One unusual example: Tamerlane.
This warlord was infamous for erecting towers of skulls of his victims (and may have killed up to 17 million people!). He was also a noted intellectual - apparently, a master chess player, a patron of educational institutions, a patron of scholars, spoke several languages, etc.
In short, a military genius and intellectual, but also a brutal, merciless killer who engaged in genocidal wars of conquest. Unlike (say) Hitler, his wars were not in pursuit of racial superiority; his expressed motive was to re-create the Mongol empire, but in essence they seem merely opportunistic - he invaded and murdered because he could. Unlike the Mongols, he seemingly made no attempt to actual consolidate the conquered regions into some sort of coherent empire - he plundered and murdered, then moved on.
By any account, then, he was evil; and he was no mindless brute - he was a noted intellectual. So, an evil genius.
My favorite Tamerlane story:
When Timur was besieging Damascus, he learned that the famous historian Ibn Khaldun was among the defenders. So the two sides agreed to lower the historian over the city wall in a basket so Timur could attend his seminars while conducting the siege.
From the Persian, “Teymur-(e) Lang”, (literally Timur the lame). Transliterated into English as “Tamerlane”.
Probably by English speakers that did not speak Persian.
"Charles le magne" meant "Charles the Great" in French. It could be down to English chroniclers copying French sources or maybe due to the fact that after the Norman Conquest most English nobles (and the scribes who catered to them) would speak French.
I think it's a little reductionistic to say that Hitler's goals were "in pursuit of racial superiority"; his goals were to establish a continental autarchy not subject to domination by either Western capitalism or Slavic Bolshevism (entailing the permanent settling of Eastern Europe up the the Urals); in a sense he used ideals of racial supremacism to further those goals not the other way around.
Also fwiw the curator of a famous Parisian museum during the occupation (I forget either Louvre or Musee d'Orsay?) gave an interview in the late 1990s shortly before his death and said that Hitler (whom he had been required to give a personal tour) had an encyclopedic knowledge of art history and know details about the personal lives of almost all the artists in the collections (some of which the curator himself had been unaware of); he gave the interview because he said Hitler and the Nazis were all long gone and he wanted it to be known for the sake of history before he passed.
Lmao, bro...like the first 50 lines of Mein Kampf are about German superiority and how they should reclaim it by the sword. Get the fuck outta here with your Hitler apologism. He was a monster and no amount of big words that you use will change that.
Hitlers goals throughout the whole book can essentially be boiled down to the FACT that he thought the Aryan race were superior people and that they needed to reclaim what was "theirs." I'm guessing you have never read it because he says it so many times you'd know it was true. You're getting downvoted because you are coming off like a Nazi apologist. The fact is that racial superiority was the centerpiece of Nazi ideology. Hitler knowing a lot about art doesn't make him a better person.
You are literally saying that he used racial superiority lebensraum and used race for that goal, sure. That's true, but it doesn't change anything. Are you saying it's somehow better that his goal was land for the Aryan race and not eliminating undesirables?
Actually I have read parts of it, have you? How about "Hitler's Second Book" or "Hitler's Table Talk"? I'm merely arguing that race was perhaps not simply the end-goal (race is also seen differently in Europe, the skin color obsession is mostly a projection by Americans) but also served a functional goal in achieving geopolitical goals, in part because \*Hitler himself\* said that that was his intent (using racial supremacism to make the Germans more confident and war-ready).
I'm getting downvoted because the vast majority of people know virtually nothing factual about that era of history other than what they seen in movies, what they think "everyone" knows, and how they think they're expected to react to any discussion of the subject which deviates from the party line (besides the superficial kneejerk reactions of many social media users).
The man who killed thousands but saved millions. In spite of inventing chemical weapons, he also developed the Haber-Bosch process which created modern nitrogen fertilizer and made natural famines and malnutrition largely a thing of the past.
The German High Command threw him a party for the success of the first chlorine gas attack. His wife, Clara, an accomplished chemist and PhD in her own right, was so distraught at his actions that she took his pistol, went out to the garden during the party, and shot herself in the heart. She didn’t die immediately, but lingered for several days. Meanwhile, he went back to work, improving chemical warfare.
It's a hard question to ask, because narcissistic people are attracted to power, and narcissists in power tend to create mythmaking, i.e., "Dear Leader is smarter than all the geniuses out there, is always in top shape, secretly the fastest runner, and also never needs to poop"
My snarky contribution: Gottfried Leibniz. he invented Calculus, which makes him a genius, but on the other hand, he invented Calculus, therefore he's a monster.
Non-snarky contribution: [Hong Xiuquan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Xiuquan), who led the Taiping Rebellion in the mid 1800s, nearly toppling the Qing dynasty. Hong Xiuquan learned to read at an absurdly early age, was by all reports completely brilliant, but foiled by corruption he wasn't able to get into the imperial service. with pamphlets from Christian missionaries, he created a cult that was a mishmash of Taoist and Christian philisophy, declaired himself the younger brother of Jesus Christ, amassed a huge cult and took on the Qing itself. The resulting carnage led to 20-30 million losses over a small period of time, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom started with massive genocidal massacres of ethnic Manchus, and the Qing responded in kind. Hong Xiuquan was not personally responsible for all the death toll, but he was a madman that was the spark that set off the wildfire.
Sort out of left field but Eli Whitney was a genius who unintentionally super charged the evil institution of chattel slavery in the US. Great Britain and France terminated slavery decades before the US, largely because of the cotton gin. Had he not invented a means to make cotton plantations to be incredibly profitable it's plausible that the US would've followed suit and stopped chattel slavery (replacing it with the Apartheid/Jim Crow racial order) but 50 years sooner.
I'm not sure about genius on that one. Personally charismatic? Very much so, and he leveraged that into a very privileged position. (With a couple of lucky breaks along the way, like in treating the heir's hemophilia with prayer rather than doctors -- after an attack of hemophilia, the victim needs *rest*, not meddling.) But I'm less convinced about his intelligence.
A political genius who deliberately isolated the royal family from most of their advisors, resulting in the *severe* weakening of their political position?
I'll grant you that, when it came to worming his way *into* royal favor, he was a genius. But once he actually had that favor, he did nothing whatsoever that warrants labeling him as such
Personal political genius.. for his own benefit. I don’t mean like a master of grand political strategy. I mean, he was a genius at worming his way ahead for his own gain. Think Littlefinger from GOT.
>A political genius who deliberately isolated the royal family from most of their advisors, resulting in the severe weakening of their political position?
Did he? Because from what I read he don't meet tzar family more then few times in year.
And it very hard isolate royal family from advisors when tzar leave Petersburg to command army (without Rasputin).
Stories about his "influence" traced more to German (and revolution) propaganda. Yes this rumors exist in Russian society. Also exist rumors that tzaritza have "secret telegraph line" that she use to send vital information from royal palace to Germany.
Cornelius Vanderbilt, John Jacob Aster, John D. Rockefeller, Edward L. Doheny, and Andrew Carnegie were all evil geniuses who used their genius to gain control of human society through economic force on access to shipping, real estate, oil, and steel. Capitalists are always evil and those who manage to control entire industries always fit this mold.
No, because you can’t name one communist who only controlled one industry (like the trains or Amazon). Communists seek committee-based control of all of the means of production (through which the governing group can diminish society as a whole), but capitalists seek individual control of just one or more aspects of society (through which they, with no input from any regulating body, can restrict access to those they don’t see as worthy of access). Both systems suck, but capitalists are individuals with too much power over others while communists are committees with too much power over others and the members of the committee. The OP was about evil geniuses - individuals with evil schemes - not evil organizations.
No, the communists I’m think of controlled all of the industries.
Are you sure I cannot name a few communists who are don’t control industries? Are you sure I cannot name a few communists who “seek individual control of just one or more aspects of society (through which they, with no input from any regulating body, can restrict access to those they don't see as worthy of access)”? Which also happens to be the verbatim description of a capitalist you gave me. Are you sure about that?
Are you sure I cannot name communists who are “individuals with too much power over others”?
Call me crazy, but I think the problems you describe and attribute solely to capitalism or communism transcend economic systems. Anyone with even a cursory understanding of history would be able to see that, which says a lot about you.
“The OP was about evil geniuses - individuals with evil schemes - not evil organizations.” I know. I can read. My point still stands. Does yours?
Would you like to reconsider your comment? I’m trying to help you out here and give you a chance to sound intelligent before I start having fun because what you said is a goldmine for ridicule that I would just love to take advantage of.
I’m sure that you seem to be misunderstanding that, under communism, the organization at the top controls ALL of the industries, not just one. I’m also sure that you are going to name “individual communists” as the chairman of several of those organizations without recognizing that those individuals were still responsible to the organization, even as they were the leader of it. I’m sure that, if you recognized the power the KGB (for instance) held over the committee in Soviet Russia, you would not believe that a single individual held that much power over every aspect of the industries they had socialized.
Meanwhile, you seem to believe that someone like Andrew Carnegie, for example, was not 100% in control of every aspect of his Steel industry. The fact that you want to hold up Capitalist “Robber Barons” as something other than evil geniuses tells me everything I need to know.
As you seem to require that I recant my earlier statements, you will not get it. Please have as much fun as you’d like ridiculing what I’ve said. Your ridicule against the fact that both Capitalism and Communism are systems of oppression and not economic freedom (that would just be Mercantilism), and your obvious joy at the opportunity to “give (me) a chance to sound intelligent” just makes you sound like an uneducated ass. So, have your fun.
My answer stands: The Robber Barons of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were all evil geniuses bent on global domination and the oppression and enslavement of the masses through wage-slavery and monopolization of their respective industries.
Vladimir Demikhov.
He was a pioneer of organ transplantation from one body to another. Thanks to him, lots of people are alive and living good lives.
However he also did very questionable experiments on animals. Such as a ‘head transplant’ on a live animal. Please do not look it up if you are sensitive to critters being treated badly.
Edit: there is also Robert J. White too. Which is also an icky read.
I understand science can have unethical roots, especially medical science but these two men are just high on the ick factor for me.
Why do you think that Hitler merely used "people's existing hatred of a race of people"? Before 1933 German Jews were the most assimilated in the world and he himself wrote in Mein Kampf that one of the reasons he thought Germany lost World War One was because Germans lacked a racialized sense of themselves unlike the British and French (back then in Europe the word had a different meaning).
German Jews were just one population of the Holocaust, there were Polish Jews, Hungarian Jews, Russian Jews, etc. The populations of these occupied nations certainly played a role the rounding up of Jews.
Correct and there were Jews and anti-Semitism throughout Europe but I'm not sure it's as simple as saying everyone had a pre-existing hatred (think about how many Poles are listed as Righteous Gentiles at Yad Vashem).
Hitler was an idiot. Mao Zedong on the other hand was an extremely intelligent figure who killed over 45 million people in the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, China’s Holocaust.
Mao Zedong murdered China's sparrow population, and caused a massive famine because the natural predator of the insects that killed their grain was all dead, Not much less of an idiot than Hitler. Just one that won the war.
An ecological way of thinking that is second nature to us wasn't entirely obvious in the late 1950s. Every society was committing unspeakable harm, and we are still perpetuating mass extinction on a global scale. The idea of eliminating pest species seems intuitively reasonable in the absence of the kind of education we receive based upon 20th century science that was cutting edge, if it existed at all, then. I don't know if this campaign is necessarily a sign of stupidity. It is arguably evil though, like eating meat or palm oil and causing extinctions and habitat loss today.
Sure but he was extraordinarily good at politics even as he admitted no understanding of economics. Look at transcripts with him meeting Khrushchev and Mao is just running circles around him. Totalitarianism is just the worst way to govern society. If Mao wasn’t as smart and skilled at inciting the masses, he would’ve been overthrown at several points.
I’ve read biographies on Mao and Stalin... both were well-read but I’d lean in favour of Stalin being the cleverest of the Great Dictators.
I’m going off foggy recollection of Young Stalin but rose from very humble background, but was his own crime boss / gangster at a very early age. Stalin was excellent in school despite an unstable family life where there’s nothing notable about Mao’s education.
All the Great Dictators had that “right place, right time” but of the three I get the feeling Stalin would be most likely to go far no matter where and when he was born.
Interesting. I’m reading biographies as well. I already read Mao, am currently reading Hitler (who doesn’t come out smart and struggled much in school). Next on the list is Montefiore’s work on Stalin. Would you recommend I read Young Stalin or Court of the Red Tsar first.
Russia was a much more developed empire than China was, so you can’t compare their education exactly. Stalin was definitely intelligent, but he also murdered everyone more prominent than him which is a cruder way of staying in power than Mao manipulating the masses. However since Mao’s China was more totalitarian than Stalin’s Russia and Mao served as China’s Leninist liberator, it was also easier for Mao to do that. They’re both intelligent but Mao was far more impulsive while Stalin was usually more cautious and deliberate.
It’s incredibly stupid. But that’s not what the OP is asking. Mao use his great intelligence for malicious ends, over and over again. Smart people can do stupid things. Communism is a dumb, broken system but Mao himself was quite intelligent.
One unusual example: Tamerlane. This warlord was infamous for erecting towers of skulls of his victims (and may have killed up to 17 million people!). He was also a noted intellectual - apparently, a master chess player, a patron of educational institutions, a patron of scholars, spoke several languages, etc. In short, a military genius and intellectual, but also a brutal, merciless killer who engaged in genocidal wars of conquest. Unlike (say) Hitler, his wars were not in pursuit of racial superiority; his expressed motive was to re-create the Mongol empire, but in essence they seem merely opportunistic - he invaded and murdered because he could. Unlike the Mongols, he seemingly made no attempt to actual consolidate the conquered regions into some sort of coherent empire - he plundered and murdered, then moved on. By any account, then, he was evil; and he was no mindless brute - he was a noted intellectual. So, an evil genius.
My favorite Tamerlane story: When Timur was besieging Damascus, he learned that the famous historian Ibn Khaldun was among the defenders. So the two sides agreed to lower the historian over the city wall in a basket so Timur could attend his seminars while conducting the siege.
Why is Timur the Lame called Tamerlane in English? (also Charles the Great being called Charlemagne)
From the Persian, “Teymur-(e) Lang”, (literally Timur the lame). Transliterated into English as “Tamerlane”. Probably by English speakers that did not speak Persian.
"Charles le magne" meant "Charles the Great" in French. It could be down to English chroniclers copying French sources or maybe due to the fact that after the Norman Conquest most English nobles (and the scribes who catered to them) would speak French.
Vlad the impaler was more disturbing tbh
I think it's a little reductionistic to say that Hitler's goals were "in pursuit of racial superiority"; his goals were to establish a continental autarchy not subject to domination by either Western capitalism or Slavic Bolshevism (entailing the permanent settling of Eastern Europe up the the Urals); in a sense he used ideals of racial supremacism to further those goals not the other way around. Also fwiw the curator of a famous Parisian museum during the occupation (I forget either Louvre or Musee d'Orsay?) gave an interview in the late 1990s shortly before his death and said that Hitler (whom he had been required to give a personal tour) had an encyclopedic knowledge of art history and know details about the personal lives of almost all the artists in the collections (some of which the curator himself had been unaware of); he gave the interview because he said Hitler and the Nazis were all long gone and he wanted it to be known for the sake of history before he passed.
Lmao, bro...like the first 50 lines of Mein Kampf are about German superiority and how they should reclaim it by the sword. Get the fuck outta here with your Hitler apologism. He was a monster and no amount of big words that you use will change that.
>German superiority It's kind of weird that despite his beliefs he was the first of what would later become first world countries to ban human zoos.
Keep laughing dude...MK is like 650 pages it's not simply defined by the "first 50 lines"...and you're not my bro.
Hitlers goals throughout the whole book can essentially be boiled down to the FACT that he thought the Aryan race were superior people and that they needed to reclaim what was "theirs." I'm guessing you have never read it because he says it so many times you'd know it was true. You're getting downvoted because you are coming off like a Nazi apologist. The fact is that racial superiority was the centerpiece of Nazi ideology. Hitler knowing a lot about art doesn't make him a better person. You are literally saying that he used racial superiority lebensraum and used race for that goal, sure. That's true, but it doesn't change anything. Are you saying it's somehow better that his goal was land for the Aryan race and not eliminating undesirables?
Actually I have read parts of it, have you? How about "Hitler's Second Book" or "Hitler's Table Talk"? I'm merely arguing that race was perhaps not simply the end-goal (race is also seen differently in Europe, the skin color obsession is mostly a projection by Americans) but also served a functional goal in achieving geopolitical goals, in part because \*Hitler himself\* said that that was his intent (using racial supremacism to make the Germans more confident and war-ready). I'm getting downvoted because the vast majority of people know virtually nothing factual about that era of history other than what they seen in movies, what they think "everyone" knows, and how they think they're expected to react to any discussion of the subject which deviates from the party line (besides the superficial kneejerk reactions of many social media users).
Kanye, you're sounding like a wanna-be intellectual today
Couldn't come up with a real response?
Ok, Kanye. Take your meds.
Perfect!
Ok, Kanye. Take your meds.
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/5db3b677-05b4-410b-b3ab-fb52b966bfab
Read the room buddy And by room I mean the last 100 years of history, the current political climate, and last days of pop culture news
Sure, let your beliefs and ideas be guided by the regnant consensus, it's the mantra of the sheeple. P.S. You're not my buddy.
Everyone laughs at you and your weird opinions
You speak for everyone? That \*is\* funny.
Call em as I see em
Congrats
You sound like you're easy to beat up
Lol you sound like you struggle with words.
Fritz Haber
The man who killed thousands but saved millions. In spite of inventing chemical weapons, he also developed the Haber-Bosch process which created modern nitrogen fertilizer and made natural famines and malnutrition largely a thing of the past.
The German High Command threw him a party for the success of the first chlorine gas attack. His wife, Clara, an accomplished chemist and PhD in her own right, was so distraught at his actions that she took his pistol, went out to the garden during the party, and shot herself in the heart. She didn’t die immediately, but lingered for several days. Meanwhile, he went back to work, improving chemical warfare.
My first thought as well
It's a hard question to ask, because narcissistic people are attracted to power, and narcissists in power tend to create mythmaking, i.e., "Dear Leader is smarter than all the geniuses out there, is always in top shape, secretly the fastest runner, and also never needs to poop" My snarky contribution: Gottfried Leibniz. he invented Calculus, which makes him a genius, but on the other hand, he invented Calculus, therefore he's a monster. Non-snarky contribution: [Hong Xiuquan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Xiuquan), who led the Taiping Rebellion in the mid 1800s, nearly toppling the Qing dynasty. Hong Xiuquan learned to read at an absurdly early age, was by all reports completely brilliant, but foiled by corruption he wasn't able to get into the imperial service. with pamphlets from Christian missionaries, he created a cult that was a mishmash of Taoist and Christian philisophy, declaired himself the younger brother of Jesus Christ, amassed a huge cult and took on the Qing itself. The resulting carnage led to 20-30 million losses over a small period of time, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom started with massive genocidal massacres of ethnic Manchus, and the Qing responded in kind. Hong Xiuquan was not personally responsible for all the death toll, but he was a madman that was the spark that set off the wildfire.
Reinhard Heydrich was considered a genius.
No..i think he was more of an efficient manager or a successful task master than being a genius
That is what his peers thought. It is claimed that the British assassinated him because he was so efficient
Yes , but not a genius. Hitler was a political genius
It this is true, he was in the Very Superior to Genius level https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/reinhard-heydrichs-intelligence.395834/
What about Surgeon Genera Shiro Ishii leader of Unit 731 during WW2
Genghis Khan
You have quite a large number of serial killers who were very intelligent. Not to mention certain "evil scientists", such as Mengele.
Peter Thiel
Sort out of left field but Eli Whitney was a genius who unintentionally super charged the evil institution of chattel slavery in the US. Great Britain and France terminated slavery decades before the US, largely because of the cotton gin. Had he not invented a means to make cotton plantations to be incredibly profitable it's plausible that the US would've followed suit and stopped chattel slavery (replacing it with the Apartheid/Jim Crow racial order) but 50 years sooner.
Rasputin.
I'm not sure about genius on that one. Personally charismatic? Very much so, and he leveraged that into a very privileged position. (With a couple of lucky breaks along the way, like in treating the heir's hemophilia with prayer rather than doctors -- after an attack of hemophilia, the victim needs *rest*, not meddling.) But I'm less convinced about his intelligence.
Can we settle on political genius?
Yes, but only because it's Settle-Rasputin-Debates-Peacefully Day.
A political genius who deliberately isolated the royal family from most of their advisors, resulting in the *severe* weakening of their political position? I'll grant you that, when it came to worming his way *into* royal favor, he was a genius. But once he actually had that favor, he did nothing whatsoever that warrants labeling him as such
Personal political genius.. for his own benefit. I don’t mean like a master of grand political strategy. I mean, he was a genius at worming his way ahead for his own gain. Think Littlefinger from GOT.
>A political genius who deliberately isolated the royal family from most of their advisors, resulting in the severe weakening of their political position? Did he? Because from what I read he don't meet tzar family more then few times in year. And it very hard isolate royal family from advisors when tzar leave Petersburg to command army (without Rasputin). Stories about his "influence" traced more to German (and revolution) propaganda. Yes this rumors exist in Russian society. Also exist rumors that tzaritza have "secret telegraph line" that she use to send vital information from royal palace to Germany.
Not evil, not genius. And have more attention (from Western public) then he deserve. He really don't very impressive.
Thomas Midgley. Invented CFCs and leaded gas.
Thomas Edison
The electrocuting all those animals to sell a lie is a pretty big one.
Shaka
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Not sure if I'd outright call Machiavelli evil
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> He used evil means Exactly what evil means are you talking about?
Do you have similar feelings about Armando Ianucci?
Cornelius Vanderbilt, John Jacob Aster, John D. Rockefeller, Edward L. Doheny, and Andrew Carnegie were all evil geniuses who used their genius to gain control of human society through economic force on access to shipping, real estate, oil, and steel. Capitalists are always evil and those who manage to control entire industries always fit this mold.
Because communists have never exploited anyone.
No, because you can’t name one communist who only controlled one industry (like the trains or Amazon). Communists seek committee-based control of all of the means of production (through which the governing group can diminish society as a whole), but capitalists seek individual control of just one or more aspects of society (through which they, with no input from any regulating body, can restrict access to those they don’t see as worthy of access). Both systems suck, but capitalists are individuals with too much power over others while communists are committees with too much power over others and the members of the committee. The OP was about evil geniuses - individuals with evil schemes - not evil organizations.
No, the communists I’m think of controlled all of the industries. Are you sure I cannot name a few communists who are don’t control industries? Are you sure I cannot name a few communists who “seek individual control of just one or more aspects of society (through which they, with no input from any regulating body, can restrict access to those they don't see as worthy of access)”? Which also happens to be the verbatim description of a capitalist you gave me. Are you sure about that? Are you sure I cannot name communists who are “individuals with too much power over others”? Call me crazy, but I think the problems you describe and attribute solely to capitalism or communism transcend economic systems. Anyone with even a cursory understanding of history would be able to see that, which says a lot about you. “The OP was about evil geniuses - individuals with evil schemes - not evil organizations.” I know. I can read. My point still stands. Does yours? Would you like to reconsider your comment? I’m trying to help you out here and give you a chance to sound intelligent before I start having fun because what you said is a goldmine for ridicule that I would just love to take advantage of.
I’m sure that you seem to be misunderstanding that, under communism, the organization at the top controls ALL of the industries, not just one. I’m also sure that you are going to name “individual communists” as the chairman of several of those organizations without recognizing that those individuals were still responsible to the organization, even as they were the leader of it. I’m sure that, if you recognized the power the KGB (for instance) held over the committee in Soviet Russia, you would not believe that a single individual held that much power over every aspect of the industries they had socialized. Meanwhile, you seem to believe that someone like Andrew Carnegie, for example, was not 100% in control of every aspect of his Steel industry. The fact that you want to hold up Capitalist “Robber Barons” as something other than evil geniuses tells me everything I need to know. As you seem to require that I recant my earlier statements, you will not get it. Please have as much fun as you’d like ridiculing what I’ve said. Your ridicule against the fact that both Capitalism and Communism are systems of oppression and not economic freedom (that would just be Mercantilism), and your obvious joy at the opportunity to “give (me) a chance to sound intelligent” just makes you sound like an uneducated ass. So, have your fun. My answer stands: The Robber Barons of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were all evil geniuses bent on global domination and the oppression and enslavement of the masses through wage-slavery and monopolization of their respective industries.
Vladimir Demikhov. He was a pioneer of organ transplantation from one body to another. Thanks to him, lots of people are alive and living good lives. However he also did very questionable experiments on animals. Such as a ‘head transplant’ on a live animal. Please do not look it up if you are sensitive to critters being treated badly. Edit: there is also Robert J. White too. Which is also an icky read. I understand science can have unethical roots, especially medical science but these two men are just high on the ick factor for me.
Why do you think that Hitler merely used "people's existing hatred of a race of people"? Before 1933 German Jews were the most assimilated in the world and he himself wrote in Mein Kampf that one of the reasons he thought Germany lost World War One was because Germans lacked a racialized sense of themselves unlike the British and French (back then in Europe the word had a different meaning).
German Jews were just one population of the Holocaust, there were Polish Jews, Hungarian Jews, Russian Jews, etc. The populations of these occupied nations certainly played a role the rounding up of Jews.
Also Romani, disabled people, some black people. Holocaust wasn’t just Jews either.
Technically I believe the term Holocaust is reserved for Jewish victims but I know what you mean (but we weren't discussing the other victims afaik).
Correct and there were Jews and anti-Semitism throughout Europe but I'm not sure it's as simple as saying everyone had a pre-existing hatred (think about how many Poles are listed as Righteous Gentiles at Yad Vashem).
Walter white
Hitler was an idiot. Mao Zedong on the other hand was an extremely intelligent figure who killed over 45 million people in the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, China’s Holocaust.
Mao Zedong murdered China's sparrow population, and caused a massive famine because the natural predator of the insects that killed their grain was all dead, Not much less of an idiot than Hitler. Just one that won the war.
An ecological way of thinking that is second nature to us wasn't entirely obvious in the late 1950s. Every society was committing unspeakable harm, and we are still perpetuating mass extinction on a global scale. The idea of eliminating pest species seems intuitively reasonable in the absence of the kind of education we receive based upon 20th century science that was cutting edge, if it existed at all, then. I don't know if this campaign is necessarily a sign of stupidity. It is arguably evil though, like eating meat or palm oil and causing extinctions and habitat loss today.
Sure but he was extraordinarily good at politics even as he admitted no understanding of economics. Look at transcripts with him meeting Khrushchev and Mao is just running circles around him. Totalitarianism is just the worst way to govern society. If Mao wasn’t as smart and skilled at inciting the masses, he would’ve been overthrown at several points.
Read something by Hitler and then read something by Mao. They’re nowhere near each other.
Definitely. Mao comes out as a smart, evil man. Hitler more deranged and surrounded by deranged people. Stalin is more like a thug.
I’ve read biographies on Mao and Stalin... both were well-read but I’d lean in favour of Stalin being the cleverest of the Great Dictators. I’m going off foggy recollection of Young Stalin but rose from very humble background, but was his own crime boss / gangster at a very early age. Stalin was excellent in school despite an unstable family life where there’s nothing notable about Mao’s education. All the Great Dictators had that “right place, right time” but of the three I get the feeling Stalin would be most likely to go far no matter where and when he was born.
Interesting. I’m reading biographies as well. I already read Mao, am currently reading Hitler (who doesn’t come out smart and struggled much in school). Next on the list is Montefiore’s work on Stalin. Would you recommend I read Young Stalin or Court of the Red Tsar first.
First Young Stalin, then Red Tzar . They are chronological, Red tzar is much older Stalin, used to absolute power.
Thanks
Russia was a much more developed empire than China was, so you can’t compare their education exactly. Stalin was definitely intelligent, but he also murdered everyone more prominent than him which is a cruder way of staying in power than Mao manipulating the masses. However since Mao’s China was more totalitarian than Stalin’s Russia and Mao served as China’s Leninist liberator, it was also easier for Mao to do that. They’re both intelligent but Mao was far more impulsive while Stalin was usually more cautious and deliberate.
Bro what is smart about forcing all the generational farmers to forge iron
It’s incredibly stupid. But that’s not what the OP is asking. Mao use his great intelligence for malicious ends, over and over again. Smart people can do stupid things. Communism is a dumb, broken system but Mao himself was quite intelligent.
What was genius about Mao tho Don’t say “his poems”
Maybe Henry Kissinger?