# Worst dictators of the C20th



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Time for some politics?

I just watched a DVD of _The Last King of Scotland_, a film about the rule of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. Forest Witaker got an Oscar for it.

It made me think about who were the worst dictators of the last century? Obviously, there as still some around, like Mugabe, Bashar al-Assad, Gaddafi, Castro & Kim Jong Il. But do they match dictators of the past like Hitler, Stalin, Mobutu, Suharto, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Franco, Galtieri, Tojo, Mao & Mussolini?

The three I would mark out as the worst of the worst are:

*Hitler* - no need to explain why. Political repression, Holocaust, World War II.

*Mobutu* - He illegally inherited a country (Congo, which he renamed Zaire) with vast mineral resources. It had the potential to be the richest country in Africa, instead under his misrule it became a basket case. He famously refused to build roads leading to the capital, Kinshasa, for fear of rebels travelling along them & overthrowing him. The heights of his corruption even coined a new phrase - kleptocracy. The country is still very unstable, with warlords ruling many parts of it, this is his legacy.

*Pol Pot* - again, no need to explain why. Emptying Cambodian cities & towns to establish his 'year zero' & herding his people into what were basically death camps that would be called 'the killing fields.' Even after he was deposed, he still caused trouble in the north, were he fled. He was never bought to justice, and died peacefully in bed, which can't be said for his 2 million or so victims.

These are serious issues, but they warrant discussion, I think. I didn't want to make a poll, because that would be cheapening the whole excercise. So what do people out there think? I'm thinking in terms of the dictators who left a bad legacy, that is still being felt today, to a degree...


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

I think Stalin. Except beign a murder and war criminal he was simply miserable man, which you can't respect. Hitler and others were, after all, gifted politicians and leaders. Stalin wasn't. For example, he was so naive that he didn't do anything before Germans started invasion to Russia, although he received many reports about military activity near the borders, which seemd like preparations for attack. He belived in their alliance and friendship, so he ignored those reports. Most of agitprop was done by his top dogs, and he never really did anything remarkable, except signing death warrants for lot of people.


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## RichardF (Aug 28, 2009)

There isn't much point in deciding which of these meglomaniacal tyrants was the worst. They were all bad. Some of them had more opportunities than others to have an impact upon the rest of the world.
If Pol Pot or Saddam had been in charge of countries as influential as the former USSR or Germany, instead of being confined to their relative backwaters, they would have caused more problems than they did.
What is more interesting is to see what followed in their wake. Germany was at least able to come to terms with it's history, although it has taken a couple of generations. The Russians? Not so much.
The cambodians and the Congo? Basket cases still.


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## Guest (Aug 29, 2009)

Not one of them could have dominated their people by themselves, they had plenty of willing helpers.


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## michael walsh (Sep 6, 2009)

Best leaving this one to posterity. Remember, history is written by the victors and quite a different story of Adolf Hitler ... and Winston Churchill would have been written had the victor nations' been the six that made up the Axis. 

Much of Churchill's war crimes have either been blue-pencilled, censored, or excused. Winston was spot on when he said: "Of course history will be kind to me. I shall be writing it." 

One of the greatest ironies of social engineering is the commonly held belief that of the great WW2 adversaries only Adolf Hitler could truly be said to have been democratically elected. It is arguable that during 1933 - 1945 he was the most popular leader in European history. 

On the other hand Winston Churchill was never elected: He was 'parachuted in' by the war lobby. He headed an unelected coalition government for which elections were not held. Stalin of course was a dictator and wouldn't know a ballot box if he fell over one. 

Roosevelt, the U.S. President was elected. However, it was afterwards conceded that it was his solemnly declared pledge to keep America out of the war which got him the Presidency. At the time he was already conspiring with Britain's government to join Britain's war.


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## nickgray (Sep 28, 2008)

Stalin, arguably, was the worst. Insane (literally) megalomaniac, millions of people died under his regime. The saddest thing of all is that quite a lot of Russian people seem to close their eyes on the mass murder, while advertising his success in industrializing the USSR. In Israel there are sirens blaring state-wide on Yom haZikaron to commemorate the victims of holocaust. In Russia, however, if you start to criticize Stalin many people would apathetically nod their heads when talking about deaths, and turn their attention to the matter of "he took the poor agrarian Russia and transformed it to the Space/Nuclear Superpower". What a strange world...


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

It seems to me that all of these dictators were aberrations. One would have thought that after the Age of Enlightenment, such people grabbing onto power would have been almost unimaginable. The reality was, as Andante points out, none of these monsters would have been able to do what they did without many willing helpers. It kind of turns the notion of democracy on it's head. Of course many of them were quite popular, but how could they not be, if opposing them meant certain death?

As for Churchill & Roosevelt, I can agree that the moment they sat down with Stalin to divide Europe after WW2, they lost much of their credibility. Out of the three, Churchill lived the longest and I think he realised (especially by the end of his long life) that he had made a mistake doing this. Wasn't it he who originated the phrase 'Iron Curtain?' I give Churchill credit only because he was one of the few to forsee what damage Hitler would do before things got really nasty. He is also viewed somewhat dimly here in Australia, as he was one of the originators of the push to open up a theatre of war in Turkey during WW1, which inevitably lead to the deaths of many Australian soldiers at Gallipoli. So I don't think he was a very good administrator, on that basis anyway...


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## RichardF (Aug 28, 2009)

Churchill and Roosevelt cannot be mentioned in the same sentence as Hitler and Stalin. They were politicans with their associated imperfections but they were not meglomaniacal dictators that were trying to rule the world and kill anyone they didn't like.
They had to make a pact with Stalin. Neither of their constituent countries would have supported a war against the USSR. With the Germans and Japanese defeated, the world yearned for peace.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I didn't say that Churchill or Roosevelt were like Hitler or Stalin. All I suggested was, that when they allowed Stalin to have the Russians stay in Eastern Europe (for the next 50 years almost), this was a big mistake. I don't think war would have resulted if at least they had made strong verbal protestations to Stalin about what he was doing, instead of just giving him the green light. Things might have stayed the same, sure, but at least then Stalin would have known that what he was doing was not right. & perhaps a bit of diplomatic leverage towards the Russians could have been applied for them to get out of Eastern Europe, the same way that all the allies left Austria in 1955. But maybe this is wishful thinking, maybe Eastern Europe had to go through what they did, regardless of what the UK or USA said? But it just appears to me that the big three superpowers just steamrolled the rights of these smaller countries into the dust.

As for the view from Australia, if you know a bit about Churchill's role in the UK government during WW1 & how he spearheaded the foolhardy & doomed campaign to enter Turkey via the Dardanelles, they you would know what I'm talking about. The campaign at Gallipoli was largely his doing, and it was a stupid decision resulting in ultimate failure & a waste of many Australian & New Zealand lives. On this basis, I don't think he was a very good administrator at all, even though he might of become better when he got older & WW2 came around. But this & what he did at Yalta proves that he was not interested in the rights of other countries, only that of Britain (wasn't it he who didn't want to grant India independence following WW2? The man was just an old conservative, he was outdated in the post WW2 world). This doesn't mean I am saying he was like a dictator, but more a self-serving politician like some of the ones we have nowadays...


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## michael walsh (Sep 6, 2009)

Let's not forget that it was Winston Churchill who ordered the Royal Navy's gunboats up the River Mersey to fire upon striking workers during the great strike of the early 20th Century. What kind of 'man' fires on his own starving citizens? 

At the risk of atracting criticism I also wonder if such a man with a penchant for wearing the finest silken knickers, and known to frequent gay parties at Somerset Maughan's villa in the south of France; and other orgies too, should be regarded as a great Briton at all, let alone entrusted to lead the country. 

Churchill was not elected to being other than a common MP. In 1940 he and the war lobby in effect seized power. In that respect, surrounded by his hand-picked cohorts he was very much the dictator ... and drinking buddy of that appalling blood-stained excuse for a man, Josef Stalin; ex-bank robber.


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## Andy Loochazee (Aug 2, 2007)

michael walsh said:


> One of the greatest ironies of social engineering is the commonly held belief that of the great WW2 adversaries only Adolf Hitler could truly be said to have been democratically elected. It is arguable that during 1933 - 1945 he was the most popular leader in European history.


Popular in Germany only, I think you mean. Yes he probably was, So what? It shows what the German nation was capable of at the time, being supporters of an obvious madman, and probably the biggest mass murderer in history.



> On the other hand Winston Churchill was never elected: He was 'parachuted in' by the war lobby. He headed an unelected coalition government for which elections were not held. Stalin of course was a dictator and wouldn't know a ballot box if he fell over one.


Hardly convenient to have a General Election at a critical point in a life-or-death War, is it?



> Roosevelt, the U.S. President was elected. However, it was afterwards conceded that it was his solemnly declared pledge to keep America out of the war which got him the Presidency. At the time he was already conspiring with Britain's government to join Britain's war.


Britain's war? It was that megolomaniac, Hitler, who started the war in Europe. Britain, France, USSR and later the Americans acted to stop this madman from taking over even greater areas of Europe and beyond, and to limit his mass murder campaign to extinguish all perceived inferior ethnic groups.



> Let's not forget that it was Winston Churchill who ordered the Royal Navy's gunboats up the River Mersey to fire upon striking workers during the great strike of the early 20th Century. What kind of 'man' fires on his own starving citizens?


Churchill was Home Secretary at the time (1911) and merely responded to a request for assistance from the Lord Mayor of Liverpool to deal with mass riots and revolution involving some 100,000 people. There had already been some deaths resulting from the riots, and the situation was getting out of hand. All that happened was that two gunboats were sent up the Mersey. What would you have done in those circumstances?



> At the risk of atracting criticism I also wonder if such a man with a penchant for wearing the finest silken knickers, and known to frequent gay parties at Somerset Maughan's villa in the south of France; and other orgies too, should be regarded as a great Briton at all, let alone entrusted to lead the country.


Even assuming this pile of vicious twaddle is remotely correct, who would you have preferred instead to lead Britain? Or would you rather that Hitler trampled all over the rest of Europe?


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## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

O.K.: here's me as humble dilettante and itinerant rectifier of misconceptions:

F. Roosevelt was first elected to the presidency in 1932- and the winning issue of his campaign was the economy, as the break-shot of the Great Depression had occurred drung the opening year of the Hoover administration. The start of World War II in Europe was early September, 1939.

O.K.: here's me as TalkClassical staffer and generally helpful guide to the Terms of Service:

_Posters are (again) reminded that disagreements are to be articulated "in a *civil and respectful manner*." Posters are further reminded to make some effort to post *on-topic*. In general, public speculations to the motives of posters are off-limits, but participants should recognize that careening off-topic provides fertile conditions for such speculations to enter into people's minds._

*Now* (with the understanding that the topic is "worst dictators,") *Let's try this again, and leave the wildly off-topic stuff, the ad-hominems and the innuendo out of it, this time... okay??*


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## ConcertVienna (Sep 9, 2009)

Hitler was a mad monster. The fact, that he was elected, makes everything only worse. It shows how many madmen there were, full of hate, believing in their racial supremacy and having no respect for the life of others, as they considered them inferior.
Today such people talk about "culture", instead of "race".


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## Rasa (Apr 23, 2009)

Chi_town/Philly said:


> O.K.: here's me as humble dilettante and itinerant rectifier of misconceptions:
> 
> F. Roosevelt was first elected to the presidency in 1932- and the winning issue of his campaign was the economy, as the break-shot of the Great Depression had occurred drung the opening year of the Hoover administration. The start of World War II in Europe was early September, 1939.
> 
> ...


Not that I mind a bit of political discussion, but this discussion will go against the ToS of this forum faster then a thread about which version of the swastika you like best.


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## Efraim (Jun 19, 2009)

Andre said:


> As for Churchill & Roosevelt, I can agree that the moment they sat down with Stalin to divide Europe after WW2, they lost much of their credibility.


As far as I know they didn't do so on some free decision but were forced by the events. Germany couldn't be defeated without the Russians, and they emerged from the war strengthened, having occupied huge territories. But it seems true that it would have been possible, during the war, to restrain them from taking so much, namely, to occupy some East-European countries before the Russian, as wanted Churchill, not to drop Prague and so on. Roosevelt countered Churchill's efforts in this sense; in other issues too he favoured the Russian. Truman changed radically Roosevelt's stance, but it was too late, at the very end of the war. But it is quite possible that Churchill made mistakes too, who doesn't?


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## danae (Jan 7, 2009)

I think that the very ambition to become the leader of a country is itself indicative of a potentially dangerous mind.


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## Krummhorn (Feb 18, 2007)

Temporarily closed for repairs


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