Category: Crazy Stories

All of the dictators profiled in this book, no matter their political stripes, used repression of one sort or another to hold power. It was often directed at their enemies, sometimes illogically, and often with disastrous results. Spanish dictator Francisco Franco was also no stranger to repression and the occasional crazy decision. The lifelong military […]

Cuban dictator Fidel Castro was well-known throughout the world. He led his country for 52 years, making him the longest-serving head of state in modern times. Of course, he was also known for a numerous other interesting, important, and very crazy things. Castro was friends and comrades with the famous Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara, as […]

It should be clear to you by now that one of the craziest things you can do if you ever become a dictator is to start a war with countries before you’re ready to do so, and under no means should you ever consider invading Russia. But Russia isn’t the only country that it’d be […]

As we continue our voyage through the annals of the worst—or best (depending on how you look at it)—dictators in history, you’ll notice that some made more crazy decisions than others and some just made a few crazy decisions that had major repercussions on history. Our next dictator is one of the most recognizable despots […]

Often thought of as just another Latin American caudillio, Argentine dictator Juan Perón is often overlooked in more popular histories in favor of other dictators. Sure, you probably vaguely remember that Madonna starred in a very forgettable musical about Perón and his wife titled Evita, but what do you really know about Juan Perón? In […]

Revolutions are an interesting thing. They wipe away the old regime in way that often takes on a life of its own and, in the end, usually reflects the path that the revolution took before establishing a new regime. The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1918 was born out of despair, poverty and violence and […]

Our next dictator, Kim Jong-Un of North Korea, is unique because he’s still in power, so currently there’s no telling how some of the crazy things he has done will impact his rule or his country. He inherited rule from his father, Kim Jong-Il, and appears to be just as dictatorial as him, but he […]

All of the dictators we’ve profiled so far did some pretty crazy things that led to massive death tolls, the collapse of their regimes, or both. We’ve also seen that food and poverty were also often used as a weapon by dictators to either keep their populations in line or to punish a group within […]

Since he is a pretty recent dictator, we tend to know more about former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein than most of the others on our list. We know him as the guy who invaded Kuwait in 1990 and who then had his country invaded by an American-led military coalition in 1991. The Americans returned again […]

Let’s go from the black Hitler to the real Hitler. Of course, Adolf Hitler needs no introduction in the world of dictators, as he stands above all others, except for maybe Stalin, in terms of brutality and a bad reputation. Hitler’s body count has been put in the tens of millions if you consider World […]