Black Widow, a fictional Marvel character famously says “I have a lot of red on my ledger”. Well, what can we say about the most evil people in history? How much red do they have on their ledger? The bad people on this list have killed millions of people.
Truth be told, the world has seen tragedy in many forms. Today, we will talk about tragedies caused by people. Think genocides, killings, mass deaths, horrific gas traps, brutal public executions, and many more inhuman activities.
In most cases, the people on this list were inspired by their political agenda. So, let’s take a look at the evilest people in history.
Adolf Hitler
There is no denying Hitler was one of the evilest politicians that have ever lived. He was the chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and Fuhrer of the Nazi Party.
His actions resulted in the direct death of more than 50 million people. Many more were injured. There is not a single person on Earth who hasn’t heard about Adolf Hitler at least once.
Responsible for the Holocaust and the Second World War, Hitler believed Jews were the root cause of all problems. He believed in a superior race, called Übermensch. For Adolf, that race was the white race.
The brutal dictator committed suicide in his bunker on April 30th, 1945. He couldn’t stand the idea of losing the war.
Joseph Stalin
How can you place the person who stopped Hitler on the list of evil politicians? Well, while Stalin helped Russia and the Allied forces win World War II, he became a maniac afterward.
The Soviet Union dictator ruled from 1922 until his death in 1953. During his last days, he was a robber and an assassin.
His decisions led to a famine that killed millions. Under his rule, more than 1.5 million German women were raped. He killed more than 20 million people. Joseph Stalin famously said, “One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic”.
During his reign, GULAG, a government agency that forced people to work in awful conditions reached its peak. Fun fact: Stalin was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 1945 and 1948 because of his contributions to defeating Hitler. And he is as evil a man as they come.
Saddam Hussein
The 5th president of Iraq played a key role in the 1968 coup that brought the party to power in Iraq. Saddam was executed by hanging on December 30, 2006, after years of protests.
The Iraqi politician was the leading member of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party. He created security forces through which he controlled conflicts between the government and the armed forces.
While the economy of the country grew during his reign, the West accused him of genocide and mass murder. He nationalized the Iraq Petroleum Company and independent banks.
Depending on different sources, he killed up to 250,000 people. His rule was a repressive dictatorship.
Vlad the Impaler
Also known as Vlad Dracul, many believe that the Dracula character was loosely based on this evil man. His sadistic personality and cruel acts done to the people of Wallachia contributed to the death of 20% of the population.
Vlad impaled the victim through the buttocks till the stake came out of the mouth. Some sources claim he roasted children, whom he fed to their mothers.
Kim Jong-il
The North Korean politician was the second supreme leader of North Korea from 1994 to 2011. He led the country following the death of his father, Kim Il-sung.
In the early 1980s, he assumed important posts in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the party. He ruled as a repressive and totalitarian dictatorship.
To this day, people cannot leave North Korea because of the rules he set. Food scarcity continued to be a problem during his reign.
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany. He was the main architect of the Holocaust. Thanks to his good organizational skills, Hitler put Heinrich high in the ranks of the Nazi Party.
Himmler developed the racial policy of Nazi Germany and founded the SS forces. He built extermination camps and oversaw the Nazi genocidal program. He personally directed the killing of six million Jews, between 200,000 and 500,000 Romani people, and many more.
Pol Pot
The leader of the Cambodian revolutionary group the Khmer Rouge orchestrated the Cambodian genocide. As you can see by now, many of the evilest people in history actually started as revolutionaries. For example, Hitler promised to grow the economy of Germany following the economic crisis.
Pol Pot believed in destroying the Cambodian civilization in order to start a new regime. He remains the only evil person in history who ordered mass genocide in his own country.
During his reign, more than 2 million people died, or more than 25% of the entire population of Cambodia. Pol Pot even ordered babies to be torn limb by limb and kept the skulls of people he had killed.
Idi Amin
Here is another revolutionary leader who turned to genocide. The Chief of Army Staff took control of Uganda while President Obote had gone to Singapore to attend a meeting.
Amin promised to bring prosperity to the country, but one week later, he declared himself President. As a dictator, he ruled with fear. He was famously known as the Butcher of Uganda.
Amin killed people by feeding them to crocodiles. He even claimed he was a cannibal and mutilated one of his wives and rearranged her limbs.
Ivan the Terrible
Ivan IV was the first Tsar of Russia. As a kid, he used to throw animals from the top of tall structures for entertainment. He was intelligent but had lots of rage due to his mental illness.
He even killed his own heir to the throne. Ivan IV loved impaling, beheading, burning, frying, and blinding people. He tortured more than 60,000 people to death.
Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan remains one of the biggest and greatest conquerors in history. He was the founder and first Great Khan of the Mongol Empire. The empire became the largest contiguous empire in history following his death.
Khan came to power by uniting the nomadic tribes and proclaimed himself the universal ruler of the Mongols.
Modern historians describe his conquests as wholesale destruction on an unprecedented scale, causing great demographic changes and a drastic decline in the population due to mass extermination and famine.
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong lived from December 1983 until September 1976. He was also known as Chairman Mao. The Chinese communist revolutionary was the founding father of the People’s Republic of China.
He ruled as the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party. To this day, he remains a controversial figure. Why? Because during his reign, China was involved in the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Sino-Soviet split. He ruled through an autocratic and totalitarian regime.
His government was responsible for the deaths of between 40 to 80 million people.
Leopold II of Belgium
He was the King of Belgium and ruled over many of the colonial countries. For example, he ruled over the Congo Free state. Fun fact: Congo was 76 times the size of Belgium. Yet, Leopold II ruled it. He made the whole world believe he was going to help Congo.
Yet, during his regime, more than 500,000 people died of disease and many more of starvation. He also killed more than 10 million people in Congo, half of the population of the country. And he ruled in other African countries as well.
Osama Bin Laden
Depending on where you live in the world, you might think of Osama as a hero or as a villain. The Saudi Arabian terrorist was the founder of the Pan-Islamic militant organization known as al-Qaeda. The terrorist group was responsible for the September 11 attacks in the US.
Following that attack, the United States declared war and what followed was the death of many people on both sides.
Maximilien Robespierre
Robespierre was the architect of the French Revolution. He started out as good but went crazy later on. He was a young leader who advocated for a better life for France. Yet, very soon, his obsession with guillotining began.
He was responsible for the development of the machine that beheaded people with a huge knife blade at the end. During a 10-months period, Robespierre killed more than 40,000 people. He believed that killing was better than forgiving.
The irony? He was guillotined without trial. He was brutal and self-righteous, and he believed he was not evil. Nicknamed the incorruptible Robespierre, he was a bloody figure in French history. Maximilien had good leadership qualities at first, but advancement in authority made him power crazy, and started turning on his own colleagues and the people in France.
