Everyone knows Hitler, one of the most famous leaders in human history. Like Hitler, who was obsessed with war and power, there were many mad rulers.
Here are some of them:
- Urban II
Times have changed. Now, Popes are more inclined to preach peace and discuss the goodness in people. But like many other things, historically Popes in the past have been found influencing politics and causing wars.
Urban II, was a major player, orchestrated the deadliest religious conflict in the history of religion. Taking the control in 1088, Urban II had to constantly compete with his rivals. Urban II launched a campaign to start a war in the Middle East. He used influence and propaganda to amass a massive Army that ended up mercilessly slaughtering 200,000 Muslims and Christians alike, in and around the Holy Land. This started a 200 years long war between Muslims and Christians known in the history as ‘The Crusades’.
2. Pol Pot
Pot ruled over Cambodia as a leader of Khmer Rogue for 22 years. Pol Pot had reportedly killed between 1 to 3 million Cambodians, almost 25% of Cambodia’s population, at the time.
Pol Pot banned any education, religion and finance under his rule because he believed them to be evil and wanted to keep Cambodia a pure state. Any educators or educated people he could find were executed. He constructed a policy to move people out of the cities and send them to countryside, where they were forced to work on farms. Pol Pot’s policies not only killed scores of his people with starvation and disease, he successfully isolated Cambodia from rest of the world and shattered the economy to its core.
- Robert Mugabe
Robert Mugabe, single-handedly, destroyed Zimbabwe economically during his long reign. His obsession with power and money to an obscene amount of poverty in the country. Land grabbing, destroying homes, violation of human rights, killing opponents, persecuting homosexuals are some of the crimes from a long list of atrocities Mugabe committed in Zimbabwe.
It is estimated that a third of Zimbabwe population was killed by Mugabe; a massive 6 million human beings.
- The Kim dynasty
No dictator, today, has the power and control that the Kim Jung Un has amassed. The Kim family has ruled over North Korea for almost 70 years now. The tyranny started when Kim Il Sung took to throne after successfully killing 2.8 million people during the Korean war. Kim Jung il, the ‘second Kim’ managed to slaughter more then 3 million Koreans including his opposition, party members and some of his family relatives as well. In the 90’s under Kim Jung il 3.5 million people died due to a famine created by the policies of Kim Jung il. He successfully manipulated the situation and blamed US and other western countries for the killing. The current leader, Kim Jung Un, is following in the footsteps of the other Kims by adopting the same iron fist ideology. Recently he killed his uncle with a huge anti-aircraft gun, suspecting that he was conspiring against him.
