Following the Khmer Viet Minh's 1954 retreat into North Vietnam, Pol Pot returned to Phnom Penh, working as a teacher while remaining a central member of Cambodia's Marxist–Leninist movement.

The Khmer Rouge emptied the cities, frogmarched Cambodians to labor camps and relocated the urban population to collective farms, where mass executions, abuse, torture, malnutrition and disease were rampant.

[7] In Phnom Penh, he spent 18 months as a novice monk in the city's Vat Botum Vaddei monastery, learning Buddhist teachings and to read and write the Khmer language.

[68] Sâr arrived in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) on 13 January 1953, the same day on which Sihanouk disbanded the Democratic-controlled National Assembly, began ruling by decree, and imprisoned Democratic members of parliament without trial.

[70] Sâr spent several months at the headquarters of Prince Norodom Chantaraingsey—the leader of one faction—in Trapeng Kroloeung,[71] before moving to Phnom Penh, where he met with fellow Cercle member Ping Say to discuss the situation.

[82] Following the Geneva Conference held to end the First Indochina War, Sihanouk secured an agreement from the North Vietnamese that they would withdraw Khmer Việt Minh forces from Cambodian territory.

[115] In February 1962, anti-government student protests turned into riots, at which Sihanouk dismissed the Sangkum government, called new elections, and produced a list of 34 left-leaning Cambodians, demanding that they meet him to establish a new administration.

[123] Their interpretation moved away from the orthodox Marxist focus on the urban proletariat as the forces of a revolution to build socialism, giving that role instead to the rural peasantry, a far larger class in Cambodian society.

[127] The North Vietnamese were preoccupied with the ongoing Vietnam War and thus did not want Sâr's forces to destabilize Sihanouk's government; the latter's anti-American stance rendered him a de facto ally.

[130] Sâr gained a sympathetic hearing from many in the governing Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—especially Chen Boda, Zhang Chunqiao and Kang Sheng—who shared his negative view of Khrushchev amid the Sino-Soviet split.

[134]Sâr left Beijing in February 1966, and flew back to Hanoi before a four-month journey along the Ho Chi Minh Trail to reach the Cambodian's new base at Loc Ninh.

[151] Sihanouk also flew to Beijing, where the Chinese and North Vietnamese Communist Parties urged him to form an alliance with the Khmer Rouge to overthrow Lon Nol's right-wing government.

[157] North Vietnamese armies, in collaboration with the Viet Cong, nevertheless invaded Cambodia to attack Lon Nol's forces; in turn, South Vietnam and the United States sent troops to the country to bolster his government.

[177] As of May 1972, the group began ordering all of those living under its control to dress like poor peasants, with black clothes, red-and-white krama scarves, and sandals made from car tyres.

[186] This move was both ideological, in that it built a socialist society void of private property, and tactical, in that it allowed the Khmer Rouge greater control over the food supply, ensuring that farmers did not provision government forces.

[204] Shortly after taking the city, the Khmer Rouge announced that its inhabitants had to evacuate to escape a forthcoming US bombing raid; the group falsely claimed that the population would be allowed to return after three days.

[209][203] For the Khmer Rouge, emptying Phnom Penh was considered as demolishing not just capitalism in Cambodia, but also Sihanouk's power base and the spy network of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

[218] To quell tensions arising from recent territorial clashes with Vietnamese soldiers over the disputed Wai Island, Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, and Ieng Sary travelled secretly to Hanoi in May, where they proposed a Friendship Treaty between the two countries.

[239] At the September Plenum, Pol Pot announced that all farmers were expected to meet a quota of three tons of paddy, or unmilled rice, per hectare, an increase on what was previously the average yield.

[338] Deng condemned Vietnamese aggression but suggested that the Khmer Rouge had precipitated the conflict by being too radical in its policies and by allowing Cambodian troops to behave anarchically along the border with Vietnam.

[323] On returning to Cambodia, in October Pol Pot ordered the country's army to switch tactics, adopting a defensive strategy involving the heavy use of land mines to stop Vietnamese incursions.

[356] As well as China, the Khmer Rouge also received the support of the United States and most other non-Marxist southeast Asian countries who feared Vietnamese aggression as a tool of Soviet influence in the region.

[373] In June 1982, at an event in Kuala Lumpur, the Khmer Rouge were among the factions declaring the formation of a Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (CGDK) as an alternative to the administration in Phnom Penh.

[388] Sihanouk negotiated the formation of a coalition government between the two parties, introducing a system whereby Cambodia would have two prime ministers, Ranariddh and Sen.[388] The new Cambodian National Army then launched an offensive against the Khmer Rouge.

[408] Pol's aim was to plunge the country into an inferno of revolutionary change where, certainly, old ideas and those who refused to abandon them would perish in the flames, but from which Cambodia itself would emerge, strengthened and purified, as a paragon of communist virtue.

But a Cambodian refugee in Paris, Laau Phuok, insists that Pol Pot's real name is Saloth Sar, and that his father was a landowner distantly related to the royal family.

[32] Chandler suggested that the seven years that Pol Pot primarily spent in jungle encampments among his fellow Marxists had a significant effect on his world-view, and they "probably reinforced his sense of destiny and self-importance".

Although some busts and paintings of him were produced during the start of the war with Vietnam, Cambodia never saw songs and plays written about him, his photograph was not included in party literature, and there were no publication of his "thoughts", as had been seen with leaders in countries like China and North Korea.

[450] In 2009, Deutsche Welle described Pol Pot's government as having initiated one of the "world's most infamous political experiments",[451] while Short referred to the Khmer Rouge as "the most radical revolutionary movement of modern times".

[455] Chandler also noted that Pol Pot's supporters believed that it was "his clear-sighted strategies and tactics that had wrested control of Cambodia from the United States and its feudal puppets" and that he had "uprooted enemies from the party, encouraged vigilance, built the alliance with China, and masterminded the Four Year Plan.