Throughout the history of mankind, a host of evil and infamous leaders fought for power. While many politicians wanted to improve the life of the people, others pursued only their own interests.
Their selfish goals led to gross abuse of power, which resulted in the death of many people. We present to your attention the 25 most cruel dictators in the history of mankind.
1. Herod the Great
Herod the Great is the same Herod, about whom it is said in the Bible. He killed a lot of male children when he learned that the Messiah was born, Jesus Christ, who was called the king. Herod could not tolerate competition, so he ordered the infants to be killed, but Jesus was not among them.
The ancient historian Josephus also recorded other of his sinful deeds, including the murder of his three sons, his most beloved of 10 wives, the drowning of a priest, the murder of a legitimate mother and, as legend says, many Jewish leaders.
2. Nero
When the Roman emperor Nero came to power after the death of his stepfather, he gradually organized a bloodbath. First, he killed his mother Agrippina younger, and then killed two of his wives. Finally, he decided to burn the whole of Great Rome, just to watch how it burns, and then restore it. After everything had settled down, he laid the blame for the fire on Christians and they were persecuted, tortured and killed. In the end, he committed suicide.
3. Saddam Hussein
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein ruled the country with an iron fist. During his reign he deliberately invaded Iran and Kuwait. By the time Saddam became president, Iraq was a booming country with one of the highest living standards in the Middle East. But the two wars that the new leader provoked led the Iraqi economy into a state of acute crisis and decline. At his command all his friends, enemies and relatives were killed. He gave the order to kill and rape the children of his competitors. In 1982, he murdered 182 people of the Shiite civilian population. On October 19, 2005, the trial of the former president of Iraq began. Especially for him, the death penalty was re-established in the country.
4. Pope Alexander VI
The Vatican papacy has long shown us that some popes are very evil and cruel rulers, but the most evil of them was Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia). He was not a righteous Catholic, but only a secular Pope who used power to achieve his goals.
In his youth, he did not restrain himself with vows of chastity and celibacy. He had many mistresses. And with one of them, the rich Roman Vanozza dei Cattane, for many years was in touch and had from her four children, the most famous of which - Cesare Borgia and Lucretia - ambitious, unprincipled, power-loving and voluptuous young people. By the way, with his beautiful daughter Lucretia, Pope cohabited and, according to rumors, he was the father of her son.
He arranged orgies and confiscated money from the rich to finance his unruly lifestyle. On August 18, 1503, the Pope died in terrible torment from poison.
5. Muammar Gaddafi
Muammar Gaddafi did everything that was possible, as long as he was the political leader of Libya. He eliminated all political opposition, declaring it illegal. I forbade entrepreneurship and freedom of speech. All the books that did not suit him were burned. Despite the huge economic potential of Libya, many economic experts recognized the decline of the country, as Gaddafi squandered most of the financial resources. His reign is considered one of the most cruel and totalitarian epochs in the history of North Africa.
Muammar Gaddafi was killed on October 20, 2011 in the vicinity of the city of Sirte. His convoy, when trying to leave the city, was hit by NATO aircraft.
6. Fidel Castro
To the rule of Fidel Castro, Cuba was a prosperous country with a rich economy, but as soon as Castro overthrew Fulgencio Batista in 1959, all this collapsed under the oppression of despotic communist rule. Over two years, more than 500 political opponents were shot. According to experts, over 50 years of Fidel Castro's rule, thousands of people were executed. Newspapers at that time were not printed. Priests, homosexuals and other people, disliked by the new government, served time in the camps. Freedom of speech was abolished. The population had no rights. 90% of people lived below the poverty line.
7. Caligula
Guy Julius Caesar or Caligula, whose name became synonymous with cruelty, insanity and evil, is known throughout the world. He declared himself God, slept with his sisters, had so many wives, was very proud, and committed many other immoral things. Caesar spent money on luxury things, while his own people were starving. Caligula terrorized Ancient Rome with his rampant insanity, talked to the moon and tried to appoint his horse as consul. The greatest evil that he committed - gave the order to cut innocent people in half during one of their luxurious feasts.
8. King John
King John Lackland is considered one of the worst kings in British history. Most of all known for the fact that in the beginning became landless, and after all in general a king without a kingdom. Sensual, lazy, lascivious, cruel, treacherous, immoral - that's his portrait.
When his enemies came to him, John threw them into the castle and starved to death. In order to build a huge army and navy, he imposed heavy taxes on England, took land from the nobles and imprisoned them, tortured Jews while they paid him the right amount. The king died of a terrible fever.
9. Empress Wu Zetian
Wu Zetian is one of the few female leaders in ancient history and history as a whole. Her life is very remarkable. Becoming a concubine of the emperor at the age of 13, she eventually became empress. After the death of the emperor, heir to the throne, he realized that he could not do without the faithful Wu Zetian and introduced her into his harem, which became a sensation for that time. Some time passed, and in 655 Gao-tsung officially recognized U Tse-tian as his wife. This meant that now she was the main wife.
She was a mean schemer. On her orders, for example, her uncle's husband was killed. Everyone who dared to go against her was immediately killed. At the end of her life, she was deposed from the throne. She was treated better than she herself did with her enemies, and was given a natural death.
10. Maximilian Robespierre
The architect of the French Revolution and the author of the "Reign of Terror" Maximilian Robespierre constantly spoke about the overthrow of the tsar and the uprising against the aristocracy. Elected to the General Salvation Committee, Robespierre launched a bloody terror, which was marked by a number of arrests, the murder of 300,000 alleged enemies, of which 17,000 were executed on the guillotine. Soon the Convention decided to sue Robespierre and his supporters. They tried to organize resistance in the Paris Town Hall, but were captured by loyal troops of the Convention, and in a day they were executed.
11. Go Amin
General Idi Amin overthrew the elected official Milton Obote and declared himself Ugandan president in 1971. He imposed a fierce regime in the country, which lasted eight years, expelled 70,000 Asians, cut out 300,000 civilians and eventually led the country to economic death. He was deposed in 1979, but never answered for his crimes. Idi Amin died in Saudi Arabia on August 16, 2003 at the age of 75.
12. Timur
Born in 1336, Timur, known to many as Tamerlane, became a tyrant and bloodthirsty conqueror of Asia in the Middle East. He was able to conquer some parts of Russia and even occupied Moscow, made an uprising in Persia, being several thousand kilometers from it. All this he did, destroying the city, destroying the population and building out of their corpses of the tower. In India or Baghdad, wherever it was, everything was accompanied by bloody slaughter, destruction and thousands of dead people.
13. Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan was a ruthless Mongol warlord, who achieved success in his conquests. He ruled one of the largest empires in history. But, of course, he paid a very high price for this. He was responsible for the death of 40 million people. His battles reduced the earth's population by 11%!
14. Vlad Tepes
Vlad Tepes is better known under a different name - Count Dracula. He was sadly famous for his sadistic tortures of enemies and civilians, among which the most terrible is the piercing of the anus. Dracula put the living people on the count. Once he invited a lot of vagrants to the palace, locked them in the palace and set them on fire. He also nailed hats to the heads of Turkish ambassadors, which they refused to remove in front of him.
15. Ivan the Terrible
Ivan the Great's grandson, Ivan the Terrible led Russia to Unity, but during his reign received the nickname of Grozny for many reforms and terror. Since childhood, Ivan had a bad temper, he really liked torturing animals. Becoming a king, he conducted a series of peaceful political reforms. But, when his wife died, he fell into a deep depression, and then the era of the Great Terror began. He seized the land, created police forces to fight dissent. Many noblemen were accused of the death of his wife. He beat his pregnant daughter, killed his son in an attack of rage and blinded the architect of St. Basil's Cathedral.
16. Atilla
Attila is a great leader of the Huns, who appreciated gold very much. All his raids were accompanied by looting, destruction and rape. Desiring absolute power, he killed his own brother Bled. One of the great invasions of his army is the city of Nisus. It was so terrible that the corpses for many years blocked the road to the Danube River. Once Attila pierced deserters through the rectum and ate two of his own sons.
17. Kim Jong Il
Kim Jong Il is one of the most "successful" dictators along with Joseph Stalin. When he came to power in 1994, he got a poor North Korea with a starving population. Instead of helping his people, he used all the money to build the world's fifth largest military base, and at that time millions of people were dying of hunger. He deceived the US without giving them their nuclear development. According to his statements, he created a unique nuclear weapon and terrorizes South Korea with threats. Kim Jong Il supported the bombing of Vietnam by America, where many South Korean officials were killed, and civilians were killed.
18. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Lenin was the first leader of revolutionary Soviet Russia, adhering to the ideology of overthrowing the monarchy and turning Russia into a totalitarian state. His Red Terror - a complex of punitive measures against class social groups - is known throughout the world. Among the social groups there were many repressed peasants, industrial workers, priests who opposed Bolshevik power. In the first months of terror, 15,000 people died, many priests and monks were crucified.
19. Leopold II
Leopold II, King of Belgium, had the nickname of the Butcher from the Congo. His army captured the Congo River basin and terrorized the local population. He himself was never in the Congo, but at his command there were killed 20 million people. He often showed his soldiers the rioting workers. The period of his reign was marked by the devastation of the state treasury. King Leopold II died at 75 years old.
20. Pol Pot
Paul Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge movement, is put on a par with Hitler. During his reign in Cambodia, which is less than four years, more than 3,500,000 people were killed. His policy was the following: the path to a happy life lies through the rejection of modern Western values, the destruction of cities that are a pernicious disease, and the re-education of their inhabitants. This ideology began the creation of concentration camps, the destruction of the local population in the regions and their actual eviction.
21. Mao Zedong
The head of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Mao Zedong, seized China with the help of the USSR army, founded the PRC, and until his death was its leader. He carried out many land reforms, which were accompanied by theft of large land plots from landowners through violence and terror. On his way, critics always came across, but he quickly dealt with dissent. His so-called "Great Leap Forward" led to a famine population from 1959 to 1961, which killed 40 million people.
22. Osama Bin Laden
Osama bin Laden - one of the most odious terrorists in the history of mankind. He was the leader of the terrorist group Al-Qaeda, which carried out a series of attacks on the United States. Among them - an explosion in 1998 by the US Embassy in Kenya, where 300 civilians were killed, and air attacks on the World Trade Center in America on September 11, during which 3,000 civilians were killed. Many of his orders were carried out by suicide bombers.
23. Emperor Hirohito
Emperor Hirohito was one of the bloodiest rulers in the history of Japan. Most importantly, his crime against humanity is the massacre in Nanjing, which occurred in the Second Japan-China War, where thousands of people were killed and raped. There, the emperor's troops conducted monstrous experiments on people, which resulted in the death of more than 300,000 people. The Emperor, despite his power, never stopped the bloody lawlessness of his army.
24. Joseph Stalin
Another controversial figure in history is Joseph Stalin. During his reign, all large land plots were under his control. Millions of farmers who refused to give up their plots were simply killed, which led to a great famine throughout Russia. In the era of his totalitarian regime, the secret police flourished, urging citizens to spy on each other. Due to this policy, millions of people were killed or sent to the Gulag. As a result of his brutal tyrannical rule, more than 20,000,000 people were killed.
25. Adolf Hitler
Hitler is the most famous, evil and destructive leader in the history of mankind. His full anger and hate speech, his senseless invasion of European and African countries, the genocide of millions of Jews, his killing and torment, the rape and execution of people in concentration camps, plus countless other known and unknown atrocities, make Hitler the most brutal ruler of all time and people . In general, historians attribute the deaths from the Nazi regime to more than 11,000,000 people.