Posts Tagged ‘JOSEPH STALIN’
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 10, 2026 at 12:16 am
A dictator can die of illness or old age. That’s what happened to Francisco Franco (Spain), Mao Zedong (China) and Fidel Castro (Cuba).
But there are other ways a tyrant can be forced to give up power—such as the following three.
Death by Bodyguards
First up: Gaius Caligula, the “Mad Emperor” of Imperial Rome.
Caligula’s reign spanned March 18, 37 A.D. to January 24, 41 A.D.—four years.
Gaius Caligula
Carole Raddato from FRANKFURT, Germany, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
He became Emperor in 37 A.D. after succeeding the Emperor Tiberius, his uncle who had adopted him as a son after his father died.
Caligula’s reign began well—and popularly. He gave Tiberius a magnificent funeral—then recalled to Rome all those whom Tiberius had banished, and ignored all charges that Tiberius had leveled against them.
He gave bonuses to the military and allowed the magistrates unrestricted jurisdiction, without appeal to himself.
But in October 37 A.D. he fell seriously ill or perhaps was poisoned.
Caligula soon recovered but emerged a changed man. He began claiming to be a god, and killing or exiling anyone he saw as a threat. He ordered his victims tortured to death with many slight wounds: “Strike so that he may feel that he is dying.”
Among his litany of crimes, according to his biographer, Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus:
“He forced parents to attend the executions of their sons, sending a litter for one man who pleaded ill health, and inviting another to dinner immediately after witnessing the death, and trying to rouse him to gaiety and jesting by a great show of affability.”
For all his cruelty and egomania, the trait that finally destroyed Caligula was his joy in humiliating others.
His fatal mistake was to taunt Cassius Chaerea, a member of his own bodyguard. Caligula considered Chaerea effeminate because of a weak voice and mocked him with names like “Priapus” and “Venus.”
On January 22 41 A.D. Chaerea and several other bodyguards hacked Caligula to death with swords before other guards could save him.
Death by Suicide
Next up: Adolf Hitler, dictator of Nazi Germany from January 30, 1933, to April 30, 1945—12 years.
He was born on April 20, 1889, in Braunau am Inn in Austria-Hungary.
Adolf Hitler
He was appointed Chancellor—chief law enforcement officer—of Germany on January 30, 1933, by President Paul von Hindenburg. Upon Hindenburg’s death in 1934, Hitler assumed the Presidency and established himself as absolute dictator.
From 1933 to 1939 he presided over Germany’s rapid economic recovery from the Great Depression, the defiance of restrictions imposed on Germany after World War 1, and the annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia, where millions of ethnic Germans lived.
These accomplishments won him widespread popular support.
But after absorbing Czechoslovakia in 1938, Hitler felt himself invincible. On September 1, 1939, his armies attacked Poland—and unintentionally ignited World War II.
After conquering Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France, Greece and Yugoslavia, he made his two greatest mistakes of the war: He invaded the far more powerful Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, and declared war on the equally more powerful United States on December 11.
Parallel to unleashing a war that slaughtered 50 million people, Hitler orchestrated the extermination of at least six million Jews during the Holocaust.
By April, 1945, Germany faced destruction from the advancing Russians on the East, and from the advancing Americans on the West.
On April 30, with Russian forces only blocks from his underground bunker, Hitler lifted a heavy 7.65mm Walther PPK pistol to his right temple, bit on a cyanide capsule, and pulled the trigger.
Just as Caligula’s mangled remains were hastily burned and buried in the Horti Lamiani gardens, Hitler’s body was hastily cremated in the Reich Chancellery garden.
Last up: Joseph Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union from January 21, 1924, to March 5, 1953—29 years.
Born on December 18, 1878, in Georgia, Russia, he hated Czarist rule and in 1903 joined the Communist Bolsheviks party, led by Vladimir Lenin, to overthrow it.
Joseph Stalin
On November 7, 1917, Lenin overthrew the Provisional Government, which had taken power in February, after Czarist rule collapsed.
Stalin became a member of the new Soviet government, gradually working his way to the position of General Secretary. When Lenin died on January 21, 1924, Stalin outmaneuvered Leon Trotsky, his major rival for the succession, and became absolute dictator.
Starting in 1934, a series of massive purges followed—most notably between August, 1936, and March, 1938.
Throughout his nearly 30-year reign over the Soviet Union, at least 20 million men, women and children died—from executions, deportations, imprisonment in Gulag camps, and a man-made famine through the forced collection of harvests.
Robert Payne, the acclaimed British historian, vividly portrayed the crimes of this murderous tyrant in his brilliant 1965 biography, The Rise and Fall of Stalin.
According to Payne, Stalin was planning yet another purge during the last weeks of his life. This would be “a holocaust greater than any he had planned before.
“This time there would be a chistka [purge] to end all chistkas, a purging of the entire body of the state from top to bottom. No one, not even the highest officials, was to be spared.”
Yet Stalin did nothing to calm their fears. He often summoned his “comrades” to the Kremlin for late-night drinking bouts, where he freely humiliated them.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 9, 2026 at 12:14 am
There are major similarities between Adolf Hitler’s 1941 invasion and intended conquest of the Soviet Union and Donald Trump’s 2026 attack and intended conquest of Iran.
Even as late as January 30, 1945, Hitler claimed that God firmly stood on the side of the Third Reich—and thus would guarantee its eventual victory.
PAST – HITLER: God the Almighty has made our nation. By defending its existence we are defending His work…Therefore, it is all the more necessary on this twelfth anniversary of the rise to power to strengthen the heart more than ever before and to steel ourselves in the holy determination to wield the sword, no matter where and under what circumstances, until final victory crowns our efforts.
Similarly, on March 22, 2026, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, hosting his monthly Christian worship service at the Pentagon, prayed:
PRESENT – HEGSETH: Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation. Give them wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.
“I pursued my enemies and overtook them, and did not turn back till they were consumed,” he read from Psalms 18:37. “Those who hated me I destroyed. They cried to the Lord, but He did not answer them.”
On December 31, 1939—more than three months into World War 11—Hitler made clear his ultimate war aims:
PAST – HITLER: We shall only talk of peace when we have won the war. The Jewish capitalist world will not survive the twentieth century.
PRESENT – PETE HEGSETH: Iran cannot outlast us. We are going to ensure through violence of action and our offensive capabilities and our defensive capabilities, as I said, that we set the tone and the tempo of this fight.
Hitler believed that German airpower could force Great Britain to submit to his will. The Battle of Britain and The Blitz proved him wrong.
He also believed that his mechanized Panzers—which had defeated French and British armies in May-June,1940—would succeed where Napoleon’s horse-driven Grand Army had failed in 1812. The final proof of his mistake appeared on April 30, 1945, as Russian forces were almost literally knocking at his Fuhrerbunker door.
PAST – HITLER: We have only to kick in the front door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.
Hegseth believes that American airpower can force Iran to submit to his will. But the Strait of Hormuz remains closed to world shipping (except for those nations that Iran regards as friendly or neutral). So long as this continues, Americans’ gas prices will continue to rise with no end in sight—and pose a threat to Republicans’ continued control of the House and Senate.
About 20% of the world’s total oil consumption—roughly 20-21 million barrels per day—passes through this, making it the world’s most crucial oil chokepoint.
PRESENT – HEGSETH: Iran will never possess a nuclear bomb, not on our watch, not ever. And this is why President Trump’s moral clarity on Iran today is so vital. Unlike the past, where vague red lines and endless negotiations let Iran fund terror and inch ever so slightly toward a bomb, this president sees the threat plainly and acts decisively, no more half measures, especially when Iran is at its weakest. No more letting Tehran play for time while our people pay the price.
PAST – HITLER: Russia is already broken and will never rise again.
PRESENT – HEGSETH: Iran’s senior leaders are dead, the so-called governing council that might have selected a successor, dead, missing or cowering in bunkers, too terrified to even occupy the same room. Senior generals, mid-level officers, enlisted ranks, they can’t talk or communicate, let alone mount a coordinated and sustained offensive. That’s not great for morale.
PAST – HITLER: Moscow must disappear from the earth’s surface as soon as its riches have been brought to shelter.
PRESENT – HEGSETH: The enemy can no longer shoot the volume of missiles they once did, not even close, and the chairman will lay out some of those percentages. So, our air defenses and that of our allies have plenty of runway. We can sustain this fight easily for as long as we need to. And as I said yesterday, we set the terms.
PAST – HITLER: Today I am at the head of the strongest Army in the world, the most gigantic Air Force and of a proud Navy. Behind and around me stands the Party with which I became great and which has become great through me. Our enemies must not deceive themselves—in the 2,000 years of German history known to us, our people have never been more united than today.
PRESENT – HEGSETH: And we know their ability to shoot versus our ability to defend. That difference gets wider and wider every day. Our defense gets better. Their offense capabilities diminish as we are going into ammunitions that we, as we said, have tens of thousands of and can drop unlimited supplies on, with even more effects than the stand-off munitions we have now, which is why, when we say the throttle’s going up, the throttle’s going up. And it’s going to stay on high.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 8, 2026 at 12:10 am
There are major similarities between Adolf Hitler’s 1941 invasion and intended conquest of the Soviet Union and Donald Trump’s 2026 attack and intended conquest of Iran.
But, for lack of courage and/or historical perspective, those similarities have not been featured during political and/or military commentaries on the ongoing conflict.
A good starting point: A comparison of the address given by German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler on the first day of “Operation Barbarossa” (June 22, 1941) and the one given by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (on May 4) four days after the start of “Operation Epic Fury.”
PAST – HITLER: German people! At this moment a march is taking place that, as regards extent, compares with the greatest the world hitherto has seen. United with their Finnish comrades, the fighters of the victory of Narvik are standing in the Northern Arctic. German divisions commanded by the conqueror of Norway, in cooperation with the heroes of Finnish freedom, under their marshal, are protecting Finnish soil.
PRESENT – HEGSETH: I stand before you today with one unmistakable message about Operation Epic Fury: America is winning decisively, devastatingly and without mercy. Under the direct command of President Trump, the War Department unleashed this operation early Saturday morning, just four days ago, which means we need to remember two things.
Second, we are only four days into this, and the results have been incredible, historic really. Only the United States of America could lead this, only us. But when you add the Israeli Defense Forces, a devastatingly capable force, the combination is sheer destruction for our radical Islamist Iranian adversaries. They are toast and they know it, or at least soon enough they will know it. And we have only just begun to hunt, dismantle, demoralize, destroy and defeat their capabilities just four days in.
PAST – HITLER: Formations of the German Eastern Front extend from East Prussia to the Carpathians. German and Rumanian soldiers are united under Chief of State Antonescu from the banks of the Pruth along the lower reaches of the Danube to the shores of the Black Sea. The task of this front, therefore, no longer is the protection of single countries, but the safeguarding of Europe and thereby the salvation of all.
PRESENT – HEGSETH: Starting last night and to be completed in a few days, in under a week, the two most powerful Air Forces in the world will have complete control of Iranian skies, uncontested airspace. I hope all the folks watching understand what uncontested airspace and complete control means.
It means we will fly all day, all night, day and night finding, fixing and finishing the missiles and defense industrial base of the Iranian military, finding and fixing their leaders and their military leaders, flying over Tehran, flying over Iran, flying over their capital, flying over the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], Iranian leaders looking up and seeing only US and Israeli air power every minute of every day until we decide it’s over.
PAST – HITLER: I therefore decided today again to lay the fate and future of the German Reich and our people in the hands of our soldiers.
PRESENT – HEGSETH: And Iran will be able to do nothing about it. B-2s, B-52s, B-1s, Predator drones, fighters controlling the skies, picking targets, death and destruction from the sky all day long. We’re playing for keeps. Our warfighters have maximum authorities granted personally by the president and yours truly.
On August 22, 1939—nine days before he launched an unprovoked attack on Poland on September 1—Hitler summoned his top generals to Berchtesgaden. There he lectured:
PAST – HITLER: I shall give a propagandist reason for starting the war. Never mind whether it is plausible or not. The victor will not be asked afterward whether he told the truth or not. In starting and waging a war it is not right that matters but victory.
Close your hearts to pity! Act brutally! Eighty million people must obtain what is their right…The stronger man is right…Be harsh and remorseless! Be steeled against all signs of compassion!
The instructions Hitler issued for the conduct of war on Poland applied just as fervently when the Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. And the Russians quickly responded with a campaign of vengeance.
As General Gotthard Heinrici noted: “The Russian soldiers are told by their commanders that they will be executed by us, so they are reluctant to surrender—and sometimes fire on our soldiers from the rear. This, of course, demands countermeasures on our side, which are harsh. So both sides step things up, and as a result there are masses of casualties.”
PRESENT – HEGSETH: Our rules of engagement are bold, precise and designed to unleash American power, not shackle it. This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be. Thus far, Operation Epic Fury has delivered twice the air power of shock and awe of Iraq in 2003, minus Paul Bremer and the Nation Building.
The campaign has seven times the intensity of Israel’s previous operations against Iran during the 12-day war, seven times. And as President Trump said, more and larger waves are coming; we are just getting started. We are accelerating, not decelerating. Iran’s capabilities are evaporating by the hour. While American strength grows, fiercer smarter and utterly dominant.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 1, 2026 at 12:17 am
Now, fast-forward 85 years—from 1941 to 2026. Substitute President Donald Trump for Fuhrer Adolf Hitler and Mojtaba Khamenei for Joseph Stalin—and Iran for the Soviet Union.
Just as Hitler launched his attack on the Soviet Union without warning, so did Trump launch his on Iran—on February 28.
Hitler—and numerous members of the Wehrmacht—believed that Germany’s mechanized panzers would quickly subdue Soviet armies.
“We were fast,” recalled Panzer Lieutenant Hans-Erdmann Schonbeck. “And our tank forces could cover huge distances. And once we broke through the enemy’s defenses, our orders were not to worry about threats to our right or left but to keep going, deep into Russian territory.”
Panzer tank
But the tanks soon faced unexpected difficulties. Most roads in Russia were unpaved, so the tanks raised huge dust clouds almost everywhere they went. The dust clogged their engines and brought many tanks to a halt. Repair crews worked themselves to exhaustion so that the lightning-fast advance could continue.
Another drawback not evident at the outset of the invasion: Summer uniforms. For a war that began on June 22, 1941, these were entirely appropriate. But as the months quickly passed, the notorious Russian winter season loomed ever closer.
Germans in summer uniforms
The German command underestimated the campaign’s duration, expecting a victory by autumn 1941, and prioritized ammunition and fuel over winter equipment. Although winter gear existed, it was stuck in supply depots in the West, and transport lines were too strained by the Soviets’ “scorched earth” tactics to move it to the front.
Without proper greatcoats or insulated boots, soldiers suffered from extreme cold, with temperatures dropping far below zero. Many resorted to stealing blankets from civilians or using blankets as makeshift clothing.
In its war with Iran, American’s air force completely dominated the skies. But then both American planes and ground forces faced an unexpected enemy: Mass-produced drones.
The same weapons—some of them supplied by Iran to Russia—have been used since 2022 in Ukraine. Unmanned and remotely-controlled, Ukrainian and Russian drones have transformed the battlefield. They’re estimated to inflict around 80% of combat casualties on both sides.
The technology—like that forged in Germany’s Blitzkrieg tactics—is revolutionizing warfare and evolving rapidly. To adapt to the new era, the U.S. military is learning lessons from Ukraine.
Iranian drone
Student News Agency, Attribution, via Wikimedia Commons
Not only are American military forces being targeted, so are those Gulf nations that have allied themselves with the United States: The United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and Oman.
Primarily targeted: Energy infrastructure, airports and sites hosting American military personnel.
For Iran, the drones are relatively cheap. For the United States, the costs of countering this threat are steadily mounting. A typical Shahed-136 costs Tehran roughly $20,000 to $50,000, while interceptor missiles, such as the Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), cost millions.
On August 22, 1939—the eve of his invasion of Poland, which would ignite World War II—Adolf Hitler delivered a secret address to his supreme commanders and generals. Its climax:
“Close your hearts to pity. Act brutally. Eighty million people must obtain what is their right. Their existence must be made secure. The stronger man is right. The greatest harshness.”
Hitler urged his generals to act similarly toward the Russians, whom he regarded as subhumans.
The results of this policy soon became obvious when the Wehrmacht invaded Ukraine. Ukrainians, long suffering under the yoke of Stalin, greeted the invaders with bread and salt, the traditional greeting of comrades.
Within a month, they realized that the tyranny of Stalin had been replaced by an all-out extermination campaign of Hitler. For every Ukrainian the Germans killed, 10 more emerged to seek revenge.
Eighty-five years later, Donald Trump and officials of his administration are celebrating the indiscriminate slaughter of Iranians, whether civilian or military.
“We totally demolished Kharg Island, but we may hit it a few more times just for fun,” Trump said on NBC News.
On March 22, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, hosting his monthly Christian worship service at the Pentagon, prayed: “Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation.
“Give them wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”
Pete Hegseth
“I pursued my enemies and overtook them, and did not turn back till they were consumed,” he read from Psalms 18:37. “Those who hated me I destroyed. They cried to the Lord, but He did not answer them.”
Former House speaker and Trump advisor Newt Gingrich posted on X: “Instead of fighting over a 21-mile-wide bottleneck [Strait of Hormuz] forever, we [could] cut a new channel through friendly territory. A dozen thermonuclear detonations and you’ve got a waterway wider than the Panama Canal, deeper than the Suez, and safe from Iranian attacks.”
This would produce countless numbers of casualties and cover the Middle East with radioactive fallout.
It remains to be seen if such exhortations will lead American soldiers to act as barbarically as those of the Wehrmacht and SS—and inspire similar barbarism in return.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on March 31, 2026 at 12:48 am
The city: Berlin.
The date: November 12–13, 1940.
The event: A meeting between German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler and Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov.
The purposes: To discuss:
- Soviet expansion and control over Finland, Bulgaria, and the Turkish Straits; and
- Germany’s desire for the USSR to attack British interests in India and Iran.
Hitler wanted the USSR to join the Axis (Germany, Italy, and Japan) and expand “southward” toward the Indian Ocean to avoid conflict in Europe.
Adolf Hitler
Molotov ignored the talk of India and instead demanded control over Finland, Bulgaria, and the Turkish Straits.
Hitler adamantly opposed Soviet control over Finland, which he considered a strategic ally. He feared a Soviet expansion into Scandinavia would threaten German iron ore supplies from Sweden and northern interests.
And he deeply feared that the Soviet Union would cut off Germany’s vital Romanian oil supplies. Romania provided roughly 75% of German oil in 1941. A late 1940 Soviet attack on the Ploiești oil fields would render Germany helpless and force an end to the war.
On a personal level, Molotov and Hitler grated on each other’s nerves. Molotov was blunt in his remarks and didn’t spare Hitler at all. He seldom smiled and refused to compromises on Russia’s demands for control of Finland, Bulgaria, and the Turkish Straits.
At one point, Molotov asked: “Is last year’s agreement [between Germany and Russia] still valid?”
Hitler replied that it was.
“I asked this question,” said Molotov, “because of the Finns. You are on very friendly relations with the Finns. You invite people from Finland to Germany and you send missions there. And the Finns are very dangerous people. They undermine our security and we’ll have to do something about that and we are going to do something about that.”
Vyacheslav Molotov
“I understand you very well,” exploded Hitler. “You want to wage war against Finland and that is quite out of the question. Do you hear me? It’s impossible because my supplies of iron, nickel and other important raw materials would be cut.”
During the talks, British Royal Air Force (RAF) bombers appeared overhead, forcing the leaders to move to an air raid shelter.
German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop had been trying to convince Molotov that Great Britain was “beaten” and that the British Empire was a “gigantic world-wide estate in bankruptcy” ready for partition.
Molotov sarcastically replied: “If England is beaten, why are we in this shelter and whose are the bombs that are falling?”
Even while Molotov was still in Berlin, Hitler ordered his generals to attack the Soviet Union on May 15, 1941.
Within a month they responded with a detailed plan code-named “Operation Barbarossa.”
Less than one year later—on June 22, 1941—with 134 divisions at full fighting strength and 73 more divisions for deployment behind the front, the German Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union.
Now the two most ruthless dictators on earth—Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin—were locked in a fight to the death.
At the outset, the odds clearly favored the Germans.
The invasion caught the Soviet Union by surprise. Joseph Stalin had received Intelligence reports from Great Britain that Germany was preparing to attack. But Stalin, who believed the British were trying to drive a wedge between him and Hitler, put his faith in Hitler, whose guarantees had long proved worthless.
German army units
From June to September, the Wehrmacht captured vast territories and encircled hundreds of thousands of Red Army troops. German forces quickly advanced toward Leningrad, Moscow, and Kiev, inflicting massive casualties.
The Luftwaffe destroyed much of the Soviet air force on the ground.
In June and July, German panzers quickly advanced, capturing over 300,000 Soviet prisoners in the Minsk-Bialystok pocket. By late September, Army Group South captured Kiev, resulting in the largest encirclement in history, with roughly 600,000 Soviet soldiers trapped.
By the end of 1941, more than three million Soviet soldiers were captured or killed. Still, the Soviet Union did not collapse and continued to commit new field armies to the conflict.
By December, the Wehrmacht, besieging Moscow, were literally freezing to death in their summer uniforms. Then, on December 5-6, the Soviets launched their decisive counter-offensive before Moscow, forcing German forces into a retreat.
It marked the first major land defeat for the Wehrmacht since its September 1, 1939 invasion of Poland, which ignited World War II.
Now, fast-forward 85 years. Substitute President Donald Trump for Fuhrer Adolf Hitler and Mojtaba Khamenei for Joseph Stalin—and Iran for the Soviet Union.
Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler
Just as Hitler launched his attack on the Soviet Union without warning, so did Trump launch his on Iran—on February 28.
Hitler’s attack didn’t kill Joseph Stalin, the all-powerful dictator of the Soviet Union. But Trump’s airstrikes killed Ali Hosseini Khamenei, who had ruled Iran as its supreme leader from 1989.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
Still, the Iranians quickly elevated his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, to the same position—and went on fighting.
Hitler—and numerous members of the Wehrmacht—believed that Germany’s mechanized panzers would succeed where Napoleon Bonaparte had failed in 1812. And that they could conquer the Soviet Union in only three months.
They were wrong.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on March 26, 2026 at 12:17 am
Donald Trump’s unprovoked attack on Iran is separated from Adolf Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union by a span of 84 years. Yet despite differences in geography and history, eerie similarities exist between the two.
Hitler launched his assault on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941—after a series of quick military conquests: Poland (1939); Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France (1940); Greece and Yugoslavia (1941).
Similarly, before launching his assault on Iran on February 28, Trump had scored a number of triumphs–albeit of a non-military nature. A March 19, 2026 article in The New Republic offers a partial summary:
Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler
“In the first year since returning to power, Trump and his subordinates have pushed the country toward fascism and oligarchy. He has turned Washington into an orgy of corruption and self-dealing beyond even the most cynical observer’s imagination.
“He has transformed Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol into a lawless paramilitary force that has besieged American cities and killed at least five U.S. citizens and 22 foreign nationals. He has abused Americans and their immigrant neighbors alike simply because he can.”
In his attempt to conquer the Soviet Union, Hitler made the fatal mistake of trying to conquer too much territory all at once.
In August 1941, Hitler diverted forces from the central push on Moscow to surround Leningrad and industrial regions in the South, which delayed the attack on Moscow. By the time Hitler decided to capture Moscow, the weather had turned cold and the Germans were exhausted and freezing.
As in the case of Hitler, Trump assumed that Iran could be forced to quickly surrender. But that effort has been handicapped by a series of shifting and contradictory goals:
- Preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
- Destroying Iran’s missile capabilities.
- Annihilating the Iranian navy.
- Ensuring that Iran quit arming, funding and/or directing “terrorist armies” outside its borders.
In the opening day of the war, American and Israeli airstrikes killed Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. By March 17, Israel announced that it had killed two more top Iranian leaders in airstrikes. Still, Iranians chose new leaders to succeed dead ones and went on fighting.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
On March 19, Israeli airstrikes hit Iran’s largest gas field—South Pars, which is part of the world’s largest natural gas reserves. In retaliation, Iran launched drone and missile attacks against energy infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, and Kuwait.
Iran also targeted Israel and attacked U.S. military bases in the region, including in Bahrain and Jordan.
Trump said there would be no further attacks on South Pars unless Iran attacked Qatar again. In that case the U.S. “will massively blow up the entirety” of the gas field.
Hitler expected the Soviet Union to collapse in a matter of weeks. France, which supposedly had the strongest army in Europe, had collapsed in six weeks in 1940. He believed that General Winter, which had defeated Napoleon in 1812, would not be a problem for the mechanized Wehrmacht.
Yet the Wehrmacht was far less mechanized than portrayed by German propagandists. It relied heavily on horses for approximately 80% of its transport needs throughout World War II. During the winter of 1941 – 1942, the Wehrmacht lost over 179,000 horses. In the Army Group Center sector, losses reached roughly 1,000 per day.
In movies like “The Longest Day” and “Saving Private Ryan,” Americans celebrate the D-Day landings on France, on June 6, 1944. But for Nazi Germany, “the real war” was in the East. There the Wehrmacht concentrated the largest proportion of its forces—and suffered 85% of its casualties.
By March 19, the United States had spent $12 to over $12.7 billion on military operations against Iran, which began on February 28.
And by March 19, the Pentagon was asking for an additional $200 billion for the war. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said “that number could move.” When asked why so much more funding was needed, he replied: “It takes money to kill bad guys.”
It also takes money—lots of it—to keep Pentagon brass well-supplied with luxuries denied to Americans forced to live on Food Stamps.
In September 2025, the Pentagon spent a record-breaking $93.4 billion in a single month. While most of this was for military grants and contracts, a significant portion was used for high-end furniture, luxury food and musical instruments.
This spending surge, often called a “use-it-or-lose-it” spree, occurs at the end of the fiscal year as agencies rush to exhaust their budgets to avoid future cuts. Examples:
- Luxury Food: Lobster tail, $15 million on ribeye steak, $9 million on Alaskan King Crab, $25 million+ on salmon
- Furniture: High-end office furniture: $225.6 million, including $60,000 for Herman Miller recliners
- Instruments: $1.8 million: Steinway & Sons grand piano ($98,329), a $21,750 custom handmade flute and a $26,000 violin
- IT/Devices: High-Spec Apple iPad Air M3s and Samsung 98-inch monitors – $5.3 million
- Goodies: Ice cream machines, doughnuts, fruit basket stands – $275,000+
Meanwhile, Trump has called for huge increases to the Pentagon’s budget. In January, he posted that the 2027 fiscal year budget should be $1.5 trillion—a 50% increase.
“This will allow us to build the ‘Dream Military’ that we have long been entitled to and, more importantly, that will keep us SAFE and SECURE, regardless of foe.”
Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy—and expensive—nightmare.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on March 25, 2026 at 12:02 am
Adolf Hitler had a warning for Donald Trump on the eve of his launching airstrikes against Iran.
A warning Trump should have heeded—but didn’t.
It all started on June 22, 1941.
On that date, Hitler ordered his powerful Wehrmacht o invade the Soviet Union.
Less than two years earlier, on August 23, 1939, he had signed a “non-aggression” pact with his longtime arch-enemy, Joseph Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union.
Since then, his army had conquered Poland, Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium and France.
Adolf Hitler with his generals
Now, he believed, it was time to “settle accounts” with the Soviet Union.
Only there could Germany obtain the “living space” it “needed” for its expanding population.
So at 3 a.m. on June 22, 1941, Hitler once again launched an invasion.
At first, Hitler felt giddy with excitement.
Turning to Alfred Jodl, his chief of operations for the Wehrmacht, he said: “We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.”
German soldiers marching through Russia
But soon afterward—almost as if he had just looked into the future and seen that he had none—he told an aide: “At the beginning of each campaign, one pushes a door into a dark, unseen room. One can never know what is hiding inside.”
That certainly proved true for Hitler.
Within four years, he was dead and the Red Army occupied Berlin.
And now the law of unintended consequences may be coming true for President Donald Trump and the United States.
On February 28, Trump—in concert with Israel—launched a series of devastating, unprovoked airstrikes against Iran. Since then, Trump and his Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, have been all over the map with rosy predictions.
Donald Trump
- February 28: Trump posted on Truth Social that the bombing would continue “throughout the week or as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!”
- March 1: In a video Trump declared that the war would continue “until all of our objectives are achieved.”
- March 2: Trump: “Right from the beginning, we projected four to five weeks, but we have capability to go far longer than that.”
- March 5: Hegseth to Pentagon reporters: “You can say four weeks [how long the war might last] but it could be six, it could be eight, it could be three. Ultimately, we set the pace and the tempo.”
- March 6: Trump: “There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER.”
- March 8: Hegseth: “We’re willing to go as far as we need to in order to be successful.”
- March 9: Trump: “No, but soon. I think so. Very soon” when asked by a reporter if the war would be over that week.
- March 11: “You know, you never like to say too early you won. We won. We won the, in the first hour, it was over.”
Hitler had been similarly optimistic about how long it would take to conquer the Soviet Union: Six to eight weeks, at the longest. And during the first three months of the war—July through September, 1941—that optimism seemed well-placed.
The Wehrmacht repeatedly lured Soviet armies into huge “cauldron battles,” then surrounded them, killing thousands and taking thousands of prisoners. By the end of September, German forces had captured or killed over 650,000 Russian troops in the Battle of Kiev alone, with total Soviet casualties reaching millions.
But then Hitler—and the Wehrmacht—paid a fatal price for their misplaced optimism.
The best—and most lethal—example of this hubris: The Wehrmacht went to war in summer uniforms on June 22—and were still wearing them in December.
Hitler placed infinite faith in the power of will to overcome all obstacles. When his soldiers were literally freezing to death before the gates of Moscow, Hitler believed that with “just one more push” the Soviet capital would fall.
When Heinz Guderian, his foremost expert on tank warfare, informed Hitler that German soldiers had no defense against the bitter cold, Hitler replied: They should dig foxholes.
Guderian replied that the icy ground was too solid to be punctured with spades.
Hitler’s reply: They should fire artillery shells into the ground to build foxholes.
This totally ignored the reality that, by December, 1941, the German army was dangerously short on munitions of all kinds.
Like Hitler, Trump seemed to consider himself omnipotent. Asked by a reporter how long the war would last, the President replied: “Any time I want it to end, it will end.”
Yet by the third week of the war, he began demanding—not asking—the assistance of NATO countries: We’ve had your back, now it’s our turn.
This totally ignored the fact that NATO exists to aid any of its members if it is attacked. After 9/11, NATO air force planes screened American airspace to prevent a repeat of similar carnage.
But NATO members are not obligated to join any nation in igniting a war. And that was precisely what Trump did on February 28—without consulting or even informing NATO of his plans to attack.
The only country that knew his intentions was Israel.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on March 24, 2026 at 12:22 am
The gap between rich and poor in the United States has never been greater.
According to former Labor Secretary Robert Reich:
“The richest Americans saw their net worth soar 120% from 2017 to 2025. The top 1% now control $55.8 trillion in assets—more than the G.D.P. of the United States and China combined. Meanwhile, millions of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.”
Average CEO pay has exploded, rising over 1,000% since the late 1970s while typical worker pay has only grown modestly. As of 2024, top CEOs make nearly 300 times more than their average employee, a trend driven by stock buybacks and corporate greed rather than merit.
Since 1978, CEO pay increased by 1,085%, while typical worker pay rose only 24%. In 2023, CEOs at the top 350 U.S. firms earned 290 times more than the average worker.
This would not have been news to Niccolo Machiavelli, the father of modern political science. In his masterwork, The Discourses, he observed the human condition as that of constant struggle:
Niccolo Machiavelli
“It was a saying of ancient writers, that men afflict themselves in evil, and become weary of the good, and that both these dispositions produce the same effects.
“For when men are no longer obliged to fight from necessity, they fight from ambition, which passion is so powerful in the hearts of men that it never leaves them, no matter to what height they may rise.
“The reason for this is that nature has created men so that they desire everything, but are unable to attain it. Desire being thus always greater than the faculty of acquiring, discontent with what they have and dissatisfaction with themselves result from it.
“This causes the changes in their fortunes—for as some men desire to have more, while others fear to lose what they have, enmities and war are the consequences. And this brings about the ruin of one province and the elevation of another.”
Author Walter Scheidel, Dickason Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Classics and History at Stanford University, has also given this subject a great deal of thought. And, like Machiavelli, he has reached some highly disturbing conclusions.
Walter Scheidel
World Economic Forum [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D
Scheidel gave voice to these in his 2017 book, The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century. His thesis: Only violence and catastrophes have consistently reduced inequality throughout history.
According to the book’s jacket blurb: “Are mass violence and catastrophes the only forces that can seriously decrease economic inequality? To judge by thousands of years of history, the answer is yes.
“Tracing the global history of inequality from the Stone Age to today, Walter Scheidel shows that inequality never dies peacefully. Inequality declines when carnage and disaster strike and increases when peace and stability return.
“The Great Leveler is the first book to chart the crucial role of violent shocks in reducing inequality over the full sweep of human history around the world.
“Ever since humans began to farm, herd livestock, and pass on their assets to future generations, economic inequality has been a defining feature of civilization. Over thousands of years, only violent events have significantly lessened inequality.
“The ‘Four Horsemen’ of leveling—mass-mobilization warfare, transformative revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic plagues—have repeatedly destroyed the fortunes of the rich….
“Today, the violence that reduced inequality in the past seems to have diminished, and that is a good thing. But it casts serious doubt on the prospects for a more equal future.”
Revolutionaries have known the truth of Scheidel’s findings from the gladiators’ revolt of Spartacus (73 – 71 B.C.) to the French Revolution (1789 – 1799) to the overthrow of the Czarist Romanov dynasty (1917).
But American politicians serenely ignore that truth. They depend on the mega-rich for millions of dollars in “campaign contributions”—which pay for self-glorifying ads on TV.
Thus, in 2016, American voters had a “choice” between two “love-the-rich” Presidential candidates: Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The result was that millions stayed home or voted in protest for third-party candidates who had no chance of winning.
In his 1975 book, The Corrupt Society: From Ancient Greece to Modern-day America, British historian Robert Payne warned that the predatory rich would not change their behavior: “Nor is there any likelihood that the rich will plow back their money into services to ensure the general good.
“They have rarely demonstrated social responsibility, and they are much more likely to hold on to their wealth at all costs than to renounce any part of it.
“Like the tyrant who lives in a world wholly remote from the world of the people, shielded and protected from all possible influences, the rich are usually the last to observe the social pressures rising from below, and when these social pressures reach flashpoint, it is too late to call in the police or the army.
“The tyrant dies; the police and the army go over to the revolutionaries; and the new government dispossesses the rich by decree. A single authoritative sentence suffices to expunge all private wealth and restore it to the service of the nation.”
For millions of struggling, impoverished Americans, that day cannot come soon enough.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Politics, Social commentary on March 23, 2026 at 12:26 am
Americans are used to Presidential candidates telling lies (euphemistically known as “campaign promises”) to get elected.
But when a candidate actually (and usually accidentally) tells the truth, the results can be electrifying.
On June 18, 2019, Democratic Presidential candidate (and future President Joseph Biden addressed a roomful of donors in New York.
The former Vice President believed that his message would comfort his well-heeled audience of billionaires: Don’t worry, if I’m elected, your standard of living won’t change.
Addressing the 100 or so guests at a fundraiser at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City, Biden said that he had taken heat from “some of the people on my team, on the Democratic side” because he had said that rich people were “just as patriotic as poor people.
Joe Biden
“The truth of the matter is, you all, you all know, you all know in your gut what has to be done. We can disagree in the margins but the truth of the matter is it’s all within our wheelhouse and nobody has to be punished. No one’s standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change,” he said.
And he added: “I mean, we may not want to demonize anybody who has made money.
“When we have income inequality as large as we have in the United States today, it brews and ferments political discord and basic revolution. Not a joke. Not a joke … It allows demagogues to step in and say the reason where we are is because of the ‘other’….
“You’re not the other. I need you very badly. I hope if I win this nomination, I won’t let you down. I promise you. I have a bad reputation, I always say what I mean. The problem is I sometimes say all that I mean.”
Biden had talked about decreasing income inequality and promoting workers’ rights. But he took a carefully moderate stance when it came to taxation.
United States Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT), on the other hand, has attacked the ultra-rich as responsible for the ever-widening gap between themselves and the poor.
“I love Bernie, but I’m not Bernie Sanders. I don’t think 500 billionaires are the reason why we’re in trouble,” Biden said in March, 2019.
Instead, he proposed expanding tax credits for the poor and middle class, and making the tax code less friendly to rich investors.
Robert Payne, the distinguished British historian, took a different—and darker—view of the rich.
Robert Payne
Payne authored more than 110 books. Among his subjects were Adolf Hitler, Ivan the Terrible, Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, William Shakespeare and Leon Trotsky.
In 1975, he published The Corrupt Society: From Ancient Greece to Present-Day America. It proved a summary of many of his previous works.
Among the epochs it covered: The civilizations of ancient Greece, Rome and China; Nazi Germany; the Soviet Union; and Watergate-era America. And the massive corruption each of those epochs had spawned.
In his chapter, “A View of the Uncorrupted Society,” Payne warned: Power and wealth are the main sources of corruption.
“The rich, simply by being rich, are infected with corruption. Their overwhelming desire is to grow richer, but they can do this only at the expense of those who are poorer than themselves.
”Their interests conflict with those of the overall society. They live sheltered from the constant anxieties of the poor, and thus cannot understand them. Nor do they try to.”
They see the poor as alien from themselves, and thus come to fear and despise them. And their wealth and influence enables them to buy politicians—who, in turn, write legislation that protects the rich from the poor.
But Payne foresaw an even greater danger from the rich and powerful than their mere isolation from the rest of society: “The mere presence of the rich is corrupting. Their habits, their moral codes, their delight in conspicuous consumption are permanent affronts to the rest of humanity. Vast inequalities of wealth are intolerable in any decent society.”
Robert Payne
Writing in 1975, Payne noted that a third of the private wealth was possessed by less than five percent of the population—while about a fifth of the populace lived at the poverty level. By 2000, he predicted, about five percent of the population would possess two-thirds of America’s wealth. And more than half the population would be near or below the starvation level.
The result could only be catastrophe. The only way to halt this this increasing concentration of wealth by fewer people would be through law or violent revolution.
Payne has proven to be an uncanny prophet.
According to Fortune, by 2024: “Over the past 30 years, the U.S.’s top 1% got richer, and now hold nearly a third of the nation’s wealth.”
And the January 30, 2026 edition of Forbes carries this assessment: “The net worth of the top 1% in the U.S. has been above a share of 30% almost consistently since 2014, while the top 10% currently own just over 68% of the country’s wealth.
“This is in stark contrast to just 2.5% of U.S. net worth in the hands of the 50% at the bottom of the wealth ladder.”
But this situation need not remain permanent.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on February 27, 2026 at 12:15 am
According to a January 18, 2020 CNN story, President Donald Trump couldn’t understand why he had been impeached.
“Why are they doing this to me?” an anonymous source quoted Trump as saying repeatedly. Over the weekend of January 18-19, 2020, Trump told people around him at Mar-a-Lago that he “can’t understand why he is impeached.”
For starters, he could have read the legal brief that Democratic House managers had filed with the Senate:
“President Donald J. Trump used his official powers to pressure a foreign government to interfere in a United States election for his personal political gain, and then attempted to cover up his scheme by obstructing Congress’s investigation into his misconduct.
“The Constitution provides a remedy when the President commits such serious abuses of his office: impeachment and removal. The Senate must use that remedy now to safeguard the 2020 U.S. election, protect our constitutional form of government, and eliminate the threat that the President poses to America’s national security.”
But Trump completely dismissed such arguments, despite the overwhelming evidence backing them up.
Donald Trump
Trump had become internationally notorious as a liar. By December 16, 2019, The Washington Post reported that he had made 15,413 false or misleading statements.
But there was no reason to doubt his sincerity when he said he didn’t know why he had been impeached.
And backing up that assertion would be no less an authority than the late British historian and author, Robert Payne.
Payne authored more than 110 books. Among his subjects were Adolf Hitler, Ivan the Terrible, Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, William Shakespeare and Leon Trotsky.
In 1975, he published The Corrupt Society: From Ancient Greece to Present-Day America. Among the epochs it covered were the civilizations of ancient Greece, Rome and China; Nazi Germany; the Soviet Union; and Watergate-era America.
Robert Payne
Forty-one years before Donald Trump entered the White House, Payne offered a terrifying examination of the future President’s character.
In his chapter, “The Corrupt Individual,” Payne writes: “The corrupt man walks alone, gathering more and more power and wealth to himself, leaving a trail of destruction wherever he passes until he finally destroys himself.
“One aspect of him is immediately recognizable: His contempt for his fellow men. Hence his ruthlessness, his celebration of himself at the expense of everyone else, his absorption in his own affairs to the exclusion of all other affairs.
“Hence, too, his secretiveness, his intense sensitivity to real or imagined slights, for his contempt does not exclude a certain fear. He is necessarily a conspirator who imagines that his fellow men are conspiring against him.”
The corrupt man holds human life in contempt. He does not care how many people he kills or destroys on his march to fame, wealth or power—and to maintain himself in any or all of them.
When a nation is weak and divided, “a tyrant arises to take advantage of their weakness and divisiveness. He comes usually from the middle or upper class.”
He quickly identifies himself with a political party offering revolutionary changes. Then he takes control of it and turns it into his vehicle to power.
“He acts decisively and ruthlessly, driving wedges between people and setting them in opposition to one another. He is the master of corruption, and if necessary he will seek to corrupt the whole state to maintain his power. His weapons are the familiar weapons of subversion, treachery, and lies.”
Tyrants plunge into dangerous foreign adventures because it allows them to assert power over others with almost no domestic oversight. This makes them feel important—and distracts their subjects from worrying about internal affairs.
Tyrants shout, “We need law and order!”—while they are the most lawless thieves and murderers.
Tyrants learn nothing from the past or their own failures. Their characters do not change or develop. They surround themselves with sycophants and regard disagreement as treason. Because others fear to approach them with bad news—such as their armies have revolted—tyrants live in a world of lies and delusions.
Only when it is too late do they learn how widely-hated they are—and how determined their enemies are to destroy them.
Writes Payne:
“In our own age it becomes more and more difficult to wage war against corruption. The corrupt tend increasingly to acquire power, and the uncorrupted want more and more to be left alone.
“This is why it is so necessary to recognize the corrupt individual, the potential tyrant, to observe him closely, and wherever possible, to destroy him.”
Most Americans ignore history, believing that it has nothing worthwhile to offer them. When American military advisers in Vietnam were warned that the French had fought a losing war against the Vietcong, they responded: “They didn’t kill enough Vietcong.”
When Americans think of Fascistic dictatorships, they think of Adolf Hitler’s Germany and Benito Mussolini’s Italy—both of which ended 80 years ago in 1945.
They don’t think that such a dictatorship could ever happen here—or that, under a Republican party obsessed with holding absolute power, it has already happened.
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THREE WAYS A TYRANT CAN LOSE POWER: PART ONE (OF TWO)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 10, 2026 at 12:16 amA dictator can die of illness or old age. That’s what happened to Francisco Franco (Spain), Mao Zedong (China) and Fidel Castro (Cuba).
But there are other ways a tyrant can be forced to give up power—such as the following three.
Death by Bodyguards
First up: Gaius Caligula, the “Mad Emperor” of Imperial Rome.
Caligula’s reign spanned March 18, 37 A.D. to January 24, 41 A.D.—four years.
Gaius Caligula
Carole Raddato from FRANKFURT, Germany, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
He became Emperor in 37 A.D. after succeeding the Emperor Tiberius, his uncle who had adopted him as a son after his father died.
Caligula’s reign began well—and popularly. He gave Tiberius a magnificent funeral—then recalled to Rome all those whom Tiberius had banished, and ignored all charges that Tiberius had leveled against them.
He gave bonuses to the military and allowed the magistrates unrestricted jurisdiction, without appeal to himself.
But in October 37 A.D. he fell seriously ill or perhaps was poisoned.
Caligula soon recovered but emerged a changed man. He began claiming to be a god, and killing or exiling anyone he saw as a threat. He ordered his victims tortured to death with many slight wounds: “Strike so that he may feel that he is dying.”
Among his litany of crimes, according to his biographer, Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus:
“He forced parents to attend the executions of their sons, sending a litter for one man who pleaded ill health, and inviting another to dinner immediately after witnessing the death, and trying to rouse him to gaiety and jesting by a great show of affability.”
For all his cruelty and egomania, the trait that finally destroyed Caligula was his joy in humiliating others.
His fatal mistake was to taunt Cassius Chaerea, a member of his own bodyguard. Caligula considered Chaerea effeminate because of a weak voice and mocked him with names like “Priapus” and “Venus.”
On January 22 41 A.D. Chaerea and several other bodyguards hacked Caligula to death with swords before other guards could save him.
Death by Suicide
Next up: Adolf Hitler, dictator of Nazi Germany from January 30, 1933, to April 30, 1945—12 years.
He was born on April 20, 1889, in Braunau am Inn in Austria-Hungary.
Adolf Hitler
He was appointed Chancellor—chief law enforcement officer—of Germany on January 30, 1933, by President Paul von Hindenburg. Upon Hindenburg’s death in 1934, Hitler assumed the Presidency and established himself as absolute dictator.
From 1933 to 1939 he presided over Germany’s rapid economic recovery from the Great Depression, the defiance of restrictions imposed on Germany after World War 1, and the annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia, where millions of ethnic Germans lived.
These accomplishments won him widespread popular support.
But after absorbing Czechoslovakia in 1938, Hitler felt himself invincible. On September 1, 1939, his armies attacked Poland—and unintentionally ignited World War II.
After conquering Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France, Greece and Yugoslavia, he made his two greatest mistakes of the war: He invaded the far more powerful Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, and declared war on the equally more powerful United States on December 11.
Parallel to unleashing a war that slaughtered 50 million people, Hitler orchestrated the extermination of at least six million Jews during the Holocaust.
By April, 1945, Germany faced destruction from the advancing Russians on the East, and from the advancing Americans on the West.
On April 30, with Russian forces only blocks from his underground bunker, Hitler lifted a heavy 7.65mm Walther PPK pistol to his right temple, bit on a cyanide capsule, and pulled the trigger.
Just as Caligula’s mangled remains were hastily burned and buried in the Horti Lamiani gardens, Hitler’s body was hastily cremated in the Reich Chancellery garden.
Last up: Joseph Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union from January 21, 1924, to March 5, 1953—29 years.
Born on December 18, 1878, in Georgia, Russia, he hated Czarist rule and in 1903 joined the Communist Bolsheviks party, led by Vladimir Lenin, to overthrow it.
Joseph Stalin
On November 7, 1917, Lenin overthrew the Provisional Government, which had taken power in February, after Czarist rule collapsed.
Stalin became a member of the new Soviet government, gradually working his way to the position of General Secretary. When Lenin died on January 21, 1924, Stalin outmaneuvered Leon Trotsky, his major rival for the succession, and became absolute dictator.
Starting in 1934, a series of massive purges followed—most notably between August, 1936, and March, 1938.
Throughout his nearly 30-year reign over the Soviet Union, at least 20 million men, women and children died—from executions, deportations, imprisonment in Gulag camps, and a man-made famine through the forced collection of harvests.
Robert Payne, the acclaimed British historian, vividly portrayed the crimes of this murderous tyrant in his brilliant 1965 biography, The Rise and Fall of Stalin.
According to Payne, Stalin was planning yet another purge during the last weeks of his life. This would be “a holocaust greater than any he had planned before.
“This time there would be a chistka [purge] to end all chistkas, a purging of the entire body of the state from top to bottom. No one, not even the highest officials, was to be spared.”
Yet Stalin did nothing to calm their fears. He often summoned his “comrades” to the Kremlin for late-night drinking bouts, where he freely humiliated them.
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