Why Isn’t Belgium’s 🇧🇪 Tyrant, King Leopold II As Reviled As Hitler?

Leopold II’s control over the Congo was a story of terror with a body count on par with Hitler’s, so why haven’t the world heard of this deranged and vicious man?

The scramble for Africa left dirt, and Belgium was not the first European nation we should come to think of when we discover the word “genocide.” Historically, this country has always been more remarkable for its beer than its disturbing human’s history that led to the transgressions against humanity.

But there was a course, at the summit of European colonialism in Africa, when Belgium’s King Leopold II ran a fleshly empire so vast and ardent, it rivaled — and even surpassed — the vices of even the gravest 20th-century madmen.

This empire was known as the Congo Free State, and Leopold II stood as its authoritative slave master. For almost 30 years, rather than being a typical colony of European power, just like the way Angola or the Spanish Sahara was, the Congo was governed as a…