When Men Played gods

Dear Mouse,

The latest Tsunami catastrophe caused some columnistsslashwriterslashopinionmkers to ask where's God?

Which god were they referring to? The Allah of the Moslem, the gods of Hindus or the God of the Christians?

There were men who played gods and killed more than the total number of victims of calamities that were attributed to the Supreme Power combined.

To name the top three with the highest number of victims, they are :

1. Pol Pot

Dead:One to three million (or between a quarter and a third of the country's population).

Weapon of Mass Destruction (killing fields)

An estimated 1.5 million were worked or starved to death, died of disease or exposure, or were summarily executed for infringements of camp discipline. Infringements punishable by death included not working hard enough, complaining about living conditions, collecting or stealing food for personal consumption, wearing jewellery, engaging in sexual relations, grieving over the loss of relatives or friends and expressing religious sentiments.

2. Stalin

Dead: Approximately 20 million, including up to 14.5 million needlessly starved to death. At least one million executed for political "offences". At least 9.5 million more deported, exiled or imprisoned in work camps, with many of the estimated five million sent to the 'Gulag Archipelago' never returning alive. Other estimates place the number of deported at 28 million, including 18 million sent to the 'Gulag'

Weapon of Mass Destruction

The collectivised farms were required to meet ever increasing production quotas, even if this resulted in starvation on the farm. In the Ukrainian Republic up to five million peasants starved to death in the "famine" of 1932-33 when the state refused to divert food supplies allocated to industrial and military needs. About one million starved to death in the North Caucasus.

By 1937, the social upheaval caused by the "revolution from above" had resulted in the deaths of up to 14.5 million Soviet peasants.

3. Hitler

Dead:60 million worldwide as a result of the Second World War including millions of Jews.

Weapon of Mass Destruction (Holocaust)

On 20 January the Nazis completed the planning for the Endlosung (Final Solution), the extermination of the Jews, Gipsies, Slavs, homosexuals, communists, and other "undesirables" and "decadents" in death camps run by the SS and controlled by the Gestapo. About six million European Jews died in the following 'Holocaust'. Most (about 4.5 million) of those killed came from Poland and the Soviet Union. About 125,000 were German Jews.

The Holocaust also claimed about 500,000 Gipsies, between 10,000 and 25,000 homosexuals, 2,000 Jehovah's Witnesses, up to 3.5 million non-Jewish Poles, between 3.5 million and six million other Slavic civilians, as many as four million Soviet prisoners of war, and up to 1.5 million political dissidents.

In Germany the physically handicapped, mentally ill, and others with so-called "worthless lives" were rounded up and sent to designated hospitals, where they were killed. Referred to by the Nazis as mercy killing and planned by Hitler's office and the Reich Interior Ministry, the "euthanasia" program claimed up to 275,000 lives when it went into full swing.

4. Mao

Dead: 14 to 20 million deaths from starvation during the 'Great Leap Forward'. Tens of thousands killed and millions of lives ruined during the 'Cultural Revolution'.

Weapon of Mass Destruction

Mao launched the 'Great Leap Forward' to accelerate the development of all sectors of the economy at once. Breaking with the development theories practiced in the Soviet Union and applied to China during the first five year plan, the Great Leap Forward sought to simultaneously develop industry and agriculture by employing surplus rural labour on either vast infrastructure projects or for small-scale, farm-based industries - the so-called "backyard furnaces".

It soon became apparent that the Great Leap Forward was an ill-considered failure. Rather than boosting production, the Great Leap Forward brought shortages of food and raw materials and the demoralisation and exhaustion of the workforce. The situation was exacerbated by poor harvests caused by bad weather and by Mao's refusal to hear of failures. In 1959 and 1960 the gross value of agricultural output fell by 14% and 13% respectively. In 1961 output dropped a further 2% to reach the lowest point since 1952. Widespread famine resulted, especially in rural areas. It was estimated that from 1958 to 1961, 14 to 20 million more people died of starvation than in similar years of poor harvests.

The Ca t