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History’s Most Catastrophic Man-made Errors

Khalid Elhassan December 9, 2020 34 min

Wanggongchang Explosion - Beijing — The Wanggongchang Explosion devastated Beijing. Pintrest

29. Controversy Has Never Ceased to Surround This Man-made Disaster

The preceding disasters resulted from human error and incompetence, with little if any controversy about whether they and their death tolls were deliberately caused. Not so the next disaster, the Terror Famine that swept the Ukraine and southern Russia in 1932 – 1933.

Controversy has never ceased about whether that famine, also known as the Holodomor, resulted from human error and incompetence, or was deliberately caused by a maliciously murderous plan. Specifically, the maliciously murderous plan of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin to deploy starvation as a tool for destroying a class of better-off peasants known as kulaks, whom he viewed as enemies.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.