The twentieth century was one of the darkest and most deadly in all of human history. Vast amounts of blood were spilled and people subjected to the most terrible fear and oppression. Not generally realized, however, is the nature of the ideological foundation that propelled the 20th century towards such disruption, chaos, war and conflict, and gave rise to such hatred and enmity. The groundwork of this ideological foundation was laid by the British economist Thomas Malthus. This twisted concept, widely accepted by people far removed from religious moral values, was further strengthened by another Briton, the sociologist Herbert Spencer, and disseminated by the theory of evolution put forward by yet another Englishman, Charles Darwin.