The Deaths Of Dictators

From Stalin to Franco to Kim Jong-il, it seems that even dictators often go into the sunset of their lives, without paying for the lives they ended up doing. However, from time to time, karma has the final say.

Benito Mussolini

The father of fascism, Benito Mussolini, led Italy as one of the Axis powers in World War II and is responsible for the deaths of thousands of his political opponents. When the tides of war turned against him, Mussolini attempted to flee to Switzerland with his mistress, Clara Petacchi, but their convoy was captured near Dongo and Mussolini was found hiding in a vehicle, posing as a German soldier. I was poorly disguised. The next morning, he and Petacchi were both brutally killed by machine guns by Italian partisans, then thrown into Piazzale Loreto in Milan, where Mussolini had killed people in the past. Italian mobs descended upon the bodies, mutilated them and hanged them by their ankles. A woman is said to have shot Mussolini's corpse five times, one bullet for each of her dead sons. Eventually, his body was recovered, given to his family and buried.

Adolf Hitler

The end of World War II was a bad time for the tyrants. After hearing of Mussolini's horrific demise and the treatment of his corpse, Adolf Hitler, the German chancellor and leader of the Nazi Party, decided to spare himself the same possible fate. On April 30, 1945, he said goodbye to his closest supporters, who had accompanied him to his bunker in Berlin, then asked his vet to test a cyanide capsule on his faithful dog, Blondie, who died as a result . Sitting next to each other on sofas in their bunker quarters, his wife, Eva Braun, whom he had married the day before, took a cyanide shot, and Hitler shot himself in the head. His body was burned, and after both Russian and French medical confirmation that the remains found were in fact Hitler, at a purposefully unspecified location near the Biederitz River to prevent any future fascists from honoring the man responsible. He was appropriately cremated and scattered. to the death of millions.

Muammar Gaddafi

Perhaps no deposed ruler suffered a worse fate than the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who fell out of favor during the Libyan Civil War. The rising government, known as the National Transitional Council, had taken over much of the country by 2011 and was looking for Gaddafi. In October, they finally traced him and bombed his convoy. Gaddafi attempted to pierce a nearby house, but rebels surrounded him and his group as he attempted to hide in a drainage pipe, and Gaddafi's guards tried to fight back but were mistaken for their own. killed by a grenade. A wounded Gaddafi was then arrested, but the rebels began attacking him before he could reach the NTC. high up. Despite her pleas, video from the captivity shows she was brutally beaten, bayoneted, raped, and shot by a spirited mob. The official cause of his death was a gunshot wound to the head.

Nicolae Ceausescu

Nicolae Ceauescu was the President of Romania from 1974 to 1989, when he and his wife were executed by firing squad on Christmas Day. He mismanaged the economy, exported so much of Romania's food crops to cover the debt that his own people were suffering from food shortages, and all contraception and abortion to fuel Romania's dwindling population. outlawed, which led to a huge increase in deaths from children abandoned in state-run orphanages along with failed abortions. The Romanians also faced severe winters, as electricity had to be rationed. Following the defection of his army following the mass killing of demonstrators, Ceausescu attempted to flee by helicopter, but was quickly taken over by the military and sentenced to death by a military war tribunal.

Saddam Hussein

Saddam Hussein was Iraq's fifth president until 2003, when his links with extremist organizations such as al-Qaeda and his possible possession of weapons of mass destruction (although evidence of this was never found) put him on the wrong side of the US government. Hussein was never properly elected after being appointed president after participating in the 1968 coup known as the July 17 Revolution, and like other dictators, he eliminated any opposition or political unrest. Diya, who sowed the seeds of hatred within his own countrymen. When the first election was actually held, he was defeated and attempted to escape but was captured by the US Army at his hiding place in the town of Ed-Dor. After being convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death for the 1982 massacre in Dujail against Shia, he was hanged by the Iraqi interim government on December 30, 2006.