A dictatorship is a government or social situation in which one person implies absolute power or, when one person takes control. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge will be analyzed and analyzed why and how they did what they did to the Cambodian people. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge led a hostile regime that subjugated the Cambodian people, killing approximately a quarter of Cambodia's population in the process. The totalitarian and brutal leadership of the Pol Pots regime was, by definition, a dictatorship and not at all a benevolent dictatorship. The main reason Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge came to power was because of the US carpet bombing Cambodia to emigrate. the North Vietnamese. Pol Pot was born in 1925 into a peasant family in central Cambodia. In 1949, at the age of 20, he went to Paris on a scholarship to study radio electronics. However during his scholarship he began to devote himself heavily to Marxism and neglected his studies. When he finally lost his scholarship four years later and returned to Cambodia, Pot joined the underground communist movement. The infamous Khmer Rouge formed in 1963 when Pol Pot became leader of the Communist Party and was forced to flee into the jungle by Cambodia's leader, Prince Nordom Sihanouk. Six years later the US Army began carpet bombing Cambodia to eliminate the North Vietnamese. Although he was indigenous, Pol Pot would not have gained the support he had from the Cambodian people without the economic and military destabilization of the United States. Many Cambodians were traumatized by the bombing, which brought the vast majority of them into the hands of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. . However, despite the rapid growth of the Khmer Rouge, the bombing of Cambodia intensified... middle of paper... before an international tribunal. Despite this, Pol Pot died in his bed later that night while waiting to be transferred to another location. Ta Mok claimed that his death was due to heart failure, however most people believe that it was a suicide and that he died due to a drug overdose. Some say it was fortunate that Pol Pot became increasingly paranoid about the North Vietnamese and without this; he could still be in power for many years to come. After the brutal regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia was not and will never be the same country it once was. Once Cambodia was deemed safe, the new government officials boarded jeeps and entered deserted Phnom Penh. The scene described by Hun Sen was "bleak and boring." As officials inspected their capital, block after block passed without any signs of life.