We have done a number of lists on the site regarding evil people and they have always given rise to much debate, so it seemed like a good idea for our latest “Your View”. Tell us (and please give reasons) who the most evil man to have ever lived (living or dead) is.
Who is the most evil man in history?
My answer is Joseph Stalin. The reason is that his actions lead to more deaths than any other dictator in history. Stalin took a thriving nation and turned it in a nation of terrified people – the effects of his reign are still apparent today and it will be many years before Russia is truly restored to its previous greatness.
i agree w/ stalin
Yes, I agree with Stalin too. Pol Pot is the second most evil.
I think this one was a bit easy…. Jfrater, you’re right about Stalin… all you have to do is look at the Stats
Hirohito was a nasty sob too. He forced people off of cliffs to their death.
hitler only because im learning a lot about what he did and seeing pictures and videos
Obviously the fact that Stalin did almost as bad torture but with more people is lost to most middle-schoolers.
Glenn Danzig
HANDS DOWN
Michael Moore
While all these leaders are indeed evil, I think there’s a special place reserved in hell for those men who can stalk another man and kill them one on one. For me, the most evil man in recent times that I’ve heard of is Richard Kuklinski, known as The Iceman. It’s not certain how many people he’s killed, but to look at him and hear him speak makes chills run up and down my spine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Kuklinski
Oh, sorry about the previous comment, I thought this list was “Fattest Douchebag Loudmouth Ass-Clown”
let’s not forget about Mao
Reinhard Heydrich. I don’t know how he slept at night. Granted he wasn’t a dictator or head of state but still.
Is it a competition?
Stalin or Hitler of course… if you purely on the numbers of people killed and/or who had their lives utterly ruined, then Stalin “wins” out. But then Hitler gets points for planning and executing a brutal world war and deliberate genocide that together killed millions.
But then Mao and Lenin were no saints either. Neither was Beria or Himmler. Pol Phot. Idi Amin.
Let’s hope we saw the last of such bastards with the end of the 20th century.
And bucslim… I DO hope you were joking.
I think Hitler wins this one easily. He brought us WWII and killed 10 million civilians (6 million jews, the rest of them were most pollish and irish). The UN, NATO and a number of other international policy are his credit.
Stalin is easily the most recongized, Hitler did some rpetty bad stuff himself… but I also think Vlad the Impaler should be on this list somewhere.
He was the inspiration for an new kind of monster: the vampire.
Paul Benardo he didn’t kill millions but he was a evil nonetheless.
Tom Cruise
George W
Tie
Why are we forgetting about Pol Pot, Baby Doc, and Kim Jong-il? I’m not saying they’re necessarily MORE evil than Hitler or Stalin or Mao but, as part of this discussion, they’ve gotta be up there.
Not sure I’d have Caligula over to drink a brew and watch the game. He was pretty nasty. He might have not hustled like Joe, but he watched plenty of people being tortured in a variety of grotesque and twisted ways simply for his enjoyment.
I don’t think I’d want to be Jewish and have the Inquisitors show up at my door with a welcoming gift either.
“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is suprise, that’s all, just surprise!”
Hitler in my opinion, don’t know much about Stalin. Whomever mentioned Vlad the Impaler, good thinking. It is sad to think but there were enough sorry SOB’s to go on and on with this.
Jim Jones. I’ve read books about what he did. He was pure evil.
probably one of the medieval popes
Stalin was a larger murder, but the one big thing Hitler has on him is generations later Hitler is still negatively leading people into bigotry and hate, that is still leading to murder’s and destroyed lives today.
Nobody is looking back at Stalin and still trying to fulfill his visions.
If it wasn’t for Stalin, Russia and thus Europe, would have lost the War.
He took a country that was quite literally in the feudal system and made them a world arms and space superpower in 30 years.
For those reasons alone he can not be considered the most evil, just because he was inadvertantly responsible for a large amounts of deaths. You would have to find someone with NO redeeming features, and for that I would have to say either Joseph Mengele or Pol Pot.
"He took a country that was quite literally in the feudal system"…I thought the bolsheviks did that,before Stalin killed most of them to have more power.But then of course Lenin and Trotsky did a lot of bad things also.
Poi Pot wiped a greater percentage of his people off the earth than Stalin; Stalin wins on numbers.
Except for wiping out the Human Race, it’s hard to go lower then these low life scum.
Stalin is incredibly evil, I agree with that, but so was Mao Zedong.
My view is that Ayatollah Khomeini is, while perhaps not “more evil” than Hitler, Stalin, or Mao, but is certainly the scariest.
Pol Pot should win for the utter pointless murderous destruction he has brought upon his own people.
Actually, maybe he [Khomeini] was. He forced women into bondage (they were much freer under the Shah; in fact, the Shah was comparatively liberal against Khomeini), and felt it glorious for people to die for God/Allah [absolutely nothing]. His policies, according to my Myth & Folklore professor, followed the Koran “very closely.” For more than a decade, he terrorized his people as a representative of the Prophet Mohammed (whom I do not like; even more than Jesus). Perhaps what scares me most about Iran under Khomeini is that I see us becoming it’s Christian counterpart…
you can’t forget the “prophet” mohammed. that douche bag brought us the greatest plague our planet has ever seen.
There is no way to say who is the most evil. Stalin had the most opportunity, which is why he was the worst. If Hitler or Pol pot or Amin or so many other pieces of scum had the amount of resources and people around them that Stalin did then they would have done just as bad. Pol pot could only kill a million people cause there was only that many he could kill. give him the USSR and he would rack up even more. same argument for any other dictator scum out there. for all we know the most evil man in history was a person no one knows or heard of, but he was never thought of as evil because he was never given the opportunity that Stalin had to exploit his twisted agenda.
i say Stalin is #1 because of his body count only and not cause of other things. after all Hitler would have loved to do more but he just didnt have the power to.
True scum are all the same. its just all about opportunities.
God
Whoever invented religion.
george w. bush.
but he is not evil…. he is just stupid.
Wait, I withdraw my comment. The most evil man in history is Randall.
JJ and Tequilajinx
When I saw the title I knew there would be arses like youn’s that would make utterly stupid remarks.
That douche who took over Cambodia (is that one Pol Pot? I can’t remember), killed people who wore glasses, separated families, destroyed anything related to Cambodia’s history or culture, and put people to work in fields until they died from overwork and malnutrition.
As far as I’m concerned, Stalin and Hitler take second and third place, for while they’re both incredibly evil, and killed millions of people, they also did some things that were beneficial for their countries. With Pol Pot, it was ALL bad.
But on another note, there are definitely some major contenders from Ancient Greece and Rome, although unfortunately my memory isn’t so fresh on those matters. And I suppose they guy who invented the nuclear bomb could also be a qualifier.
romerozombie
I second Randall! LOL
Nero, Caligula, Staling, Pol Pot, Bin Laden, Hitler…
they guy who invented the nuclear bomb could also be a qualifier.
If you look at the number of people who would have died in an invasion of Japan, you can say they saved lives by dropping the bomb
First off, Hirohito evilness is still under debate. I tends to agree with many historians that he was surrounded by too many nationalist advisers. He just went with the flow, he was one of the first people that seek truce. Do you know that he boycott the WWII shrine in Japan because it has included Class A War Criminal?
I would go with Stalin and Pol Pot. But there are more person often missed. Qin Shi Huang Di. Lord knows how many people die so he can unite China.
i agree with stalin as a choice.(he was statisticly th deadliest dictator)
however his 5 year plans greatly improved USSR’s economies.which is evident in the fact hey were one of the superpowers after WW2
I’m gonna have to go with Jesus Christ or at least the people that took his message and created a faith out of it…
Grant:the nuclear bomb was inevitable.almost everyone in WW2 was trying to develop one and whoever got it first would really have won the war.it was a necessity that the english or americans invented it first
Its practically impossible to read up on Joseph Mengele without getting sick to your stomach. That man defined Evil…
Nero, Caligula…. not even close to Genghis Khan (the Wrath of Khan?)
They even discovered that if you fling dead plague victims into a wall city, youll kill them inside the city.
Nero & Caligula just got the fame since the historians were Romans
Nuclear bomb didn’t save anyone. The Japanese was negotiating with the US. But the US wanted ‘unconditional surrender’. The Japanese wants the emperor left alone. The US unleashed nuclear bomb. The Japanese unconditionally surrender. The US (rather McArthur) left the emperor alone anyway.
King of the Horizon: I agree with that (I just copied the 1st part from an earlier post)
specialk: would you mind explaining that?
King of the Horizon: He improved the economy? What about the famine that caused the deaths of millions?
Jessy:
Not to be argumentative (okay, it IS to be argumentative)… but would you care to tell us what these things are that Hitler and Stalin did that were so beneficial for their countries? Some industrialization and the Autobahn (both done to support military purposes) don’t offset genocide, torture, and brutal cults of personality.
I give you kudos, though, for hating Pol Pot so much. Surely he was one of the worst monsters in human history.
What irks me a bit more is… who are these contenders from ancient Greece that you refer to? Ancient Greece is a specialty of mine… and to my knowledge it did not produce ANY monsters to match those of Rome or medieval Europe, not to mention the 20th century. In fact, no real “monsters” at all. A few tyrants, but no real mass murderers.
And please don’t get me started on the invention of the atomic bomb. The men who accomplished that feat were NOT evil. They were scientists who were trying to ensure that the Allies got the thing before the Nazis did–the Nazis, by the way, WERE actually evil.
I hate this knee-jerk reaction people have about the atomic bomb. Yes, it’s a horrible weapon. I hope to god we never see one used again. But at the time of its use it brought a speedy end to the most terrible war in human history–a war which would have dragged on weeks and possibly months–and even possibly YEARS longer without it—killing thousands and perhaps millions more people.
Tonny SS:so if the japenese were in talks with the US but they refused conditions of surrender how can you be sure they would eventually give in?japanese always found surrender a disgrace(hari-kiri).So there are 2 options.An invasion or the bomb.In an invasion more people would have died.I presonally think the Us made the right choice
HandyMandy:
K, I take back anything nice I said about you and to you yesterday, honey.
Tough call. There are so many evil men in this world, past and present. I’m going to have to choose Oprah Winfrey.
Oprah gives s*** away all the time. Yeah, we know you’re rich, stop f***ing showing off. Women just LOVE Oprah Winfrey. Years down the line, women are going to revolt against men because of this evil man, and women are going to start killing us men and our evil penises and soon the human race will burn in flames. Thanks Adolf Winfrey!
And before anyone says it, yes, I know Oprah is a woman. If you don’t get my joke, you’re a damn idiot.
One of the reasons I frequent the comments section on this website more than others is because of some of the bat***** crazy things people write.
specialk – are you feeling ok today? Congrats on moving up to the top of the *****-hill of the most stupid things ever uttered on this site.
I didn’t know Jr. High got out this early in the afternoon . . .
Jfrater:true about the famine.however russias leaders had been more or less a series of disasters(look at the tsars) and the serfs were treated terribly and using much outdated farming methods which had been changed many years ago.stalin was bad but to the peasentry it wasnt much of a change i beleive.I will brush up on my russian history later when i have some time
Ya,the bolsheviks,the provisory government and the white's where all bastards.
No one “invented” religion, it is a natural human impulse. People have done some nasty things in the name of Christianity, but that doesn’t make Christian principles evil. I’m not a religious person myself, but Jesus seemed pretty sensible to me
I’d have to go with Hitler. The ways he killed people and his reasons for doing it just disgust me more. Stalin caused a famine, but I don’t think he really went about that on purpose. His reasons for ordering people murdered were also sickening, but these murders were often caused more by Stalin’s raging paranoia than despising people for their heritage, something they couldn’t change. Certainly doesn’t excuse Stalin in any way, it is just my opinion that Hitler’s motivations were much more evil. Stalin just seems crazy to me, which is different than evil.
Correct me if I am wrong on my facts, but I think my opinion is driven more by gut feeling than facts anyway.
Tonny SS:
I don’t wish to open this up into a debate about the atomic bomb, but you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.
The Allies had made no threat to the Emperor’s status in their ultimatums to the Japanese. Moreover, “leaving the Emperor alone” was NOT the only condition that the Japanese were placing on any surrender.
The Japanese were NOT “negotiating with the US.” We had no relations whatsoever at the time. Negotiations (what negotiations there were) were being conducted through neutral parties–one of whom, for a time, was the Russians–who had their own agenda (they hoped to have a chance to enter the fight with Japan just in time to grab some mainland territory and some long-disputed islands) and so played it very cagey with the Japanese.
What you don’t seem to realize is that WHILE all this supposed negotiating was going on, soldiers were *still* dying on both sides. And IF the Japanese were so keen on surrendering–then why did it take TWO atomic bombs to finally convince them to do it?
Christianity, and religion in general, has been responsible for more deaths than anything else in history. Look at the holocaust since so many have brought WW2 and Hitler. Anti-semitism stems from the anachronistic belief that they killed Jesus. Terrorism today is just a warped interpretation of the Qur’an. The Spanish Inquisition targeted religious minorities, especially Jews, and tried to convert them under the threat of torture and death. If the question was, what was the most evil thing in history, I would have said Religion, but it was the most evil man, so I just chose Jesus because the spreading of Christianity has caused so many problems in the world. I know that the man Jesus Christ taught brotherly love and peace, but the result is the same.
Specialk – Just because someone’s actions cause others to be evil, this does not mean they are evil. It is just not logical. Let it go.
GEORGE W!
King of the Horizon:
No no… wrong.
“…stalin was bad but to the peasentry it wasnt much of a change i beleive.” (sic)
It was very much a change, King. There’s this half-mythical idea that the Czars were as bad as Lenin and Stalin. Well let’s not pretend–the Czars sometimes were miserable bastards (other times not) and they did keep their people in an essentially feudal status well past the time that that system had died out in the rest of Europe–but what Stalin did to the peasantry was *far* worse than anything the Czars EVER did. Up to the time of Lenin and Stalin the peasants had been kept down, badly, but otherwise were more or less left to their own devices. Lenin and particularly Stalin introduced forced collectivization, however, which is one of the brutal and monstrous moves which helped usher in the terrible famines that followed in the wake of the Bolshevik takeover.
The peasants of Russia were never in a happy place, no… but they were far better off under the Czars than the brutalization they suffered under Stalin.
Ivan the terrible?
King of the Horizon – I believe much of the peasantry was displaced from their homes to work on collective farms. Or maybe I just got that from watching Fiddler on the Roof.