Secret police and army units poured across the countryside, seized grain stocks, ransacked barns and surrounded rebellious villages with machine guns. Houses, barns, livestock and farm implements were turned over to the collectives.
When the stubborn peasantry continued to resist by burning their fields and destroying their animals, Stalin ordered their leaders shot. To starve the rest into submission, he moved grain and other foodstuffs into cities by the trainload. How many men, women and children died of "starvation punishment" in the famine years of will never be known accurately, but conservative western historians put the toll at "several millions. By , Stalin felt firmly enough entrenched to carry out the plan he had calculated from the start- the liquidation of every remaining Russian who posed a threat to his supreme power.
In a series of public "trials" that lasted into , political and military adversaries were eliminated lot by lot. The most dangerous of the opposition were sentenced to death before firing squads. Hundreds of thousands of others were exiled or imprisoned. The victims included most of the men who had been Nicolai Lenin's lieutenants- party organizers, propagandists, diplomats and other high officials.
They were accused of treason of collaboration with Nazi Germany and Japan, of capitalist conspiracy, of numberless black plots. Any opposition was swiftly suppressed. Others point out that his policies led to the deaths of 40 million people through starvation, forced labour and executions. Reign: General Amin overthrew an elected government in Uganda via a military coup and declared himself president. He then ruthlessly ruled for eight years, during which an estimated 3,00, civilians were massacred.
Pinochet died before he could stand trial on accusations of human-rights abuses. Note: All people on the list ruled prior to No living figures were included on the list. Nifty 17, InterGlobe 2, His ruthless decisions led to a famine that killed millions. For bizarre reasons, he even killed families of people who were fond of him. Under his rule, more than 1.
He died of a stroke in Pol Pot was the leader of the Cambodian revolutionary group the Khmer Rogue, which had orchestrated the Cambodian genocide. Pol Pot wanted to destroy the Cambodian civilisation in order to start a new regime. He is probably the only man in history who carried out a mass genocide in his own country.
He liked to keep the skulls of people he had killed and he went as far as ordering babies to be torn limb by limb. He died of natural causes. Himmler had ordered the killing of about 6 million Jews, 2 to 5 lakh Russians and many other groups that the Nazis believed were unworthy of living. It is believed, not verified, that he had furniture made from the bones and skins of Jewish victims. He also invaded Gaul with the intention of conquering it, though he was defeated at the Battle of Catalaunian Plains.
Source: Britannica , Biography. Wu went from year-old junior concubine to empress of China. She ruthlessly eliminated opponents by dismissing, exiling, or executing them — even if they were her own family.
The Chinese empire greatly expanded under her rule, and though she had brutal tactics, her decisive nature and talent for government has been praised by historians. Notably, m ilitary leaders who were handpicked by Wu took control of large parts of the Korean peninsula. Source: Britannica. Khan's father was poisoned to death when Khan was 9, and he spent time as a slave during his teenage years before he united the Mongol tribes and went on to conquer a huge chunk of Central Asia and China.
His style is characterized as brutal, and historians have pointed out that he slaughtered civilians en masse.
One of the most notable examples was when he massacred the aristocrats of the Khwarezm Empire, decimating the ruling class, with unskilled workers taken to be used as human shields. Torquemada was appointed Grand Inquisitor during the Spanish Inquisition. He established tribunals in several cities, put together 28 articles to guide other inquisitors, and authorized torture to extract confessions.
He reportedly encouraged King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella to give Spanish Jews the choice between exile or baptism, causing many Jews to leave the country.
Historians estimate that Torquemada was responsible for about 2, people burning at the stake. Interestingly, some sources say Torquemada himself came from a family of Jewish converts. Timur led military campaigns through a large chunk of western Asia, including modern Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria, and he founded the Timurid Empire. In present-day Afghanistan, Timur ordered the construction of a tower made out of live men, each stacked on top of another, and cemented together with bricks and mortar.
He also once ordered a massacre to punish a rebellion, and he had 70, heads built up into minarets. Source: Encyclopedia.
When Vlad III finally became the ruler of the principality of Wallachia, the region was in disarray because of the many feuding boyars.
According to the stories, Vlad invited his rivals all to a banquet, where he stabbed and impaled them all. Impaling was his favorite method of torture. Though it's difficult to determine whether this story was embellished, it characterizes Vlad's rule: He tried to bring stability and order to Wallachia through extremely ruthless methods. Ivan IV began his rule by reorganizing the central government and limiting the power of the hereditary aristocrats the princes and the boyars.
After the death of his first wife, Ivan began his "reign of terror" by eliminating top boyar families. He also beat his pregnant daughter-in-law and killed his son in a fit of rage.
H e earned the nickname "Ivan Grozny" aka "Ivan the Formidable" — which has been mistranslated to "Terrible". Source: Biography , Britannica. Over the next few years, hundreds of Protestants were burned at the stake, and for that she earned the nickname "Bloody Mary. Source: Biography , BBC. The countess lured young peasant women into her castle, promising them jobs as maids before brutally torturing them to death.
According to one account, she tortured and killed as many as girls, though the actual number is likely to be much lower.
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