THE DEATH DEALER

Single individuals, such as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, were responsible for the deaths of millions of people. However, they did so primarily by decree, and not by personally performing each killing. Arguably, the persons who directly slew the most individuals would be the toggliers aboard the Enola Gay and Bock's Car, who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, when considering who was the most prolific killer who personally dealt death on an individual one-on-one basis, the Guinness World Records awarded that honor in 2010 to General Vasily Mikhailovich Blokhin--Stalin's chief executioner from 1926 to 1953.

Blohkin was the head of the Kommandatura Branch of the Administrative Executive Department of the NKVD of the Soviet Union--the agency in charge of "black work" for the government. Under his tutelage, his agency supervised an estimated 828,000 executions.

Blohkin, however, was not just a bureaucrat who sat in his chair while ordering others to do the dirty stuff. He personally performed at least 10,000 slayings, and perhaps a lot more.

His most infamous stint involved the murder in April of 1940 of 7,000 Polish prisoners of war in the Katyn Forest in Poland. Blohkin established for himself the goal of killing at least 300 prisoners each night. He set up an assembly line system where each prisoner was brought to a specially designed soundproofed shed equipped with a sloping concrete floor and a drain. Once the prisoner entered the shed, Blohkin immediately shot him in the back of the head. Blohkin's assistants then removed the corpse and quickly hosed down the floor prior to bringing in the next victim. This ritual was performed from dusk to dawn for 28 consecutive nights.

Blohkin carried a briefcase full of German Walther pistols with him to use for the Katyn killings. He thought the weapon more reliable than the Soviet-issue TT-33 and, if things went south, he wanted the murders to be attributed to the Germans instead of to the Russians.

Blohkin was forced to resign after Stalin died in 1953. He descended into alcoholism and insanity and purportedly committed suicide in 1955. Of course, during that period of time, a lot of Stalin's myrmidons committed "suicide" under mysterious circumstances.