Which Government has killed more innocent lives since WW II ?

Answer 1

China:
Chinese Civil War: 2,500,000
Communism under Chairman Mao: 40,000,000
Occupation of Tibet: 600,000

So roughly 43,100,000 deaths after 1945, plus untold numbers of political prisoners and dissidents to date.

Answer 2

The question can be interpreted a few ways... what you consider to be a single government, and whether killing is to mean actual murders or deaths through neglect and mismanagement.

Do you count deaths by famine? Can you determine if the government was responsible for that or if it was an unavoidable crop failure? What about deaths by flooding or from exposure? Is that simply the weather, or the government's fault for not adequeately providing?

Stalin's government probably brought about the most deaths or murders, had you included the purges and famines of the 30's. Post-WWII, Stalin's government killed about 3-4 million (higher figures are Cold War propaganda). About half of those died in Gulags -- so do you count prison deaths as government killings? (And were all of those people "innocent"?)

Pol Pot's 3 million killed are less contestable. It was a systemic, ruthless attempt at social engineering.

The death counts attributed to Mao's Great Leap Forward have been estimated at 20-40 million. But these were almost all from famine and drowning, which was certainly not the government's plan. For murder-killings, the Anti-Rightist campaigns under Mao purged "only" about 500,000 people.

So if you include deaths by "mistakes" then Mao's government. But for intentional killings, I have to go with "Uncle Jo" Stalin or Pol Pot.

Answer 3

I would have to say China --

As a direct result of the failed "Great Leap Forward" campaign in the 50's, an estimated 38 million people died from widespread famine. in addition, as many as 3 million people died in the violence of the "Cultural Revolution" of the late 60's to mid 70's

Answer 4

PolPots
The Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975. A new government was formed and the name of the country was changed to Democratic Kampuchea. The regime's policies caused the death of around one third of the population, 3 million people, either from starvation, overwork, disease or murder.

Answer 5

With out doubt the hands down winner is: The Peoples Republic of China with honorable mention going to the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United States of America.

Answer 6

If you are looking for people just to say USA you are entirely wrong....
The Khmer Rouge is remembered mainly for the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million people (estimates range from 850,000 to 3 million) under its regime, through execution, starvation and forced labor. Following their leader Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge imposed an extreme form of social engineering on Cambodian society—a radical form of agrarian communism where the whole population had to work in collective farms or forced labor projects. In terms of the number of people killed as a proportion of the population (est. 7.5 million people, as of 1975), it was one of the most lethal regimes of the 20th century. One of their mottos, in reference to the New People, was: "To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss."

Answer 7

Has to be the Soviet Union.

Their own citizens, to boot.

According to Alexander Solzhenitsyn a soviet statistician (whose name I just can't remember) estimated that 67 million soviet citizens (I hope I'm remembering correctly. the number was truly appalling, in any case)
died in their gulag camps between 1919 and 1959.

Now that I think about it, though, China under Mao probably ranks a strong second place.

Answer 8

The Extreme Islamic

Answer 9

China under Mao and his disastrous "Great Leap Forward" landed them smack dab in hell.

Answer 10

Germany at 17 million and that just counts those the Germans went out to kill.