20 of the Worst Atrocities in Recorded History
As any historian knows, our collective past is filled with countless atrocities. Genocides. Slavery. Colonization. But whether these gut-wrenching events happened 1,000 years ago or just a few decades ago, we can still learn from this heartbreaking history, reflecting on our past, mourning, and looking forward to our future.
From the Holocaust to the Nanjing Massacre, here are 20 of the worst atrocities in human history.
1. The Cambodian Genocide
“During Pol Pot’s rule from 1975 to 1979, it is estimated that 1.5 to 2 million people, nearly a quarter of Cambodia’s population, perished due to forced labor, starvation, diseases, torture, or execution.”
2. The Nanjing Massacre
“I’m usually unfazed by talks and videos of death, torture, and gore but that book... The kind of stuff they thought up doing to their victims was abhorrent and unbelievable. Some of the worst things I remember were the killing of families including the women and infant children.”
3. The Taiping Rebellion
“A man known as Hong Xiuquan, who lived in China during the 19th century, claimed to be the brother of Jesus Christ. He tried to overthrow the then-ruling Qing Dynasty with his own Christian kingdom, known as Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. The conflict resulted in approximately 20 million deaths.”
4. Genghis Khan’s reign of terror
Thought to have murdered up to 11% of the world’s population, Genghis Khan and his armies killed so many people, that it lowered Earth’s carbon dioxide levels.
5. The Rwandan genocide
During the Rwandan genocide, in which 800,000 civilians died and 2,000,000 were displaced, some people paid to die from a bullet as opposed to a machete or a club.
6. World War II’s Unit 731
"In WW2 the Japanese had a secret bio-warfare research unit called Unit 731 that performed lethal human experimentation, including infecting captives with the plague, STDs, performing vivisections without anesthesia and more. An estimated 200k - 300k people were brutally murdered."
7. The Battle of Verdun during World War I
“During the battle of Verdun, a soldier wrote that he ‘stayed ten days next to a man who was chopped in two; there was no way to move him; he had one leg on the parapet and the rest of this body in the trench. It stank and I had to chew tobacco the whole time in order to endure this torment.’”
8. Nazi Germany’s 'Operation Barbarossa'
“In 1941-42, during 'Operation Barbarossa', the Nazi's captured roughly 5.5 million Soviet prisoners of war resulting in one of the most concentrated mass killings in human history.”
9. The Atrocities In The Congo
“King Leopold’s rule over the Congo in the late 1800’s led to roughly 10 million deaths of Congolese which was around 50% of the total population.”
10. Comfort Women
“Comfort women. From 1932 to 1945, Japanese imperial armed forces forced women from all over the world to be sex slaves in Korea and surrounding areas. Japan still denies it ever happened today.”
11. The Tulsa Race Massacre
“in 1921, ‘Black Wall Street’ was the wealthiest Black community in America before being attacked by an angry mob which killed hundreds of Black residents and destroyed 35 city blocks.”
12. The Transatlantic Slave Trade
“The [Transatlantic Slave Trade], and the keeping of slaves in the America's and Africa was a different kind of awful. Not just killing, but treating people as property, hard labor, starvation, mutilation, killing of children and more as enforcement measures in an indifferent way is hard to stomach, and the justifications (look what you made me do) are imo, particularly awful.”
13. The Genocide of Indigenous People
European colonizers killed roughly 56 million indigenous people in the Americas over the course of 100 years.
14. The Bodo League Massacre
“[In the] Bodo League Massacre of 1950, 60,000-200,000 civilians suspected of being communists (many of whom had no connection with communism) were executed in South Korea during the Korean War.”
15. Attacks on Japan During World War II
“Hiroshima and Nagasaki were just 2 of dozens of Japanese cities subjected to massive incendiary attacks. Firestorms leveled almost 100 square miles in Japan's three largest cities (Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya) alone. Hundreds of thousands were killed and millions forced to evacuate.”
16. The Black War
“The Black War was a period of violent conflict between British colonists and Aboriginal Australians in Tasmania from the 1820s to 1832. A bounty of ₤5 was paid for every captured Aboriginal and ₤2 per child. Historians debate whether the war should be defined as an act of genocide.”
17. The American Bison’s Near-Extinction
“The near-extinction of the American bison was a deliberate plan by the US Army to starve Native Americans into submission. One colonel told a hunter who felt guilty shooting 30 bulls in one trip, ‘Kill every buffalo you can! Every buffalo dead is an Indian gone.’”
18. The Holocaust
“Six million Jewish people were killed by Nazis across multiple campaigns including these camps. They killed 14 million civilians targeted for their identity including Roma, LGBT, disabled, Polish, and Slavic civilians. That's not even including the German people killed for opposing the Nazis.”
19. The Armenian Genocide
“During World War 1 the Ottoman Empire rounded up and slaughtered over 1,500,000 Armenians living in their empire. This event was the basis for the creation of the word ‘Genocide.’”
20. Argentina’s Dirty War
“30,000 People disappeared during Argentina’s dirty war. Every Thursday Buenos Aires’ Plaza de Mayo fills with women wearing white scarves and holding signs covered with names of those who were kidnapped by the government.”
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