Deadly Dictators: Masterminds of twentieth century genocides

by Terry Stafford

One hundred million people died in twentieth century wars, but during the same period, more than a quarter of a billion people were murdered by their own governments. This human catastrophe is the subject of Deadly Dictators: Masterminds of Twentieth Century Genocides. This thought-provoking chronology explores the lives and crimes of Joseph Stalin, father of the Soviet Gulag; Dominican dictator Raphael Trujillo, who committed serial sexual violation of his nation's women; Adolf Hitler, the Nazi fanatic who unleashed the Holocaust; the Kims of North Korea, who imposed a savage slavery on their people; Mao Zedong, the last emperor of China, who starved tens of millions; the Duvaliers of Haiti, who used Voudou hit squads in their vicious repression; Idi Amin, who launched a tribally-based genocide in Uganda; Pol Pot, the Cambodian ideologue who cultivated the "Killing Fields;" Saddam Hussein, who exterminated Iraqi citizens with nerve agents and Théoneste Bagosora, the architect of the apocalypse in Rwanda that slaughtered 800,000 people in only one hundred days.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

473 pages, Paperback

First published August 11, 2010

About the author

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Reviews

[Terry Utterback · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an impressive book. It covers the events created by the worst dictators of the 20th century and explains why their crimes have contributed to the world we live in. Genocide continues in many areas of the world and very few even notice. Mass murder seems to have become bacground music in this century where terror, torture and political violence almost seem normal. This book shows why this situation was rooted in the events of the last century. A must read.