The Fate of Dictators
How the tyrants of history have sooner or later met their end.
When Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine at the end of February 2022, the world saw what we thought we had left behind in another decade: a dictator. Vladimir Putin is using his absolute power to make aggressive military moves aimed at restoring what he sees as the former glory and geographic security of the Soviet Union. He has suppressed all independent journalism, ordered the widespread arrest of any protesters, held massive rallies for himself and humiliating his terrified senior staff on national TV. Putin is now a card-carrying member of a club that includes some of histories most brutal fiends and influence historical figures. But membership in this particular club does not come without its costs.
Now in April 2022, the Russian invasion of Ukraine falters, and Putin has tried to save face by changing objectives to focus on the eastern separatist regions. No doubt he is feeling the pressure that is unique to his position, and this is what makes a man like him so dangerous: he must succeed, whatever the cost. The reason is because many past dictators who failed were met with painful, grisly, humiliating deaths. Worst of all, they remain forever detested in the annals of history. Only a select few have managed to survive, slipping through the cracks of history and die in peace as old men, their crimes fading away with the coming of new generations. Which fate will Putin meet?
In order to better contend with Putin and the other living dictators of our time, let’s take a look at who some of history’s tyrants, their legacies and how they met their end.
Nicolae Ceaușescu, age 71
After fifteen years of totalitarian rule, Romanian president Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife were captured and killed on December 25, 1989 as they tried to flee in the midst of an anti-Soviet revolution. Ceaușescu was one of the most repressive authoritarians of the Eastern Bloc, known for his secret police, mass surveillance, strict control of the media, nepotism in government and human rights abuses. After his capture, he and his wife were hastily put on trial by Romania’s provisional government where they were both found guilty of genocide from having ordered soldiers to fire on protesters, killing a claimed 60,000 (the real number was probably around 1,000). Despite his desperate claims that the trial was illegitimate and he was still the legal president, Ceaușescu and his wife were immediately taken outside the building where a firing squad was waiting for the summary execution. The Ceaușescus were blindfolded and shot to death by paratroopers with automatical rifles. A television crew filmed the entire trial and execution and proof of these events was spread throughout the Eastern Bloc in the following days. If you have the stomach for it, you can actually watch the whole thing on YouTube. Yet another dictator who met a terrifyingly grim end.
Saddam Hussein, age 69
After being in power for over three decades, Saddam Hussein was executed on December 30, 2006 by the interim Iraqi government that had formed after the fall of Bagdad three years earlier. Though the U.S. operation in Iraq would continue for years to come, the president and authoritarian leader of the country had been ousted, his two sons killed in a spectacular three-hour gun fight with U.S. forces, and finally captured. An Iraqi special tribunal held a trial for Hussein that convicted him of crimes against humanity for rounding up and killing 148 people in 1982 as a reprisal for an assassination attempt against him earlier that year. Though this was enough to seal his fate, Hussein is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands through actions considered by many to be genocide. The brutal autocrat managed to stay in power through wars, assassination attempts, coup d’état attempts and more. But when he found himself in the cross hairs of the United States of America still mourning over the September 11 terror attacks, his number finally came up. As with Ceaușescu, you can watch this execution on YouTube if you really want to.
Muammar Gaddafi, age 68
On October 20, 2011, Muammar Gaddafi’s four decades of rule over Libya came to a violent, merciless end as he was captured and killed by forces of the interim Libyan government. Protests against his rule had started in 2009, and by 2011, with the momentum of the Arab Spring in the region, the unrest in Libya culminated into a full blown revolution and civil war. Opposition forces backed by NATO fought to oust Gaddafi, eventually bombing him out of his playboy palaces in Tripoli and chasing him and a small entourage north to a town on the Mediterranean coast. The rebel militia eventually forced him to surrender, and upon discovering that they had captured their detested authoritarian leader, a scene of chaotic, savage retribution ensued. The details vary from different accounts, and the gruesome videos on YouTube offer only snippets of insight, but it’s clear enough that Gaddafi was terrified as he was beaten, abused and mutilated, then finally shot in the face at point blank range. After the rebels stripped the body naked and posed for photos with the lifeless corpse, Gaddafi’s remains were dumped onto a mattress in a cold storage room and put on public display for the next few days. Everyone in the country had the chance to see with their own eyes that their former dictator was dead as a doornail. It’s hard to think of a worse way to die than that.
Joseph Stalin, Age 74
Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, after defeating Nazi Germany in the deadliest theater of war in history, making a global superpower out of the Soviet Union, died on March 5, 1953 after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage at his personal residence. The dictator’s health had already begun to decline by the end of World War II, making him extremely paranoid of political rivals who he feared would take advantage of the situation and seek power for themselves. Stalin continued his brutal suppression of dissidents, malcontents, religious organizations, artists and suspected traitors, expanding the Gulags and using this huge prison labor force to rebuild the nation. In the years leading up to his death, his political activity severely declined, giving few speeches and writing far less than earlier in his career. His mistrust and brutality showed no sign of weakening, though, as he imprisoned his own doctors and had others tortured and executed on conspiracy charges. Joseph Stalin, the man who killed over ten million people through judicial executions, Gulag imprisonment, class warfare, political purges, massacres, torture of POWs and famine caused by economic mismanagement, never faced any significant consequence for his actions. Never arrested, never tried, and never punished, he lived to the end of his natural life as we all aspire to do. Fate, it would seem, let one slip through the cracks.
Francisco Franco, Age 82
This military dictator, who ruled Spain for thirty-five years after overthrowing the Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War, died on November 20, 1975 at a hospital in Madrid, surrounded by his family. Francisco Franco had been battling Parkinson’s disease and had suffered several heart attacks before he slipped into a coma in the weeks leading to his death. Despite owing his successful rise to power to Hitler’s military and logistical assistance in the Spanish Civil War, Franco never chose to involve his country in World War II, although he toyed with the idea on many occasions. From the sidelines, Franco weighed the pros and cons of joining the Axis powers and bolstering the western front against the United Kingdom and the French resistance. In the end, negotiations with Hitler reached an impasse over who would gain control of colonies in Africa, and fears of economic reprisal from the U.S. and dominance the Royal Air Force kept Spain out of the war. Given the grim fate suffered by Mussolini and Hitler at the war’s conclusion, this would prove to be a wise decision. Franco was able to continue his rule with absolute power, suppressing dissent with around half a million extrajudicial killings and state executions attributed to him. Despite this, Spain became an important ally to the West as the Cold War ramped up, receiving a state visit from U.S. President Eisenhower and gaining admission into the United Nations. All in all, Franco appears to have led a long, dramatic and fulfilling life in the seat of power, as if crime (against humanity) does indeed pay.
Mao Zedong, Age 82
On September 9, 1976, one of the most influential people of the twentieth century, Mao Zedong, died four days after suffering his third heart attack at a hospital in Beijing. In the years leading up to his death, he opened the country to a now-famous state visit from U.S. President Richard Nixon, which solidified his country’s place as a major player on the world stage. In his twenty-seven years as Chairman of Communist Party, Mao Zedong brought two decades of civil war to an end and unified the country through the Communist Revolution. Later he launched the Cultural Revolution, a violent rejection of established tradition and capitalist influence to preserve communism as the one and only ideology. His most effective weapons in this fight were purges led by the infamous Red Guard, who brought about violent persecution, internment at labor camps, mass execution and widespread famine. Tens of millions of people were killed under his rule, with some estimates ranging as high as eighty million dead. His legacy is a controversial one, with some condemning him to the same brutal chapter of history where Hitler and Stalin have etched their legacies and others revering him as great leader and the father of a nation. Whatever the case, those who may have wanted to oust, capture and kill him never did get their chance, and Mao Zedong was able to live to become an old man, fathering ten children and twelve grandchildren.
Fidel Castro, Age 90
Eight years after stepping down as president of Cuba, Fidel Castro died on November 25, 2016 of a still-undisclosed condition regarded as natural causes due to advanced age. After leading the Cuban government for forty-nine years and finally seeing his physical condition weaken, he handed control to his brother Raúl Castro. In his last few months, he spoke openly about his upcoming death, preparing his country for a continued commitment to communism in his absence. In South Florida, news of his death was met with celebration by some who had fled Cuba in decades past seeking to avoid human rights abuse and the privation of economic isolation brought on by Castro’s regime. In other places around the world, Castro’s death was mourned, the world having lost a champion of social and economic justice and an influence leader in socialist ideology. Had the Cuban Missile Crisis not been resolved by diplomatic means, the world could have plunged into another world war between nuclear armed super powers, and Castro’s fate could have been very different. His part in allowing the Soviet Union the build missile sites in his country invited the attention of President Kennedy, who nearly ordered U.S. forces to invade Cuba. Castro could easily have been overthrown, captured, tried and ended up in prison or executed. That he lived into to age ninety and had many grandchildren is a stroke of good luck in the pages of history.
Benito Mussolini, Age 61
The Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini was captured by Italian communist partisan forces and executed on April 28, 1945. Facing imminent defeat in World War II, Mussolini desperately tried to escape the American forces invading from the south and the partisan forces rising up around him. But before he could reach the Swiss border as he had planned, his luck ran out. Mussolini’s identity was discovered and he and his mistress were taken by partisan forces to a private villa in a small town in northern Italy. There, with no trial and no fanfare, he and his mistress were shot to death—riddled with bullets by submachine gun. Later that night, their bodies were transported to Milan where they were beaten, abused and mutilated before being hung upside down alongside other executed fascists.
Adolf Hitler, Age 56
On April 29, 1945, Adolf Hitler, the most notorious of all dictators and generally regarded to be the most evil man who ever lived, swallowed a hydrogen-cyanide capsule, put a pistol under his chin and pulled the trigger. He was deep underground in the Führerbunker, an air raid shelter used as his headquarters in the final years of the war, while Soviet tanks rolled through the rubble-strewn streets of Berlin. Hitler had only the day before been informed that his long-time ally and mentor Benito Mussolini had been captured and executed by Italian partisan forces. Desperate to spare himself a similar fate, or what likely would be far worse worse at the hands of vengeful Soviet troops, Hitler chose to end his life. He knew his time was up, that there was no place left on this Earth for him anymore. He could not continue leading Germany, he could not resign, nor retire, nor accept exile, nor escape — his fate was sealed.
