History's Underrated Bad Guys

[minute bull]

So Christmas is over.

 

[Buff]

This man's early life was pretty screwed up and went on to have one crazy adult life.

His last words?

"Yes, hurry it up, you Hoosier bastard! I could kill a dozen men while you're screwing around!"

 

[ctrlaltdelete]

Bump.

The world has to include so many more terrible people

 

[Buff]

Bump.

The world has to include so many more terrible people

I'll do some more later!

 

[Possum Jenkins]

King Leopold II of Belgium and it's not even close.

No one's heard of him but the Belgians' cruelty and destruction in the Congo under his personal behest was Nazi-level.

Failure to meet the rubber collection quotas was punishable by death. Meanwhile, the Force Publique were required to provide the hand of their victims as proof when they had shot and killed someone, as it was believed that they would otherwise use the munitions (imported from Europe at considerable cost) for hunting. As a consequence, the rubber quotas were in part paid off in chopped-off hands. Sometimes the hands were collected by the soldiers of the Force Publique, sometimes by the villages themselves. There were even small wars where villages attacked neighboring villages to gather hands, since their rubber quotas were too unrealistic to fill. A Catholic priest quotes a man, Tswambe, speaking of the hated state official Léon Fiévez, who ran a district along the river 500 kilometres (300 mi) north of Stanley Pool:

All blacks saw this man as the devil of the Equator ... From all the bodies killed in the field, you had to cut off the hands. He wanted to see the number of hands cut off by each soldier, who had to bring them in baskets ... A village which refused to provide rubber would be completely swept clean. As a young man, I saw [Fiévez's] soldier Molili, then guarding the village of Boyeka, take a net, put ten arrested natives in it, attach big stones to the net, and make it tumble into the river ... Rubber causes these torments; that's why we no longer want to hear its name spoken. Soldiers made young men kill or rape their own mothers and sisters.

In Forbath's words:

The baskets of severed hands, set down at the feet of the European post commanders, became the symbol of the Congo Free State. ... The collection of hands became an end in itself. Force Publique soldiers brought them to the stations in place of rubber; they even went out to harvest them instead of rubber ... They became a sort of currency. They came to be used to make up for shortfalls in rubber quotas, to replace ... the people who were demanded for the forced labour gangs; and the Force Publique soldiers were paid their bonuses on the basis of how many hands they collected.

This sounds like some medieval or even antiquity sort of shit, yet it took place well into the 20th century.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_State#Atrocities

 

[SammyPops]

Pol Pot

UBL, KSM

Stalin

Oliver Cromwell

Came in here to say Pot.

 

[DeJulez]

Ever hear of Nat Butler?

This dude was a black slave trader, which is pretty fucked up in itself, but he also had a sideline business - telling black slaves to run away to him, whereupon he would contact their previous owners to enquire about a reward, and if it was sufficient he would deliver them back to receive their punishment, or just sell them to someone else... If they were ok used badly, and their value lowered, he would then buy them himself and sell them on... Thought to be the only black slaver that engaged in this practice.

There was also a story about a free black woman called Dilsey Pope who bought her husband's freedom, then one day had a row and sold him to a neighbour... Next day she felt bad and went to buy him back, but the owner wouldn't sell him. Hard knock.

Too bad he didn't run into Nat Turner

 

[SamSchmidt]

Dong Zhuo

Not only was he cruel, he was a fucking idiot too lol

"Dong Zhuo threw lavish banquets during which torture would be performed on captured enemies as entertainment: he first cut their tongue so they wouldn't make as much noise for the following operations, which were the severing of limbs and removal of eyeballs. Dong made sure that the procedures were conducted so that they would remain conscious when they were eventually thrown into boiling oil. Then the remains of the captives were rolled up into a literal "meat-ball" and placed in the center of the banquet for all to observe. While Dong was quite comfortable with his "masterpiece" and enjoyed his meal as usual, the rest of the audience were said to have experienced a high degree of discomfort"
For Yuan Shao's role as leader of the coalition against him, Dong Zhuo had the entire Yuan clan in Luoyang wiped out. Within two years, thousands of public servants were wrongly accused and executed, and numerous commoners were kidnapped or killed. In order to purchase materials for further development of the Mei citadel, he had bells and bronze statues, among which were nine of the Twelve Metal Colossi,[10] melted and recast into coins. The resulting influx of coinage caused widespread inflation, rendering the currency useless. While his policies greatly reduced Han authority and created immense resentment among the gentry class and commoners of the time,

Only reason he was an idiot was for betraying. Oh no...! It's LU BU!!!!!

 

[faustian]

I love to read about history's villains... I like really obscure figures that did horrific things under the guise of some other fucked up shit - War Criminals, killers, people that coldly contributed to genocides or other great atrocities that you may not have heard of.

Here's a few of the worst of the worst - I'll sporadically add more to the thread and op.

Oskar Dirlewagner - Nazi war Criminal, Rapist.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oskar_Dirlewanger


So this guy was a WW1 veteran, noted for bravery and brutality, as he raped and murdering his way through Romania until he led a garrison of his men home. At some point in the early 30s went to jail for molesting a 14 year old girl... Upon release, he joined the Nazi Party, and because of his attitude and ruthlessness, he rose quickly through the ranks, and when WW2 started he was put in charge of a Penal Death squad - hand picked by Dirlewagner, these guys were the dregs of the jails - a bunch of alcoholic sexual deviants, just like Dirlewagner...


When Warsaw rebelled against the Nazis, it was Dirlewagner and his troops that were sent in to make sure it didn't happen again... They spent a week moving from house to house, killing, raping, and torturing as they pleased - Dirlewagner had a particularly nasty fetish for injecting girls with poison and then raping them as the writhe in pain... This guy routinely sent his men into hospital to kill all the patients, and rape/murder all of the doctors and nurses... As his squads pushed into the Polish country, they just put the villagers in churches, burnt the church, and machine gunned anyone that managed to escape the flames. They even based a film on the guy.

When the war ended, his unit was taken prisoner, and as fate had it, the prison was manned by some local Polish dudes... Who recognised Dirlewagner, and beat his evil ass to death on the spot. His unit had killed up to 300,000 people.

George Bingham, Lord Lucan The 3rd.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bingham,_3rd_Earl_of_Lucan (his wiki is seriously lacking certain facts)
https://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/from-the-files-of-the-dib-the-exterminator/

Now this absolute piece of shit is actually more famous for the notorious military disaster, "The Charge Of The Light Brigade", wherin he ordered his unit to charge at a group of Turks, causing them to get annihilated by cannons.

Anyway, this dude was a Landlord on the west of Ireland during the great potato famine (potatoes crops failed, England refused to cease food exports from Ireland, and about 25% of the population died). He was, it's fair to say, not the nicest guy, even before then - he kept subdividing land, to the point where literally the only crop a family could afford after farming to lag the enormous rents Lucan charged was potatoes. Families squatted over fires in barren shacks freezing, while Lucan lived a luxurious life in England, going back only to reap more misery.

When the famine hit hard, the British Government blamed the landlords, and ordered them to pay a small levy to feed the poor... Lucan responded by evicting as many as he could, using "crowbar gangs" who would literally just turn up at a family house and pull it apart over their heads, whatever the weather. Stories of families dying from cholera having priests give them last rites as gangs ripped their shacks apart in the pouring rain as they lay on the ground were common..."I will not breed paupers to pay a priest" he said once, as he evicted 2000 people from a single parish on a cold December morning.

He even closed the workhouses in his constituency - he was the chairman of the local "Help The People" society, and so, after walking through the wild lands of rural Ireland, starving and emaciated, willing to sign their lives to slavery just for a bowl of cruel and floor to sleep on... They ended up dying in the doorways. 100,000 people died as a direct result of his policies... Entire villages died, and were wiped from the map, and the only thing protesting against him did was make him angry. He gained the nickname "The Exterminator" while he was still alive, and was proud of the title.

His ruthlessness led to him being put in charge of The Light Brigade in Crimea... He managed to arrogantly ignore everyone who advised him, and make his troops hate him with his brutal punishments and expectations... Right up until the point that he panicked during a battle, and ordered his entire unit to charge a guarded enemy position on horseback - they were obliterated, Lucan was called back in disgrace, and died in London 3 years later a hated figure both in England and Ireland.

Spoiler: His Great Grandson Was Also An Asshole

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bingham,_7th_Earl_of_Lucan

Am I the only one who can't see all the content in the spoiler tags?

Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus AKA Caligula
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caligula

I copied the text below.

Rome’s 3rd emperor from AD 37 to AD 41. He was wild, extravagant, with a penchant for sexual adventures. In the first 3 months in his reign of terror, over 160,000 animals were sacrificed in his honor. He later got a brain fever that made him mentally ill. He then believed he was a god. Under Caligula, the law became an instrument of torture. He believed prisoners should feel a painful death. He began to brutally murder for fun. He would kill his opponents slowly and painfully over hours or days. He decapitated and strangled children. People were beaten with heavy chains. He forced families to attend their children’s execution. Many people had their tongues cut off. He fed prisoners to a lions, panthers and bears and often killed gladiators. One gladiator alone was beaten up for 2 days full days. He sometimes ordered people to be killed by elephants. His cruelty caused people to commit suicide. He demanded sex with a lot of women including his 3 sisters. He would force husbands to give up their wives. He exiled his sisters and had his brother in law put to death. He caused many to die of starvation. Sawing people was one of his favorite things to do, which filleted the spine and spinal cord from crotch down to the chest. He liked to chew up the testicles of victims. He killed some of his most important friends and his father-in-law. One time Caligula said “I wish Rome had but one neck, so that I could cut off all their heads with one blow!” In AD 41, Caligula was killed by Casius Chaerea, a man whom Caligula had mocked at court for his effeminacy.

"Mad" Sam DeStefano
Loan Shark, gangster, lunatic.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_DeStefano

This guy is considered to be the most sadistic guy to ever be connected to the American/Italian Mafia - although they never let him become a "made" guy because he was fucking nuts. A gang rape and a few theft charges were the stand out moments of his teen years... The dude came into his stride as a loan shark - he deliberately lent money to shitty debtors like junkies, just either he could bring them to his torture chamber and stick them with ice picks - he was the teacher of Tony "The Ant" Spilotro, the guy Joe Pesci's character in Casino was based on... He loved sticking them in people's balls and into people's joints. He was also a shitty husband, forcing his wife to put a gun in her mouth and making her pull the trigger, on my for her to hearth empty gun go click and have him laugh at her... Sam also abducted a strange man at gunpoint and forced him to have sex with Sam's wife at gunpoint to punish her for something or another. As a loan shark he did some really fucked up shit... Especially to his own people... William "Action" Johnson was a guy that did collections for Sam... Sam decided that Action was skimming from the top, so he took Tony Spilotro and tortured him too death... Here's an account of the murder. Here's another classic Mad Sam moment... Or this one... And another... When the Feds started to close in on him, Mad Sam's behaviour got more and more extreme and erratic... In the end it was his protege Tony Spilotro, and his own brother that killed him...


Anyone with any more, please add... Serial killers, or similar welcome... The more obscure and fucked up, the better.

 

[JabToucher]

Guy Fawkes