How Do You Kill 11 Million People?

A Book Review

I was at Oasis Bookshop at Abbatoir, Plateau State on World Book Day when I saw this book. The title hooked me, and the page length encouraged me to read it. It is 60 pages.

Yet, it expresses a powerful message. A message that begins with a question,

“How Do You Kill 11 Million People?”

The author uses this number for reasons he explains within the book. He was referring to Adolf Hitler’s genocide against the jews. The 20th Century was the bloodiest century in all of human history, it was the century where millions died in China, millions died in the USSR, millions died in Europe and millions died in Africa. Most were human-inflicted deaths, WARS.

How did Joseph Stalin kill millions of people in the USSR? How did the Tutsis and Hutus kill each other in 1994? How did Adolf Hitler kill Millions of people? How did the leaders of China cause the death of millions of their citizens?

It always begins with a LIE. How do you kill 11 Million People? LIES.

All of those terrible wars we’ve seen in the past century and even today have been caused by lies. The leaders lie to their people leading to war and death on a scale that a single person could not have perpetrated.

Andy Andrews wrote this book with an American audience in mind. He was writing to Americans, however, his work is important for every nation. In Nigeria, we saw how the Biafran War lead to the death of an estimated 3 million people. It also began with a lie; a false narrative was shared within the northern region that the coup of 1966 was an Igbo coup.

The message Andy Andrews shares are more important today than ever before, we have more desperate politicians, more divisive political issues, and more dangerous weapons in the hands of politicians we cannot trust.

Think about the current war in Ukraine. Russian President, Vladimir Putin has been telling anyone who cared to listen that Ukraine is not a country, that Ukrainians and Russians are the same, and that he is invading Ukraine to remove an illegitimate government. Every one of those statements is a lie.

Think about the US capitol insurrection of January 6, 2021. It all started with a lie, that Joseph Biden did not win the 2020 elections.

Truth is important, if not for anything else because it could prevent deaths.

I highly recommend this. It is short, poignant, and mind-straightening!