10 Most Evil World Leaders To Ever Live

Top 10 Most Evil World Leaders of All Time

Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down the most brutal, horrific, and despicable world leaders in history.

#10: Saddam Hussein

Iraq (1979–2003)

Within a week of taking power, Iraqi president Saddam Hussein arrested and massacred all his rivals within the Ba’ath Party. It was a horrific foreshadowing of the next two bloody decades. Hussein invaded Iran and later Kuwait, which ultimately devastated his own economy. The Iran-Iraq War lasted for eight years and cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Despite these failures, he maintained power through horrific repression and violence. He brutalized and slaughtered Shi’a and Kurdish minorities, killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians. Hussein remained in power until the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He was executed two years later.

#9: Idi Amin

Uganda (1971-79)

Fearing arrest for corruption, Ugandan General Idi Amin took power in 1971 through a violent military coup. His eight year reign was marked by ethnic cleansing, corruption, and murder. Within a year he purged Uganda of East Asians, expelling tens of thousands. He purged the military of Acholi and Lango ethnic minorities, disappearing hundreds of people. The purging spread through Ugandan society. Amin silenced all dissident voices and dumped their bodies in the Nile. Amnesty International estimated that Amin killed upwards of half a million of his own people. Eventually, Amin alienated enough rivals to get usurped and pushed into permanent exile. He died in 2003 from kidney failure.

#8: Hideki Tojo

Japan (1941-44)

As Imperial Japan entered World War II, General Hideki Tojo coalesced all power behind himself. In addition to being Prime Minister, Tojo represented much of his own cabinet. He indoctrinated Japanese youth through nationalist education and suffused Japanese culture with supremacist ideology, justifying years of atrocities against so-called lesser races. Tojo greenlit the use of illegal chemical and biological weapons in China. He instituted forced labor regimes, brutalizing POWs and civilians alike. He authorized human experimentation through his secret unit 731. By the end of the War, Imperial Japan was responsible for almost 30 million civilians across East Asia and the South Pacific. Tojo was arrested at the end of the war and executed by a military tribunal.

#7: Mehmed Talaat

Ottoman Empire (1913-18)

Mehmet Talaat, also known as Talaat Pasha, was the Minister of the Interior of the Ottoman Empire. Despite his title, he all but ran the nation until he formalized his power as Grand Vizier in 1917. Talaat was the leading figure in the persecution of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks. Fearing Armenian independence, Talaat ordered the arrest of prominent Armenians in Constantinople. Some were deported, but many were killed. This kicked off a wholesale slaughter of Armenians so widespread that a new word eventually had to be coined, despite Turkey’s protestations, to describe the violence: genocide. By the time of Paşa’s assassination in 1921, nearly one million Armenian lives had been taken.

#6: Augusto Pinochet

Chile (1973-90)

Augusto Pinochet overthrew his predecessor in a U.S.-backed coup in 1973. To the world, Pinochet presented the face of a reformer. He stabilized Chile’s free-falling economy, bringing free market capitalism to Chile. Under his leadership, Chile had one of the best economies in Latin America. Under the surface, however, Pinochet was a stone-cold monster. His secret police would often arrest and disappear opposition figures in the dead of night. Between two and four thousand were murdered. Upwards of 35,000 Chileans were arrested. The horrific mistreatment Pinochet inflicted upon them is beyond description.

#5: Leopold II

Belgium (1865-1909)
In Belgium, they called Leopold II the Builder King. He enacted social and economic reforms, and commissioned dozens of public works. In Africa, King Leopold went by another name: The Butcher of the Congo. His mercenary army extracted the Congo’s rubber wealth, filling Leopold’s personal coffers. Leopold never visited the nation, yet he left an indelible mark. Failure to meet his quota of rubber was paid for in blood. His soldiers cut off the hands of the people they murdered as proof. Around 10 million Congolese men, women, and children were killed or died from famine and disease. After being forced to relinquish the colony, he ordered the Congolese archive burned. Leopold said, "They have no right to know what I did there."

#4: Mao Zedong

China (1943-76)
Mao Zedong led his Communist revolutionaries against the Imperial Japanese during World War II. After the war, he consolidated power in China under Communist rule. He instituted ‘land reform,’ seizing private land by force. Over half a million dissenters were persecuted. In 1958, Mao initiated the “Great Leap Forward” campaign to transform China’s economy. The transition from an agrarian economy to an industrial powerhouse was wildly successful. But China paid for this success in a staggering toll of human lives. The transition created a countrywide famine. Anywhere between 15 and 55 million Chinese died between 1958 and 1962. His subsequent Cultural Revolution, a violent class struggle, led to hundreds of thousands more deaths.

#3: Pol Pot

Cambodia (1963–81)
Pol Pot was a Cambodian Communist revolutionary who led the ethnonationalist Khmer Rouge. He believed in a Cambodian resurrection of the ancient Angkorian Empire, launching attacks on Vietnam and Thailand. The Khmer Rouge acted with brutal savagery within Cambodia. He also launched a civil war, seizing power in 1975. The Khmer Rouge then emptied every town and city in the country. Nobody was excused, not even the elderly or infirm. Anyone who refused, or moved too slowly was killed. The survivors were sent to forced labor farms, the infamous “Killing Fields.” Intellectuals and professionals were murdered along with their families. All told, between one and two million died during the Cambodian Genocide.

#2: Joseph Stalin

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) (1924-53)
Joseph Stalin’s 29-year reign saw the U.S.S.R. transform into one of the world’s great superpowers. That transformation cost tens of millions of Russian lives. His land seizure campaign included the purposeful murder by starvation of millions of Ukrainian farmers and villagers. Stalin expanded the size and scope of the Soviet secret police. He turned the Soviet Union into a police state, where neighbor spied on neighbor. Millions were killed or vanished into gulags. Even conservative estimates make Stalin responsible for the death of more than 4% of his country’s entire population.



Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few dishonorable mentions.

Caligula, Rome (37-41 CE)
Sadistic Emperor Reveled in Excess & the Suffering of His People


Vlad III, Wallachia (1448; 1456–62; 1476)
Vlad the Impaler Killed Many of His Own People


Kim Jong Il, North Korea (1994-2011)
Instead of Feeding North Korea, Kim Repressed and Starved It

#1: Adolf Hitler

Germany (1933-45)

Adolf Hitler’s rule in Nazi Germany was the nadir of humanity. His fiery rhetoric set Germany ablaze with nationalistic fervor during the Great Depression. His speeches and beliefs spread, monstrously scapegoating Jews for Germany’s problems. After gaining power through intimidation and propaganda and then subverting democracy, Hitler brought total war to Europe and the world. He then planned and carried out the Holocaust, the most horrifyingly systematic mass murder of humans in history. Six million Jewish people were deliberately murdered in death camps. Hitler persecuted, enslaved and murdered millions more gays, Poles, Slavs, people with disabilities and other victims of his insane ideology.



Please share your thoughts on history's most brutal and evil dictators below. Let us reflect together on the somber lessons we can learn from their dark legacies.