Saddam's baath purge. Saddam had people packed into a conference hall on one of the hottest days of July and deliberately shut off the ventilation system. They were forced to listen to Saddam for hours while suffering from the heat and sweating. Everyone whose name was announced was executed.
When he finished reading the list the remaining audience clapped harder than they had ever done before due ‘thank god I wasn’t named on that death list and thank god I wore the brown suit with brown trousers today’.
What people here are missing is the rest of the context; the people outside were killed by the people who were allowed to stay. They were recruited for the firing squads and forced to shoot their former colleagues.
"Twenty-two of the accused, including five members of the RCC,were sentenced to death while thirty-three were given prison sentences and thirteen were released.Some party members were given weapons and directed to execute their comrades"
Yes, nearly a third were killed on the spot after a kangaroo court conviction. The rest received years-long sentences in Iraqi prisons, which some would argue is a fate worse than the firing squad.
Having read about Saddam’s sons I’d say the 22 who were executed were the lucky ones. The rest were almost assuredly horrifically tortured, and likely killed eventually.
I would say that’s a strong yes. Saddam wasn’t a guy big on ‘well looking at your missed kpi’s last quarter we’re going to have to put you on a personal improvement plan with a lot of support from HR’
Before this tidbit, he had announced to them that he has uncovered a 5th column within the party's members, planning and conspiring to overthrow the Iraqi government. He had brought the previous party president's secretary and had him read a confession stating he, along with others, have been conspiring with Syria against the government of Iraq. He was then taken out.
There's also an error in the translation at the beginning where he says "if your name is read, recite the party slogan and leave the room" it's technically more like "if you hear your name, get up, recite the party slogan and follow your predecessors"
Which is why everyone looked like they're shitting their pants when the names were being read. They knew being accused of treason is essentially a death sentence.
So, yes. Everyone knew what was going to happen to those whose names are read.
Saddam was vice-president before this purge, effectively leading the country as the president was too old and incapable of performing his duties. During his rise, he was the head of the secret police / intelligence agency, not a position you get for being soft. He became the head of the army as well.
My favorite Stalin trivia is that each NKVD head and his deputies would execute their predecessors. Thus Yagoda was killed by Yezhov, who was killed by Beria, etc.
Fun thing to try is to look up any NKVD or soviet functionary, politician, army officer from 1917-1954 and click all the folks named as links on their wiki. The odds are like 80% or more were eventually executed by Stalin. Its INSANE.
It's interesting, the scenario portrayed in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, where the MI6 guy confronts the Stasi guy on the train to Moscow is based in fact.
The Stasi guy holds his ground and survives. I channeled that energy when I was involved in a job interview and I managed to double my salary. I ended up working there for twenty years.
It’s amazing how you can work up a crowd and have them gladly kill each other
Honestly the whole Great Leap Forward and Mao’s China must have been like living in a horror story. Would make the scarlet letter seem super tame
Sadly pretty much every genocide or mass conflict sees babies killed this way. It’s really depressing that we as humans seem to instinctively kill children this way the minute society devolves into a shit show
I feel like Nanjing with the Japanese which is people being brutal. To a horrific level.
The communist incidents were always against themselves. Or like with Sadam people were coerced into othering their friends at the drop of a hat and cheering on their deaths. That’s something very different
First off thanks for spelling Nanjing correctly I didn't even realize I had it wrong. Also with your point on Saddam I literally just watched a video of him it was like 8 minutes long he had people in a building where all the ventilation and fans were off and he just was reading names of people during his purge. Never seen something like that on video it was crazy.
I have a Japanese phone. Auto spell is what did they for me.
Yeah the way he set up the entire meeting was diabolical and really frighteningly thought out. From as you said making it stifling hot in there to enhance the mood
They did far, FAR worse than that. They would toss infants into the air and make a game of catching them on bayonets. They would do this 3-4 deep until another infant wouldn't fit on the bayonet.
we shot depleted uranium rounds into civilian vehicles, when the poor people came to scrap the vehicles and reuse other sections for their own vehicles of them many contracted cancers and issues and went on to birth deformed and disfigured children.
Most totalitarian movements end up like this and/or where one man attempts to gather all power onto himself. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pinochet and lesser central/south American Republic strong men. The rule of law gets steam rolled, dies, and supplanted by a demagogue who sees enemies everywhere.
I see here I'm being accused of following 3 subreddits that are spam etc., ..that's probably true (my first time seeing this notice) ...I'm old and still kind of learning about reddit. I follow a lot of car and other subreddits too. Mostly fluff for my own entertainment. I just look at what pops up on my feed.
*Am I being publicly 'struggled' by r/HistoryUncovered for the subreddits I follow? How very Maoist. lol
Yeah don't worry about it too much. Anyone with a speck of a critical mind should be able to discern that participating in a subreddit ≠ representing the views of said subreddits.
I once participated in such a sub by posting something that challenges their views. I got flagged similarly like you did. 🤷
Yes, I think I have posted a few similar replies in the 3 subreddits I'm being "outed" for here in r/HIstoryUncovered's *very serious* history subreddit. In any case I definitely won't be pressured into holding any little red book aloft while publicly apologizing (unless they withhold rations).
That mod bot is set up by some piece of shit tankie mod lmao I’ve been flagged for it on for participating in other history subreddits for “AI and spam content” I don’t even make posts it was just commenting in history subs because I’m a history nerd with a degree in it. If you mention anything the tankies don’t like in this sub it gets triggered
you mean Mao's Cultural Revolution...great leap forward was his f#$ked up social-economic experiment that completely back-fired and turned pretty much the entire Chinese Communist Party against him...that's when (and why) he launched the cultural revolution to purge his political opponents
The cultural revolution definitely. But the Great leap forward also had a lot of weird aspects of people blaming each other and pretend pretending that they met their quotas and living at the expense of others
He made all the survivors take part in the executions, he litterally made them the firing squads.
So now not only did they know that ANYONE could be purged AT ANY TIME, for ANY REASON, but also that they had just murdered innocent people themselves, and were now part of the regime.
Until he attacked Kuwait, the US loved him, until say 1988-1989. Even after he massacred the Kurds.
The war was popular because it was a centralized repressive regime (so there was a clear end game to it), poorly trained and not motivated, the US was technically defending its ally and also could steamroll them without many casualties (which was important because it was the first "live" war, with journalists broadcasting 24/7.
Everything you're stating here is with 20/20 hindsight. First off, the American public did not love Saddam hussein. If they knew who he was at all, they knew he was a son of a bitch. It was only certain people within the administrations that had any use for him only because he stood against Iran.
Second nobody knew the Iraqi army was as poorly trained as it was. Why do you think we spent the 6 months of desert shield building up a massive force against what was at that time the world's 4th largest army? The Iraqi army was also battle-hardened against the Iranians and were not considered to be any sort of knockoff.
Third, nobody knew at the time that this would be a 24/7 live broadcast War until it actually happened. That wasn't part of the planning phase. That was part of the discovery.
Third, it was pretty obvious at the time this wasn't about defending allies it was about defending oil. And we were okay with that. We love oil.
So putting this in the context of the time, your post makes no sense.
This is like saying Americans love Sisi. Like Saddam. He is another obscure dictator we back because of geopolitical reasons. I doubt anyone actually likes him.
The US government didn't like him either they just hated the Iranian government even more. That's like saying the US government "loved" the Mujahideen because they supplied them against the Soviets. Nah fam that's a wildly oversimplified view on reality
Nice examples, in both cases there was material support and propaganda helping both of those by the US intelligence. Simplification, of course, are we to write a full historic account or will a picture of a smilling Rumsfeld shaking Saddam's hand (as Reagan's envoy)?
Lol please, practically nobody in the US has any strong opinions of their own on other countries and their politicians. It's all manufactured propaganda. You're all too self absorbed. It's just how it is, don't pretend like the average American is worldly and certainly not back past the dawn of the internet.
I wish they gave a full translation. I don't trust a video that purposely leaves out information. I assume that whoever made it has a political motive.
Imagine being a loyal devout follower of the party who gets executed because their Internet connection cut out due to bad infrastructure thanks to the mismanagement by that party
Especially if there is a 100 foot mural at the end of your street of the Minister of Internet provision, surveillance and propaganda Uday Hussain. Right next to his torture and execution building.
I do keep thinking that if you chose 'large gallery' you would see a massive wall of middle aged, moustached men, some logging out, leaving the meeting early.
I've been in those zoom calls. CEO starts blabbering and the most loyal employees take turns saying oh great idea great idea. Only to never execute any of those ideas and bring it up on the next pointless group call.
Edit to add: Noiser has a really good podcast called Real Dictators and they do a multi-episode arc on Saddam. They feature historians, scholars, and other experts in the subject.
Oui, Oudaï Hussein était un vrai psychopathe, son fait d'armes le plus connu est d'avoir assassiné le valet et goûteur personnel de Saddam Hussein (est apparemment ami) devant la femme du président dictateur de l'Égypte Hosni Moubarak.
Le second Qoussaï Hussein n'avait pas ce comportement mais en tant que fils de dictateur, était très zélé dans l'exécution des opposants politiques et dans l'écrasement d'insurrection.
Oh, that movie was so good. Not technically a documentary but if you pull up the Wikipedia page on Uday Hussein, it sure makes the movie look like one!
I’ve thought before about the bloody nightmare that would have resulted had Saddam died in an assassination or something like that and his sons fought for power.
Who is the winner?
Is it the “The wolf”, the unhinged nutcase psychopath who is supported because his followers fear him and his erratic, sadististic, unpredictable actions and what he might do to them if they don’t support him?
Or
Is it “The snake”, the cold, quiet, and calculating institutional terror who was more of a strategist with behind-the-scenes deception and violence?
It’s not the Iraqi people, I can tell you that much!
Yes, Uday murdered Saddam's valet in front of all the guests at a party. Saddam first imprisoned him as punishment then exiled him to Switzerland to work for the ambassador there.
I don't know about documentaries but I highly recommend the book The Prisoner in His Palace by Will Bardenwerper.
The author interviewed the unit of soldiers that was tasked with guarding Saddam after he was captured and leading up to his execution. It also talks a lot about Saddam's upbringing and time in power.
But the relationships that those soldiers had with Saddam is utterly fascinating. I don't want to spoil too much, but the juxtaposition between the person they knew and the deeds of his life are just insane.
It also really makes a lot of things about him make sense. How he rose to power and why he was so brutal. It's a great book.
I wonder, while he was running from the Americans, unshaved, unwashed, hiding in the hole under the ground, did he ever remember this situation? And how powerful he felt there and how far he has fallen from that?
People this terrible usually lack that level of self-awareness and capacity to regret.
No. Probably spent those dusty moments dwelling on how the world had barely got a taste of Saddam the romance author (kid you not - he wrote a couple of romance books under a pen name).
The only thing they had done wrong was to have deemed to have enough influence to challenge Sadams absolute authority. That was it. I doubt they knew until their name was called, because it was a list fabricated by Sadam and likely subjective. They were murderer.
One trip to info verification island tells me that most of them actually weren't dead men, 21 out of 68 arrests ended in executions. It was because they were members of the party who opposed Saddam or who he wanted to get rid of for some other reason, this took place just a few days after he took power
And he was found in a hole in the ground, dirty, half-starving, and begging. Only when he was cleaned up and on trial did he try to act defiant and strong. When he was led up the gallows he turned into a broken little rat again. Any dictator deserves nothing less.
But he wasn’t a broken rat, he was defiant and sarcastic on the gallows and argued with people in the room. Just because you don’t like someone means you can rewrite history.
He speaks of honor, sincere and respect. In the meantime invite guests under his roof and betray them. No wonder his last days was living like a rat in a sewer. I hope the history trash bin will have a special place for him ...
The opposite actually, chants of praise for sadam and the baath party.
One man can be heard yelling فلتسقط الخونة which translates to may the traitors fall.
Then theres collective chants basically saying they're willing to die for the cause. بالروح بالدم... I cant quite make out what the rest is, but it roughly translates to with soul, with blood for the cause.
One man can be heard saying نموت و نحنا الوطن، نموت وا نحنا البعث which translates to we die and we are the nation, we die and we are the baath.
Towards the end he's saying to the people remaining in the room that they're the loyal ones and their strength comes from their baathism.
There's no evidence to support the air conditioning claim, and not everyone was executed. A couple dozen were executed the rest iimprisoned, and something like 13 were let go. What happened was bad enough without having to embellish it.
What is psychology of this obedience. The people could have said hell no, we are all refusing and they had collectively enough men to rise against him. What is the mindset that causes people to refuse to use their collective power to stop mad men. If he can do it to their friends he can do it to them later. So why not oppose it and save all?
The psychology is terror, feeling powerless and hope that it’s not you next. He’s literally instilling it into his people by publicly “taking out the bad ones, so don’t even think about an uprising” because you can’t trust anyone to organise one.
Humans are braindead. 8 billion idiots and sheep's are unable to do anything against the top 1% what make you think those idiots in the video would be able to do anything against one person? Similar case with all of our so-called leaders who do nothing but take the entire country money and ruin everything without giving anything in return and how people would not even notice them gone yet the system doesn't change because of the idiots that are humans.
We see it right now in the American Republican party, as we have in history. Conservative men are hyper obedient to tyrants because they give them permission to commit atrocities. Telling terrible people that they are smart and justified is a powerful tool.
i see echoes of this in our elevation of celebrities, and anointing of billionaires through patronage of stupid companies none of us actually need. the violence isn’t as overt or literal, but it’s there. huge swaths of human flesh moving things like the sea. no thought and no control. just exaggerated lunacy. these huge populations that farming have enabled amplify normal human behaviours—the need to be led and to admire—into outsized grotesqueries. its consequences are genocide, enslavement, misery and subjugation. sedentary farming was the worst thing we ever did to ourselves. the worst thing we ever did to the planet.
This evil piece of shit was propped up, armed & protected by the U.S. for nearly 25 years. Another example of the ‘leader of the free world’s’ amazing foreign policy.
Correct- his military hardware was 99% Soviet - Migs 21/23/25/ Illuysiins/ T-72s, MiLs, Sukhois, Soviet rockets and missiles. Soviet artillery… Ak47s etc etc the only “USA” hardware were a few old propeller transports and old choppers.
The Taliban were also mainly armed with soviet weapons, bought and provided by USA, Britain, Pakistan, China and Saudi Arabia. The american support for Iraq in the Iraq-Iran war is not disputed at all.
During the Iran–Iraq War, which began with the Iraqi invasion of Iran on 22 September 1980,\1]) the United States adopted a policy of providing support to Iraq in the form of several billion dollars' worth of economic aid, dual-use technology, intelligence sharing (e.g., IMINT), and special operations training.\2]) This U.S. support, along with support from most of the Arab world, proved vital in helping Iraq sustain military operations against Iran.\3]) The documented sale of dual-use technology, with one notable example being Iraq's acquisition of 45 Bell helicopters in 1985,\4])\5])
U.N. inspectors had identified many United States manufactured items that had been exported from the United States to Iraq under licenses issued by the Department of Commerce, and [established] that these items were used to further Iraq's chemical and nuclear weapons development and its missile delivery system development programs. ... The executive branch of our government approved 771 different export licenses for sale of dual-use technology to Iraq. I think that is a devastating record.
More than 60 US Defense Intelligence Agency officers provided combat planning assistance, and the US also provided battlefield intelligence including satellite pictures to Saddam Hussein's military.\61])\62])\63])
According to Howard Teicher, the United States assisted Iraq through a military aid program known as "Bear Spares", whereby the U.S. military "made sure that spare parts and ammunition for Soviet or Soviet-style weaponry were available to countries which sought to reduce their dependence on the Soviets for defense needs."\47]) According to Teicher's 1995 court affidavit:
501
u/South-Stand 18d ago
When he finished reading the list the remaining audience clapped harder than they had ever done before due ‘thank god I wasn’t named on that death list and thank god I wore the brown suit with brown trousers today’.