Should we humanize the world's most inhumane leaders?
Adolf Hitler. Joseph Stalin. Benito Mussolini. Mao Zedong. Kim Il Sung.
Vladimir Lenin. These cruel dictators wrote their names on the pages of
history in the blood of countless innocent victims. Yet they themselves
were once young people searching for their place in the world, dealing
with challenges many of us face--parental authority, education, romance,
loss--and doing so in ways that might be uncomfortably familiar.
Historian Brandon K. Gauthier has created a fascinating work--epic yet
intimate, well-researched but immensely readable, clear-eyed and
empathetic--looking at the lives of these six dictators, with a focus on
their youths. We watch Lenin's older brother executed at the hands of
the Tsar's police--an event that helped radicalize this overachieving
high-schooler. We observe Stalin grappling with the death of his young,
beautiful wife. We see Hitler's mother mourning the loss of three young
children--and determined that her first son to survive infancy would
find his place in the world.
The purpose isn't to excuse or simply explain these horrible men, but
rather to treat them with the empathy they themselves too often lacked.
We may prefer to hold such lives at arm's length so as to demonize them
at will, but this book reminds us that these monstrous rulers were also
human beings--and perhaps more relatable than we'd like.
