The First World War (1914-1918) wrecked European society.  Out of the wreckage appeared people who never could have risen in politics or society before the war.  Two of them were especially terrible. 

            Josef Stalin (1878-1953).  The sickly, abused son of a drunken shoe-maker and a devoted mother in a backwater of the Russian Empire.  Studied to be a priest, but opted for revolutionary politics instead.  He joined Vladimir Lenin’s tiny Bolshevik Party (1903), organized strikes and robbed banks for the Party, did some time in Siberia, and rose to become an important assistant to Lenin during and after the Russian Revolution (1917-1923).  After Lenin’s death, Stalin schemed his way into supreme power (1923-1928).

            Once he held power, Stalin launched Russia’s real revolution.  He “collectivized” agriculture (government ownership of all the land) to gain control of the resources needed for industrialization.  Several million peasants starved to death as a result.  He launched the “Five Year Plans” to industrialize Russia.  Russia became second only to the United States as an industrial economy.  His “Great Purge” killed off hundreds of thousands of Bolsheviks, managers, intellectuals, and soldiers—anyone who might form part of a challenge to his dictatorship.  Millions of others were deported to Siberian prison camps, where many died.  At home his petty cruelties drove his wife to suicide.  After Nazi Germany attacked Russia, Stalin led his country to victory (1941-1945). 

            Adolf Hitler (1889-1945).  Like Stalin, he had an unpleasant father and a devoted mother.  He thought that he wanted to be an artist, but he didn’t like the hard work involved.  He fought bravely in the German army during the First World War, then drifted into right-wing extremist politics.  Anti-Semitism and anti-Communism were his main themes.  He became a brilliant orator and a devious schemer as the head of the Nazi Party in a democratic Germany.  The Nazis didn’t count until the Great Depression paralyzed democracy.  He was appointed—not elected—head of the German government in January 1933.  People thought they could control the odd little man.  They couldn’t.  He didn’t play by any rules. 

            Between 1933 and 1939 Hitler created a dictatorship, pulled Germany out of the Depression, persecuted the German Jews, built up German military power, added Austria and part of Czechoslovakia to Germany, and became wildly popular among Germans. 

            Between 1939 and 1945 Hitler’s Germany conquered most of Western and central Europe, tried to murder all of the European Jews, expanded a European war into a Second World War that Germany could not win, brought down a rain of ruin on Germany, and became wildly unpopular among Germans.  Fifty million people had died and much of Europe and Asia were in ruins when he killed himself in April 1945. 

            Josef Stalin again.  After 1945, Stalin ruled Eastern Europe (Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Rumania), and supported the Chinese Communists who won power in China (1949).  He imposed the same kind of government and economy on these countries that he had on Russia.  He clamped down on dissent once again, raced to build an atom bomb, and prepared to launch a new purge.  He died of a stroke in March 1953.  One of the “mourners” at his outdoor funeral caught pneumonia and died.  Bad habits are hard to break.