- 5/24/2025
From ancient conflicts to modern warfare, history is marked by acts of unprecedented brutality. Join us as we examine the most devastating military decisions that shaped our world. These shocking events demonstrate how single actions can trigger catastrophic consequences and change the course of history forever.
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00:00Around five square miles of the city was reduced to ashes, with over 60% of the total building
00:05stock destroyed.
00:06Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at some of the most monstrous acts of war
00:10that incited, ended, or prevented a war in history.
00:13But Vlad fought on, with a sheer hatred that defies description.
00:20Battle of Port Arthur
00:21One of the earliest wars for the Empire of Japan was an overwhelming victory over the
00:26Russian Empire in 1905.
00:28After its defeat in the Crimean War of the 1850s, the Russian Empire turned its attention
00:33to further expansion in the Far East.
00:36Japan was anxious about Russia's ambitions in Asia, which conflicted with their colonial
00:41interests.
00:42As you might expect, Russia wasn't at all intimidated by Japan, viewing them as a minor
00:47Asian nation to be pushed around.
00:49St. Petersburg was convinced of its racial superiority, and the Tsar assumed war would break out only
00:55if he decided to start one.
00:57The Japanese military proved otherwise, launching a surprise attack on Port Arthur, which didn't
01:02become a victory for either side.
01:04Despite this, in roughly 18 months Japan had firmly defeated Russia, turning the island
01:09nation into a great power, while ruining the Russian Empire's reputation.
01:13It weakened Russia, made Japan into a major power, and caused some to conclude that modern wars
01:20could be won relatively quickly and decisively.
01:23Nazi invasion of Poland.
01:25After years of tension in Europe, with Nazi Germany repeatedly seeing what it could get
01:30away with, invading Poland finally triggered all-out war.
01:33Hitler had already annexed Austria, plus Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland, with no heated response from other
01:53powers. Starting September 1st 1939, Hitler and Stalin conquered the country in only 35 days.
02:00The 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.
02:10Hitler sought to exterminate the Polish people, making it into a living space for the Germans.
02:15It was one of the darkest periods of not only Polish history, but European history as a whole.
02:20The Second World War wouldn't end until 1945, and almost entirely began because of Nazi cruelty.
02:26Persecuting the god-worshipping society. The 19th century was a particularly dark era in Chinese history, later called the Century of Humiliation.
02:43The Century of Humiliation captures a painful time in China's long history. The century was actually closer to 110 years.
02:52One of the bloodiest periods was the Taiping Rebellion, when Hong Shui-chan declared he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ.
02:59The devoutly Christian man from Quan Chou formed the God-worshipping Society, a religious movement that combined Protestant Christianity with traditional Chinese folk religions.
03:09The next few years were spent with Hong honing this new religion. In 1847, he studied under the American preacher I.J. Roberts,
03:16but the two fell out over Hong's rejection of Christian concepts of forgiveness, and he decided to focus on his own divinity.
03:23The Qin Dynasty viewed it as a subversive cult, then subsequently violently suppressed its followers.
03:30They began harassing the god-worshippers, hoping to stop people believing in Hong's prophesied war. Instead, they triggered it.
03:37Eventually, it turned into an enormous rebellion which lasted almost 14 years, killing between 20 and 30 million people.
03:45Killing Ottoman supporters
03:47The Ottoman Empire was one of the largest Middle Eastern empires in history, stretching from Croatia to the Persian Gulf at its greatest extent.
03:54It was a vastly powerful empire at its peak.
03:57Besides occupying large areas of the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and North Africa,
04:02the Ottoman people also took pride in significant achievements in various domains, such as arts, science, medicine, architecture, and so on.
04:11Despite its power, it never once managed to entirely conquer neighboring Persia.
04:16It wasn't for lack of trying, with one lengthy war lasting between 1532 and 1555.
04:23It was triggered by the Safoide Emperor, the ruler of Persia, assassinating the governor of Baghdad.
04:29This time, the conflict began from mutual territorial disputes, and included an effort from the Persians to form an alliance with the Europeans,
04:38particularly the Habsburgs, to try and correlate an attack on the Ottomans from both sides at once.
04:44He was a sympathizer of Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman ruler, and as such they took it as a major provocation.
04:51The assassination wasn't the only contributing factor, but it gave the Ottomans a casus belli,
04:56leading to a war that eventually put Baghdad under Ottoman control.
05:00The Ottoman Empire counted 15 million people by the end of the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent.
05:06British Response to China's Opium Ban
05:09So we've discussed the Taiping Rebellion, which worsened China's century of humiliation.
05:13But how did the century begin?
05:15Well, it was with the First Opium War in 1839.
05:19In 1792, Britain has just come out of a war that's cost it not only much of its national treasury,
05:24but also one of its most lucrative overseas colonies, North America.
05:28The empire needs new sources of revenue, new opportunities for trade.
05:32And there's one clear possibility, China.
05:35In the early 19th century, Britain began smuggling huge quantities of opium into China.
05:40This caused tons of issues with China, but it was extremely lucrative for Britain.
05:44So the East India Company found its solution.
05:47They would grow poppies in India, convert them into opium, sell that at a profit in China,
05:52use the profit to buy tea, and then sell that at a profit back in Britain.
05:56Chinese officials decided to ban opium, alongside destroying opium stocks.
06:01Britain responded by ignoring diplomacy, instead sending the navy to fix the situation.
06:06The British navy was overwhelmingly strong, causing China's defeat in under three years.
06:12As a result, the Treaty of Nanjing was signed, sending China on a downward spiral into foreign control.
06:22Killing Genghis's Diplomat
06:24The Khwarezmian Empire is significantly less well-known than the Mongol Empire.
06:28The major act of war that caused this was the killing of Mongol diplomats.
06:33The two had no real bad blood initially, with the Mongols sending a merchant caravan to them in 1218.
06:39A Khwarezmian governor decided, for some reason, to execute them and seize the goods.
06:44And with the blessing of the Shah, Inalchuk, driven either by suspicion or greed,
06:50executes the entire caravan and sells its precious cargo for his own profit.
06:55Genghis's empire subsequently sent envoys, which the Shah killed one of, then humiliated the other two.
07:01He forces the other two to return to Genghis Khan with their beards disgracefully shaven.
07:06Genghis was so upset that he put his invasion of China on hold, then spent two years exterminating the empire.
07:14The Khan knows that in Asia and Europe, there are yet many peoples and places to conquer.
07:20And so across the burning lands once claimed by the Shah, the Mongols press onward.
07:25Vlad's Forest of the Impaled Vlad III was the Voivode of Wallachia, a tiny principality located
07:33along the Danube in the 15th century. At the time, their neighbors were the terrifying,
07:38power-hungry Ottoman Empire. Once he took power in 1448, Vlad began a lifelong battle to protect his
07:45country from invaders from all sides. Hungarians, rival nobles, but most of all, the ever-expanding,
07:53ruthless Ottoman Empire, Vlad's mortal enemy. Vlad's nation was tiny, so he knew he had to
07:59get creative to protect it. He was outnumbered 10 to 1, so he decided to launch a surprise attack
08:05at night on the Sultan's camp. The Wallachian Voivode reacts and attacks the approaching
08:10Ottoman contingent with full force, annihilating them down to a man.
08:15The Wallachians were then pursued to the capital, where they found the city gates left wide open.
08:21Inside was the Forest of the Impaled, with more than 20,000 Ottoman soldiers and sympathizers
08:27impaled along the roadside. The Sultan left Wallachia the day after,
08:31with Vlad getting exactly what he wanted. The Sultan's assumptions proved true,
08:36as Vlad delivers yet another major night attack near Buzau, inflicting yet more losses to the
08:43invading army. Invasion of Iraq. One of America's most controversial decisions in the 21st century
08:50was to invade Iraq. My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early
08:57stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger.
09:04In 2003, a US-led coalition invaded Iraq, motivated by America seeking to end Saddam Hussein's rule,
09:12alongside getting rid of their weapons of mass destruction. In the end, it turned out they didn't
09:17have any WMDs, as the UN inspection declared before the war's outbreak. I don't know how to explain
09:23the war to myself, and have yet to have any clear thought of like, yes, we actually made a difference
09:30there because we didn't at all. The invasion was extremely controversial, led to immense suffering
09:35in the region, and served to increase turmoil in Iraq. Why on earth, if you were President of the United
09:41States, would you plan to use military force and then divorce yourself from essentially the most
09:46important aspect of that use, and that is the aftermath. It was widely regarded as a violation
09:52of international law and was declared without any approval from the United Nations. The Afghanistan
09:57conflict, the rise of ISIS, and the Syrian civil war were all direct outcomes of the invasion. I do
10:03believe it was his choice to make as to whether or not he would be held to account for the demands of
10:10the free world at the time. Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia. Italy became a fascist state in 1922,
10:16and remained that way until its liberation in 1943. At its head was Mussolini, a pioneer in the field of
10:23spreading hatred and cruelty. In the early 1930s, he won over a large part of the population, including
10:29some of his future victims. One of the many atrocities ordered under his regime was the invasion of
10:34Ethiopia in 1935. It was almost entirely unprovoked, with Italy not even declaring war before invading.
10:42He believed it would be the start of a colonial war that would test the new man and revitalize his
10:47regime. Ethiopia was one of the last independent African nations, and had already repelled an Italian
10:53invasion decades prior. The 1935 invasion was an act of revenge, which caused extreme suffering among the
11:00population and employed tools such as chemical warfare. Even if they did receive aid, there was
11:05nothing the Ethiopian soldiers could do against the clouds of mustard gas the Italian planes unleashed
11:11upon them. Entire villages were massacred, with every Ethiopian being a target in Italy's crosshairs.
11:17Before we move on to our next entry, here are a few dishonorable mentions. The defenestration of Prague.
11:23Protestants throwing Catholics out a window triggered the Thirty Years' War. The invasion of Kuwait.
11:29Iraq began the Gulf War after occupying Kuwait. The bombing of Pearl Harbor. Japan sought a quick
11:40victory over America, but got the opposite. The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately
11:48attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. Japanese invasion of Manchuria. It would
11:57eventually trigger Japan's full-blown invasion of China.
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12:20Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Things had taken a turn for the worst for Imperial Japan
12:28by 1945, with the Japanese homelands at risk of American invasion, plus the Soviet Union finally
12:35breaking their pact. By August, they were ready to surrender. However, the Allied powers sought an
12:40unconditional surrender. Hiroshima was selected as the first target, as it was an important economic
12:45and military hub that had so far escaped serious air raid damage.
12:50To achieve this, they dropped two atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
12:55It got what America desired, with Imperial Japan finally surrendering on August 15th.
13:00The signing of the surrender signals the official end to a savage conflict.
13:05Many consider it a necessary evil, but this is a widespread falsification.
13:09America's enemies were Japan's leaders, not the civilians of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
13:14making it one of the most barbaric acts of cruelty in human history.
13:18On a more positive note, do you know of any acts of great kindness made during wartime?
13:30Leave them in the comments below.
13:32Hiroshima and Nagasaki were essentially experiments in a new kind of warfare,
13:35whose full implications were not entirely understood at the time.
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