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When we think of despots and dictators, it's often their notorious record of cruelty and brutality that springs to mind. But what were these people like before the evil? Some of the most infamous tyrants were well-read, highly educated individuals. Civilized, almost. Most, however, endured miserable childhoods—hardship and unhappiness that followed them into adulthood. But what really shaped them into becoming among the world's most wicked and degenerate totalitarians?
Click through this gallery and learn of the world's worst dictators as young men.
Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, in Braunau am Inn, a town in Austria-Hungary (present-day Austria).
As a child, Hitler was shy and socially awkward. He shunned physical activity except for the occasional walk. He also liked to swim. This photograph shows Hitler in elementary school. He's standing in the center of the top row.
As a young man, Hitler expressed a desire to become an artist. He applied for admission to the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, but was rejected twice. Disillusioned, Hitler, like many Austrian Germans, began to develop German nationalist views. He was living in Munich in 1914 and was photographed in Odeonsplatz among the crowds listening to a speech the day after Germany declared war on Russia.
Hitler (seen here on the right) fought in the First World War and was awarded an Iron Cross for bravery. Shocked by Germany's capitulation in November 1918 and the humiliation that followed in the wake of the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler joined a fledgling organization called the National Socialist German Workers' Party, better known as the Nazi Party.
Joseph Stalin was born on December 18, 1878, in Gori, Georgia, then part of the Russian Empire. Though his family experienced poverty, Stalin excelled at school. In 1894, he enrolled as a trainee Russian Orthodox priest at the Tiflis Theological Seminary, but eventually lost interest in his studies.
It was after reading Das Kapital that Stalin began to embrace Karl Marx's philosophy of Marxism. He organized secret workers' meetings and encouraged strikes.
His activities caught the eye of the Czarist secret police, and, in April 1902, Stalin was arrested. He was sentenced to three years exile in Siberia, but later escaped. Stalin ended back in Georgia where he aligned himself with the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin.
Active throughout the Revolution of 1905 and later the First World War, the October Revolution, and Russian Civil War, Stalin still found time to edit the newspaper Pravda. Arrested and imprisoned on several occasions during this period, he eventually became part of the leadership in Lenin's government. When Lenin died in 1924, Stalin, as General Secretary of the Communist Party, swiftly rose to power.
Benito Mussolini always expressed pride in his humble beginnings. Born on July 29, 1883 in the small town of Dovia di Predappio, the Mussolini family were poor but politically aware: Benito Mussolini's father idolized 19th-century Italian nationalist figures, including the republican and revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi.
Despite the violent character he'd nurtured, Mussolini eventually qualified as an elementary schoolmaster in July 1901. In 1902, he emigrated to Switzerland, where he became active in the Italian socialist movement. His advocacy of a violent general strike saw Mussolini briefly serve time in a Bernese jail.
Back in Italy, the intelligent and widely read Mussolini began working as a political journalist. In 1912, he was awarded editorship of the Italian Socialist Party newspaper Avanti!
Mussolini ultimately lost his job on the newspaper and was expelled from the party after favoring Italy's intervention in the First World War. He joined the fight. In 1918, he advocated for the emergence of a dictator to confront the economic and political crisis then gripping Italy. "Viva l’Italia!" he exhorted. It was the birth cry of fascism.
Mao Zedong was born on December 26, 1893, into a peasant family in Shaoshan, central China. Mao's father was a stern disciplinarian who regularly beat his children. Mao enjoyed only a rudimentary education before having to work full time on his family's farm.
Mao eventually trained as a teacher and relocated to Beijing. There he was exposed to Marxist literature and, in 1921, became a founding member of the Chinese Communist Party.
The anti-communist purges after the end of the Second World War led to civil war between the Communists and the Kuomintang nationalist party. A Communist victory prompted Mao in October 1949 to proclaim the founding of the People's Republic of China.
Mao's attempt to introduce a more 'Chinese' form of communism—the "Great Leap Forward"—led to famine and the deaths of millions. The subsequent "Cultural Revolution" launched by Mao in 1966 saw 1.5 million people die and much of the country's cultural heritage destroyed.
Since its establishment in 1948, North Korea has been governed as a totalitarian dictatorship by just three leaders, all members of the same family. The country's founder, Kim Il Sung, was born on April 15, 1912.
When Kim was an infant his family fled the Japanese occupation of Korea and moved to Manchuria in northern China. While attending school in Manchuria, he became interested in communist ideologies and joined a communist youth organization. He was arrested and jailed for his activities with the group in 1929–30.
Released from incarceration, Kim joined the Korean guerrilla resistance against the Japanese occupation. In 1940, he crossed the border into the Soviet Union and received military training before joining the Red Army.
Joseph Stalin saw in Kim Il Sung a potential communist leader on the Korean Peninsula. Kim was promptly dispatched to northern Korea to prepare for his role. To solidify his control, Kim established the Korean People's Army, aligned with the Communist Party, and sought to reunite the Korean Peninsula under his rule. With Stalin's backing, Kim ordered North Korean troops to invade South Korea in June 1950, precipitating the Korean War. Kim is pictured sitting in the front row, second from the right, as a member of the 88th Separate Rifle Brigade, an international military unit of the Red Army.
Saloth Sar, better known as Pol Pot, was born on May 19, 1928, in the small fishing village of Prek Sbauv in French Cambodia. Pot, whose family were relatively prosperous, was educated in a series of French-speaking schools. In 1949, he won a scholarship to study in Paris, where he became involved in communist politics.
Pol Pot was inspired by the writings of Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin (pictured together in 1949) on how to conduct a revolution. In 1953, he became one of the leaders of an underground communist movement known as the Khmer Rouge.
In the early 1960s, the Khmer Rouge were at war with the government of Prince Sihanouk. In 1970, Sihanouk was overthrown in a coup. Prime Minister Lon Nol became the de facto head of state, which led to civil war between Lon Nol's army and the Khmer Rouge.
In April 1975, the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, captured the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. Pot reset the calendar to "Year Zero" and attempted to transform Cambodia into his vision of a communist, rural society. Hundreds of thousands died, their corpses ending up in the infamous Killing Fields. Pot is today considered one of the most brutal despots in world history.
Saddam Hussein was born on April 28, 1937, in al-Awja, a small village near Tikrit in northern Iraq. His early life was marred by tragedy and disappointment. His father left shorty after he was born; soon afterwards, his older brother died. His mother, unable to cope, offloaded her son to an uncle. The upheaval meant Saddam didn't start school until he was 10 years old.
It was Saddam's uncle, an ardent Arab nationalist, who introduced the impressionable teenager to the world of politics. In 1957, at age 20, Saddam joined the Ba'ath Party.
Saddam quickly made an enemy of the Iraqi government, involved as he was in a 1959 attempt to assassinate the prime minister. Forced to flee, Saddam went into exile, first in Syria and later Egypt. He returned to Iraq in 1963 after the Ba'ath Party overthrew the government and took power.
The Ba'ath Party itself was overthrown in 1964, forcing Saddam to once again flee abroad. In 1968, when the party regained power, Saddam was made vice president and the chief of Iraq's notorious secret police. In 1979, Saddam Hussein became President of Iraq.
Born in Birán, Cuba, on August 13, 1926, Fidel Castro regularly misbehaved at boarding school and didn't excel academically until he began to study law at the University of Havana in 1945.
Castro graduated as a Doctor of Law in September 1950, but throughout his studies had adopted leftist ideas and become an ardent anti-imperialist. When the military dictator General Fulgencio Batista moved to the right, solidifying ties with both the wealthy elite and the United States while severing diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, Castro was determined to oust the regime.
Castro formed a group called "The Movement." On July 26, 1953, he led an armed raid by revolutionaries on the Moncada Barracks. But the attack failed, with many of the rebels captured and later executed.
Castro managed to evade capture, but was soon apprehended. He later stood trial along with the surviving rebels and served 22 months in prison. The assault on the barracks is widely accepted as the beginning of the Cuban Revolution.
Vladimir Putin's childhood was rife with hardship. A native of Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), the young Putin literally fought his way out of deprivation, taking up judo and the Russian martial art of sambo at age 12 while at the same time reading the works of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Lenin.
Putin (seen here second from left back row) studied law at Leningrad State University, graduating in 1975. That same year, he joined the Soviet intelligence service, otherwise known as the KGB.
A fluent German speaker, Putin was posted to the East German city of Dresden in 1985 using a cover identity as a translator. He was, in fact, working as one of the KGB's liaison officers to the Stasi secret police.
It was while stationed in East Germany that he witnessed firsthand the collapse of a communist state. In 1990, he retired from the KGB and returned to Saint Petersburg. In 1996, he moved to Moscow, where he joined the presidential staff. Two years later, Russian President Boris Yeltsin made him director of the federal security service. Yeltsin, who was seeking an heir to assume his mantle, appointed Putin prime minister in 1999. By the end of that year, Vladimir Putin was Acting President of the Russian Federation.
Sources: (Holocaust Encyclopedia) (BBC) (Britannica) (History.com)
The early years of infamous dictators and despots
Were these individuals born to be evil?
LIFESTYLE History
When we think of despots and dictators, it's often their notorious record of cruelty and brutality that springs to mind. But what were these people like before the evil? Some of the most infamous tyrants were well-read, highly educated individuals. Civilized, almost. Most, however, endured miserable childhoods—hardship and unhappiness that followed them into adulthood. But what really shaped them into becoming among the world's most wicked and degenerate totalitarians?
Click through this gallery and learn of the world's worst dictators as young men.