Pol Pot
On April 17, 1975, Pol Pot entered Phnom Penh, the capital, and took control. He planned for a "super great leap forward", inspired by Mao's Great Leap Forward in China. The second in command, Noun Chea, also called Brother Number Two, said later that the mass killing was a mistake. Pol Pot took all the city people and drove them towards fields as forced labour, where they worked without rest. A lot of people died on the way to the fields. Even more died in the fields from hunger, thirst, overwork, and sickness. They would only get a 180-gram can of rice every day, and they were harvesting fruits and rice. Every tenth day was a rest day, and so were the festivals. The government took over anything that had to do with money, which was illegal.