These decisions cost humanity dearly. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re looking at ten horrible choices from human history that had disastrous - and deadly - consequences.
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00:00Hitler's decision to invade the Soviet Union was his greatest gamble of the Second World War.
00:06Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at 10 horrible choices
00:10from human history that had disastrous and deadly consequences.
00:13His radical policies had devastated the country
00:16and triggered the deadliest famine known to human history.
00:20Russia invades Ukraine
00:22Eight years after annexing Crimea in 2014,
00:30Russia followed up with a full-fledged invasion of Ukraine.
00:33Vladimir Putin expected the war to end in a matter of days or hours.
00:37Instead, as of 2024, it is still dragging on.
00:42The death toll of Russian troops is staggering.
00:44Some estimates suggest that more than 100,000 soldiers have been killed.
00:48Many of the casualties are now older fighters with little or no training.
00:53Significant numbers have also been recruited from prisons.
00:56The attrition rate has forced Russia to conscript new fodder for the war machine.
01:00Economically, Russia faces severe sanctions and a crippling recession.
01:04Russia has been forced to seek economic aid and military armament from China and North Korea.
01:10Western aid to Ukraine has allowed their military in 2024
01:14to launch the first significant military incursion into Russian territory since World War II.
01:19Video shows a Ukrainian soldier driving through the bombed-out Russian countryside
01:24unchallenged, then celebrating driving back a Russian tank.
01:29The Wang Gong Chang explosion
01:31Gunpowder has been used by China since the 9th century.
01:34Early Chinese alchemists were trying to create a potion for immortality.
01:39Instead, what they created was a flammable powder
01:42that burned down many of their homes.
01:44Despite centuries of use and refinement,
01:47Beijing officials were criminally negligent in the spring of 1626.
01:52It never seemed to occur to anyone in power that the center of a densely populated city
01:56wasn't the best choice for storing volatile materials.
01:59Late on the morning of May 30, for reasons which remain unclear,
02:03the Wang Gong Chang armory exploded.
02:06Everything within four square kilometers was all but obliterated,
02:10and debris was launched across the length of the city.
02:13Somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 people were killed,
02:16and large swaths of the city were utterly destroyed.
02:20The American Invasion of Iraq
02:23My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces
02:28are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq,
02:32to free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger.
02:36The 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq
02:38was driven by the deadly combination of misleading claims and poor assumptions.
02:43The U.S. government convinced their allies that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction
02:48and had links to terrorism.
02:49There was no link between 9-11 and Iraq,
02:52so the Bush administration began manufacturing justifications.
02:56The Bush administration's assertions were later proven false.
02:59No WMDs were ever found,
03:02nor was any evidence linking Iraq to Al-Qaeda.
03:05By some estimates, the invasion led to over a million deaths and casualties,
03:09as well as widespread destruction and regional instability.
03:13The U.S. invasion also ultimately played a crucial role in the rise of ISIS.
03:18The economic cost to Americans is hard to pin down,
03:21though some experts believe that the war cost taxpayers between $1 and $2 trillion.
03:27It changed the entire Middle East.
03:29In fact, it changed much of our world forever.
03:32A mistranslation may have caused America's nuclear attacks.
03:36The U.S. had a choice.
03:38An invasion of Japan requiring a million troops or a top-secret weapon.
03:44The Japanese were given an ultimatum.
03:46Surrender or suffer dire consequences.
03:49After the fall of Hitler's Germany,
03:51the Allies issued the Potsdam Declaration demanding Japan's unconditional surrender.
03:56The declaration came with a warning.
03:58Refusal would result in, quote,
04:00prompt and utter destruction.
04:02The culture of Imperial Japan couldn't tolerate public consideration of surrender.
04:06They responded with a statement including the word Moksatsu.
04:10The Allies interpreted this as an outright rejection of the Potsdam Declaration.
04:14Moksatsu, they believed, meant to ignore with silent contempt.
04:18They acted accordingly, dropping two nuclear bombs.
04:22When we came back after the surrender,
04:26we came back to the same area,
04:28and the whole city was completely flat.
04:31It was really devastating to see.
04:33However, some believe Foreign Minister Togo was counseling circumspection and patience.
04:38He hoped that the Soviets would mediate a better deal.
04:41In the years after the nuclear attack on Japan,
04:44people have argued that by Moksatsu,
04:46Japanese leaders just meant, quote,
04:48withholding comment.
04:49Truman claimed he never lost a night of sleep over his decision.
04:52And to this day, the United States has never apologized for it.
04:55Still, the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki firmly cemented atomic bombs
05:00as the world's weapons of absolute last resort.
05:02Moctezuma II welcomes the Spanish.
05:05Cortez's legacy is a complex one.
05:08On one hand, he is the conqueror of Mexico.
05:11He brought and extended the Spanish Empire.
05:15But from the indigenous point of view, he was a mass murderer.
05:18Moctezuma II, the Aztec emperor,
05:21received Hernán Cortés and his conquistadors in 1519
05:25with a mix of curiosity and apprehension.
05:27According to some historians,
05:29Moctezuma, influenced by a prophecy suggesting that a god would return
05:33in the form of a pale-skinned man,
05:35initially saw the Spaniards as divine.
05:37Cortés, he thought, could be the incarnation of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl.
05:42He sought to appease them by offering gifts and hospitality,
05:45believing this would prevent conflict.
05:47Cortés was motivated by these treasures and continued towards the city.
05:51He later wrote,
05:53Moctezuma came to greet us and with him some 200 lords,
05:57all barefoot and dressed in a different costume.
06:00Instead, his decision invited invasion.
06:03Cortés and his men exploited Moctezuma's hospitality to gather intelligence,
06:07gain political leverage, and incite dissent among the Aztecs.
06:10The Spaniards spread disease and formed alliances with rivals to the Aztecs.
06:15This alliance would be crucial for Cortés
06:18as the Tlaxcalteca helped him navigate the landscape,
06:21served as translators, and urged the defeat of Moctezuma.
06:24Combined with their superior weaponry,
06:26they easily conquered the Aztec empire completely by 1521.
06:31The wrong turn that triggered World War I.
06:34From a pistol shot at Sarajevo,
06:36the first of the great modern world wars exploded.
06:40And almost overnight, all of Europe was engulfed in conflict.
06:44World War I is infamous in history as an accidental war.
06:48The assassination of one man,
06:49when combined with a series of interwoven alliances,
06:52was a string of dominoes that dragged the world into armed conflict.
06:56But did you know that Archduke Ferdinand was killed thanks to a wrong turn?
07:00The morning of the assassination.
07:01Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his motorcade
07:03managed to avoid a bombing by his would-be assassins.
07:06The bomb was thrown by Nedeljko Cebrinović,
07:09a member of the young Serbian nationalist movement.
07:12There are a few injuries, but Ferdinand and his wife are unharmed.
07:15They continued their day,
07:17until his driver accidentally made a wrong turn.
07:20He attempted to pull the car back in reverse, stalling the car.
07:24Unfortunately, he did so right in front of Gavrilo Princip,
07:27who happened to be on that wrong street at a cafe
07:30and took advantage of the situation to shoot Ferdinand.
07:33As the crowd tries to subdue Princip,
07:35the Archduke and his wife are left bleeding in the car.
07:37Insulting Genghis Khan.
07:39Genghis Khan's legacy today is his reputation
07:42as a great conqueror and ruthless ruler.
07:45Under him, the Mongols were able to sweep out of Central Asia
07:49and take over most of the known world.
07:53Genghis Khan knew that diplomacy was as useful a tool as conquest.
07:57To that end, in response to the killing
07:59of a caravan of his merchants in Khwarazm,
08:01Khan sent a diplomatic mission to Shah Aladin Muhammad II
08:05of the neighboring Khwarazmian Empire.
08:07His envoys were not greeted warmly.
08:09The Shah, ruler of a vast empire,
08:12dismissed the power of the Mongols.
08:14He accused the envoys of espionage and had them executed.
08:17The great Khan did not take this light well.
08:20He launched a savage and devastating campaign
08:23against the Khwarazmian Empire.
08:24He systematically pulled Khwarazm apart
08:27battle by battle and city by city.
08:2950,000 Tajik infantry poured out of the city to meet the Mongols.
08:34But resistance was futile.
08:36The war ultimately decimated the population.
08:39As a result, the empire was brought to utter ruin by 1221.
08:44The Shah managed to escape his Mongol pursuers
08:47only in the spring of 1221
08:50to die a broken and defeated man
08:52on a remote island in the Caspian Sea.
08:54Stalin's Terror Famine
08:56In terms of ruthlessness, bloodlust,
08:59Stalin remains one of the greatest villains of the 20th century.
09:04To this day, the Holodomor is considered
09:07one of the greatest tragedies of Ukrainian history.
09:10A term meaning death by starvation.
09:13It was genocide.
09:14From 1932 to 1933,
09:17Joseph Stalin pushed a brutal campaign of forced collectivization
09:21and grain requisitioning in Soviet Ukraine.
09:23Unfortunately, the country was already in the middle of a food shortage,
09:27exacerbated by Stalin's policies.
09:29Records show the Soviets took over 4 million tons of grain
09:33from Ukraine alone in 1932.
09:36That same year, a new law punished anyone
09:39who took even a handful of grain
09:42or was caught hiding grain or bread
09:44with 10 years in prison or the death penalty.
09:47As a result, Ukraine fell into a terrible famine.
09:50By the end of 1933,
09:52somewhere between 3.5 and 5 million Ukrainians
09:56perished due to hunger and related diseases.
09:58In the fall and winter of 1932,
10:02Soviet police began seizing not just grain,
10:05but anything edible, even livestock.
10:08Stalin refused to provide aid,
10:10although Russia continued to export grain.
10:13The Holodomor devastated Ukrainian agriculture and local economies,
10:17ripping families to pieces and traumatizing a nation.
10:21HITLER INVADING RUSSIA
10:23Hitler's decision to invade the Soviet Union
10:26was his greatest gamble of the Second World War.
10:29One problem with narcissistic dictators
10:31is that their arrogance often prevents them
10:33from learning the lessons of history.
10:35They think themselves special,
10:37able to achieve what those in the past could not.
10:40Despite facing a Red Army with almost 3 million men
10:43on its western border,
10:45Hitler is confident of victory.
10:47That is one of many reasons why Adolf Hitler
10:49repeated Napoleon's classic blunder,
10:52invading Russia.
10:53In 1812, the French emperor pulled together
10:56a massive army from his conquests in Europe
10:58and sent this merry band into the frozen Russian winter.
11:01They were almost completely destroyed.
11:04In 1941, Hitler betrayed his erstwhile ally Joseph Stalin.
11:08Operation Barbarossa was a massive Nazi mobilization to the east.
11:12The Germans saw major victories in Ukraine
11:15until they reached Moscow in the winter of 1941.
11:18Their backs were broken and were forced to retreat west.
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11:38Mao's Great Leap Forward
11:39His radical policies had devastated the country
11:42and triggered the deadliest famine known to human history.
11:45Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward, launched in 1958,
11:49aimed to rapidly industrialize China.
11:51Forcing workers in the countryside to farm crops on government-run communes
11:56and millions more to manufacture crude steel in homemade blast furnaces.
12:00Like Stalin before him,
12:02Mao embarked on a massive forced collectivization effort
12:05and large-scale agricultural and construction projects like dams.
12:09The campaign was a disaster.
12:11Mao's production targets were utterly unrealistic.
12:14The Chinese people were being forced to work tirelessly
12:17on land they once owned themselves, and they were starting to lose morale.
12:21Mao led his nation into the jaws of a deadly and widespread famine.
12:25The deaths caused by the Great Leap Forward
12:27are estimated to be somewhere between 15 and 55 million people.
12:31This failed effort hampered China's economy and agricultural output for decades.
12:36The impact was even felt in 1975 with the Banqiao Dam disaster.
12:40The dam, built during the Great Leap Forward,
12:43was poorly constructed and ultimately collapsed thanks to torrential rains.
12:47As many as 240,000 people died.
12:51Did we make a huge mistake and leave one of history's deadliest blunders off our list?
12:56Let us know in the comments below.