Download Benito Mussolini B. July 29, 1883 Virgin Mary, Giuseppi Garibaldi

Benito Mussolini1
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1
B. July 29, 1883
Virgin Mary, Giuseppi Garibaldi, and Benito Juarez
Banned from church (age 8)
Active inferiority complex
Stabbed classmates on two different occasions
Insatiable lust for women
Elementary school teacher
Astonishing eyes
Karl Marx
Hatred of the rich, the Church, the King, the Army, the Government, Christ
Arrested as a vagrant (1), agitator (2) . . . no fewer than 13 times
Writer, editor for various socialist newspapers
o Il Duce
o Avanti! (Forward!)
o Il Popolo d’ Italia
Strike leader
Initially condemned World War I as a capitalist conflict
o Betrayed the socialists by then supporting war
o Urged war and joined the army (as a private, by choice)
o Wrote a war diary
o War hero (40 shrapnel wounds, 27 operations)
Founded fascism following the war to oppose the socialists / communists
o Priests, poets, philosophers, pimps, pornographers, pilferers, and bankers
o “Blackshirts”
o “Me ne frego!” (“I don’t give a damn!”)
o Violent campaign against socialists / communists resulted in King Victor
Emmanuel’s decision to “entrust you with the task of forming a Cabinet”
Dictator
Lateran Treaty with the Vatican
Widespread support
o Mohandas Gandhi: “I am no superman like Mussolini”
o Winston Churchill: shook his hand and congratulated him for defeating
Communists
o Thomas Edison: “the greatest genius of the modern age”
o Adolf Hitler: sent Mussolini a gushing letter, but Il Duce “refused” Hitler’s letter
Robert Leckie, Delivered from Evil: The Saga of World War II (New York: HarperPerennial, 1988), 11-26.
Adolf Hitler2
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2
B. April 20, 1889
Humble origins
Baptized Catholic
Muttersöhnchen – spoiled, noisy, mischievous Mama’s boy
“Lively and bright youngster . . . orderly and disciplined”
Fascinated by ritual, music, art, and architecture
o Richard Wagner
Contemplated a religious life
The death of his brother, Edmund (age 6) shook Hitler to the core
o Morose, moody, brooding, nervous, arrogant, insolent
o Fell out of “love with the Church”
Worshipped his mother and compare all women to her
Hated his father, who came to symbolize repressive authority
Psychopathic egotist
Denied entry into the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts
Utterly grief stricken following the death of his mother (when he was 18)
Voracious reader, especially mythology, philosophy, architecture, and military history
Spellbinding speaker
Bully
“Worshipped sexual purity” and despised homosexuals and “ladies of easy virtue”
Anti-semitic
Homeless beggar
Remembered “every insult” and eagerly sought revenge for each rebuke
“Dodged” the Austrian draft, but later sought admission into the Germany army
o Courier, usually stationed well behind the front-line
o Wounded twice and won several medals before being temporarily blinded by gas
o Blamed Jews for Germany’s loss
o Also hated the Communists
By 1919, had developed his program for the “destruction” of the Jewish race
Joined the German Worker’s Party, which later became the National Socialist German
Worker’s Party (NAZI), with the “intention of destroying the party and reshaping it to his
own ends”
o Soon took over the party with fiery speeches and violence
o Unser Führer . . . then, Der Füher
Became obsessed with seizing control of the government and ruthlessly ruling it
November 1923: Beer-Hall Putsch (coup)
o Utter failure, Hitler arrested, sentenced to five years in prison, of which he served
9 comfortable months
o Wrote Mein Kampf
 Autobiographical
Robert Leckie, Delivered from Evil: The Saga of World War II (New York: HarperPerennial, 1988), 27-49.
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Blueprint for the destruction of the Judeo-Christian civilization and the
conquest of the world
 Lebensraum
o Decided to overthrow the government by “legal subversion, while building a mass
movement and intimidating the opposition by street terror”
Questionable relationship with Angela “Geli” Raubal, the daughter of his half-sister
o Likely the only woman he ever loved (aside from his mother)
o Drew nude pictures of her
o Rumored to have “whipped” her
o She committed suicide with Hitler’s pistol following an argument with Hitler – he
nearly followed suit
o Hitler made a cult of Geli Raubal
Great Depression proved the catalyst for his revolution
o Street war between the Nazis and Communists
o Hitler blamed the Jews and Communists
o Hitler finished 2nd in the national elections of 1932 (behind Paul von Hindenburg)
 Forced Hindenburg to resign
Joseph Stalin3
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3
B. December 9, 1879 as Iosif Vissarionovich Dzughashvili
Terribly humble origins: “son of peasants . . . [whose] ancestors within memory had been
serfs”
5 feet four inches tall
Nicknamed “Soso,” meaning little Joe.
Only child (3 older brothers died in infancy)
His violent and alcoholic father habitually beat Stalin and his mother, Ekaterina
Doting mother desperately wanted Stalin to become a priest in the Georgian Orthodox
Church
Nearly died from smallpox at 7 and a horse-drawn carriage accident a few years later
o The latter injury left him with a deformed left arm
Attended the Gori theological school
o Insatiable appetite for learning
o He proved to be the “mental superior of his classmates”
o Voracious reader, especially Marx, Darwin, Hugo
o Esteemed by his teachers
Later attended the Tiflis Theological Seminary, on scholarship
o Ordained a priest
“Sullen mood, curt in speech, and always eager to pick a fight”
Atheist
Jealous of the powerful
o “Effective instrument of self-advancement: denunciation”
o He was his only true “cause”
Withdrawn, an outcast
Strike organizer
“Loved bloodshed”
When writing, used the pseudonym “Koba,” meaning “the Indomitable”
Possibly a secret ‘double’ agent for the Okhrana, a counterintelligence agency for the
czar
o Responsible for the death and arrest of many associates
Became an avid Marxist around the age of 18
“Intoxicated” by blood
First wife died, leaving him heartbroken
o “She is dead and with her my last warm feelings for all human beings have died”
Assigned the task of robbing a bank for Vladimir Lenin’s Russian Social Democratic
Labor Party (Bolsheviks)
o Resulted in “great bloodshed . . . scores of innocent people” were killed
o Rose through the Bolshevik ranks by the time of the Russian Revolution
 “Except for Lenin, Stalin was still hated and distrusted by all who knew
him”
Began calling himself Stalin (Man of Steel) by 1917
Robert Leckie, Delivered from Evil: The Saga of World War II (New York: HarperPerennial, 1988), 73-88.
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“Lack of humor,” “wounding sarcasm,” “crude”
o To his mother: “You here too, old whore?”
o To some friends (regarding his daughter): “Well, my friends, who do you think is
*&#$ing her now?”
“Intellectual parrot”
Patient
“Very sparing of courage”
Womanizer
His chief adversaries (Trotsky, Kamenev, Buhkrain) for Lenin’s seat viewed him with
contempt, to their detriment
“Spread his administrative tentacles throughout the Party”
Lenin’s death Testament “asked that Stalin be removed from” power (to no avail)
Within four years, Stalin had taken control of the government
Hated “backwards Russia”
o Ordered a raid on the fairly well-to-do Kulak peasants
o 12 million peasants “disappeared”
o Ordered 25 million peasant farmers into “forced labor” in the cities where their
“suffering was extreme”
“To choose the victim, to prepare the blow with care, to slake an implacable vengeance,
and then go to bed . . . there is nothing sweeter”
Ordered the killing / assassination / imprisonment of:
o Leon Trotsky
o His brother-in-law and wife, who raised his first son
o His current wife’s brother-in-law
o His wife
o Lenin’s wife
o 11 of the 12 members of the first Soviet government (he was the 12th)
o 375 of the 504 members of the Central Committee
o Kamenev
o Bukharin
o Various military leaders
Stalin was the “most accomplished liar and murderer in the history of humanity”