Child sacrifice, unfathomable torture, genocide, biological warfare, and a number of other atrocities have been committed under very powerful empires. From the Mongols to the Soviet Union, here are the 5 of the most evil civilizationsin history:
5. The Mongols
This empire was founded by Genghis Khan, a Mongol politician and military commander who was known for his brutality.
The Mongol Empire existed during the 13th and 14th centuries A.D., and was the largest empire to ever exist in human history, as it emerged through the collaboration of Mongol and Turkic tribes.
However, Mongol campaigns in Northern China, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East caused great destruction. In fact, the Mongols slaughtered 11% of the world’s population-around 40 million people. Among the dead were innocent civilians, including pregnant women. They would even rip open the bodies of pregnant women to slaughter unborn children.
The Mongols were barbarians and savages,and their aim was to spread terror to others. The troops that submitted to the Mongols and overthrew (or rose up against) their rulers were incorporated into the Mongol system in order to expandmanpower. It also allowed for the Mongols to absorb new technology, knowledge, and skills for the use in military campaigns against other armies.
The Mongols were known to burn farmland during their invasions, causing starvation among the populace. Their destruction of the irrigation systems of Iran and Iraq turned back centuries of effort to improving agriculture and water supply in these regions. The loss of food also led to death of more people from starvation than from the battles that were fought.
Mongols also had a fetish with severed heads. They would often gather the heads from diseased corpses and catapult them into the enemy’s compound to terrorize and to infect cities with bubonic plague, infecting entire populations.
Genghis Khan vowed in his youth to bring his world to his feet, and he came very close to keeping his promise. At its height, the Mongol Empire covered large parts of modern-day China, Mongolia, Russia, Armenia, Georgia, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Moldova, South Korea, North Korea, and Kuwait.
4. The Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire, also known as the Turkish Empire, lasted from 1301 to 1922 A.D. and stretched over three continents.During the 16th and 17th centuries, the Ottoman Empire was multinational, multilingual, and controlled much of Southeast Europe, parts of Central Europe, West Asia, Northern Africa, and the Horn of Africa.
It was considered to be one of the most powerful empires in history at its height. However, toward the end of its existence, it committed several atrocities. In 1876, 8,000 Ottoman soldiers massacred the defenseless population of Batak, Bulgaria, beheading and burning alive at least 5,000 people.
In 1915, leaders of the Turkish government established a plan to expel and massacre Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire. And on April 24, 1915, the Armenian genocide began. That day, the Turkish government arrested and executed several hundred Armenian intellectuals. Next, ordinary Armenians were forced out of their homes andinto the desert.
During the genocide, even children and the elderly were sent on death marches through the hot desert. This covered hundreds of miles, and those marching were often naked so they would die of dehydration from the scorching heat of the sun. People who stopped to rest were shot.
During this time, the Young Turks created a “special organization,” which basically organized “killing squads” or “butcher battalions” to carry out the elimination of the Christian elements. The killing squads consisted of murderers and ex-convicts that drowned people in rivers, threw them off of cliffs, crucified them, and burned them alive. The Turkish countryside was littered with Armenian corpses.
Turkish government squads would also kidnap children, convert them to Islam, and give them to Turkish families. In certain areas, Armenian women were raped and forced to serve as slaves. Muslim families moved into the homes of deported Armenians and seized their property.
Between 1915 and 1918, the Ottoman government slaughtered 1.5 million Armenians living in Turkey. To this day, the Turkish government denies the genocide.
3. Nazi Germany
Under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, the National Socialist Party grew into a mass movement and ruled as a fascist totalitarian regime from 1933 to 1945. Nazi Germany was also known at that time as the Third Reich.
The Nazi Party was originally founded in 1919 (as the German Worker’s Party) and it championed German pride while promoting anti-Semitism. Hitler became the leader of the party in 1921 and later became chancellor of Germany in 1933, where his Nazi government reigned with dictatorial powers.
Although it was a brief civilization, Nazi Germany was responsible for the murder of 6 million Jews during its reign.The atrocities committed by the Nazis include: gassing, drowning, beatings, property crimes, torture, and human experiments, thanks to laws established by Hitler.
The Nazis created 20,000 concentration camps to incarcerate their racial opponents. By 1941, up to 6,000 prisoners each day, were sent to gas chambers in Auschwitz, which were disguised as shower rooms. There, a highly toxic substance was unleashed, asphyxiating the victims within minutes. Guards would then remove the dead prisoners’ hair and gold fillings. The hair was used to make rope and the gold was deposited into a Nazi bank account.
German doctors also carried out deadly human experiments at the camps. Prisoners were subjected to icy water for five hours until they froze to death. They were also injected with tuberculosis and malaria, sterilized, and forced to undergo nerve and limb transplants without any anesthetic.
The Nazis also started the worst war in human history.
While Hitler was one of the most influential people who ever lived, his Nazi Germany was one of the most evil empires that ever existed.
2. The Aztecs
The Aztec people were a specific ethnic group of central Mexico who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica from the 14th to 16th centuries.
The Aztecs believed that for every 52 years that passed, the world would end unless the gods were strong. They also believed the best way to toughen up a god was with a steady flow of human sacrifice.
About 20,000 people were sacrificed yearly and hearts of the sacrificed victims were cut out of their chest while they were still alive. Their bodies were often cooked and eaten after the ceremony. Other victims were drowned, beheaded, burned, or dropped from heights.
However, the most evil part of the Aztec culture was the child sacrifice that was performed. During the first month of the dry season, the Aztecs sacrificed young children to Tlaloc—the god of rain and water—as they believed the tears of children would secure abundant rain for the rest of the year.
Parents would dress their child in ceremonial clothing before placing the child on a stone. Priests would then hold the child down by their arms and legs. Next, a knife was hammered down through the child’s gut or ribcage to extract his or her beating heart to be offered to Tlaloc.
If the child was not crying before the sacrifice, they pulled off his or her fingernails to ensure plenty of tears. After extracting the child’s heart, his or her body was then tossed down, cut into pieces and eaten.
The age of the children who were sacrificed was typically between three and six years old.
1.The Soviet Union
In the beginning, Vladimir Lenin, the first dictator of the U.S.S.R., defeated the White Army and gained power of the empire.
Lenin led his brutal regime until Stalin murdered him and became the next dictator.Stalin continued the evil that Lenin started. Only, under Stalinist control, the U.S.S.R. instigated a regime of terror that spread across Russia and into Eastern Europe. The Soviet Union intended to eliminate all the enemies of socialism. In doing so, they killed approximately 20 million people.
Millions of prisoners were sent to overcrowded Russian Gulags, where they were subjected to hard labor, starvation, and execution. In Gulags, the Russians used rat torture as a method of gaining confessions from prisoners. Guards stripped the victims naked and attached a rat cage to the victim’s abdomen. The bars were then heated so the rat would try to escape by burrowing into the victim’s abdomen. The procedure was excruciating for the victims.
The government also took farmland across the Soviet states, and when the farmers refused to hand over their land, Stalin caused a man-made famine to starve the peasants into submission. This killed 7 million people in the process. He then started a famine to intentionally starve the Ukrainian people, killing 13 million Ukrainians.
Living under Stalin put most citizens in a perpetual state of fear.