5 Top Declassified Government Atrocities That Redefine Evil!

Evil is a word that has become far too common in human society. We tag serial killers, armed robbers, and psychopathically insane people as the worst evils to grace the surface of the Earth. But what if the evil we fear most doesn’t carry a weapon or wear a mask? What if it sits in an office, signing orders and running the world from behind the curtain?

Governments have existed since the dawn of civilization. They have upheld law and order, driven technological progress, and shaped our modern world. But behind every flag and anthem lie declassified government atrocities, secret military experiments, and real-life horror stories buried for decades.

Today, we’re diving into five of the most terrifying and jaw-dropping atrocities ever committed by powerful nations — stories once locked away in top-secret vaults and now exposed to the world.

These aren’t conspiracy theories but cold, documented facts — signed, sealed, and covered in blood and ink.

The Manhattan Project Human "Guinea Pigs": Injected with Plutonium

When COVID-19 took the world by storm, outlets noticed that some people, particularly Americans, rejected the idea of receiving a vaccination from the government. It even turned into a whole debacle throughout the United States, as many people were surprised at how others rejected medicines that would save them from a ravaging virus.

What could make people choose to face a virus rather than take a vaccine from their government? Well, it stems from intense distrust and the United States' not-so-good record of secret government experiments, like intentionally injecting people with harmful substances in the name of saving them, and real government cover-ups of such experiments.

One such occurrence that stands out is the human experimentation that occurred during the Manhattan Project. As fears of the Cold War grew, scientists working on the Manhattan Project exposed themselves to unknown levels of radiation.

Emblem of the Manhattan Project

To better study the effects of the exposure, the United States government greenlit a secret program that involved injecting test subjects with doses of radioactive elements.

In the course of the experimentation, which took place from 1945 to 1947, about 18 people were intentionally given Uranium, Plutonium, and other radioactive metals.

A Report on The Incident Stated:

In many cases, subjects willingly participated in experiments, but they became willing guinea pigs nonetheless, in some cases the human subjects were captive audiences or populations that experimenters might frighteningly have considered “expendable”: the elderly, prisoners, hospital patients suffering from terminal diseases or who might not have retained their full faculties for informed consent. For some human subjects, informed consent was not obtained or there is no evidence that informed consent was granted. For a number of these same subjects, the government covered up the nature of the experiments and deceived the families of deceased victims as to what had transpired. In many experiments, subjects received doses that approached or even exceeded presently recognized limits for occupational radiation exposure. Doses were as great as 98 times the body burden recognized at the time the experiments were conducted. - “American Nuclear Guinea Pigs: Three Decades of Radiation Experiments on U.S. Citizens,” Congressional Subcommittee on Energy Conservation and Power, 1986.

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The first person injected in the Manhattan Human Experiment was Ebb Cade, a construction worker at Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. After a traffic incident, Ebb was hospitalized and was unknowingly added to partake in an experiment he never signed up for. He was given the codename HP-12 (HP standing for Human Product) and was injected with 4.7 micrograms of Plutonium without his consent. Though he still had a broken bone, Ebb's fracture wasn't fixed until 5 days after the radioactive dose. He later suddenly left the hospital and moved out of state, where he later died of heart failure. Besides the Plutonium dose, Ebb had 15 of his teeth and bone samples extracted.

Read more about Ebb Cade's ordeal from the DOE's ACHRE Report.

An Ongoing Test Involving Uranium In The Manhattan Project

The Manhattan Project's experiments remained secret for 50 years until their declassification in 1995. The government eventually paid the families of the unwilling subjects and passed laws prohibiting the use of humans for scientific experimentation. However, the revelations increased people's intense distrust of the government, and this has continued to this day.

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The One-Child Policy: Mass Abortions Behind China’s Rise

Many people and countries look up to China as a source of inspiration because it left the shackles of underdevelopment and became one of the world's leaders. However, behind its rapid advancement lie dark government secrets that many people are clueless about.

Among them is the One Child Policy, which took effect in 1982.

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Though the One Child Policy prohibited families from having two children, there was an instance where families could have more than one child; this was when a family first gave birth to a female child. This archaic practice led to fewer female children being born and discrimination towards women.

The One Child Policy was a set of laws prohibiting couples from having more than one child. The policy aimed to halt China's rapidly increasing population as the government needed a planned economy that could rapidly advance.

According to the government:

If we do not implement planned population control and let the population increase uncontrollably, rapid population growth is bound to put a heavy burden on the state and the people, cripple the national economy, adversely affect accumulation and State construction, the people’s living standard and their health and slow down progress of the four modernisations. - Editorial, People’s Daily, 8 July 1978.

Read more from the Asia Pacific Curriculum.

However, the policy resulted in a brutal campaign that could be termed government crimes against civilians. Throughout the country, family planning officials sought out women who were pregnant after having one child and forcefully aborted their babies.

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One brutal account on the One Child Policy was that of Xiao Aiying, a 36-year-old woman who was forced to have an abortion while in the eighth month of pregnancy. According to her husband, Luo Yanquan, Xiao Aiying was dragged out by family planning officials while kicking and screaming. She was taken to a hospital and forcefully underwent an abortion procedure. Her ordeal made headlines throughout the world and many Chinese citizens rallied behind her to decry the brutal actions of the officials—many of who were dismissed for their inhumane actions.

Read more about Xiao Aiying's story.

The brutal enforcement of the One Child Policy resulted in over 330 million state-sanctioned abortions and 196 million sterilizations; this led to the sharp mental health decline of millions of Chinese women who felt violated by the forceful procedures done on them.

Read more about The Perceived Mental Health Effects of China’s One-Child Policy.

In an interview with CNN, Deng Jiyuan, the husband of a woman, Feng Jianmei, forced to undergo an abortion, stated:

They forced her to abort our seven-month-old child – do they deserve to be called Communist Party officials who served the people?

In response to the incident, the officials of the Ankang city government in Shaanxi Province apologized:

Since the illegal actions by some officials have seriously hurt Feng Jianmei and her family, we want to offer our deep apologies to them and to the generic public.

However, the deed had occurred. Read more about Feng Jianmei's ordeal.

In 2021, the Chinese government introduced the Three Child Policy, stating couples could have three children. However, the dark past of the One Child Policy continues to haunt Chinese families who had to bear sterilization and multiple forced abortions.

The Red Army’s Hidden War Crime: 2 Million Rapes

World War II is known as one of the bloodiest wars in human history. It resulted in the deaths of some 35 to 85 million people. Though many countries felt the destruction, no country lost more citizens than the USSR, as it claimed over 27 million Soviet citizens.

The Red Army's Flag

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The majority of the casualties from the USSR in World War 2 were civilians, with a staggering figure of around 19 million people. For more context, the total number of Jews who were casualties of the war was around 6 million, meaning 300% more Soviets lost their lives, the highest of any civilian population during the war. For a more detailed breakdown of Soviet casualties, check out the Association of Accredited Public Policy Advocates to the European Union.

However, as World War II ended, Germany lost its power, and the Red Army of the Soviet Union marched into it. On gaining entry into Germany, one of the worst violations in human history took place. To this day, the governments of the countries once under the Soviet Union try to hide the number of rapes that occurred.

The Red Army is said to have raped over 2 million German women, with soldiers going for girls aged eight and women aged eighty. There were also multiple gang rapes, and so many people died.

Ruth Schumacher, who was 18 at the time of the incident, recanted her personal experience after the Red Army forces had begun marching into her town:

I was immediately gang raped by five Russians. The memories come back to you over and over again; you can never forget something like that. Sometimes after I talk about it, I sleep for a few hours and then wake up crying, screaming. I didn't want to know about anybody else's experiences, and they didn't want to know about mine. My conscience was heavy enough. And I didn't want to make it worse. Of course we felt ashamed about what the Nazis had done. But one should never pay back in the same currency, right?

Read more at NPR.

Red Army Soldiers

During the massive invasion, officers could do little to stop the intoxicated soldiers from killing and raping everyone in their path as the soldiers believed they were exerting revenge for the comrades and loved ones they lost to Germany's invasion. War brings out the worst in humans.

Korean War Secrets: Island Massacres and Brutal Executions

Mentioning the atrocities of nations without talking about the Korean War would be incomplete; this conflict led to the deaths of millions of people. The Korean War was a conflict between two opposing ideologies. It was like a proxy fight between the USSR and the United States.

During the conflict, the North and South Korean armies committed heinous murders. They killed people they felt to be enemy supporters and maltreated prisoners, even executing them.

Some of the Atrocities Committed by the North Korean Army During the Korean War

One of the evilest crimes committed during the conflict was the massacre ordered by South Korea's Syngman Rhee's government. The army went to Cheju Island to quell a possible revolt; this eventually led to the death of more than 30,000 people.

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Another significant massacre during the Korean War was the Bodo League Massacre. In the summer of 1950, the South Korean government ordered the execution of over 100,000 suspected communists, many of whom were civilians with no real ties to the North. Registered in a so-called “re-education” program, victims were rounded up and killed without trial by police and military forces across cities like Daejeon and Busan. The bodies were dumped into mass graves, and the massacre was covered up for decades until declassified U.S. photos exposed the horrific truth.

Read more about the Bodo League Massacre.

Some of the Atrocities Committed by the South Korean Army During the Korean War

Though the Korean War raged on for years, it yielded no positive results, as North and South Korea remain separate countries to this day.

Unit 731: Japan’s Biological Horror Lab

Making a list of the worst government atrocities in human history without mentioning the famous Unit 731 would be incomplete; this organization was responsible for the deaths of between 200,000 and 300,000 people.

What made Unit 731 stand out was the nature of the deaths that occurred within the organization. Set up as a covert biological and chemical development research unit of the Imperial Japanese Army, Unit 731 committed some of the worst crimes known to humankind.

The organization became a testing facility with human subjects. No one was spared in the series of brutal testing, amputations, torture, and dehumanizing research.

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Unit 731's experimentation was so covert that even many workers didn't know what was going on. Among them was Hideo Shimizu, a 14-year-old boy who was given the grim task of getting rid of human bones. The true scale of the Unit's atrocities dawned on the young boy when he was taken to a specimen room. Shimizu recanted details that could be described as pure evil. He saw preserved body parts, including that of a pregnant woman whose mid-section had been opened. He stated, "I thought it was a study on how to prevent people from getting sick. I only later realized we were infecting and dissecting people to conduct germ warfare.

After the Axis forces' defeat, the army tried covering up Unit 731's atrocities, and people like Hideo Shimizu, who had participated in burning evidence, were handed cyanide pills and ordered to end their lives. However, the U.S. and Soviet Union gathered extensive knowledge of the organization's brutal activities, which were declassified.

Unit 731 Complex

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In exchange for immunity, many of the scientists and military personnel in charge of Unit 731 gave the data they compiled on biological warfare to the United States. They were never tried for their crimes — an action that led to immense criticism worldwide.

 

Conclusion

From secret human experiments to massacres buried by history, these declassified government atrocities reveal how terrifying power can become. If you want more true government cover-ups and jaw-dropping facts, follow Biobizarre and join us as we uncover the dark truths history tried to hide. Also, you can check out our 5 Horror Phobia Stories.