Successful leaders often share multiple similarities in the choices they make with their power; however, there also tend to be numerous differences between the executions of their respective rules. Though Communist leader Pol Pot and German nationalist Adolf Hitler can be compared in several ways, there are also myriad differences between their ascendancies. The social dispositions and executions of Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot, although similar in several ways, also differed for numerous reasons during their supremacies.
The social perspectives and exploits of Hitler and Pol Pot have multiple similarities. For example, both Pol Pot and Hitler advocated and, to an extent, succeeded in mass execution of people based on a specific attribute. Thus, Pol Pot and Adolf Hitler each had different motives for their mass executions.
Another difference between Pol Pot and Adolf Hitler was the victims of their mass killings. The Khmer Rouge targeted Buddhist monks, Western-educated intellectuals (apart from themselves), educated people in general, people who had contact with Western countries or with Vietnam, people who appeared to be intellectuals (for example, individuals with glasses), the crippled and lame, and ethnic minorities like ethnic Chinese, Laotians and Vietnamese (Pol Pot, Pol Pot Massacre, Pol Pot Genocide, Cambodia Genocide). Also, several of the individuals executed, for example in the infamous S-21 camp, were accused of working for the CIA, KGB or the Vietnamese (Pol Pot, Pol Pot Massacre, Pol Pot Genocide, Cambodia Genocide). This is because, as previously stated, Pol Pot desired to purge society of all Western influence in order to create a new agrarian communist utopia. Hitler, however, focused on the elimination of Jews, the Roma (gypsies), Soviets (particularly prisoners of war), ethnic Poles, other Slavic people, the disabled, homosexuals, and political and religious dissidents, such as Jehovah's witnesses (Katz, 31). These victims were killed as a result of Hitler's aforementioned nationalist views. Subsequently, Pol Pot and Adolf Hitler differed in the victims they designated.
