Mao Ze-Dong (China, 1958-61 and 1966-69, Tibet 1949-50) | 49-78,000,000 |
Adolf Hitler (Germany, 1939-1945) | 12,000,000 (concentration camps and civilians deliberately killed in WWII plus 3 million Russian POWs left to die) |
Leopold II of Belgium (Congo, 1886-1908) | 8,000,000 |
Jozef Stalin (USSR, 1932-39) | 7,000,000 (the gulags plus the purges plus Ukraine’s famine) |
Hideki Tojo (Japan, 1941-44) | 5,000,000 (civilians in WWII) |
Ismail Enver (Ottoman Turkey, 1915-20) | 1,200,000 Armenians (1915) + 350,000 Greek Pontians and 480,000 Anatolian Greeks (1916-22) + 500,000 Assyrians (1915-20) |
Pol Pot (Cambodia, 1975-79) | 1,700,000 |
Kim Il Sung (North Korea, 1948-94) | 1.6 million (purges and concentration camps) |
Menghistu (Ethiopia, 1975-78) | 1,500,000 |
Yakubu Gowon (Biafra, 1967-1970) | 1,000,000 |
Leonid Brezhnev (Afghanistan, 1979-1982) | 900,000 |
Jean Kambanda (Rwanda, 1994) | 800,000 |
Saddam Hussein (Iran 1980-1990 and Kurdistan 1987-88) | 600,000 |
Tito (Yugoslavia, 1945-1980) | 570,000 |
Suharto/Soeharto (Indonesian communists 1965-66) | 500,000 |
Fumimaro Konoe (Japan, 1937-39) | 500,000? (Chinese civilians) |
Jonas Savimbi – but disputed by recent studies (Angola, 1975-2002) | 400,000 |
Mullah Omar – Taliban (Afghanistan, 1986-2001) | 400,000 |
Idi Amin (Uganda, 1969-1979) | 300,000 |
Yahya Khan (Pakistan, 1970-71) | 300,000 (Bangladesh) |
Ante Pavelic (Croatia, 1941-45) | 359,000 (30,000 Jews, 29,000 Gipsies, 300,000 Serbs) |
Benito Mussolini (Ethiopia, 1936; Libya, 1934-45; Yugoslavia, WWII) | 300,000 |
Mobutu Sese Seko (Zaire, 1965-97) | ? |
Charles Taylor (Liberia, 1989-1996) | 220,000 |
Foday Sankoh (Sierra Leone, 1991-2000) | 200,000 |
Suharto (Aceh, East Timor, New Guinea, 1975-98) | 200,000 |
Ho Chi Min (Vietnam, 1953-56) | 200,000 |
Michel Micombero (Burundi, 1972) | 150,000 |
Slobodan Milosevic (Yugoslavia, 1992-99) | 100,000 |
Hassan Turabi (Sudan, 1989-1999) | 100,000 |
Syngman Rhee (South Korea, 1948-50) | 80,000 (various massacres of civilians) |
Richard Nixon (Vietnam, 1969-1974) | 70,000 (Vietnamese and Cambodian civilians) |
Efrain Rios Montt – but disputed by recent studies (Guatemala, 1982-83) | 70,000 |
Papa Doc Duvalier (Haiti, 1957-71) | 60,000 |
Rafael Trujillo (Dominican Republic, 1930-61) | 50,000 |
Bashir Assad (Syria, 2012-13) | 50,000 |
Francisco Macias Nguema (Equatorial Guinea, 1969-79) | 50,000 |
Hissene Habre (Chad, 1982-1990) | 40,000 |
Chiang Kai-shek (Taiwan, 1947) | 30,000 (popular uprising) |
Vladimir Ilich Lenin (USSR, 1917-20) | 30,000 (dissidents executed) |
Francisco Franco (Spain) | 30,000 (dissidents executed after the civil war) |
Fidel Castro (Cuba, 1959-1999) | 30,000 |
Lyndon Johnson (Vietnam, 1963-1968) | 30,000 |
Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez (El Salvador, 1932) | 30,000 |
Hafez Al-Assad (Syria, 1980-2000) | 25,000 |
Khomeini (Iran, 1979-89) | 20,000 |
Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe, 1982-87, Ndebele minority) | 20,000 |
Rafael Videla (Argentina, 1976-83) | 13,000 |
Guy Mollet (France, 1956-1957) | 10,000 (war in Algeria) |
Harold McMillans (Britain, 1952-56, Kenya’s Mau-Mau rebellion) | 10,000 |
Jean-Bedel Bokassa (Centrafrica, 1966-79) | ? |
Paul Koroma (Sierra Leone, 1997) | 6,000 |
Osama Bin Laden (worldwide, 1993-2001) | 3,500 |
Augusto Pinochet (Chile, 1973) | 3,000 |
If Nixon and LBJ are on this list for ordering bombing on civilian targets in Vietnam, then FDR and Truman should be included for firebombing civilian neighborhoods in Germany and Japan. As a culture, we tend to glorify WWII and vilify Vietnam. Perhaps the dislike of Nixon and LBJ also factored into the compilation of this list.