Obviously most people's first instinct would be to say "Nazi Germany". But the more I think of it, the more accurate this list seems to be:
10. The Ottoman Empire
9. The Spanish Empire
8. The People's Republic of China
7. Confederate States of America
6. Belgium (under Leopold II)
5. Democratic Kampuchea
4. Soviet Union
3. Imperial Japan
2. Nazi Germany
1. The British Empire
The criteria were:
- Body counts, of course, but not just the numbers. The percentage of a population killed and the reasons for doing so also counted
- The reasons for founding the particular entity; this probably boosted the CSA, for instance.
- Wars of aggression, including their scale and motivation.
I'm completely baffled how anyone could say the British Empire was worse than Nazi Germany, especially using the criteria you used. If I were a cynic I would say you just did that to try and get an enraged reaction, because I can't see any other plausible reason.
500 years of conquest and slaughter>6 years of conquest and slaughter.
Who invented concentration camps? The British, in their conquest of the Boer states.
Okay, hell, I'll bite.
First, the British didn't invent concentration camps. Before the Boer war, the Russians used similar strategies to deal with Polish rebels; the Spanish used them in Cuba; the United States used comparable camps when relocating Native Americans and definitely used outright concentration camps in the occupation of the Philippines.
However, the comparison of these concentration camps (though they were atrocious in themselves) to Nazi Germany's nation-wide system of facilities explicitly intended to conduct murder on a massive scale is simply disingenuous.
Furthermore, while British colonial policies were pretty bad in a lot of ways, I don't see how it compares in the slightest to Nazi Germany's utterly evil nature. Come on: blatant genocide, horrible oppression, ambitions to eventually enslave or murder every single person who wasn't a regime-supporting Aryan. Sure, the British Empire has some bad marks, but what did they do that is anywhere nearly as bad as
that?
