I’ve always been impressed with RJ Rummel’s books on what he calls democide — the state-sponsored murder of civilians. Rummel has written a number of books about state violence (a good introduction to his work his Death By Government).
One of the interesting things, which Rummel has written about in asides to his more scholarly works, is the difficulty of comprehending the numbers murdered by states in the 20th century. The number is easy enough to repeat. By Rummel’s estimate, about 174 million people were murdered by states in the 20th century. But as Rummel points out, that number is a bit too big for our minds to get wrapped around.
Rummel has posted on his web site some visual attempts to depict just how many people that is in more tangible ways. One non-visual way to illustrate that number is that this would be equivalent to killing 2 out of 3 Americans alive today.
One of the more surprising facts is contained in a chart comparing civilian murders to combat deaths. The comparison isn’t even close, with an estimated 36 million people killed in combat in the 20th century.