The 20th century was the bloodiest in human history.

Evidence

In the final section of this book, we explore the psychology of large-scale political conflict, violence, and political transformation within and among nation-states. There is ample evidence suggesting that the last century was the bloodiest in all of human history. More than 20 major wars were fought during the 20th century, claiming more than 100 million human lives; it is estimated that World War II alone caused 50 million deaths. To this awful tally, we must add the nearly 170 million people massacred during scores of genocidal campaigns (Rummel, 2001). In addition to the Nazi Holocaust, this list includes the Turkish mass murder of the Armenians, the killing fields of Cambodia, the slaying of more than 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis throughout the 1990s, and many thousands more killed in Bosnia and Herzegovina. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 146

Categorization

• CANDY: Neat, grim dinner-party fact: WWII alone killed 50 million, plus ~170 million in genocides.
• XREF: connects to: The twentieth century’s catastrophes shook faith in historical progress. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 58; Genocide is a recurring feature of human history with a uniquely bloody twentieth century. — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 302