20th Century Tyrants

I finally finished Mao: the Untold Story. In all it is an excellent piece of work. The research that went into the book is astounding. Here is some additional discussion.

Now that I have read serious works on all three major 20th century tyrants, I thought it would be fun to rank them from worst to least worst, with the caveat that even the least worst still hits the jackpot on the evil scale.

1. Mao - Mao was the worst big 20th century tyrant. Not only did Mao want to remake Chinese society in his own image he found that public violence, murder, and death were the best tools to terrorize the people to achieve his goals. Mao's ambitions were all personal, he had no ambition for the Chinese people and didn't even bother or attempt to leave a legacy. 99 out of 100 on the evil scale.

2. Stalin - similar to Mao, but chose to keep his terror more secret. It is also unclear whether Stalin had any ambition for the Russian people. However, he did have ambition for world communism, yet it doesn't appear that he advocated the violent overturning of traditional societies (as Mao did) to achieve his goals. 98 out of 100 on the evil scale

3. Hitler - plunged the world into total war. Hitler differed from Mao and Stalin in that he his goals were less personal and more driven by a legacy of a lasting Germany - his 1000 year Reich. 97 out of 100 on the evil scale.

Pol Pot would probably score 100 out of 100. But his tyranny was fortunately limited to a smaller country.

UPDATE: Here is a link to the 1976 obituary of Mao in the NY Times. It's gross. Unbelievable that people in this country gloss over and apologize for obvious evil. I have to puke.

UPDATE: Here is an interesting analytical analysis of the 20th century tyrants. The site also lists other famous tyrants.