It is not merely the extent of the catastrophe that dwarfs earlier estimates, but also the manner in which many people died: between two and three million victims were tortured to death or summarily killed, often for the slightest infraction. What comes out of this massive and detailed dossier is a tale of horror in which Mao emerges as one of the greatest mass murderers in history, responsible for the deaths of at least 45 million people between 19. But the true dimensions of what happened are only now coming to light thanks to the meticulous reports the party itself compiled during the famine… Extrapolating from published population statistics, historians have speculated that tens of millions of people died of starvation. As incentives to work were removed, coercion and violence were used instead to compel famished farmers to perform labour on poorly planned irrigation projects while fields were neglected.Ī catastrophe of gargantuan proportions ensued. In collective canteens, food, distributed by the spoonful according to merit, became a weapon used to force people to follow the party’s every dictate. People had their work, homes, land, belongings and livelihoods taken from them. In pursuit of a utopian paradise, everything was collectivised. Mao thought that he could catapult his country past its competitors by herding villagers across the country into giant people’s communes. Historian Frank Dikötter, author of the important book Mao’s Great Famine, recently published an article in History Today, summarizing what happened: The Vast, Cruel, Deliberate Extinction of Millions From 1958 to 1962, his Great Leap Forward policy led to the deaths of up to 45 million people-easily making it the biggest episode of mass murder ever recorded. Others might guess Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, who may indeed have managed to kill even more innocent people than Hitler did, many of them as part of a terror famine that likely took more lives than the Holocaust.īut both Hitler and Stalin were outdone by Mao Zedong.

Who was the biggest mass murderer in the history of the world? Most people probably assume that the answer is Adolf Hitler, architect of the Holocaust.

Mass mother murderer