Thousands died in just the first few weeks of the Khmer Rouge’s reign. The evacuation process itself was ruthless, as even children, elderly people and those who were hospitalized were forced to move. More than two million people were evacuated from Phnom Penh when the Khmer Rouge took power. Pol Pot had been influenced and impressed by China’s Cultural Revolution under Mao Tse-tung, thus following that country’s lead in evacuating cities and forcing people into a rural, farming life. The Khmer Rouge was one of the most brutal regimes of the 20th century. Setting the calendar to “Year Zero,” Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge embarked on building what they considered to be the new Cambodia. bombing aimed at preventing communist leaders from taking over Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge army took control of Phnom Penh in spring 1975. After a civil war, which included heavy U.S. In 1970, Cambodia’s Prince Norodom Sihanouk was overthrown and replaced by Lon Nol, who had U.S. Afraid he would be arrested, he fled Phnom Penh the following year. In 1962, Pol Pot became his party's secretary general. In 1956, Pol Pot married Khieu Ponnary, whom he had met in Paris, and became a high school educator. When his scholarship was withdrawn, he returned to Cambodia, intent on building a revolution there. In Paris, he became involved with the Communist Party, taking on the name Pol Pot. He eventually studied carpentry and then received a government scholarship which sent him to Paris to study radio technology in 1949.

Saloth was initially educated at a monastery in the capital city of Phnom Penh and later attended a French Catholic school. He was the eighth of nine children born to relatively prosperous parents who owned 50 acres of rice paddies.

Pol Pot was born Saloth Sar on May 19, 1925, in Kompong Thom Province, Cambodia. The mass graves he commanded his people to dig were often referred to as 'the killing fields.' Pol Pot was arrested in 1997 and died under house arrest on April 15, 1998. During its reign, which ended in 1979, Pol Pot oversaw the deaths of an estimated one to two million people from starvation, overwork or execution. Pol Pot rose to power as leader of the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia’s Communist regime, which took control of the country in 1975.

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