1900-2000: A century of genocides

The worst genocides of the 20th Century

(Note: the crimes committed by right-wing dictators have always been easier to track down than the crimes against humanity committed by communist leaders, so the figures for communist leaders like Stalin and Mao increase almost yearly as new secret documents become available. To this day, the Chinese government has not yet disclosed how many people were executed by Mao's red guards during the Cultural Revolution and how many people were killed in Tibet during the Chinese invasion of 1950. We also don't know how many dissidents have been killed by order of Kim Il Sung in North Korea, although presumably many thousands). Main sources: Charny (1988) Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review Stephane Courtois: Black Book on Communism (1995) Matthews: Guiness Book of Records (2000) Clodfelter: Warfare and Armed Conflicts (1992) Elliot: Twentieth Century Book of the Dead (1972) Bouthoul : A List of the 366 Major Armed Conflicts of the period 1740-1974, Peace Research (1978) R.J. Rummel: Death by Government - Genocide and Mass Murder (1994) Matt White's website Several general textbooks of 20th century history

The most frequently asked questions are always about current unpopular USA presidents: Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II... The moment the USA elects a new president, i start receiving emails asking to add him to the list of "genociders". The moment the president leaves office the same people forget about him and jump on the next one. Can we consider President Bush a genocider due to all of the civilians killed in Iraq under his watch? I don't think so, because the vast majority of civilians killed in Iraq were NOT killed by USA troops. It is genocide, but the "genociders" are others, and the situation is still too murky to decide who exactly killed those 100,000 civilians. The USA bears some clear responsibilities for the chaos, but ineptitude, miscalculation, ignorance, etc do not qualify as genocide. Otheriwse the United Nations and France would be responsible for the genocide in Rwanda (900,000 people). Putin would be a better candidate for "genocider", since the vast majority of Chechen civilians killed under his watch were killed by Russian troops. However, i have never received a single email nominating Putin.

I often get asked if Hiroshima/Nagasaki qualify as a genocide. I disagree. First of all, why only nuclear weapons? The carpet bombing of German cities and of Tokyo killed the same number of people. Second, Winston Churchill and Harry Truman did not start that war: they ended it. It is even debatable if these bombings killed or saved lives: Hiroshima probably saved a lot of Japanese lives, because a long protracted invasion like the one that took place in Germany would have killed a lot more people (Germany lost 2 million people, Japan only 300,000, because Japan was never invaded, while Germany was invaded from all sides). Actually more Japanese died in two weeks of battles with the Soviet Union in Manchuria than in the two nuclear bombings. I suspect a nuclear bomb on Berlin would have killed 100,000 people but caused Germany to surrender right away, thus saving many German lives. (I know, it is gruesome to count dead bodies like this. But, again, I didn't start that war, the Germans and the Japanese started it). Most historians believe that it was the atomic bomb to convince Japan to surrender, and it was the second one: after the first one, there were still members of the Japanese cabinet that were opposed to surrender (the cabinet had to be unanimous in order for the emperor to surrender). Koichi Kido, advisor to emperor Hirohito, said: "We of the peace party were assisted by the atomic bomb in our endeavor to end the war." Hisatsune Sakomizu, chief secretary of Cabinet, said that the atomic bombs were a "golden opportunity given by heaven for Japan to end the war." Thus the Japanese themselves (those who wanted to surrender) seem to indicate that the two atomic bombs were indispensable to end a war that was killed hundreds of thousands of people per battle (the battle of Okinawa killed more Japanese than the atomic bomb on Nagasaki). It is also estimated that throughout Japan-occupied Asia about 200,000 civilians were dying every month (of disease, hunger, etc): if the atomic bombs helped Japan surrender even just six months earlier, that saved the lives of one million Indonesians, Indochinese, Philipinos, Chinese, etc. (Notable dissenting voices were the two most powerful USA generals, Dwight Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur, who both felt that the atomic bombs were unnecessary to finish Japan. But historical documents prove them wrong: on August 9, the day of Nagasaki, the supreme council of Japan was still split on whether to surrender or continue the war. Even after Nagasaki, the council was still split. The emperor in person had to force them to surrender. The dissenters who wanted to continue the war even tried a coup to overthrow the emperor rather than obey the order to surrender. There is no evidence that Japan would have surrendered any time soon without the two atomic bombs). People die in wars. During the previous world-war, millions died of everything from guns to chemical weapons. The fact that a more or less efficient weapon is used to fight a war does not constitute genocide, per se. It is not the weapon, but the intent. Churchill's and Truman's intent was to end the war, not to exterminate the peoples (which they could have done easily, had they wanted to). In fact, I think that Churchill and Truman are exemplary of how to treat a defeated enemy: instead of annihilating the enemies, they helped Germany and Japan to rebuild themselves and become as strong and wealthy as they were before the war. It may have been the first time in history. Also we know that Werner Heisenberg in Germany and Yoshio Nishina in Japan were working on an atomic bomb: what if they had had the time to complete one? Heisenberg in Germany had failed to correctly calculate the critical mass of uranium required to sustain a chain reaction, but Nishina in Japan had just done that in 1944. It was a matter of time before Germand and Japanese scientists would find out the right recipe. Thus the first bomb was justified, and (as crazy as it sounds) it saved a lot of lives, probably millions of lives (not just Japanese lives, but lives of all the nations that were being massacred by the Japanese). Estimates of 1945 (based on the ratio of civilians and soldiers who died in similar ventures) were that one million USA soldiers would have died and 10-20 million Japanese would have died during a USA invasion of Japan. Last but not least, the USA dropped 720,000 leaflets on Hiroshima two days earlier, warning of the impending destruction of the city. It is debatable, instead, if the second atomic bomb was necessary. The USA did drop millions of leaflets over Japan to convince the population to revolt and the emperor to surrender. But the USA only waited three days to see the effect of the first atomic bomb and of its leaflets. We now know that Japan would not have surrendered. At a cabinet meeting after the first atomic bomb the Japanese generals convinced the civilian ministers to continue the war. After the first bomb, Nishina (head of the Japanese nuclear program) was asked if it was possible that the USA could build another atomic bomb within six months: obviously the people who asked him the question were not going to surrender unless a second bomb was possible. Even after the second atomic bomb the Japanese generals still argued in favor of continuing the war. It was the emperor in person who ordered the surrender. Even the surrender was not quite what the USA wanted: the Japanese requested that the emperor be left in control of Japan. Truman was under pressure from the USA public opinion to execute or at least jail the emperor. The plan for the land invasion of Japan was ready. Eventually Truman decided that he would rather live with the public anger of having appeased the Japanese emperor then with more USA soldiers dead in the war, and so decided to accept the Japanese conditions. All the evidence indicates that the second atomic bomb was crucial to end the war. For a list of casualties in wars, see this page.