[Genocide]: "The world's worst massacres" by Greg Brecht.

I'VE RESEARCHED the Holocaust, war, terrorism, and related topics for many years, seeking to find patterns, explanations, causes. Why does anyone research so macabre a subject? To remember.

I have not differentiated between war and massacre. I am aware of only two major wars in which more soldiers were killed than civilians: World War I and our own Civil War. This list is not complete, for it has not attempted to include events before the year 1100 or cases for which numbers are unavailable--the Muslim conquest of India, some of the rebellions in China, and the long wars between the Turks and the Persians, for example.

Nor have I included "smaller" events. Examples of these include the Indonesian conquest of East Timor (100,000 victims); the mutual genocide of Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda/Burundi (150,000?); the Iroquois genocide against the Erie and Huron (5,000?); or the Red Sea slave trade in which Arab slavers traded in black eunuchs for Islam's harems (250,000?).

I may well be accused of a bias against Communism. That is not the case, but the facts are harsh: the toll of the purges, terrors, labor camps and engineered famines at the hand of the Soviet, Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese regimes has been immense, not far short of the Mongol horrors.

It is a concern of mine that the numbers not be used to diminish the Holocaust. The industrialized genocide inflicted on the Jewish people by the Germans exceeds the others in horror, even if the toll of victims is less.

The list is being added to in Afghanistan, in West Iran, and as I write looks to be breaking out in Sri Lanka.

The literature of human hate and killing is immense. It is not localized in time or place I have found no people, or religion or ideology which has not been both murderer and victim.

a. This total includes soldiers, civilians and genocides, some derailed above in table.

c. This includes a deliberately engineered famine to break the will of the Ukrainian people.

d. This does not include Soviet Jews, military deaths or related mass murder at Stalin's hands. The total nears 30 million.

e. Ten million of these were soldiers killed in battle. Incompetent generalship in effect killed a million men.

f. The nations most involved: Americans, British, Danes, Dutch, French, Portuguese and Spanish. There was some German, Arab, Swedish and other involvement.

g. The best-known incident was the "Rape of Nanking," where 200,000 Chinese civilians were massacred. The Japanese Army routinely used mass killing as a terror technique to quell resistance, as did the Germans.

h. 700,000 people were put to the sword at the sack of Merv, and very large numbers when the Mongols took Kiev, Herat, Nishapur, Samarkand, Balkh and Baghdad.

j. The bloodiest episodes were the Spanish conquest of Hispaniola, the Aztec, Maya and Inca.

k. Timurlane (who was Turko/Mongol) sought to emulate Genghis Khan. He took grim pleasure in pyramids of skulls. He conquered Persia, much of India and Central Asia and, at his death in 1405, was preparing to invade China.

l. This does not include Polish Jews or the thousands of Poles the Russians killed.

m. There were savage guerilla wars in Spain and the Vendee, and the French invasion of Egypt begat much violence. The word "guerilla" originated at this time in Spain.

n. Crusades were fought in the Baltic (the Teutonic Knights) and against heretics. The Albigensian Crusade (1229) in the south of France killed a million people.

o. This includes death resulting from the Vietnamese occupation of Laos and Cambodia and the border war with China. During the American phase, about 1.4 million Vietnamese died, half of them soldiers.

p. Korean civilians suffered terribly, but Chinese military casualties were very heavy. The North Koreans were particularly prone to atrocity.

q. These are Russian soldiers and civilians captured by Germany, turned over to Stalin and murdered by him. Thousands had fought for the Germans, thousands more were prewar refugees. The blame lies partly on the British and Americans.

r. While some men were burned, the victims were overwhelmingly women, particularly older women, the retarded and the mentally ill.

s. Suttee is the ritual whereby a Hindu widow dies on her husband's funeral pyre.

t. The Germans were particularly brutal in Namibia and the Belgians in Zaire. At this time the Ethiopians themselves warred for conquest.

u. Some 16 million Germans and "Volkdeutsch" were moved. Germans had lived in some of the area for 700 years.

v. Thuggee was a cult honoring the goddess Kali. The word "Thug" originated here.

to. The Inquisition in Spain murdered many people who had converted or were descended from Jewish or Arab converts. They were suspected of secret apostasy.

cc. The firebombings of Hamburg and Dresden produced huge casualties. Estimates of the toll at Dresden go as high as 400,000.

dd. Greece tried to conquer parts of Turkey. Greeks were expelled, having lived there for 2,000 years.

ee. The Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs engaged in a bitter civil war with extreme atrocities committed by each against the other. The fascist Ustachi murdered at least 500,000 Serbs. The Germans, Bulgarians and Hungarians killed more.

gg. This was a clean war, but 15,000 Union POWs died of maltreatment at the Confederate prison camp at Andersonville.

hh. The French invaded Mexico, seeking to place Maximilan (brother of the Austrian Emperor Franz Josef) on the throne.

ii. Both sides conduct atrocity daily. Russians captured are usually murdered. The Russians and their puppet troops use terror as a tactic.

jj. There are several different wars concurrent in Ethiopia. The Mengistu regime killed about 30,000 people in a purge, and may or may not be engineering a famine to starve rebels; the evidence is inconclusive.

Death Toll	Victims	Dates	Killers	Comments

59,000,000	people	1937-45	Racism, ideology	World War II (a)
40,000,000	Chinese*	1210-40	Mongols	Conquest of North China (b)
40,000,000	Chinese*	1850-64	Chinese	Taiping Rebellion
30,000,000	Russians*	1930-53	Stalinist regime	Purge, slave labor (c)
15,000,000	Chinese*	1949-64	Maoist regime	Purge, labor camps
15,000,000	Russians	1941-45	Nazi Germany	(Civilians) conquest, maltreatment (d)
15.000,000	people	1914-18	State rivalry	World War I (e)
12,000,000	Africans*	1400-1880	Capitalism	Atlantic slavetrade (f)
10,000,000	Chinese	1937-45	Fascist Japan	Invasion, maltreatment (g)
10,000,000	people*	1220-60	Mongols	Conquest of Russia, Middle East (h)
6,000,000	Jews	1939-45	Nazi Germany	Death camps, slave labor
6,000,000	Europeans*	1618-48	Religious war	Thirty Years' War (i)
5,000,000	Americans*	1492-1600	Spanish	Conquest (j)
5,000,000	Chinese*	1640-44	Chinese, Manchus	Manchu conquest
5,000,000	Chinese	1250-80	Mongols	Conquest of South China
5,000,000	Chinese	1945-49	Chinese	Civil war (Chiang, Mao)
5,000,000	Asians*	1370-1405	Timurlane	Wars of Timurlane (k)
3,500,000	Poles	1939-45	Nazi Germany	Conquest, slave labor (l)
3,500,000	people	1789-1815	Rising nationalism	Revolution, Napoleon's wars (m)
3,000,000	Russian Pows	1941-45	Nazi Germany	Maltreatment, slave labor
3,000,000	people*	1096-1400	Religious war	The Crusades (n)
3,000,000	Indochinese	1945-87	Revolution, ideology	The Vietnam wars (o)
2,500,000	Koreans	1950-53	Ideology	The Korean War (p)
2,500,000	Russian prisoners	1945-50	Stalin's regime	Execution, labor camps (q)
2,500,000	Russians	1917-23	Ideology	Civil war
2,000,000	European	135O-1750	Religious paranoia	Persecution of women* "witches" (r)
2,000,000	Hindu	?-1850	Religious custom	Practice of women* "suttee" (s)
2,000,000	Africans*	1839-1911	Europeans	Conquest of Africa (t)
2,000,000	Indians*	1750-1850	British	Conquest of India
2,000,000	Germans	1944-46	Russians	Poles- Forced migration (u)
2,000,000	Indians	1500-1850	Thuggee cult	Ritual caste murder (v)
2,000,000	Europeans*	1300-1750	Religious paranoia	The Inquisition
2,000,000	Mexicans*	1400-1520	Religious custom	Human sacrifice
1,500,000	Cambodians*	1975-78	Red Terror	Khmer Rouge regime
1,500,000	Mexicans*	1910-23	Anarchy	Civil war
1,000,000	Armenians*	1916-18	Turks, Kurds	Genocide
1,000,000	Bengalis	1969-71	Pakistanis, anarchy	Bangladesh independence (x)
1,000,000	Asians*	1947-49	Hindus, Muslims	Partition of British India (y)
1,000,000	Americans*	1810-24	Spanish, Americans	Independence wars from Spain
1,000,000	Indians*	1853-54	British	Sepoy Rebellion
1,000,000	Nigerian*	1966-69	Nigerians	The "Biafran War" (z)
1,000,000	Indonesians*	1942-45	Fascist Japan	Maltreatment of conscript labor
1,000,000	Chinese	1904-05	Russians, Japan	Russo-Japanese War (aa)
1,000,000	Japanese	1943-45	Americans	Terror bombing (bb)
1,000,000	Germans	1939-45	British, Americans	Terror bombing (cc)
1,000,000	Greeks, Turks	1919-23	Turks, Greeks	Greco-Turkish War (dd)
1,000,000	Europeans	1900-12	Europeans, Turks	Balkan Wars
1,000,000	Serbs, Croats	1940-45	Croats, Serbs, Germans	Genocide, civil war (ee)
600,000	Spanish	1936-39	Spanish	Spanish Civil War (ff)
600,000	Americans	1861-65	Americans	U.S. Civil War (gg)
500,000	Mexicans	1850-75	Mexicans, French	Anarchy, civil war, invasion (hh)
500,000	Afghanis	1979-87	Russians	Soviet invasion (ii)
500,000	Algerians	1957-63	French, Algerians	War of Independence, civil war
500,000	Gypsies	1939-45	Nazi Germany	Death camps
500,000	Vietnamese*	1954-65	Hanoi Red Terror	Purge, labor camps
500,000	Kurds	1920-87	Turks, others	Kurd war for independence
500,000	people	1947-87	Ideology, religion	Israeli-Arab wars
500,000	Japanese	1945-50	Chinese, Russians	Maltreatment in camps POWs
500,000	Sudanese	1960-87	Sudanese	Civil war
500,000	Ethiopians	1960-87	Anarchy, ideology	Ogaden, Eritrean wars, Red Terror