Pol Pot Vs Hitler

Pol Pot had the idea to make everyone equal. He killed all smart and educated people, or people he saw as a threat. It was mainly doctors and teachers and occasionally other people but not very often. Hitler and Pol perfect worlds were a little bit different from each other. Pol Pot needed to make everybody equal which caused him to kill so many people. Hitler on the other side killed many different groups but the main group was Jews. He killed over 6 million jews. He hated everything about them, and their beliefs. Hitler also only wanted people with blue eyes and brown hair to stay alive. That was Hitler's idea of a perfect world. When analyzing these two genocides Pol Pot and Hitler wanted power and both genocides affected the world then and still continues to affect the world today.

Pol Pot and Hitler wanted control of their country and caused people to work and killed. Pol Pot wanted to take Cambodia back to the middle ages. Forcing millions to work on farms. Whole families died from execution, starvation, disease and overwork(BBC News). This was a huge part to the cambodian genocide because people worked probably around 12-14 hours a day with no food or water. Without food or water and you are working for that long often times you will end up with a disease of some type or die from starvation. Same as the Cambodian genocide, The first official concentration camp opened at Dachau (near Munich) in March 1933, and many of the first prisoners sent there were Communists(History). This first concentration camp started everything. It caused Hitler to gain even more power and set up more concentration camps where jews would be sent and killed. Pol Pot gained power and wanted Cambodia to go back to Middle ages causing them to restart and be known as Year Zero. Hitler hated Jews and gained power in order to kill the jews in concentration camps. Hitler in 1938 took full control of Germany and started a horrific genocide. Under the Nuremberg Laws, Jews became routine targets for stigmatization and persecution. This culminated in Kristallnacht, or the 'night of broken glass' in November 1938(History). This event was when the German synagogues happened. Causing windows in jewish shops were destroyed. Thousands of jews were killed and hundreds were arrested during this time period. Around a hundred thousands jews escaped before anything happened to them, while others stayed and paid the consequences. Yet Pol Pot started his domination another way. He started by evacuating every city in Cambodia causing around 20,000 people to die on the way. This was a very difficult time for everyone just because the forcibly evacuated people out of the cities. If people refused to leave they would be killed and they had to walk extremely far which caused people to die from starvation or exhaustion.

Pol Pot and Hitler decided they both wanted camps where they could have people work and if they refused then they would get tortured or killed. Hitler would have all jews or people that were to sick or weak go to concentration camps where they would be tortured then gassed to death. The first mass gassings began at the camp of Belzec, near Lublin, on March 17, 1942. Five more mass killing centers were built at camps in occupied Poland, including Chelmno, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and the largest of all, Auschwitz-Birkenau(History). This was detrimental to everyone because they were being killed just because of their religion or because they were too old to work. Same as Pol pot he had camps where people would work on farms and if they were to sick or would not be able to work much longer they would be killed. He would also kill anyone who he saw as a threat which includes people with an education or he would even kill people if they wore glasses. Children were taken from their parents and placed in separate forced labour camps(Cambodia Genocide). Families had it the worst in during this genocide because they would be seperated and they had no way into knowing if their family was still alive. Hitler and the Nazi's tried to keep everything a secret. Though the Nazis tried to keep operation of camps secret, the scale of the killing made this virtually impossible. Eyewitnesses brought reports of Nazi atrocities in Poland to the Allied governments(History). They did not want anybody knowing what they were doing for as long as they could. Pol Pot did the same thing he Khmer Rouge cut off all communication to the outside world so nobody could try and stop them for what they were doing. Until 1977, the Khmer Rouge's top leadership (known as 'Angkar Padevat') worked in secret, with few outside of the party aware of their identities. The world had no idea these two genocides were going on making it so the rest of the world could not help.

To this day and age the effects on the culture are still impacted to this day. People are still alive to this day making it so they have to know what they saw or went through. People who live to this day during these two event get reminded everyday that they were being punished just because of what they believed in. Same as the Cambodian genocide people were punished because they were smart. The Khmer Rouge believed that in order to complete this process the Year Zero they would have to kill anyone who was intelligent. People get affected by this genocide because still to this day because even though they had an education and wanted to do something with there life they were punished for it. People were also affected by losing their family members. Pol Pot separated all families causing them to never see each other again unless miraculously they all made it out alive. People to this day still have to deal with the loss of their family members from something that should have never happened. However Hitler had many concentration camps but he had one big one named Auschwitz. Not all families were separated but they were forced to see the killings of their own family members. This made it even worse for the people who survived it because they have to remember seeing the killings of their family members.

Pol Pot and Hitler wanted to take over their countries and start a genocide so they could be in full control. Pol Pot did not want anyone with an education to be alive so he could restart and go back to the middle ages. Hitler on the other hand wanted all jews killed because he believed that the reason Germany lost in WW1 was because of the jews and he also hated their beliefs.

Cites

Aljazeera editorsKey facts on the Khmer Rouge US and Canada, Aljazeera. 3 Feb 2012, 1 Nov 2018

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/02/20122314155454169.html

Peace Pledge Union Information editors, Talking about genocide-Genocide Genocide, Peace Pledge Union Information. (N.D), 1 Nov 2018

https://archive.ppu.org.uk/genocide/g_cambodia1.html

History editors The Holocaust, History, A&E Television Networks, 14 Oct 2009, 1 Nov 2018

https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/the-holocaust#section_1

BBC editors Cambodia's brutal Khmer Rouge regime News, BBC 4 Aug 2014, 1 Nov 2018

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-10684399

Cite this page