[TOPIC] Dictatorships

Is he a "benevolent" dictator or kind of evil?

Look into Castro. He had a sister that fled Cuba. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juanita_Castro (note the references and external links)

Hitler had an autobiography...but I don't know how much that would help. I'd give you the name but I cen't remember how to spell it XD

Hello!

The rise to power within a dictatorship, and how the dictator functions once in power, really varies depending on the country, and the political views of the dictator. The examples you gave are all of dictators, but they represent different political views. The one thing they do have in common is that they're all authoritarian. In other words, they infringe on civil liberties a lot, and citizens of their countries do not have very much, if any, freedom.

You'd also want to look at the country you're putting this dictator in. There are many different systems of government, and the type of system will influence how this dictator rises to power. If you plan to make up a country, try giving that country a type of government that mirrors an existing or past government, possibly even one that was previously a dictatorship. Look at how those leaders rise to power, and that'll be a good starting point.

(Or post back here with some more information on the political views/country you have in mind, and I'll help where I can. I loves me some politics.)

Edit: Also, Hitler's book is called Mein Kampf. :)

Liberal Feminist Hippie

He becomes more and more evil as the novel goes on.

LFH is definately right that it can depend alot on the country and political view of the dictator.

Still, to give you another example you might want to look up info on the first emperor of china. The story of his conquest of china and short reign as emperor is still debated about because he did both good and bad things. But one thing I remember clearly was he became very paranoid after becoming emperor due to several failed assasination attempts, and began to suspect everyone around him. If I remember right he killed all the servants of his advisor because he suspected him of plotting against him, even though he wasn't.

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L
Do you believe?

Leon Trotsky - "Fascism: What it is and How to Fight It" (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1944/1944-fas.htm) is an analysis of the rise of fascism in Europe between the World Wars.

Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.
--Edward Gibbon

I came across an alternate-history series of novels by Harry Turtledove; he had the South win the Civil War and then wrote a multi-book series going through to the late 1940s based on it. The broad events paralleled our history - there was a WWI, a Depression, WWII, etc - but he had most of the events happen in North America instead. In part of the series - I believe the sequence of books was "Blood and Iron," "The Center Cannot Hold" and "The Victorious Opposition" - he follows a Confederate soldier's rise from a disaffected veteran to undisputed ruler of the CSA.

(If that sounds familiar it should - one thing Turtledove likes to do is take a historical event and plonk it in a different setting; the same things generally happen for the same reasons, but the detachment of having them in a fictional world makes them read a bit less like a history book and more like a You Are There kind of story, which can sometimes make really byzantine events more reachable.)

I'd advise looking at some histories of specific political periods, so you can see details of how dictatorial regimes emerged. I'd also suggest getting a clear picture on what kind of authoritarian regime it is, and from what context it arises. It makes an enormous difference in how conditions in the country develop.

For instance, Adolf Hitler gained power in a tottering democracy. With a large amount of popular support and back door deals with the conservative elites, he took power legally. Many of the pivotal backers weren't Nazi radicals, rather they feared them less than the Communists, and thought they could moderate and control Hitler once in power. Instead, Hitler operated quickly to consolidate power and crush domestic opposition, swiftly erasing the fabric of democratic representation in Germany.
As an aside, it doesn't seem like reading Mein Keimpf would be useful for this project. All other issues aside, it was written long before Hitler gained power.

Francisco Franco was a conservative general in Spain who attempted a coup against the new, democratic, socialist government. With other elements of the army that were suspicous of the civilian regime as too leftist and and anti-Catholic, Franco fought and won a lengthy war. He subsequently ruled as an authoritarian fascist, although without the expansionist and genocidal elements of Hitler or Mussolini.

Josef Stalin gained dominant power after the death of Lenin, who had overthrown the previous Russian regime and put the Bolsheviks in charge, this previous regime had itself gained power after a military revolution against the tsar. Stalin subsequently beat out Trotsky and consolidated his direct personal control to an unprecedented extent.

It'll probably help to have a clear picture of what sort of man this dictator is and what sort of regime he presides over. Then you can build the appropriate family details. For instance, is the regime has a lot invested in the image of the dictator as a moderate, temperate and Catholic man, he's probably not going to approve of his sister partying it up internationally. On the other hand if he gained power from foreign capitalist support, then he might be inclined to mind less if she visibly spreads some of the wealth around and is well traveled. Generally the dictator will favor his family to some extent with wealth and political positions. In the more paranoid states this might be done very heavily, where many of the key positions are held by family members, since there's concern over trusting outsiders.

The history of Hitler as portrayed in The Devil's Disciples: Hitler's Inner Circle (Anthony Read, but
I'm not sure if it is this Anthony Read) illustrates a Germany in chaos with different region controlled by the various militia that were regarded as elite citizens and were above the law.

The need for reunification, the continuing threat of the French military, the demand for reparations in accordance with the Treaty of Versailles which bankrupted the country* essentially made Germany ready for a charismatic dictator.** It might have been Röhm or Göring if Hitler hadn't proven the more captivating an orator.

My point being, if life in a given region sucks enough, a government will invariably emerge, and without compelling influence otherwise, it will be despot, and anyone who disagrees with those who seize power will be regarded as subversive; they will become enemies of the state, and they will be contained, and/or destroyed.

Whether we're talking neighborhoods and street gangs, or nations and kings, history shows few deviations from this pattern.

Derek.

* The Third Reich created Reichsmarks to reset the hyperinflation of the mark. One Reichsmark = 1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion) marks.

** Speculations abound in fiction regarding what would have happened if Hitler were assassinated as a boy, the most likely answer: they would have found someone else to run the National Socialist Party. The holocaust probably still would have happened, and if the alternative leader listened to his generals, the Axis might have won the war.

I thought I'd suggest another source, since you're clearly writing something in the realm of sci-fi heroics: African dictatorships.

I went and picked out three different dictators for you. I'm sorry for doing this - but as whoever wrote this on Wikipedia did a great job, I'm not a fan of paraphrasing them.

Thomas Sankara and Blaise Compaore (Republic of Burkina Faso)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sankara
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Compaor%C3%A9

Ahmed Sekou Toure (Republic of Guinea)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sekou_Toure

Mobutu Sese Seko (Democratic Republic of Congo, also known as ex-Zaire)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobutu

Robert Mugabe (Republic of Zimbabwe)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mugabe

I suggest these for the following reasons:
- I have listed them in order of growing evilness
- this might give you insights on the various possible ways one might come to power.
- although Sankara was not an evil dictator, the person who killed him and replaced him is - and Compaore was much like a brother to Sankara, having fought at his side, etc.

I hope this helps.

Dictators who gained power through violence or other illegitimate means are often fearful that others might do to them what they did to their predecessors. Dictators who did not arise from the ranks of the military (such as Iraq's Saddam Hussein) tend to not trust the military, even if they are forced to depend on it. Saddam Hussein supposedly had the habit of moving his generals and senior military officers around periodically to insure that they never got enough popular support with the troops to represent a threat to him and his regime. This is probably one of the reasons the US military was able to trounce on the Iraqi military as easily as it did during both invasions; Saddam could never really trust his military enough to allow it to become as powerful or as effective as it could have become. A military belonging to a country where the government is thought to represent the people can afford to strengthen their armed forces in ways that no dictator would ever feel safe doing.

One of the first things most dictators do after the success of the revolution is to arrest or dispose of all those crazy revolutionary types who helped put them in power. Sounds crazy, but its true; the last thing a dictator wants running around is a bunch of idealists running around loose, especially the ones who have proven that they willing to be use violence to uphold their ideals. These folks are almost never happy when the reality of the new government does not live up to the movements propaganda. They have to go. Hitler got rid of the brown shirts who put him into power, and the communists in Russia did so after their revolution.

Dictators also tend to be the sort of people who do not like to hear bad news, or information of any sort that contradicts their view of the world. This tends to mean that the longer they are in control the more yes men tend to surround them, and the more detached from reality they become. At the end of WWII Hitler was said to have been issuing orders to units that no longer existed. None of his staff had the courage to tell him how bad things really were.

Lastly, if the main characters goal is to restore democracy to her country, you need to make up a brief political history for that country. How long were they democratic before the dictator took over. How many other revolutions and changes in government were there before the current one. Democracy is not only a system of government, in order to be successful it needs to be a tradition grown from a history of democratic growth. The American government we have today is much different than the one we had after the revolution was one. The failure of many emergent democracies around the world today may have as much to do with their histories as with anything else.

That is all for now, hope it helps.

Good luck.