In the popular imagination, the 20th century was a time of technological progress and relative world peace, when we built the computer and finally reached outer space. Take a closer look, however, and this rosy view doesn't seem accurate, or at least not for everyone. While it's true that some parts of the world experienced unprecedented growth and stability during this time—at least in the post-war era—for many others, it was a turbulent and bleak period.
10. Problems
From the late 1960s to 1998 Northern Ireland was embroiled in one of the bloodiest uprisings of the 20th century. Known as the Troubles, it was the brutal culmination of years of conflict between nationalist Irish and unionist British populations in the region, which had been controlled by Britain since the 1920s. years . It was a large-scale conflict, and could even be classified as a war, based on the numbers.
During this episode, more than 3,500 people died as rebel Irish paramilitary groups such as the Irish Republican Army (IRA) waged an intense guerrilla war against Ulster loyalist forces allied with the British Army. The conflict left numerous civilians dead and injured, with more than 47,000 people wounded in the crossfire, most of them young men. The period was also marked by several high-profile assassinations, such as Lord Mountbatten и Airy Neave — British Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in 1979.
Although the unrest officially ended with the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, violence only ceased completely in 2007.
9. Civil War in Guatemala
The Guatemalan civil war began after the Cuban Revolution in 1959, when leftist guerrilla groups in the country began 36 years old An armed conflict against the Guatemalan state. It was the longest struggle in modern Latin American history, claiming the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and leaving millions homeless.
The conflict is still remembered for its exceptional brutality against civilians, particularly those of Mayan descent. Much of the violence can be attributed to paramilitary death squads affiliated with the state or local governments. landowners or directly controlled by them . This included summary executions, sexual violence, torture, mutilation, child abuse, and the systematic destruction of settlements.
The worst phase of the conflict occurred in the early 1980s, when paramilitary forces launched counterinsurgency measures aimed at eliminating the rebel population. During this time, between 701 and 901 people were killed in the worst-hit provinces, a figure that has since been acknowledged. UN genocide .
8. Hutu revenge for the genocide
Most people know about the Rwandan genocide of 1994, when more than 80% The Tutsi minority was massacred by Hutus following the assassination of President Juvénal Habyarimana. However, the immediate impact of this tragedy on surrounding regions, particularly the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is much less discussed.
Throughout 1996 and 1997, Hutu refugees in Congo were subjected to a repressive genocide by the Rwandan government, now led by Tutsi. During the First Congo War, Rwandan-backed rebels committed several massacres in the eastern part of the country, primarily targeting Hutu refugees fleeing Rwanda after the civil war, as well as local Congolese Hutu. Were applied cruel methods of execution, because tens of thousands Civilians were killed in a campaign of ethnic cleansing that would shape politics and social relations in the region for years to come.
7. Japanese invasion of Manchuria
The Sino-Japanese War officially began in 1937, although the conflict in China continued for much longer. longer . Japan invaded the Chinese province of Manchuria in In 1931 and created a puppet state Manchukuo , starting a conflict that lasted until the defeat of the Japanese Empire in 1945.
Throughout the war, Japanese forces committed numerous atrocities in many parts of China. While some are well known—such as the Nanking Massacre of 1937, when the invading army terrorized hundreds of thousands of civilians in Nanjing over six weeks—others are now largely forgotten. Like Germany, Japan also conducted extensive experiments on the conquered population, with major laboratories operating in Manchukuo . The details are gruesome, as the experiments were typically carried out in brutal and inhumane ways. The victims were typically prisoners of war captured during the invasion, many of whom died within weeks of the experiments.
6. Iran-Iraq War
On September 22, 1980, Iraqi forces launched a full-scale invasion of Iran, beginning a conflict that would be characterized by inhumane killing methods such as chemical attacks , and mass violence against civilians. The Iran-Iraq War was one of the longest conflicts of the 20th century, lasting nearly eight years until a ceasefire in 1988 (although a formal peace agreement was not signed until August 16, 1990).
The conflict would have a profound impact on geopolitics in the Middle East and beyond, even if it was largely forgotten outside the immediate regions where it was fought. Iraq used its chemical weapons arsenal excessively, both against civilians and on the battlefield against Iranian soldiers. Violence was also directed against Kurdish rebels within Iraq – in March 1988, between 3,000 and 5,000 people were killed in a massive chemical attack in a Kurdish-Iraqi town. Halabja .
5. Genocide of Herero and Namaqua
At the turn of the 20th century, Germany controlled one of the largest colonial empires in the world, almost all of it located in Africa. In 1904 and 1907 The Herero and Namaqua tribes of Namibia suffered what many historians now recognize as the first genocide of the 20th century, almost entirely perpetrated by professional German troops. Based on the numbers, more than 801 TP3T Herero and 501 TP3T Namaqua were exterminated, often in brutal and inhumane ways that were repeated in numerous battles and concentration camps until the end of World War II.
On the German side it was a war of destruction , carried out with the aim of completely replacing the local population with German settlers. Although it began as a Herero rebellion, they were quickly suppressed by superior German firepower, followed by some of the most horrific atrocities against the indigenous population in the history of colonial Europe. Many were forced into the desert and died of hunger or heat; others were forced to work in concentration camps until they died, or subjected to torture, experiments, rape, and even beheading .
4. Partition of India
In August 1947, India was partitioned into the modern states of Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan, finally granting independence to the long-time British colony. While it was a moment of celebration, the period is now remembered for widespread violence on both sides of the border, leading to one of the largest humanitarian crises of the 20th century.
Moretwo million people died as a number of Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims on both sides of the border began one of the largest mass migrations in human history. More than 14 million people would be left homeless as a result of the violence, almost all of which was directed against civilians. While it is not recognized as genocide, some British soldiers and journalists who witnessed it later described it as worse than Nazi concentration camps.
3. Late Ottoman Genocide
The First World War was as full of atrocities and dark phases as the Second, though it hardly receives the same attention in modern readings of 20th-century history. One of the darkest was the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, followed by brutal violence and campaigns of ethnic cleansing in the new territories.
Some historians view them as a continuous series of genocides known as late Ottoman genocide , even though there are quite a few in Turkey disputes regarding whether they should be considered genocides. Although Armenian Genocide still remembered and spoken of today, it also included violence against Assyrians, Greeks, Kurds, Arabs, Jews and others. As the vast empire that once stretched By As Eastern Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East disintegrated and gave way to new nations in the Middle East, old ethnic tensions between communities and the region's new geopolitical realities led to numerous atrocities, often committed by the armed forces of the new states.
2. Colonial Belgian rule
From 1885 to 1908 The country of Congo was run entirely as a private enterprise by the Belgian King Leopold II. Known as the Congo Free State, it was the only private colony in history, with its own private army and local militias controlling the region's lucrative resources. This period was marked by exceptional cruelty towards the local population, so much so that a handful of other empires, including other European colonial powers that had employed similar tactics in their colonies, were forced to band together and intervene to put an end to it. .
Although figures are disputed, the Congolese population has declined during this time с Between 20 and 10 million people. Natives were frequently kidnapped and forced to work for resources such as ivory and rubber. Torture, sexual violence, amputations, and exhaustion were common in places like plantations and mines, as Leopold's armies strictly and brutally controlled productivity. There were several rebellions, though they were often ruthlessly suppressed, followed by retaliatory attacks on the local population.
1. Eastern Front of World War II
The Eastern Front of World War II was undoubtedly the largest military confrontation in history, even if modern history textbooks hardly pay it the same attention as, say, the Pacific and Western European theaters of war. Stretching across a front that at its widest point was more than 1000 miles, with a total of more than 400 Red Army and German divisions, it can be said that this was the place where the war was really fought and decided.
The Eastern Front also witnessed some of the most brutal atrocities of the entire war, though much of it is simply mentioned in post-war figures. Here, Nazi violence was not limited to the Jewish population, but also to other communities, such as Roma, Russians, Poles, prisoners of war, and others. In the occupied territories, mass murders committed by the Germans death squads and local collaborators were commonplace, often carried out in brutal and horrific ways. Unlike in the West, the war in the East was waged as a war of total annihilation, and there were few historical parallels in terms of scale or brutality.