Why was the 20th Century the bloodiest century ever?

Question

Why was it more brutal? why, and who made it so?

Answer 1

Why:

*2 World wars.

*Democracy made possible dictatorship.

*Colonies got independence but civil wars appeared in it.  

*Who:

Adolf Hitler (Germany)

Yosif Stalin (Soviet Union)

Pol Pot (Cambodia)

Answer 2

the answer is simple- socialism and technology

socialism because it teaches people to disregard the individual person. Any mass murder is justified "for the common good" - except that it is a dictator who decides that "common good" is "what I want"

technology because of cheap, mass produced soviet and chinese AK's- which meant being able to arm 12 year old kids with assault weapons and play at "national liberation"

Answer 3

First, it wasn't more brutal.  On the other hand, it probably was the bloodiest century ever.  This was the case for two reasons.  First the population was greater than ever before (not to mention that life expectancy was longer) and second, with two world wars and innumerable small wars, weapons developed at a rate faster than the means of protecting against them.  Throw into this mess a handful of megalomaniacs like Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot, and you have a most unwholesome stew.  It was a killer of a century, but certainly not the most brutal!

Answer 4

Due to many reason.like

Hegemonic ideologies,Raids for resources,and Extremism in any aspect of life and society.

Answer 5

all the wars in the 20th century with the better technology and weapons. also, the population growth and people like hitler

Answer 6

Mostly because people who make such statements dont consider history before their time very important.  There has been blood shed forever.  We just want our bloodshed to be worse.  Granted, it was a bloody century.  But the 21st is catching up fast.

In the 20th there was the turks in Armenia, WW1, Stalin in Georgia, somewhat less was Hitlers camps.

But you want to remember that the bloodshed was documented better than previous centuries.

No one knows the total count of the south american wars in the 19th century because they didnt keep that close a count.  But it is known that in one war 80 percent of one nations population was killed.

During the crusades the entire population in one city of 14000 was butchered.  

History started a long time ago but no one seems to remember much before their birth.

Personally I doubt that there was a "bloodiest" century at all.  Just one we remember better.

Answer 7

looking at the pure numbers.  it might very well be.  But you have to take into account the population growth of the general public.  People like Stalin, Hitler and mao tse tung were responsible for millions of deaths.  World war one took it's fair deal of the body count and the number of smaller conflicts are too many to name.  but I think it would be a bad comparison if it were based on just numbers of people.  After all the Roman era was known it's many military campaigns that cost their share of life but the global population was not that big so they could not have cost that many lives.  

In medieval days the plague eradicated large parts of the european population but again the population was much smaller.

so if you really would want to compare you'd need to figure out the percentages of the population in stead of the pure number of people

Answer 8

Mostly, it was just a matter of technology.  Scientific advances improve life and have led to immensely higher population.  But they also lead to much more efficient methods for killing large numbers of people.  

Answer 9

It may not have been the most brutal of centuries, but mayhap it was the bloodiest, as others have already stated. Perhaps it was because we had so many more people on this planet and more people involved in brutality that there was a lot more blood.

Well the 20th century saw two World Wars, genocides in Africa and in Europe, a civil war in Spain, the usage of nuclear weapons rising, wars in Korea and Vietnam, thought to be the greatest famine in history, the Great Chinese Famine, some civil wars in China leading to the end of the imperial dynasty, followed by another civil war in China , a civil war in Lebanon...

I mean, how brutal? Other centuries have seen many tragedies, there's no lying about that, but think about what state we were in during this century. We had, and were, creating weapons that were far more acurate and deadly come each new chance at warfar, our population was, and is, high - imagine how many people died in each one of those wars? Then there are all the famines, viruses and diseases that killed many, AIDS sweeping Africa.

I don't know how people still can see all the good things that happened with a track record like that.

Cheers!