# What person has verifiably killed the most other people? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 22, 2005, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-person-has-verifiably-killed-the-most-other-people/332239 "2005-11-22T14:17:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ccd318/32.png) [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2005, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-person-has-verifiably-killed-the-most-other-people/332239/41 "2005-11-24T03:10:45Z")
More in the spirit of the OP, the winner is Beria, Stalin’s secret police chief. Someplace in this pile of books, I have a copy of _Inside the Court of the Red Tsar_. It seems that Beria not only authorized the killing of the Polish elites in '39, he also took part. It seems he and a couple of other guys spent over a week doing it. A group of fifty or so people were led in. Beria and his buddies would kill them with pistols and then they went in the next room to drink while the killing room was cleaned up. The book gave some guess as to how many it totaled to, and I do not have that figure at hand, still it was thousands. Beria died soon after Stalin did, on his knees begging. ---
**Author:** ![alterego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/6bbea6/32.png) [@alterego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alterego)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2005, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-person-has-verifiably-killed-the-most-other-people/332239/42 "2005-11-26T22:48:22Z")
I guess I don’t mind treating hearsay with hearsay. > [@Paul in Saudi](#): > > More in the spirit of the OP, the winner is Beria, Stalin’s secret police chief. > [@Wikipedia](#): > > Numerous stories have circulated over the years involving Beria personally beating, torturing and killing his victims. Since the 1970s, Muscovites have been retelling stories of bones found in either the back yard, cellars, or hidden inside the walls of Beria’s former residence, currently the Tunisian Embassy. Such stories continue to re-appear in the news media. The London Daily Telegraph reported in December 2003: “The latest grisly find - a large thigh bone and some smaller leg bones - was only two years ago when a kitchen was re-tiled. In the basement, Anil, an Indian who has worked at the embassy for 17 years, showed a plastic bag of human bones he had found in the cellars.” > > Such reports are treated with scepticism by some commentators. It should be noted that despite partial opening of Soviet archives since 1991, most of the Beria-related material remains classified. Memoirs by the people close to Beria, such as his son Sergo Beria and a former Soviet foreign intelligence chief Pavel Sudoplatov deny these charges and draw a very different portrait of Beria. Thus, cite? ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2005, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-person-has-verifiably-killed-the-most-other-people/332239/43 "2005-11-27T00:25:14Z")
> [@kinoons](#): > > Maybe this guy should be in the running. He was the top scoring German ace of WWII, and is the the most successful ace in the history of aerial combat with 352 victories. While it is hard to say how many lives that equates to, I’d bet its damn near 500. > > [http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery;jsessionid=21cgt6a9va0al?method=4&dsid=2222&dekey=Erich+Hartmann&gwp=8&curtab=2222\_1&sbid=lc01b&linktext=Erich%20Hartmann](http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery;jsessionid=21cgt6a9va0al?method=4&dsid=2222&dekey=Erich+Hartmann&gwp=8&curtab=2222_1&sbid=lc01b&linktext=Erich%20Hartmann) If we’re defying the OP and including aerial weaponry, I’d say Erich Hartmann is clearly trumped by countryman Hans-Ulrich Rudel, a Ju-87 pilot, who is credited with destroying over TWO THOUSAND Soviet tanks, trucks and other vehicles, plus a Soviet battleship, Marat. I’d bet he killed more than 500 people. ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2005, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-person-has-verifiably-killed-the-most-other-people/332239/44 "2005-11-27T01:09:53Z")
The difficulty is finding reliable sources: \* When David returned from the slaughter of the Philistine, the women came out of all the cities of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet King Saul, with timbrels, with songs of joy, and with instruments of music. And the women sang to one another as they made merry. "Saul has slain his thousands And David his ten thousands" And Saul was very angry, and this saying displeased him; he said “They have ascribed to David ten thousands, and to me they have ascribed but thousands…” And Saul eyed David from that day on.\* [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-person-has-verifiably-killed-the-most-other-people/332239.md?page=2)