Summary
Highlights
The 20th century saw an unparalleled number of deaths due to mass atrocities, with approximately 120 million casualties from the two World Wars alone, half of whom were civilians. New technologies like aerial warfare and the atomic bomb also contributed significantly to mass casualties. The most sinister cause, however, was the rise of extremist political ideologies that targeted entire populations.
The Armenian Genocide, from 1915-1916, was the first major atrocity of this kind. The Ottoman Empire, influenced by the Young Turks, began a program to create a primarily Turkic state, casting suspicion on the Armenian Christian population. Fearing Armenian support for enemy forces during World War I, Ottoman authorities initiated a program of mass extermination, resulting in the deaths of 600,000 to one million Armenians through slaughter and forced relocation.
During World War II, Nazi Germany under Hitler pursued the extermination of groups deemed to tarnish his vision of a purified German race, a policy known as the Final Solution. While targeting various groups, the Jewish population bore the brunt of this policy. Jews were stripped of their rights, forced into ghettos, and later sent to concentration and extermination camps like Auschwitz. Through industrial precision, approximately six million Jews and five million others were murdered.
In the late 1970s, the Khmer Rouge, a communist group led by Pol Pot and supported by China, took power in Cambodia. Pol Pot aimed to transform Cambodia into an agrarian state and eliminate Western influence. This involved emptying cities, forcing people into labor camps, and targeting the educated population for extermination. This program, though not racially motivated like the others, led to the death of about a quarter of the Cambodian population.