Worst Leaders

[Juristonia]

The world would be a very prosperous place if it was.

[Serrland]

Who do you think are the top 10 worst world leaders, past or present, for a real world country? The country may not exist anymore.
1. Adolph Hitler
2. Khmer Rouge (I like elephants!)
3. Kim Jung Il (He gets fresh lobster daily!)
4. Saddam Hussein
5. Vlad Dracula
6. Kaiser Wilhelm
7. Emperor Hirohito
8. Emperor Nero
9. Kim Jung Un (Not a leader yet, but said mean stuff!)
10. Not President O-J! He's great!

Kaiser Wilhelm? How do you justify his inclusion on this list, when people of the ilk of Stalin and Mao, both of whom lead to the deaths of tens of millions of their people, were left off?

Edit: And Nero is on the list, but Caligula isn't?

[Lloydopolis]

Agree with most of what I'm seeing, but I think Mao Zedong requires more attention. True, he was possibly the most important theorist and practitioner of rural guerrilla warfare ever, and he led the Communists to victory against the Japanese and the Kuomintang, but come on. The Cultural Revolution and the systematic slaughter of intellectuals? The so-called "Great Leap Forward" that killed at least fifteen million and possibly as many as forty-three million peasants? Mao killed more people than either Stalin or Hitler, even if some proportion of the deaths resulting from the Great Leap Forward were somewhat accidental.

[Frenca]

Agree with most of what I'm seeing, but I think Mao Zedong requires more attention. True, he was possibly the most important theorist and practitioner of rural guerrilla warfare ever, and he led the Communists to victory against the Japanese and the Kuomintang, but come on. The Cultural Revolution and the systematic slaughter of intellectuals? The so-called "Great Leap Forward" that killed at least fifteen million and possibly as many as forty-three million peasants? Mao killed more people than either Stalin or Hitler, even if some proportion of the deaths resulting from the Great Leap Forward were somewhat accidental.

I put him as number 5 on my list.

[Professional Leaders]

Who do you think are the top 10 worst world leaders, past or present, for a real world country? The country may not exist anymore.
1. Adolph Hitler
2. Khmer Rouge (I like elephants!)
3. Kim Jung Il (He gets fresh lobster daily!)
4. Saddam Hussein
5. Vlad Dracula
6. Kaiser Wilhelm
7. Emperor Hirohito
8. Emperor Nero
9. Kim Jung Un (Not a leader yet, but said mean stuff!)
10. Not President O-J! He's great!

Kaiser Wilhelm? How do you justify his inclusion on this list, when people of the ilk of Stalin and Mao, both of whom lead to the deaths of tens of millions of their people, were left off?

i agree


Edit: And Nero is on the list, but Caligula isn't?

[WWII History Geeks]

Ivan Grozny! Killing and raping everyone from little boys to old women by his own hands! First secret police! Every STD known to man was contracted by him at the time of his death! Novgorod! Oprichnina (medeival siberia)! He has been outdone. v_v

[Ordo Drakul]

When you state "Obviously", you are showing a definite bias. Hitler was not a bad leader because of the Holocaust, but because he arrogantly assumed his nation could take on more fronts than any sane man would have. Similarly, Stalin doesn't belong on the list at all-while he was a genocidal maniac, he took the most backwards country in Europe and turned it into one of two super-powers. Leadership isn't always moral-Alexander VI was actually a capable administrator and top-notch politician even though he was a wanton sybarite whose papacy was continually dogged by rumors of an incestuous affair with his bastard daughter. Although not a good Pope, he wasn't even one of the ten worst.

You should really look at guys who were detrimental or destructive to their nations-Neville Chamberlain was a worse leader than Hitler. James Buchanon was such a do-nothing his administration can be blamed for many of the problems that lead to secession. I think you really can't call someone a bad leader just because you disagree with him morally or because someone else's bias is influencing you. Look at the changes wrought on their nations by their leadership.

[Tagmatium]

He probably didn't do that, you know.

He used Christians for lanterns.

No more worse than using any other bunch as lanterns.

Life was a lot cheaper back then.

[The Archregimancy]

I know he's overrated when it comes to it, I'm examining his reign in my Medieval History A-Level, but he's mostly on here for causing so much trouble to the people. Granted, when he lost most of the Angevin Empire, it wasn't all his fault, but still...and I object to your inclusion of Athelred Unraed, he was just unlucky

Nonsense. Many of Aethelred's problems were entirely of his own making, and he seems to have been - as the accurate translation of his nickname indicates - ill-advised to boot. The whole reason Sweyn Forkbeard found it so easy to (temporarily) depose Aethelred was because the latter was so disliked by his own nobles, not least because of his habit of paying the Danes massive cash bribes in an unsuccessful attempt to make them go away; and didn't that work well? ("well, he paid us 36,000 gold coins last year to go away - maybe he'll pay us 48,000 this year!") And John never came up with anything as murderous as Aethelred's St Brice's Day massacre, which involved the killing of every Danish male (and some women) in the parts of England under his control.

Not that Aethelred was as bad as some historians have traditionally claimed either - he was hardly the only monarch of the period who found Norse invaders difficult to cope with - but he certainly wasn't just 'unlucky'.

[South Norwega]

i know hitler was a terrible man but he was a great leader. he lead germany out of depression and built them to a world power in only a few decade. so i the leader perspective he was great.....but a terrible person

Hitler was an absolutely shit leader. Most of the economic build-up was either based on war, or not his idea at all. Sure he was charismatic and all, but he was an ideological nut-case. He left Germany in complete and utter ruins and caused the deaths of tens of millions of people.

[Druidville]

I surely don't count a liberal blog such as HuffPo a reliable source for anything. Even the weather.

[The Archregimancy]

i know hitler was a terrible man but he was a great leader. he lead germany out of depression and built them to a world power in only a few decade. so i the leader perspective he was great.....but a terrible person

Hitler was an absolutely shit leader. Most of the economic build-up was either based on war, or not his idea at all. Sure he was charismatic and all, but he was an ideological nut-case. He left Germany in complete and utter ruins and caused the deaths of tens of millions of people.

All true, but that doesn't stop people from making the clearly ridiculous "Hitler was a bad person, but a great leader" argument every time this thread topic - and it's by no means a very original thread topic - comes up.

As I wrote in January of last year....

The idea that Hitler was a good leader because of his success in 'restoring' the German economy and remilitarising the country, and that the failures of the war - including the Holocaust - can be separated from his 'successes' before the war is based on the fallacy that Hitler's actions prior to the war are somehow separable from his actions during the war.

They are not. The pre-war economic policies inexorably and directly led to the war; indeed, those pre-war economic policies made the war more or less inevitable.

As I've written previously on NSG, The Nazi 'economic miracle' was unsustainable beyond the short term without the annexation of resources and industrial capacity from other countries.

The expansion was initially dependent on the increase of German industrial capacity to fuel remilitarisation, with surplus manufacturing being redirected towards domestic consumption. However, as German remilitarisation expanded, there was a decrease both in available resources and the manufacturing surplus; industrial capacity was then unable to keep pace with both military demand and consumer demand, a problem exacerbated by increasing problems with resource availability.

The expansionist policies of Nazi Germany weren't just caused by Nazi ideologies over lebensraum and untermenschen - though we should be careful not to underestimate the importance of these - it was also a necessary byproduct of the impossibilities inherent in Nazi economic policy. Given the broad - and justified - opposition to Nazi ideology in much of the rest of Europe, the only way to obtain the resources and industrial capacity necessary was via force and/or compulsion.

As the war was therefore at least partially a direct consequence of Nazi economic policies, I think we can count me as another vote for 'bad leader'.

Oh yes, and then there's the whole genocidal totalitarian police state governed through a divide and conquer system that saw the increasing dissolution of central bureaucratic control and the increasing formation of overlapping competing power structures as individual centres of power were each encouraged to independently "work towards the fuhrer" without much in the way of explicit guidance from Hitler himself.... but I just wanted to focus on the economics.

[Felids]

Perhaps we should start thinking out of the box. US leaders who messed up? European leaders who haven't lived up to expectations?

Indian prime minister got you down? Are you a fanatical hater of Julia Gillard (I certainly am - I have no respect for her, since she disposed Rudd via passive aggressive force - no good follower is a good leader).

I don't have a real list, partially because I don't like the idea of labeling Hitler/Kimmy boy/Stalin/etc. as a bad leader. Why? Too cliche. It's like there's a template or something out there where you can switch the names and positions around, and maybe change one or two, that everyone uses.

[Kandorith]

I don't have a top... Just because mostly they do both good and bad... But I must say in my opinion the worst leader ever must be Bush... Or maybe the previous prime minister of the Netherlands, no charisma or anything....

[Esternial]

The entire Julio-Claudian dynasty, because they were unbelievably cruel to their people.

Galba, Otho, Vitellius. They all became Emperor and were murdered the same year. They just sucked at being a leader.

[St George of England]

The entire Julio-Claudian dynasty, because they were unbelievably cruel to their people.

Galba, Otho, Vitellius. They all became Emperor and were murdered the same year. They just sucked at being a leader.

I would dispute the latter. Vitellius was both an accomplished administrator, and a decent military commander. He was badly assisted and allowed himself to be easily led though. However, if the commander of the East had been anyone other than Vespasian, maybe Vitellius would've remained on the throne.

[Angleter]

1. Pol Pot
2. Idi Amin
3. Ne Win
4. Adolf Hitler
5. Mao Tse-Tung
6. Mengistu Haile Mariam
7. Robert Mugabe
8. Ioseb Stalin
9. Mobutu Sese Seko
10. Empress Dowager Cixi

[Angleter]

The entire Julio-Claudian dynasty, because they were unbelievably cruel to their people.

Galba, Otho, Vitellius. They all became Emperor and were murdered the same year. They just sucked at being a leader.

I would dispute the latter. Vitellius was both an accomplished administrator, and a decent military commander. He was badly assisted and allowed himself to be easily led though. However, if the commander of the East had been anyone other than Vespasian, maybe Vitellius would've remained on the throne.

Yes. VitelliusPAC (previously the Vitellius for NSG Emperor campaign) endorses this statement, also adding that Vitellius had a great economic plan based on the food and drink industry, and that Vespasian was a treacherous bastard who can't take the credit for ending Roman civil war because he extended it himself.

[South Norwega]

10. Empress Dowager Cixi

But surely rebuilding the summer palace was a matter of much greater import than creating a functional navy!

[Frenca]

1. Pol Pot
2. Idi Amin
3. Ne Win
4. Adolf Hitler
5. Mao Tse-Tung
6. Mengistu Haile Mariam
7. Robert Mugabe
8. Ioseb Stalin
9. Mobutu Sese Seko
10. Empress Dowager Cixi

How was Cixi that bad?

[Angleter]

1. Pol Pot
2. Idi Amin
3. Ne Win
4. Adolf Hitler
5. Mao Tse-Tung
6. Mengistu Haile Mariam
7. Robert Mugabe
8. Ioseb Stalin
9. Mobutu Sese Seko
10. Empress Dowager Cixi

How was Cixi that bad?

She managed to oversee several wars, famines and uprisings; almost single-handedly drove the Qing Empire into complete submission and probably put China back several decades in doing so, given how her mismanagement caused the 1911 Revolution and thus its effects, namely the Japanese invasion, the warlord period, and the rise of Mao Tse-Tung.

[Frenca]

How was Cixi that bad?

She managed to oversee several wars, famines and uprisings; almost single-handedly drove the Qing Empire into complete submission and probably put China back several decades in doing so, given how her mismanagement caused the 1911 Revolution and thus its effects, namely the Japanese invasion, the warlord period, and the rise of Mao Tse-Tung.

It can't be entirely her fault. Ci'an also had a fault. If Ci'an had a male child, Cixi would have never rosen up the ranks and we would never have had the An Dehai scandal and the starvation of Empress Alute.

[FREEaquaticdancelesson]

> 5. Vlad Dracula

Vlad Dracul the second, terrible leader.
Vlad Dracul the third, amazing leader. (Dracula)

He single handedly united Romania, gave the lower classes more power and made Romania a military might! He stood up against both foreign and Domestic enemies (Who tore his country apart). His image was smeared by his enemies, who were terrified of him. This was his strategy, impale and display his enemies as a deterrent from war. The pamphlets they sent out throughout Europe slandering his image actually helped his reputation, unknowingly to his enemies.

He HAD to be a badass in order to stave off foreign invasion (which he did very well). He WAS sadistic, he WAS cruel but it was all necessary in those times. Today in Transylvania he is remembered as a hero because of this.

[Angleter]

She managed to oversee several wars, famines and uprisings; almost single-handedly drove the Qing Empire into complete submission and probably put China back several decades in doing so, given how her mismanagement caused the 1911 Revolution and thus its effects, namely the Japanese invasion, the warlord period, and the rise of Mao Tse-Tung.

It can't be entirely her fault. Ci'an also had a fault. If Ci'an had a male child, Cixi would have never rosen up the ranks and we would never have had the An Dehai scandal and the starvation of Empress Alute.

Ci'an was harmless. Useless all the same, but harmless- and I don't think we can exactly blame her for her inability to produce a male heir. Cixi was the real leader of China for 47 years, almost all of which were disastrous.

[Serrland]

Cromwell might need a bit of a mention here, too