Category: Crazy Stories

Our next dictator is an interesting case because he not only did some crazy things that caused a lot of misery, he was one of the few cases that had a lot of outside support and people who hoped he’d succeed. Robert Mugabe was the first leader of Zimbabwe, first as the prime minister from […]

Aviator sunglasses… check! Plenty of medals never won in battle…check! Female bodyguards… Meet former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, known to his people as the “Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution of Libya,” or sometimes just as “Colonel Gaddafi.” Gaddafi was perhaps the most eccentric dictator in our book; he did plenty of crazy stuff […]

When we think of a prototypical Latin American dictator, leftwing or rightwing, images of a man with carefully coifed facial hair wearing a uniform with plenty of medals and possibly a nice pair of aviator sunglasses come to mind. Pinochet, who we’ve already met, and Castro, who we’ll meet later, more or less conformed to […]

The 1990s may have seemed like a boring time for many people in the world, especially historians. When the Cold War ended in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, most people around the world breathed a sigh of relief, as it was believed that the threat of nuclear Armageddon had dissipated. It also […]

When you think of dictators, Napoleon Bonaparte usually isn’t the first person to come to mind. He never subjected any people to mass starvation, he never devised a large and elaborate system of prison camps, and he never had pictures of himself painted and distributed throughout the land. Napoleon also didn’t wear military medals that […]

When Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu was overthrown on December 21, 1989, and executed the next day, it happened so quickly that many people around the world almost missed it. After all, it happened within the bigger picture of communism collapsing throughout Eastern Europe, so it was quickly overlooked in the chaos. But Ceauşescu held the […]

Dictators for the most part are very manipulative people. They know how to give the people what they want, when to take it from them, and what their weaknesses are. The number one strength, or weakness, of any country, is its food supply and the people who produce that food. We’ve already seen how Pol […]

As we continue our journey through the crazy things that dictators have done, it may sometimes seem like a descent into madness. Although there’s really no way of knowing what another person is thinking, it’s clear from the actions of some of these dictators that they had truly flipped their lids. Or that their lids […]

As much as all dictators are infused with a healthy dose of paranoia, many of them—rightwing and leftwing—are actually pretty innovative with their methods of torture and repression. The idea of torturing or killing someone never crosses most of our minds, but dictators are a completely different breed and they tend to attract violent and […]

If there’s one thing that all of the dictators in this book have in common; it is grandiosity and hubris that can’t be contained. They just don’t look at the world the way most of us do, so when they see a problem, they often come up with the craziest way to solve it. And […]