Leadership is a great skill and no one can reach great heights without it. Most of the successful personalities in the world are successful leaders too. In the words of Queen Elizabeth II, “I know of no single formula for success. But over the years I have observed that some attributes of leadership are universal and are often about finding ways of encouraging people to combine their efforts, their talents, their insights, their enthusiasm and their inspiration to work together.” A true leader is the one who has to achieve the outcomes and the goals he has set for himself and the people under him.

Leaders like Nelson Mandela sacrificed their whole life for downtrodden sections of society, whereas some cruel leaders exploited their people for personal gains. Today in school our kids are reading about the atrocities committed by many ringmasters who ruled with an iron hand and made the common people dance at their whips. Such leaders destroyed countries just for pleasure! Of course, they gained popularity, money and a luxurious life due to their cruel rule, but they will forever be labeled as “deadly leaders” or “the enemies of the human race.”

Here, you have the list of the 15 most ferocious and cruel leaders of all time. After reading their stories, you may thank God for saving your world from such deadly leaders.

15. Joseph Stalin

“Man of Steel” Joseph Stalin was known for his tough attitude and ruthless rule. Those who stood against Stalin’s decision were brutally murdered. He never had a soft spot for people and his quotes also reflect that. Just check out these quotes from Stalin – “Death is the solution to all problems. No man — no problem,” and “One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic.”

A Georgian historian Roy Aleksandrovich Medvedev had compiled a research paper that revealed the death toll during Stalin’s rule. According to Medvedev’s paper, a million people were put behind the bars, another million were executed during the ”Great Terror”, and 4 to 6 million had to live in labor camps. Around 10 to 12 million people had to relocate themselves and 6 to 7 million died due to an artificial famine. Stalin’s reign has been called a “Reign of Terror”. The Great Terror was a period of severe infamous political repression and many books have been penned that give a detailed record of the atrocities in that time period.

14. Genghis Khan

It is said that a child’s frame of mind can be seen in their cradle. Genghis Khan was no exception to this adage. He had been cruel in his childhood days too. He killed his half-brother while having an argument! Around 40 million people died during Khan’s rule and he was always proud of it. He considered the augmenting fatality count as a feather in his cap. He gave no option to the people, either they had to join Khan or sacrifice their life in the rebellion. And as far as religious tolerance in Khan’s rule is concerned, he was a fanatic and the cruelest one at that.

He was so obsessed with the Mongolian culture that Jewish and Muslim people were treated like slaves and never allowed to practice their own customs. He not only made them live in his kingdom like dogs but also forbade them from eating their native food. Those who disobeyed Khan’s order had to accept severe punishments. There are also incredibly gruesome stories that Khan and his soldiers stabbed pregnant women and removed the fetuses in the enemy empire. Even the devil might think twice before doing this.

13. Vlad the Impaler

Vlad III was the cruelest leader of the medieval period. He had the habit of biting war victims on the neck for blood. Throughout his intermittent rule, he wanted to show off his power and to achieve this he invaded empires. Once he called a beggar to have food and just for his sick sense of fun, he had him burned alive! This was his method of sending out a message to all beggars as his aim was to create a beggar-free country. He was a whimsical ruler, running purely on instinct.

From time to time he committed acts that struck fear into the hearts of the people. Once he gave orders to cut the hands of a woman who wore ragged clothes while going to meet her husband. Those who were unable to pay the tax had to accept severe punishment, and while his soldiers meted out punishment on the innocent people, Vlad was entertained. He strongly believed that cruel acts would correct people. He was a different breed altogether; after burning people, he fed their corpses to crabs in a pond and had dinner with his enemies’ dead bodies. A masochistic fellow, watching people in pain was a great pleasure for Vlad.

12. Ante Pavelic

Due to his brutal policies against minorities, Ante Pavelic is considered as one of the cruelest Nazi leaders. Ante Pavelic was the chief of the Ustase party which had power in Croatia. Due to his cruelty, no less than 80,000 Jews and 30,000 Gypsies lost their lives. He used each and every opportunity to increase his personal wealth. Being a Nazi, Pavelic was always in favor of genocide and also killed many people through genocide. Serbs were always his main target. During an interview, Pavelic was asked: “What if all Serbs rebel?” He replied that all Serbs would be killed! Pavelic had no mercy for the Jewish or Gypsy people and neither did he care about women and children. 

11. Saddam Hussein

Saddam was a living nightmare for the western world. The daring leader of Iraq destroyed the lives of millions to achieve his evil deeds. One such event that elucidates his blind rage happened which broke all past records of cruelty. Once he was in Dujail, a town near Baghdad, and some militants attacked him. As a response to that attack, a livid Saddam gave an order to arrest the residents of the whole town. He did not even exclude the kids from the brutal punishment. The whole town was destroyed and witnessed the heights of animosity.

Shiites and Kurds were not happy with Saddam’s rule. To suppress these two groups, Saddam ordered the killing of many Shiites. The Marsh Arabs had to relocate themselves from Southern Iraq and Saddam mercilessly destroyed their villages. Saddam’s cruelty came to an end in 2006 when he was held responsible for multiple crimes against humanity. On December 30, 2006, Saddam was executed. Although there was an atmosphere of respite and a sigh of relief was heaved by one and all, people felt that somehow his execution was too peaceful in comparison to the horrors committed by him.

10.  Attila the Hun

The Huns had been a constant trouble for the people and Attila made sure his name would be recorded as the fiercest and most barbaric of all. Attila troubled the Roman Empire throughout his rule. This Hun ruler killed his brother to take the crown. All Attila wanted was wealth, and to get that he destroyed cities, killed innocent people and destroyed the lives of all in his wake. For Attila, punishing his enemies was a big time pleasure. So, he used to torture them and make them die slowly and painfully. To please him, the Romans had to pay heavy amounts, consistently accepting his suzerainty.

When the Romans mustered up the courage to say no to Attila, he attacked Rome and somehow the Pope convinced him to go back. He returned with a massive amount og loot. God’s retribution had its own way and Attila died on his wedding night. Those who buried his body were also killed, in order to keep the buried location of the body a secret. 

9. Pol Pot

Pol Pot was a Cambodian leader who was deeply committed to Marxist ideology. He led the Cambodian Marxist political movement called the Khmer Rouge. Pot was totally against western thoughts and did not want his country to have any kind of contact with foreign countries. He closed schools and hospitals and gave no place for banking, private property or commerce. In his bid to build an agrarian society, he prohibited other economic activities in the country. People’s freedom to practice religion and lifestyle were restricted and they had to leave cities and settle down in rural parts of the country.

Pot awarded death sentence to those who refused to follow his orders. Any member of the defeated Cambodian army, doctors, teachers, religious figures, journalists, lawyers, and even government workers were treated with the highest of suspicions and frequently targeted for immediate liquidation. Many such professionals were murdered along with their entire extended families. No one had the right to own a radio or to listen to music. Public gatherings and possessing valuable assets were also considered a punishable offense. Pot executed 25,000 Buddhist monks and destroyed 4,000 of their monasteries. 

8. King Leopold II

King of Belgium, Leopold II was strongly against the African people. He is responsible for the death of 10 million innocent people. Today’s Democratic Republic of Congo was like hell for natives when Leopold was in power. He did not try to control robbery – in fact, he participated in it. Congo’s soldiers had to follow the orders of Leopold like slaves. Leopold exploited Congo and sent the resources to his country. In his perspective, in order to make Belgium strong, he had to plunder his colonies. Congo had a lot of natural resources, but Leopold milked everything for the development of Belgium and kept Congo’s people in the dark. People in Congo had to pay a heavy tax and Leopold II used the money to build many buildings in Belgium. He was a bastard at heart.

7. Robespierre

This French leader did not even spare his own friends from brutal punishment. 16,594 death sentences were granted during the rule of Robespierre. Robespierre’s Committee of Public Safety created the Law of Suspects which gave the right to local authorities to put anyone behind the bars if they aroused even the least bit of suspicion. Around 400,000 people including innocents became the victims of this law. Those who did not join Robespierre’s Jacobin Club had a tough time in France. For him, violence was the best tool to achieve his goals. “Terror is nothing more than speedy, severe and inflexible justice; it is thus an emanation of virtue,” Robespierre once said. He was a cruel man who left nothing in his wake. Not even a dead leaf.

6. Andrew Jackson

For many, Andrew Jackson is the worst American President ever. His bad decisions played with the lives of millions. He told his men to capture women and children during the Seminole War. “I think I may say that the Indian war is at an end for the present, the enemy is scattered over the whole face of the earth, and at least one-half must starve and die with disease,” Jackson’s letter to his wife reads. He was proud of what he was doing with innocent people. He neglected the Supreme Court and ruled the country like a dictator. He is also the reason for the economic depression which happened in the 1880s.

5. Ho Chi Minh

Ho Chi Minh’s aim was to free Vietnam from French rule, but in fulfilling his wish he destroyed the lives of many. Public opinion was highly neglected and exploited by Ho. People were beaten and beheaded, and in some even more barbaric cases they were stoned to death. Nearly 50,000 to 100,000 people died due to the cruel rule of Ho. Ho was totally against South Vietnam’s leaders. He and his team perpetually troubled those particular South Vietnamese who had relatives serving in the army or civil services. Ho’s guerrilla team were experts in creating fear among people by beheading innocents. Once they beheaded a young girl and kept her head in front of her home! His barbarism knew no equal.

4. Muammar Gaddafi

This Libyan leader troubled his people with too many restrictions. He raped many women throughout his rule. A German broadcaster RTL created a documentary about Gaddafi and revealed some hidden information. His female bodyguards were also victims of his sexual harassment. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, had claimed that Gaddafi asked his men to rape women who were against his rule. He used to abuse all those women who came to meet him. He was ready to forgive people who could gift him young girls. Businessmen used to send escort girls for Gaddafi just to be in his good books. It is also reported that nurses had aborted many women who were raped by Gaddafi. A perfect portrait of a person infested with evil and nefarious intent.

3. Adolf Hitler

This name needs no introduction. Till his last breath, he was against the Jews and making Germany free from Jews was his sacred mission. While he ruled over Germany, he never allowed Jews to have a peaceful life. They were deprived of good jobs and basic rights. Germany’s prisons were filled with them and they were treated very brutally. He had killed around 6 million Jews during the Holocaust.

In Poland, Jews were killed in gas chambers. Hitler had a strong belief that Jews would never contribute to Germany’s success. He made them die through starvation or forced them to serve the German army like slaves. In Hitler’s kingdom, those who were not able to work had no right to live. Around 70,000 mentally ill and disabled people were killed under his Euthanasia Program because for Hitler they were a big burden. A person with no regard for life other than his own, Hitler’s name goes down in history as one of the most callous and stone-hearted dictators.

2. Mao Zedong

Certainly this person deserves to be on top of the charts. Also known as Chairman Mao, he was the first chairman of the communist party of China. He took advantage of the various civil wars that wreaked havoc in China in his time, and rose to power. 49 million people died as a direct result of his policies. During the first five years of his rule, from 1949 to 1953, Mao killed 4 to 6 million people either by awarding them death sentences or exiling them to diabolical labor camps. His programs, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, are said to have caused around 20 million deaths due to starvation. In the end, because of his policies and political purges, Mao caused the deaths of as many as 78 million people, making him the most evil dictator in history comparable to the likes of Hitler and Stalin. If his tyranny can’t be judged by these stats, people in his time used to refrain from walking around the peripheries of skyscrapers lest they risk the chance of suicide bodies landing on them. This was the condition of China under him.

1. Idi Amin

This dictator was a man eater, literal a cannibal, and he was proud of it! It was believed that Amin used to keep human organs in his refrigerator. “It’s not for me. I tried human flesh and it’s too salty for my taste,” Amin once confessed. His former Health minister had revealed that Amin has eaten human flesh. Amin brutally treated his enemies in an underground prison that was equipped with a torture chamber and an electrified moat. To kill people Amin used sledgehammers. Amin ordered South Asians to leave Uganda and he also claimed that he was following God’s order, after which around 80,000 South Asians who were residing in Uganda had to leave Uganda. He was illiterate, so in his perspective educated youth were always a threat to his power. He always kept such people at bay, away from the administration. He was referred to as the Butcher of Uganda, and really he does deserve the title.

These cruel leaders and rulers have defiled the world where they lived. Where there could have been peace and harmony, they desecrated the lands by spilling blood and all sorts of gore. Unimaginable is the plight of the people who must have had lived under constant terror. Consider yourself fortunate that you live in today’s era of peace and didn’t breathe in those dark ages. God bless the souls of the tormented.

Sources: ibtimes.com, History.com, Dailymail, nytimes.com, BBC