemalan genocide of the indigenous people.
I can understand why is Ersebeth Bathory here, even though it is now widely believed by most historians, that the acusations were false and just a pretext to claim her estate, but the information about Khomeini is nothing else than a propaganda.
While it is true that he had blood of the innocent on his hands, most of the victims on his count are people who received punishment according to the law that was in power – harsh and inhumane, true, but in many cases we are talking about murderers sentenced to death. Also, his approach to the political oponents (including torturing and killing) was no deterioration compared to the Pahlavi’s rule – it was no-change. The only reason it is nowhere to be found in US-published works is that the Shah was an ally to the USA, while Khomeini ceased that alliance and later gained (unexpected if You compare his ideology and Soviet one) support from the Soviet Union.
Also, blaming him for the rise of al-Qaeda is not only propaganda, it’s just a plain lie.
I am not at all defending the actions of Queen Mary but why is there never ever any mention on how incredibly “BLOODY” and savage her sister Elizabeth was towards Catholics? Moreover, Henry the VIII killed hundreds and hundreds of catholic laity, nuns and priests just for not converting to Protestantism. The British crown has been historically suppressive, uncivilized, malicious, fierce and brutal towards Catholics.
The Brits have treated the Egyptians, Irish, India etc…….with an unmerciful iron fist and seldom is it ever mentioned.
When you said “Pol Pot is the closest thing to Stalin” I do believe you spelled *Satan* wrong there, but very informative article nonetheless.
Most of these people have had a good deal written about them in the history books.
I would also dispute the inclusion of Mary Tudor. I am a big fan of Mary’s sister Elizabeth, but to be fair to Mary it should be noted as many Catholics were executed in Elizabeth’s reign as Protestants were executed in Mary’s reign. The difference is that most Catholics in Elizabeth died less horribly (mostly being hanged) nominally for treason and over 30 years (instead of 3 or 4 years as in Mary’s reign).
Also I’d suggest that in all the more in depth historical accounts about Mary she comes across as quite a sad monarch, whose reign and marriage were total failures.
America is responsible for the rise of Al Qaeda.
Surprised they didn’t say Russia was
If you would study the life and work of Dr. Oskar Dirlewanger, you’d see none of the above would even come close to him…
Left out Donald Rumsfeld.
But really… quite a random list here.
You forgot George Bush !
A lot of people are missed that from that list e.g Dirlewanger, Pinochet, Vlad Tepes and Gilles de Rais to name but a few