How PARIS Trained Pol Pot To Kill Millions Of His Own People
A Day In History
40,019 views
In Cambodia in the late 1970s, this man would have attracted immediate suspicion. He spoke fluent French, had studied engineering in Europe, and had spent his youth surrounded by intellectuals, reading foreign political books and debating revolutionary theory. Under the Khmer Rouge, those were exactly the kinds of things that could get someone arrested.
There was, however, one important difference. The authorities could not arrest him because he was the authority. His name was Saloth Sar, though the world would come to know him as Pol Pot.
Twenty-five years earlier, before he transformed Cambodia into one of the most terrifying states of the twentieth century, Pol Pot had been an ordinary Cambodian student living in Paris. He was not alone. Around him was a small circle of young Cambodians who had come to France to receive an education and then return home to help modernize their country.
Instead, several of them returned home as revolutionaries. The ideas they encountered in Paris, the political circles they joined, and the relationships they formed would help shape the future leadership of the Khmer Rouge. In one of history's most striking ironies, many of these educated young men would eventually build a regime that grew deeply suspicious of education, intellectual independence, and foreign influence—and would turn against people who looked remarkably like the students they had once been.
BODY
In the late 70s, the small country of Cambodia became hell on Earth.
Across the communist country, schoolteachers, doctors, civil servants, engineers, former government employees, writers, white-collar professionals – all were taken away by armed men. In the capital of Phnom Penh, people fortunate enough to speak more than one language were suspect, and learned to hide their ability – especially if that language was French, which it most often was. Cambodia had been a French colony from 1863 to 1953 – and to the communists especially, anyone who spoke French was suspect.
#polpot #cambodiangenocide #paris #history
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DISCLAIMER: All materials in these videos are used for entertainment purposes and fall within the guidelines of fair use. No copyright infringement intended. If you are, or represent, the copyright owner of materials used in this video, and have an issue with the use of said material, please send an email to adayinhistory2021@gmail.com
20 Comments
He really was an idiot.
He should have faced justice for all his atrocious and the collaborators who helped and armed him and the factional juntas
Siam also started to attack Cambodian villages , but most of the crime networks and human drug arms trafficking originate from these Siam … Siam has lots of guns
UN giving him a seat to the Khmer Rouge of pol pot is very wrong.. and idiotic . But there were ulterior motives . Good thing the Vietnamese people saved the innocents and others caught up in pol pot mass murdering and land stealing campaigns during the periods of the 60s-70s
How PARIS Trained Pol Pot To Kill Millions Of His Own People
A Day In History
40,019 views
In Cambodia in the late 1970s, this man would have attracted immediate suspicion. He spoke fluent French, had studied engineering in Europe, and had spent his youth surrounded by intellectuals, reading foreign political books and debating revolutionary theory. Under the Khmer Rouge, those were exactly the kinds of things that could get someone arrested.
There was, however, one important difference. The authorities could not arrest him because he was the authority. His name was Saloth Sar, though the world would come to know him as Pol Pot.
Twenty-five years earlier, before he transformed Cambodia into one of the most terrifying states of the twentieth century, Pol Pot had been an ordinary Cambodian student living in Paris. He was not alone. Around him was a small circle of young Cambodians who had come to France to receive an education and then return home to help modernize their country.
Instead, several of them returned home as revolutionaries. The ideas they encountered in Paris, the political circles they joined, and the relationships they formed would help shape the future leadership of the Khmer Rouge. In one of history's most striking ironies, many of these educated young men would eventually build a regime that grew deeply suspicious of education, intellectual independence, and foreign influence—and would turn against people who looked remarkably like the students they had once been.
BODY
In the late 70s, the small country of Cambodia became hell on Earth.
Across the communist country, schoolteachers, doctors, civil servants, engineers, former government employees, writers, white-collar professionals – all were taken away by armed men. In the capital of Phnom Penh, people fortunate enough to speak more than one language were suspect, and learned to hide their ability – especially if that language was French, which it most often was. Cambodia had been a French colony from 1863 to 1953 – and to the communists especially, anyone who spoke French was suspect.
#polpot #cambodiangenocide #paris #history
Copyright © 2026 A Day In History. All rights reserved.
DISCLAIMER: All materials in these videos are used for entertainment purposes and fall within the guidelines of fair use. No copyright infringement intended. If you are, or represent, the copyright owner of materials used in this video, and have an issue with the use of said material, please send an email to adayinhistory2021@gmail.com