- Maximilian Robespierre
He was the father of modern state terror and an influential figure for some of the worst dictators of the 20th century. The first among humble men who believed they had access to a higher truth. His vision of France during the First Republic turned out to be one of the most frightening episodes of despotic arbitrary rule that eighteenth-century Europe had ever seen. On July 22, 1793, the former lawyer and former president of the National Convention was elected head of the Committee of Public Safety, which was essentially the collective dictatorship that governed the First French Republic. In his short time in office, he was to re-educate the French people and lead them into a new Golden Age of Enlightenment, whether he liked it or not.
Maximilien Robespierre was one of the many idealists of the Enlightenment, a time when people began to question the old order and old ways of thinking. It was rumored that Rosbespierre kept a copy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "The Social Contract" wherever he went. In it, Rousseau spoke of how humanity would return to its exalted state through "virtue." Robespierre fully believed in this idea and planned to create a new type of man in France, which would then influence the whole world. As soon as the Jacobins seized power in the French Republic, Robespierre immediately set about creating a new society. The Parisian sans-culottes were easily amenable to this proposal and supported it. But then there was the rest of the population of France outside of Paris . Many of them were still conservative and not prepared to make the next step in human evolution so rapidly. They would pay a price for their resistance.
The first step in creating a new man was to dictate how people dressed. The old fashions that distinguished social class were replaced by the fashion of son-culottesque clothing such as the Phrygian cap. People addressed each other as "citizens" rather than Mr. and Mrs. But the ruling Jacobins didn't stop there. They wanted to redefine time itself. During this time, the Catholic Church was seen as an enemy of the people, and a process known as de-Christianization was implemented. The most radical step was the invention of the French revolutionary calendar. It was designed to eliminate all elements of Christianity. Instead of the birth of Christ, the calendar listed September 1792 as year one; the overthrow of the monarchy. Months were named after the seasons. July became Thermidor and March Germinal. The Notre Dame Cathedral was repurposed as the Temple of Reason. To Robespierre, all of these Extreme Measures were necessary as a means to remind the French people that they had been reborn. But soon the transformation of France by decree would turn into a furious frenzy of killing.
In the early 1790s, the French Republic was fighting for its life. It was in circled by three other foreign armies who wanted to destroy the Republic and reinstate a puppet monarchy. The threat of foreign intervention might have been one of the causes for later be known as The Terror. On February 5th 1794, Robespierre delivered perhaps his most profound and notorious speech at the National Convention.
“Terror without virtue is disastrous, but virtue without Terror is powerless.”
You could not have missed the point. The people of France were to be enlightened through virtue, and those who did not obey or do what the state required of them were to suffer terrible consequences. The Terror had begun. All those suspected of royalism and counter-revolution were arrested, imprisoned or executed. People who did not speak a certain way, behave a certain way, or dress a certain way were taken away. Robespierre and the Jacobins used a new and effective method of execution, the guillotine. In almost every town in France, drums rattled, guillotine blades were lowered and heads rolled. It was a democide unprecedented in Europe at that time.
In Léon in the west of France, there was stiff resistance to Jacobin rule. Robespierre and the Jacobins decided to punish the entire city. After a long siege, the French military stormed Léon, destroyed it, and killed much of the population in the most barbaric ways. One method of mass murder was that people were lined up in front of cannonons and blown to pieces. Others were packed into boats Which were then intentionally sunk. Many of the victims drowned or were bayonetted as they tried to swim to shore.
Even as the Terror was in full swing, the French military began to win victories over the invading armies. But even with the military successes of the French army, the Terror did not subside, but accelerated. By this time the revolutionary terror had consumed everyone, even loyal revolutionaries and even some members of the Committee of Public Safety were being taken away and executed by guillotine. Most of the victims were Republicans, but the wrong sort. Maximilian Robespierre saw enemies everywhere. Anyone who dared to accuse him became an accused himself. Things got even stranger when Robespierre decided to change the national religion from atheistic reason to the cult of the Supreme Being. During one such ceremony, Robespierre took part in a large-scale celebration in which he dressed up as if he were a god. But while Robespierre wallowed in his ideological illusions and selfishness, forces from within conspired to get rid of the tyrant once and for all and stop the senseless killings before their turn came.
Finally on the 28th of July 1794 (9 to 10 Thermidor Year II), the conspirators struck. A group of French Gendarme arrived to arrest Robespierre. In panic, Robespierre either took his pistol and shot himself in the mouth in a vein attempt to kill himself or was shot in the jaw by a Gendarme. The voice of the revolution could no longer speak, and he was taken away. After a very brief trial for revolutionary excesses and a betrayal of the people of France, Robespierre was sentenced to death by guillotine which was carried out very swiftly. The blade of the guillotine fell one last time silencing the voice of the Revolution permanently. With Robespierre gone, the Terror finally ended. A few years later France was taken over by Napoleon Bonaparte who immediately ended what remained of the Jacobin policies, including the Revolutionary calendar.
Maximilian Robespierre is often overlooked in the history of despots, and overshadowed by men like Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot. What is often overlooked is the fact that many of these future dictators of the 20th century were somewhat or directly inspired by Maximilian Robespierre and his idea of State Terror. Pol Pot, leader of the Khmer Rouge, often stated how he greatly admired Maximilian Robespierre, the French Revolution and the Terror that followed when he was studying in Paris before he became dictator of Cambodia.
2. Ante Pavelić
In 1998, an elderly man of Croatian origin named Dinko Šakić, living in Argentina, was interviewed live on Argentine state television. He admitted that during World War II he had been the director of a notorious concentration camp in Croatia called Jasenovac. Although he denied his involvement in the deaths at the camp, the reaction to the interview was so profound that the Argentine president immediately ordered his arrest. In May of that year, Šakić was apprehended and extradited back to Croatia, where he stood trial for crimes against humanity. He was subsequently found guilty and sentenced to imprisonment for the rest of his life. It was one of the last major World War II trials of the twentieth century, and it highlighted an almost unnoticed catastrophic event that took place in the Balkans. Around the same time that Nazi Germany was terrorizing Europe and committing mass genocide, another, more brutal regime was conducting its own campaign of ethnic cleansing. Dinko Šakic was just a cog in this murderous system, but the man in charge was a true homicidal maniac. His name was Ante Pavelic. Of all the fascist regimes established in Europe, Croatia under the Ustasha was perhaps the most brutal. So extreme that even members of the Nazi regime were horrified.
On October 9, 1934, King Alexander I of Yugoslavia was assassinated by a group of anti-monarchist terrorists. One of their accomplices was Croatian ultranationalist Ante Pavelić. Shortly afterward, Pavelić was arrested, exiled to France, where he was tried and sentenced to death. His sentence was later commuted and he was transferred to another prison in Italy for 18 months. During his time in Italy, Fascist dictator Mussolini was at the height of his power. After more than 10 years of his rule, Italy had been turned into an ultra-nationalist police state where any opposition was suppressed, and Il Duce dreamed of creating a great Italian empire. Pavelich liked everything he heard from Mussolini and drew great inspiration from him. Of all the states that made up the former Yugoslavia, Croatia was the most fiercely nationalist. But Mussolini was not the only dictator who preached the values of fascism. In Germany, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party seized control of the entire country. National Socialism and its anti-communist and anti-Jewish stance also greatly appealed to Pavelich. He considered himself a disciple of both fascist dictators, but believed that he could surpass them and create an ideal and great Croatia.
Two years after the outbreak of World War II, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy invaded the Balkans. The royal family of Yugoslavia went into exile and the Yugoslav army capitulated within days. A fascist puppet government, the Independent State of Croatia (N.D.H.), was established in Croatia, and Pavelić immediately saw his chance to gain absolute power in the region. He established the Ustaše, an ultra nationalist/fascist organization. On April 10, 1941, at the request of the Germans, Slavko Kvaternik, a senior Ustasha official, announced the establishment of the N.D.H. on Pavelic's behalf. Pavelich, who called himself Poglavnik (Supreme Leader), returned from Italy and took control of the puppet government.
Immediately after taking control, Pavelić and the Ustaše began their campaign of ethnic cleansing. The targets were similar to that of Nazi Germany (Jews, Gypsies, Communists, and any political opposition). But it was a Serbian population that would suffer the most. Pavelić and the Ustaše held a profound hatred of the Serbian people and their Greek Orthodox faith. Before taking power, there were already plans on Exterminating all of the Serbian Yugoslav population. They would die by the thousands in some of the most barbaric ways imaginable.
Croatia's regime under the Ustasha was very similar to the Nazi regime from which it took its example, except for one point. While the Nazis despised organized religion, Croatia at the time could be described as an extremist clerical-fascist state. Like Francisco Franco's regime in Spain, Pavelić's vision of a Greater Croatia meant that the entire country had to be 100% Catholic. Other religious minorities, notably the Greek Orthodox Church, had no purpose in the new Croatia. One of the main policies of the Ustasha was the forced conversion of the entire population. If you did not convert, you were either arrested or exterminated. With terrible irony, the Catholic Church supported this policy. Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac of Croatia gave his blessing to Pavelić's draconian initiative.
It wasn't the forced conversions or repression of political opponents that set the Ustaše regime and Pavelić apart from his fascist allies, but the excessive level of violence and cruelty against the victims. Within the former yugoslavia, squads of Ustaše militia went around murdering and pillaging with impunity. Entire towns saw their population of serbians exterminated. Men women and children were shot, beaten, burned alive, raped and stripped of all of their possessions. Some victims were made to suffer slow and painful deaths such as being sawed in half, or having parts of their body chopped up into pieces. Many Ustaše took pictures of their victims as they were either killing them or after they had killed them; they posed with their victims as if they came back from a successful hunt. To save ammunition and kill a more efficient rate, the Ustaše invented a killing tool known as the “Serb Cutter”. A leather grip dagger with a blade fashioned for slitting the throats of people. One former Ustaše member boasted how he killed 1,300 Serbians with this weapon alone.
The beastial violence committed by the Ustaše was not done in secret, and was witnessed by many German and SS troops stationed in Croatia. Even men like them, who had committed terrible acts of violence against others, were shocked and irritated at the level of bloodlust by the Ustaše against the Serbs. They also feared that the excessive killing would further incite a major Serbian uprising which would destabilize the entire region. It was reported that Heinrich Himmler received letters from SS officers chronicling their concerns of the frantic killing that was taking place in the Balkans by the Ustaše. But little to nothing was done because Croatia was a reliable ally to Germany.
In 1941, the Croatian fascist regime finished construction of Jasenovac, one of the most brutal and least known concentration camps in human history. Like Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps, Jasenovac was a place where people came to be killed. From 1941 to 1945, 100,000 or more people perished in some of the most deplorable conditions one can imagine. It was here where victims worked to death, we're tortured, raped, looted and killed for sport. There were even some attempts at creating a type of gas chamber using the exhaust from automobiles. When that didn't work, they resorted to using the Serb Cutter. Ironically, Pavelić became concerned that the reports of animalistic violence taking place at Jasenovac what tarnish his reputation and in the outside world. He attempted to cover it up by having the Ustaše take a photographs inside of the camp showing inmates partaking in innocent activities and work projects. But the terrible reality could not be buried. When the Soviets and partisans liberated the camp, they found it abandoned and littered with the rotting corpses of prisoners that either could not be moved or were deemed useless.
World War II finally came to an end in Europe in 1945 with the Allied Victory against Nazi Germany and fascist italy. The fascist regime of Croatia also collapsed and in its place a communist regime led by Joseph Brons Tito. The Ustaše regime murdered an estimated million or more people in their short reign. Many of the collaborators and members responsible for the genocide in Croatia were apprehended and put on trial, including the Croatian Archbishop who gave his approval for the forced conversions. But where was Ante Pavelić? He fled to Austria where he was given a false passport by the Vatican where he then traveled to Argentina. Pavelić served as security advisor to Argentine President Juan Perone and later ended up in Spain where he was given Asylum by the fascist dictator Francisco Franco. But he would not succeed in escaping his fate. On the 10th of April 1957, the owner of a hotel, who was also ethnically Serbian and an agent of Tito, shot Pavelić. He survived the initial shooting but eventually succumbed to his wounds two years later at the age of 79. A fitting end to one of the most murderous dictators in human history.
3. François Duvalier
Imagine a tragedy in which a country is led by a man who started out as a well-intentioned educated doctor and then became insanely evil and convinced that he was a demonic demigod capable of making those who oppose him suffer. Then you might get an idea of who François Duvalier (aka Papa Doc) was. He was the darkest curse the Caribbean country of Haiti has ever experienced, and his ghost haunts the country to this day. Much of the problems facing modern Haiti are due to this man's terrible leadership. He ruled Haiti not only through physical fear but psychological fear as well. Papa Doc took full advantage of the superstitious nature of the Haitian people and oppressed them for his own gain. From 1957 to 1971, Papa Doc ruled by kleptocracy, which left Haiti permanently impoverished and traumatized.
François Duvalier was born on the 14th of April 1907, in Port-au-Prince, Hati. He was one of the few to have grown up in a educated middle class background and received a very decent education himself, particularly in the fields of Medicine. Haiti is a country with a very dramatic and dark history. Founded as a French slave colony of Saint-Domingue, the region was one of the most lucrative regions within the old French Empire. It was the place where the wealthiest families in Paris got their income from. But the wealth came at a terrible price as Saint-Domingue tell the reputation for being one of the cruelest slave colonies in the world. Then in 1791, as the French Revolution was taking place, a slave insurrection led by Toussaint Louverture succeeded in expelling the french, American, British and Spanish armies from Saint-Domingue which was later renamed the Republic of Haiti. But Hati's Independence has always been a troubled one. Almost every leader following the Revolution was violently overthrown, including the Revolutionary hero Jean-Jacques Dessalines.
Over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, Hati came under the thumb of various outside influences. During his early life, François Duvalier saw the occupying Americans during World War II mistreat and exploit the Haitian people. This would instill a profound hatred for the United States later on during his reign. It was around this time that François Duvalier graduated from his studies in medicine and became a doctor. While back in haiti, François Duvalier made a reputation for himself as a miracle doctor having helped find yours for tropical diseases that were plaguing the Haitian population with the use of penicillin. It wasn't long before the local Haitians began believing that François Duvalier was more than just a doctor. They started looking at him as though he was a magician with Supernatural powers to cure diseases. They gave him the name “Papa Doc” which he later adopted for himself. Duvalier also took more of an interest in the local Haitian religion of voodoo. Though he was never truly a believer, he understood the power that superstitious beliefs could give him.
Duvalier’s first political breakthrough happened when he Allied himself with the then president of Haiti Dumarsais Estimé. Appointed Director General of the National Health Service, he served as Minister of Health and Labor in 1949, but left government and returned to the practice of medicine when Duvalier opposed Paul Magloire's coup d'état in 1950. A few years later Magloire's government was collapsing, and Duvalier announced his candidacy for the president to replace him. On December 1956, duvalier beat Magloire, but still had to contend against other political rivals. Riding on pan-africanism and Haitian populism, duvalier swept away his political rivals and was elected president of Haiti in 1957. He promised to bring Eddie out of poverty and establish a golden age. It was all a lie.
As president of Haiti, Duvalier was well aware that his position was not secure. Shortly after taking office, members of the military launched a coup d'etat against him which was successfully crushed. Devalier realized he could no longer trust the Army to protect him, and so he not only fired military leaders, he created his own elite terror militia called the the Militia of National Security Volunteers (M.N.S.V.). But they were better known as the “Tonton Macoutes”, named after a terrible ogre in Voodoo mythology. The name was not coincidental. The Macoutes carried a reputation for fear and intimidation. Twice as large as the army, it was made up of murderous thugs and criminals from local jails who pledged loyalty to Duvalier and his regime. Dressed in military attire, they wore black sunglasses and carried around rifles. Often, they were granted immunity as they pillaged locals and raped women.
On the 24th of May 1959, François Duvalier suffered a near fatal heart attack brought on by diabetes. He survived, but he was now a changed man. François Duvalier, the ambitious educated doctor was gone, and in his place the demon known as Papa Doc. The true nightmare of Papa Doc's regime was about to begin. Papa Doc's Behavior also changed for the worst as he began to act and talk as though he were a living god. He dressed in black and wore a large top hat. When he delivered speeches he spoke with a strange lisp. All of this was to imitate the voodoo demigod Baron Samedi, lord of the cemetery. In 1969, Clement Barbot, a former Ally and political opponent of Papa Doc, devised a plot to overthrow Duvalier. The plot was uncovered by Papa Doc who's then launched an expedition to locate and eliminate Barbot. Things got even stranger as Papa Doc claimed that Barbot couldn't be found because he had magically transformed into a black dog. Papa Doc then ordered the Haitian people to hunt down and kill every black dog they could find.
The Tonton Macoutes captured and killed Barbot in July 1963. On other occasions, Papa Doc ordered the heads of executed rebels to be packed in ice and brought to him so he could communicate with the spirits of the dead. A peephole was cut in the wall of the interrogation room through which Papa Doc watched the torture of Haitian prisoners and their immersion in sulfuric acid baths. The entire population of Haiti both feared and revered Papa Doc who was by now a madly evil dictator. Papa Doc was also not very popular outside of Haiti. In the 1960s during the height of the cold war, Papa Doc played both sides. Though he did not support communism, he never forgot that his true hatred lie against the United States. The problem was he needed money from the United States government to keep him and his regime afloat. After the successful Revolution and subsequent establishment of Fidel Castro's communist regime, Papa Doc threatened to join Cuba against the United States unless the Kennedy administration handed them billions of dollars in aid. The US government reluctantly offered financial and Military Support to Papa Doc and his regime.
President John F Kennedy was under no Illusion of who Papa Doc truly was. He understood that the Mad Doctor of Haiti ran one of the most oppressive and corrupt regimes the Western Hemisphere had ever scene. Secretly, Kennedy began drawing plans to remove Papa Doc from power, but on November 22nd 1963, John F Kennedy was assassinated while on a visit to Dallas texas. Papa Doc immediately took the credit for the assassination, claiming that he had placed a curse on John F Kennedy as punishment. Papa Doc was saved again by dumb luck, all the while his regime continued to grow more and more brutal. Papa Doc continued to consolidate his power and his own personal wealth while much of the patient population starved or suffered under unfathomable poverty. Haiti resembled a nation run by organized and murderous thieves.
From the late 1960s to the early 1970s, the personality cult surrounding Papa Doc grew to absurd proportions. Voodoo was now the official state religion with Papa Doc as an immaterial being/ demigod or “Iwa”, Baron Samedi. An infamous image was created depicting Jesus Christ standing with his hand on the shoulder of a seated Papa Doc, with the caption "I chose him." In 1964, he published a catechism in which he greatly paraphrased the "Lord's Prayer" and praised the Duvalier instead of God. There was no end to the superlatives for which Papa Doc was given.
Finally, on the 21st of April 1971, the so-called immaterial being and incarnation of Baron Samedi, François Duvalier (AKA Papa Doc), died of heart disease comfortably in his bed at the presidential Palace. He was succeeded by his equally rotten son Jean-Claude Duvalier (AKA Baby Doc), at the age of 19 where he continued his father's brutal and corrupt regime until 1986 when he was overthrown in a coup. The nightmare was finally over, but the ghost of the demon known as Papa Doc remains. In his 14-year reign, Papa Doc single-handedly destroyed the dream that was Haiti. An estimated 30 to 60,000 people were murdered by Papa Doc's regime. The nation was economically ruined and remains impoverished and politically unstable to this very day.
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