20th Century Dictators – Dale’s Daily Data

We’re still not sure exactly what happened last week when Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi was captured then killed. Some reports were he was being taken for treatment of injuries when he somehow got shot in the head. There were some other things done to his body as well, but there’s little doubt he was executed. Not too many ruthless dictators die a peaceful death. Many people say they get what’s coming to them. Gaddafi had a lot of enemies and likely there weren’t enough pieces of him to around, but here are some other dictators and how they met their end.

Adolf Hitler – with allied troops closing in on his headquarters in Berlin in 1945, Hitler pulled out his pistol and shot himself in the head. His orders to his officers were to take his body outside his bunker, pour gasoline on it and burn it. They did.

Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein – he was found hiding in an underground chamber. Found guilty after trial, he was hanged.

Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu – he was so hated they held a lottery to determine where he’d be executed. He and his wife were both shot by a firing squad on Christmas Day, 1989 – a gift to the Romanian people.

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini tried to escape to Switzerland as World War Two was coming to a close. He was shot the following day.

Russian dictator Josef Stalin. He might have been the most brutal of dictators in the 20th century. He’s believed to have ordered the executions of 20-million – some believe the number was closer to 60-million. He suffered a stroke while sleeping, but his guards were under strict orders not to wake him. Nobody got the courage to actually check on him until the next night. When they called for doctors they found that many of the best doctors had been arrested in a political purge. Stalin hung on for a couple of days, paralyzed and unable to talk, until he finally died.