Name: 10 Most Vicious Acts of War in History
Uploaded: 2025-05-23T04:45:36.000Z
Duration: 13 min 46 s
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Around five square miles of the city was reduced to ashes, with over 60% of the total building stock destroyed.

Relative clauses (Restrictive vs. nonrestrictive)

Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at some of the most monstrous acts of war that incited, ended, or prevented a war in history.

But Vlad fought on, with a sheer hatred that defies description.

One of the earliest wars for the Empire of Japan was an overwhelming victory over the Russian Empire in 1905.

After its defeat in the Crimean War of the 1850s, the Russian Empire turned its attention to further expansion in the Far East.

Japan was anxious about Russia's ambitions in Asia, which conflicted with their colonial interests.

As you might expect, Russia wasn't at all intimidated by Japan, viewing them as a minor Asian nation to be pushed around.

Petersburg was convinced of its racial superiority, and the Tsar assumed war would break out only if he decided to start one.

The Japanese military proved otherwise, launching a surprise attack on Port Arthur, which didn't become a victory for either side.

Despite this, in roughly 18 months, Japan had firmly defeated Russia, turning the island nation into a great power while ruining the Russian Empire's reputation.

It weakened Russia, made Japan into a major power, and caused some to conclude that modern wars could be won relatively quickly and decisively.

After years of tension in Europe, with Nazi Germany repeatedly seeing what it could get away with, invading Poland finally triggered all-out war.

In September 1939, Poland was very exposed, geographically isolated.

It was hemmed on three sides by East Prussia, Silesia and Slovakia, where German troops were also stationed.

Hitler had already annexed Austria, plus Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland, with no heated response from other powers.

Starting September 1, 1939, Hitler and Stalin conquered the country in only 35 days.

The Germans' primary objective is to regain the eastern territories that had to be ceded under the Treaty of Versailles, and swiftly reincorporate them into Germany.

Hitler sought to exterminate the Polish people, making it into living space for the Germans.

It was one of the darkest periods of not only Polish history, but European history as a whole.

The Second World War wouldn't end until 1945, and almost entirely began because of Nazi cruelty.

The 19th century was a particularly dark era in Chinese history, later called the Century of Humiliation.

The Century of Humiliation captures a painful time in China's long history.

The century was actually closer to 110 years.

One of the bloodiest periods was the Taiping Rebellion, when Hong Xiuquan declared he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ.

The devoutly Christian man from Guangzhou formed the God-worshipping society, a religious movement that combined Protestant Christianity with traditional Chinese folk religions.

The next few years were spent with Hong honing this new religion.

In 1847, he studied under the American preacher I.J.

But the two fell out over Hong's rejection of Christian concepts of forgiveness, and he decided to focus on his own divinity.

The Qin Dynasty viewed it as a subversive cult, then subsequently violently suppressed its followers.

They began harassing the God-worshippers, hoping to stop people believing in Hong's prophesied war.

Eventually, it turned into an enormous rebellion which lasted almost 14 years, killing between 20 and 30 million people.

Killing Ottoman Supporters The Ottoman Empire was one of the largest Middle Eastern empires in history, stretching from Croatia to the Persian Gulf at its greatest extent.

It was a vastly powerful empire at its peak.

Besides occupying large areas of the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and North Africa, the Ottoman people also took pride in significant achievements in various domains, such as arts, science, medicine, architecture, and so on.

Despite its power, it never once managed to entirely conquer neighboring Persia.

It wasn't for lack of trying, with one lengthy war lasting between 1532 and 1555.

It was triggered by the Safavid Emperor, the ruler of Persia, assassinating the governor of Baghdad.

This time, the conflict began from mutual territorial disputes and included an effort from the Persians to form an alliance with the Europeans, particularly the Habsburgs, to try and correlate an attack on the Ottomans from both sides at once.

He was a sympathizer of Suleyman the Magnificent, the Ottoman ruler, and as such, they took it as a major provocation.

The assassination wasn't the only contributing factor, but it gave the Ottomans a casus belli, leading to a war that eventually put Baghdad under Ottoman control.

The Ottoman Empire counted 15 million people by the end of the reign of Suleyman the Magnificent.

British response to China's opium ban So we've discussed the Taiping Rebellion, which worsened China's century of humiliation.

Well, it was with the First Opium War in 1839.

In 1792, Britain has just come out of a war that's cost it not only much of its national treasury, but also one of its most lucrative overseas colonies, North America.

The empire needs new sources of revenue, new opportunities for trade, and there's one clear possibility.

In the early 19th century, Britain began smuggling huge quantities of opium into China.

This caused tons of issues with China, but it was extremely lucrative for Britain.

So the East India Company found its solution.

They would grow poppies in India, convert them into opium, sell that at a profit in China, use the profit to buy tea, and then sell that at a profit back in Britain.

Chinese officials decided to ban opium alongside destroying opium stocks.

Britain responded by ignoring diplomacy, instead sending the navy to fix the situation.

The British navy was overwhelmingly strong, causing China's defeat in under three years.

As a result, the Treaty of Nanjing was signed, sending China on a downward spiral into foreign control.

Killing Genghis' Diplomat The Khwarezmian Empire is significantly less well-known than the Mongol Empire.

The major act of war that caused this was the killing of Mongol diplomats.

The two had no real bad blood initially, with the Mongols sending a merchant caravan to them in 1218.

A Khwarezmian governor decided, for some reason, to execute them and seize the goods.

And with the blessing of the Shah, Enelchuk, driven either by suspicion or greed, executes the entire caravan and sells its precious cargo for his own profit.

Genghis' empire subsequently sent envoys, which the Shah killed one of, then humiliated the other two.

He forces the other two to return to Genghis Khan with their beards disgracefully shaven.

Genghis was so upset that he put his invasion of China on hold, then spent two years exterminating the empire.

Vlad's Forest of the Impaled Vlad III was the Voivode of Wallachia, a tiny principality located along the Danube in the 15th century.

At the time, their neighbors were the terrifying, power-hungry Ottoman Empire.

Once he took power in 1448, Vlad began a lifelong battle to protect his country from invaders from all sides.

Hungarians, rival nobles, but most of all, the ever-expanding, ruthless Ottoman Empire, Vlad's mortal enemy.

Vlad's nation was tiny, so he knew he had to get creative to protect it.

He was outnumbered ten to one, so he decided to launch a surprise attack at night on the Sultan's camp.

The Wallachians were then pursued to the capital, where they found the city gates left wide open.

Inside was the Forest of the Impaled, with more than 20,000 Ottoman soldiers and sympathizers impaled along the roadside.

The Sultan left Wallachia the day after, with Vlad getting exactly what he wanted.

The Sultan's assumptions proved true, as Vlad delivers yet another major night attack near Buzau, inflicting yet more losses to the invading army.

Invasion of Iraq One of America's most controversial decisions in the 21st century was to invade Iraq.

My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger.

In 2003, a US-led coalition invaded Iraq, motivated by America seeking to end Saddam Hussein's rule, alongside getting rid of their weapons of mass destruction.

In the end, it turned out they didn't have any WMDs, as the UN inspection declared before the war's outbreak.

I don't know how to explain the war to myself, and have yet to have any clear thought of like, yes, we actually made a difference there because we didn't at all.

The invasion was extremely controversial, led to immense suffering in the region, and served to increase turmoil in Iraq.

Why on earth, if you were president of the United States, would you plan to use military force and then divorce yourself from, essentially, the most important aspect of that use, and that is the aftermath?

It was widely regarded as a violation of international law, and was declared without any approval from the United Nations.

The Afghanistan conflict, the rise of ISIS, and the Syrian civil war were all direct outcomes of the invasion.

I do believe it was his choice to make as to whether or not he would be held to account for the demands of the free world at the time.

Italy became a fascist state in 1922, and remained that way until its liberation in 1943.

At its head was Mussolini, a pioneer in the field of spreading hatred and cruelty.

In the early 1930s, he won over a large part of the population, including some of his future victims.

One of the many atrocities ordered under his regime was the invasion of Ethiopia in 1935.

It was almost entirely unprovoked, with Italy not even declaring war before invading.

He believed it would be the start of a colonial war that would test the new man and revitalize his regime.

Ethiopia was one of the last independent African nations, and had already repelled an Italian invasion decades prior.

The 1935 invasion was an act of revenge, which caused extreme suffering among the population and employed tools such as chemical warfare.

Even if they did receive aid, there was nothing the Ethiopian soldiers could do against the clouds of mustard gas the Italian planes unleashed upon them.

Entire villages were massacred, with every Ethiopian being a target in Italy's crosshairs.