Essay:Duce's Hall of Horrors

I mainly edit history articles on Rationalwiki, and through the process of doing so, I've come across some truly gut-churning historical images. They depict cruelty, crimes, and war. I'm documenting them here primarily to demonstrate how horrible people can be to each other, and how destructive human conflict always becomes. Actually, that's a lie. I've just seen so many of these fucking things that I need a place to vent.

Obviously, viewer discretion is advised.

Belgian Congo: dismembered daughter


I put this image at the top of our Belgian Congo article. The man's name is Nsala, and mercenaries hired by Belgium dismembered his daughter, killed her, killed his wife, and sent him his little girl's foot and hand. All for failing to meet a production quota for rubber.

Belgian Congo: severed hands


These two men are holding the severed hands of their friend. Severed hands were a commodity in the Belgian Congo, as the Belgian colonial overseers required mercenaries to only use their bullets on people. To enforce this, he demanded that the mercenaries cut off their victims' hands as proof that they had fired each bullet with proper intent. However, the mercenaries would often go hunting for sport, and they'd cut the hands of living people to cover it up. Severed hands became a gruesome form of currency in the Congo.

I also used this image in the Belgian Congo article.

Amerindian genocides: cultural extermination


I picked this one over the other, more violent pictures in the Amerindian genocides article because this image shows the brutally totalitarian attempt by the US government to exterminate an entire way of life. People joke about how 1984 isn't fiction, and they're right. It's not. It already happened.

China: Lingchi


I stumbled across this while adding images to the death penalty article. Lingchi was a method of execution used in China until about 1910, and this instance was captured on photograph. The executioner would carve pieces of skin off of the victim until they finally died.

Ku Klux Klan: mainstream marchers


This is an image from the KKK article; it depicts a Klan rally. Note the building in the background. There was once a time when the Ku Klux Klan was a mainstream organization that tormented American minorities out in the open and influenced elections. America was always this.

Rape of Nanjing: the smiling men


As is noted on the file's talkpage, the man with the sword seems to be smiling. The men behind him are definitely smiling. Executing prisoners was often a game to the Japanese, and some of them would to compete to see who could decapitate the most prisoners in the shortest amount of time.

This image is at the top of the Rape of Nanjing article.

Rape of Nanjing: too graphic for Rationalwiki


This image is one that I actually refused to add to the Rape of Nanjing article. A woman was raped and profaned by Japanese soldiers.

Holocaust: Sonderkommando


This image is from the genocide article, and it depicts Jewish sonderkommando burning naked corpses in Auschwitz. Sonderkommando were later executed themselves, thus turning the Holocaust into a self-containing secret. For a time. Thankfully, only for a time.

Vietnam War: also too graphic for Rationalwiki


This is another image I declined to use. This is a woman who was murdered by American troops during the My Lai Massacre in the Vietnam War. That's right. American soldiers, crusaders for freedom. They only occasionally shoot women's brains out the back of their fucking heads for no fucking reason.

Iran-Iraq War: no place for children


This image is from the Iran-Iraq War article. The Iranians used children and teenagers during the war, often making them participate in human-wave attacks against Iraqi trenches. Iran itself estimates that about 33,000 high-school age and younger boys died during the war.