ILLUSTRATIONS Icarus Yuji
In these walls and halls, meet the 50 historical figures who proved that human cruelty has no limits. (Attention: the numbers are not a ranking; they only serve as a reference between the images and the captions)
1) ADOLF HITLER
Homeland Braunau Am Inn, Austria
Birth 4/20/1889
Death 4/30/1945
With a meteoric rise in the German Nazi party, he became Chancellor in 1933 and threw the world into the chaos of World War II, the biggest armed conflict in history. Preaching racial superiority, he systematized the elimination of about 8 million Jews and members of other minorities in death camps.
+ Who were Hitler’s right-hand men?
2) NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
Homeland Ajaccio on the island of Corsica, France
Birth 8/15/1769
Death 5/5/1821
Political and military leader who rose to power at the end of the French Revolution, became emperor and ruled between 1804 and 1814. He ignored international treaties and the death of 6 million Europeans during his conquests. He was overcome by his ambition, as he exhausted the might of his military forces.
+ After all, how did Napoleon lose the war?
3) ATILLA
Homeland unknown
Birth Unknown
Death 453
The king of the Huns ruled much of Europe from 434 to 453. His military campaigns annihilated entire nations and were so devastating that rivals considered him divine punishment: «the Scourge of God.» A sworn enemy of the Romans, he even conquered part of northern Italy, but his death halted the Hunnic advance.
+ Who was Attila the Hun? Know more about his biography
4) HEROD THE GREAT
Homeland unknown
Birth Between 74 and 73 BC
Death 4 BC
Known as a madman who killed his own family and had hundreds of rabbis murdered, the Roman king of Judea was also tyrant and corrupt. He organized a kind of secret police that investigated any outbreak of rebellion among the controlled Jews. Any suspect was publicly tortured and executed.
5) BASIL II
Homeland Constantinople, Türkiye
Birth 958
Death 12/15/1025
Leader of the Byzantine Empire between 976 and 1025, he became the «killer of Bulgarians» after a war that lasted 30 years. In one of the battles, he killed 15 thousand and blinded another 15 thousand (including children and women) with red-hot daggers. He also tortured, imprisoned, or confiscated enemy property.
6) QUEEN RANAVALONA I
Homeland Ambatomarine, Madagascar
Birth 1778
Death 8/16/1861
He punished the African island between 1828 and 1861 with an isolationist policy based on forced labor. High taxes sponsored her luxuries and supported the army, which she used to suppress the people. The lack of contact with Europeans killed thousands of people due to lack of structure and health.
7) KIM IL-SUNG
Homeland Pyongan, ancient Korea
Birth 4/15/1912
Death 7/8/1994
In power from 1948 to 1972, he started the Korean War, which killed 3 million people. Another 900,000 died from political persecution or lack of infrastructure. Only those in Sung’s leadership had money and resources. And even his “friends” suffered: he exiled or executed 90% of his generals
+ What was the Korean War?
8) MUAMMAR AL-GADDAFI
Homeland Abu Hadi, at the time, an Italian colony in Libya
Birth Between 1940 and 1943
Death 10/20/2011
When he took control of Libya in 1969, the country prospered due to intense oil production. But a good part of the wealth remained with the “Coronel” – his fortune reached US$ 200 billion. Gaddafi censored the media, gave charge to relatives and, of course, asked for the heads of opponents
9) FRANCISCO FRANCO
Homeland Ferrol, Spain
Birth 12/4/1892
Death 11/20/1975
Tell me who you hang out with… The Generalissimo, who controlled Spain with an iron fist from 1939 until his death, aligned his political ideals with those of Hitler and Mussolini. He came to power in a civil war that claimed the lives of 500,000 Spaniards and starved another 200,000 more after diverting money to military efforts.
10) AUGUSTO PINOCHET
Homeland Valparaiso, Chile
Birth 11/25/1915
Death 12/10/2006
The coup d’état that placed him at the head of Chile in 1973 was the beginning of a dark period in the country, with political persecution, assassinations, inflation and social inequality. Studies indicate that, by the end of his government, in 1990, Pinochet had arrested 80,000 people. Worse: it is estimated that 30% of them were tortured
11) JOSEPH STALIN
Homeland Gori, former Russian Empire
Birth 12/18/1878
Death 3/5/1953
Imagine you, after making a comment criticizing the government at work or at school, being arrested after work, tortured and sent to labor camps. Apply this to your friends and relatives, and only then will you begin to get a sense of what it was like to live under Stalin – dictator of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1953. His paranoia cost the lives of around 60 million people
+ What were the gulags in the Soviet Union?
12) KIM JONG-IL
Homeland Baekdu Mountain, Japan-controlled Korea
Birth 2/16/1942
Death 12/17/2011
The penultimate leader of North Korea almost completely cut off trade, immigration and communication with the world, which may have indirectly caused the deaths of millions of Koreans. According to the World Human Rights Forum, another 150,000 were detained without trial in labor camps.
13) MARY I OF ENGLAND
Homeland Greenwich, England
Birth 2/18/1516
Death 11/17/1558
A fervent Catholic, she received the nickname “Blood Mary” for her cruel treatment of Protestant Christians. She burned the richest at the stake, accusing them of heresy, and enacted laws that hindered or extinguished the practice of this religion. Irony: when she died, she passed the crown to her Protestant half-sister, Elizabeth
14)NERO
Homeland anzio, italy
Birth 12/15/37
Death 6/9/68
The fifth Roman emperor loved to torture, crucify or give Christians boiling baths. He also reserved some of his madness for part of his family (whom he killed out of sheer paranoia, including his mother), for the Romans (with the famous fire that lasted six days in 64) and even for the apostle Paul (whom he ordered to kill)
+ Why did Nero set fire to Rome?
15) SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC
Homeland Pozarevac, former Yugoslavia
Birth 8/20/1941
Death 3/11/2006
Serbia’s president from 1989 to 1997 promoted the ethnic cleansing of Bosnians and Muslims in the Kosovo region. To that end, he started four wars in the 1990s, which killed 250,000 people and created 2 million refugees. He was accused of genocide and political, racial and religious persecution by the International Criminal Court.
+ If Yugoslavia had won the Cup, which current country would have won the cup?
16) REINHARD HEYDRICH
Homeland Halle an der Saale, German Empire
Birth 3/7/1904
Death 6/4/1942
Imagine someone that Hitler himself defined as “a man with an iron heart”. Heydrich was second-in-command in the SS, the Nazi paramilitary organization that coordinated the Holocaust. He created a secret police to eliminate dissidents in German territories and ordered the massacre of the Czech city of Lidice, one of the worst in history.
+ What was the Gestapo?
17) OMAR AL-BASHIR
Homeland Hosh Bannaga, Sudan
Birth 1/1/1944
Death Still alive
A military coup put him in the presidency of Sudan in 1989 – which he has not left until today. He is wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, including the ethnic cleansing of non-Arabs in the Darfur region. Amidst rapes, summary executions and expulsions of the tribal population from their lands, al-Bashir’s body count has now reached 400,000.
18) TALAT PASHA
Homeland Kircaali, Ottoman Empire
Birth 1874
Death 3/15/1921
He stayed just over a year (between 1917 and 1918) in command of the Ottoman Empire, but he touched terror. Robbery, torture and rape began a massacre that killed more than 1 million Armenians (the Armenian population at the time was 2.5 million). He was murdered by a survivor of that atrocity
19) QIN SHI HUANG
Homeland Handan, China
Birth 260 BC
Death 210 BC
The first Chinese emperor was also one of the most brutal: according to records, he ordered the deaths of more than 1 million people. Among them, researchers who failed to make him immortal (one of his biggest obsessions). He imposed forced labor on the population, such as the construction of a mausoleum that cost the lives of thousands.
20) KING JOHN OF ENGLAND
Homeland oxford, england
Birth 12/24/1166
Death 10/19/1216
After losing territories to France in a war that started in 1202, John became obsessed with recovering his resources. For this, he imposed heavy fees, including on nobles close to his inner circle. The French took advantage of the bad weather and incited a civil war, led by John’s former allies in the nobility.
21) MAO TSE-TUNG
Homeland Shaoshan, China
Birth 12/26/1893
Death 9/9/1976
From 1943 to 1976, Mao followed the communist dictators’ booklet: he eliminated those who criticized his leadership and forced the people to work under slavery (all in the name of “progress”). According to the UN Human Rights Organization, it caused the deaths of 45 million people – including about 700,000 who committed suicide due to the situation in the country.
+ What was the Chinese Cultural Revolution?
22) VLADIMIR LENIN
Homeland Simbirsk, Russian Empire
Birth 4/22/1870
Death 1/21/1924
Leader in the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution that turned monarchical Russia into the world’s first socialist state. After suffering an assassination attempt, he had more than 800 public servants executed. He encouraged censorship and created a secret police that intimidated his opponents.
+ What was the Russian Revolution?
23) ROBERT MUGABE
Homeland Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia
Birth 2/21/1924
Death Still alive
Violence, intimidation and extreme poverty have plagued the people of Zimbabwe since the beginning of Mugabe’s rule in 1980. Half the population (about 6 million) needs international assistance to survive. Meanwhile, the dictator is more concerned with stealing the country’s mineral wealth, persecuting homosexuals, taking private property…
24) ELIZABETH BATHORY
Homeland Nyirbator, Hungarian Kingdom
Birth 8/8/1560
Death8/21/1614
This countess was a woman of great fortune who supposedly went mad after losing her husband in combat. She was accused of killing and torturing 650 girls captured near her castle. Peasants believed that she bathed in the blood of her victims – which left her forever associated with vampirism.
25) ADOLF EICHMANN
Homeland Solingen, Germanic Empire
Birth 3/19/1906
Death 5/31/1962
Its primary function was to gather Jews from Nazi-controlled areas and organize them to send them to death camps. Everything was run like a factory, with production goals and targets. The disposal of evidence (the gas chambers and cremations) was also part of his responsibility.
+ Hunting the Nazis: find out how Eichmann fled after the war and was arrested, in Argentina, thanks to a coincidence
26) CALIGULA
Homeland Anzio,…