For school we had to study and research the Khmer Rogue and Pol Pot's regime in Cambodia. Long story short, he did a lot of very crazy and cruel things to the people, and the Regime was overall completely destructive to the entire country until the Vietnamese liberated it.
But I do wonder why did Pol Pot become so Genocidal and maniacal to begin with? None of my research has ever explained or answered this. He was raised in a small Cambodian Town by two devout Buddhist parents, and also had multiple siblings (who are still alive today even) that didn't grow up anything like that. Pol Pot in his youth was also described as very gentle & kind. So what happened?
Was he just born a psychopath? Did something happen at his time in University, or in his childhood that was unrevealed to historians, which made him grow jaded with humanity? I mean, most other Dictators had very dark pasts and only become Dictators to perpetrate the cycle of abuse. It seems like Pol Pot though was something different, I can't imagine he would've just been born wanting to hurt so many people.
Discuss below.
You have to understand that the genocide was a revolution inspired by the Cultural Revolution in China and U.S. intervention in Vietnam. The revolution took the form of a civil war which ended (mostly) in 1975 when the Khmer Rouge took over Phnom Penh. Pol Pot's vision was to re-brand Cambodia as Angkor, a classless agrarian society which completely eschewed the west, notably through self-sufficiency. Part of the reason Pol Pot was so opposed to the west is because the United States bombed Cambodia as part of the Vietnam War. This is why genocide first targetted former leaders, intellectuals, the wealthy, people with ties to the west, etc. The push to self-sufficiency and a return to the ideals of "Angkor" explains why the Khmer Rouge forcibly relocated urban populations to rural areas.
Finally, understand that Pol Pot was simply a member of the ruling Khmer Rouge. Other "brothers" made up the leadership, so Pol Pot did not make decisions unilaterally. Indeed, many studies have shown that groups making decisions together (groupthink) are more likely to take extreme views.
There are lots of good books/resources about this:
Yale University's Cambodian Genocide Program
Genocides of the Oppressed by Nicholas A. Robins
Genocide in Cambodia: Documents from the trial of Pol Pot and Ieng Sary
Did the CPK leadership even know of the democide while it was occuring?