91 of 91 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
War not biggest killer - governments kill more of their own, June 20, 1999
This review is from: Death by Government (Paperback)
Sometimes it takes the insight of others to help me make better sense of what I already knew. I used to think war was the greatest cause of death and tragedy, but after reading R.J. Rummel's "Death by Government" I came to the recognition that governments killing their own citizens (what Rummel terms "democide") accounts for far more death than war has this century (by a factor of about four to one). War's visibility distorts perception. For example, I have long been aware of the six million Jews executed in the Holocaust because this was part of World War II. Yet even while I also knew the former Soviet Union had annihilated some fifty to sixty million of its own people, until I read Rummel I had not given the Soviet slaughter nearly the same significance as the Holocaust (though the number of Soviet citizens slaughtered was literally ten times the number of Jews murdered by the Nazis!). Rummel has been called the foremost "atrocitologist" of our time and "Death by Government" has been thoroughly researched with expertise. To complete the book this former Yale professor and Nobel Peace Prize nominee recorded over 8,000 estimates of genocide and mass murder from over a thousand sources. As a political science doctoral student, I have reviewed many books on the subject, and, for anyone interested in understanding genocide and government mass murder, "Death by Government" is the most comprehensive compilation of government atrocities I have ever encountered. It contains the pertinent numbers as well as the sad and grisly tales of unimaginable carnage. "Death by Government" is an illuminating book on some of the darkest elements of this century. Any course on these issues will be seriously enhanced by Rummel's very readable accounting of state sponsored homicide.
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76 of 79 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Most Important History Book You've Never Heard Of ., June 2, 2003
This review is from: Death by Government (Paperback)
And with reason. There is none of the sacrifice, drama or nobility reported in battles. It's not about Thermopylae or Gettysburg.
This is an account of what humanity has done to itself--and continues to this day. It's a book on comparitive demonology. One almost gets the impression that a soldier ripping a baby from his mother's arms, tossing it in the air and catching it on the point of his bayonet is the rule, not the exception. Ditto for POW's captured by front line troops.
The author is a professor of Political Science who finds it amazing that his colleagues write texts on the purposes of government, yet fail to mention that (with the possible exception of the Jewish victims of Nazi genocide) instead of protecting citizens from "the savagery of the jungle" by rule of law, governments have and continue to be, THE greatest killers of all.
"Democide" is the word he coins to combine genocide (murdering because of membership in a hated race, ethnicity,or religion,) plus politicide ( murdering for political purposes, e.g; dissidents ) and mass murder (indiscriminate killing).
Democide is always committed by governments. It is as organized as taxation or road building. Discounting civilians accidentally killed in cross-fires, or even in the aerial bombardments of cities, this still leaves horrifying numbers.
Pre-Twentieth Century? An estimate of 169,198,000 human beings massacred. Since this includes the victims of Genghis Khan, Incas, Conquistadors, etc., There's an obscene tendency to see them as not quite human, not quite real due to the distance in time. So Tarmelane, the Turkish conqueror slaughtered 100,000 people outside of Delhi and he liked to make pyramids of human heads?--Who cares?--Just stuff in history books. . .
Is WW2 is close enough? We all know about the 6 million Jews, but did you know that constituted only aprox 13% of the victims of The Nazi Genocide State?
Overall, by genocide, euthanasia, killing of hostages, reprisal raids, starvation, forced labor camps and so forth the figure is anywhere from 15 to 31 million, most likely 21 million. Rummel admits he may be off somewhat in numbers, but certainly not as to the State's intentions. The Nazis still head the list when it comes to killing people in occupied territories, with the Imperial Japanese Military being second.
As to murdering one's own people, it's estimated some 35,236,000 for the Communist Chinese Anthill. The author notes that those who were shocked by the 1989 Beijing massacre of students, really shouldn't have been--it's the norm. But even that figure is topped by 54,800,000 victims of The Soviet Gulag State.
(Not counting an additional 5-7 million comprised of German POW's plus non-combatants deliberately murdered by The Red Army).
For sheer numbers, Stalin is our grand prize winner in brutality. In terms of percentage, however, the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot beats his insanity--they wiped out nearly one third of all Cambodians.
The chapter on The Vietnamese War State is most instructive, not just for the total toll of 1,670,000 victims but for the inferences Rummel draws: Before the U.S. entered the war, the Viet Minh were already as hardened a bunch of mass killers as the most disciplined SS units under Himmler. America had no idea what it was getting itself get into.
The Balkans are something else. Off the scale.
Required reading.
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