Hitler Isn't the Only Mega Asshole

This topic actually arose out of some debate about Communists and whatnot but this particular subtopic came to light when for some reason, Communists were being given some sort of "free pass" by folks engaged in the debate while Hitler was being crucified like it was going out of fashion. Now I'm not being a Nazi apologist or anything because it is true that Hitler was evil, the Nazis were also evil and they did some absolutely deplorable things. However...

Bullshit: The Nazis were historically unique in terms of evil because of the fact that they organized the mass murder of specific kinds of people in large numbers to execute mass murder in the most efficient way.
The Truth: Quite a few groups of people have murdered people in mass in the most efficient way they could find.

When the Nazis were faced with the task of having to murder Jews, homosexuals, gypsies and other folks (after they stopped killing the crippled and retarded), they faced the dillemma of having to kill off millions of people. The use of ammunition would be too expensive and ammunition was needed badly by their soldiers fighting the war. So what resulted was the construction of death camps where gassing to death was the order of the day.


Dachau Concentration Camp.

But was this so unique? I say no.
So the Germans felt that their most efficient way to kill millions of people was to use the gas chamber. Others had a different approaches...

The Mongols
The Mongols had a unique problem when they first started empire building in that their entire population did not number a million while their conquered lands had populations exceeding tens of millions in total. Their dire problem was the possibility of simply drowning in the massive population that they conquered. What if they rose up? The Mongols would never have enough men to police them all. So the solution was to kill as many people as they could.
Their first major massacre worthy of note was the massacre of the Tartars where every male that was taller than the axle of a wagon was put to death.
Cities in northern China which did not surrender quickly enough for Genghis Khan's liking were also flattened and every last soul put the the sword.
It is believed that the Mongols under Genghis Khan may have killed up to forty million (40,000,000!!!!!!) people and perhaps as much as a hundred million by the time his grandson, Kublai Khan, had died.
It was even claimed (though it is impossible) that Genghis Khan killed about 1.7 million people in one hour! An impossible feat, but the story refers to the massacre of Nishapur, a Persian city that the Mongols had conquered. In the process, one of his favorite son in laws was killed. His wife (therefore Genghis Khan's daughter) asked that every last woman and child in Nishapur be killed.
Genghis Khan did so and more, by even having every animal in the city killed. 1.7 million was the estimated population of Nishapur before the massacre.
The way the folks were killed were probably a lot worse than getting gassed.


If you shat your pants before you waved the white flag, you're already too late.

Rwanda
Hutu Power members killed about a million people in a period of five months in 1994. Timed perfectly with the assasination of Habyarimana, the President of Rwanda since 1973, the killing spree was well organized and vicious. It was rumored that machetes were actually imported in large quantities to ensure there was enough to go around. These may have been a part of the four major weapon caches known to the UN to be a part of a larger plan for a genocide. A key part of their strategy were the radio stations which constantly played Hutu Power propaganda, encouraging people to go out and kill the Tutsis. Radio Rwanda was one of the main broadcasters of such messages and the tactic was a resounding success for the Hutu Power movement.
Led by Gregoire Kayibanda, the Hutu Power movement was surely violent enough to be considered equivilent to Hitler's genocide as well. Consider that one million would have been 20% of the population during this time.
Between getting gassed to death and getting hacked to pieces by a machete, I elect getting gassed. Many of the Hutus who perished would have agreed. When it was clear that the Belgian Peacekeepers would have to abandon a large group of Hutu refugees who were being protected at Murambi Technical School, they asked the Belgians to shoot them so they would not have to face the machetes. The Belgians obviously declined. Outside the Hutus waited, drinking beer and singing hate songs. As the Belgians left, the Hutus entered.


I guess Kayibanda is less evil than Hitler since he only killed black people.

Cambodia
The Killing Fields really needs no introduction. Led by Pol Pot in his quest to create a true Communist Utopia, it quickly became the process of the creation of death camps where death could come for any reason. Past occupation, softness of your hands, eye glasses. The result was the death of perhaps two million people. Two hundred thousand were executed formally by the Khmer Rouge and the rest died from starvation, disease, undocumented execution and other ways one usually dies when working in a death labor camp. And this is a country that had seven million people at the time.
Facing the same problem as the Nazis of needing to use too many bullets to execute that many people, they resorted to using sharpened bamboo sticks (a very bad way to go), hammers, axe handles etc., often after being forced to dig their own graves.
Torture victims were recorded and documented in German precision.
Yet even this is not unique. The creation of death labor camps and mass executions is pretty consistent among many Communist countries. Why mass murder by Communist regimes aren't taken very seriously is beyond me.
Cambodia under Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge... just as bad, if not worse than Nazi Germany in terms of mass murder.


Just as evil as Hitler but somehow manages to get off the hook. I guess you're not completely evil if you don't slaughter White people.

And of course by no means are these it. Actually you'll find a lot of Communist countries fit the bill as well and why Communism is allowed to go while Nazism is scrutinized to beyond death and beyond afterlife is a mystery.
One thing is for certain. Human history has had its share of world class assholes and Hitler was not alone at the top.