Bonnie and Clyde (Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow)
In the days of the Depression in America after 1929, these two young people made a great name for themselves robbing stores and committing murders quite casually and often for the sheer fun of it. Bonnie Parker was a waitress when she met Clyde Barrow, and she ended up a legendary figure known for her love of red dresses, cigars and firearms. Working in the southern states of the USA they left behind a trial of destruction. On several occasions they were trapped by the police, but seemed to bear a charmed life and escaped even through a hail of bullets. On one occasion they held up a prison farm killing a guard and helping a friend to escape. Huge rewards were by then offered for their capture. Following a tip-off, the police finally ambushed Bonnie and Clyde at a crossroads and killed them in the gunfight that followed. In1967 a film was made of their exploits, which resulted in the two becoming almost cult figures, and a pop song was written about them, which became a best-selling record.
Alphonse Capone, 1899-1947
‘Al’ Capone is possibly the best-known of all American gangsters, though by no means the most important. His home ground was Chicago. He was brought into the racket by Johnny Torrio and Torrio’s uncle ‘Big Jim’ Colosimo. Capone seized his chance when Prohibition was declared in 1920, which made the manufacture and sale of alcohol illegal in America. He soon rose to control a large part of the illegal liquor market in Chicago and the Middle West. A fierce and vicious man, he was responsible for many gangland killings, including the 1929 St.Valentine’s Days Massacre, in which seven rival ‘bootleggers’ (men selling illicit liquor) were trapped by gunmen dressed as police and machine-gunned to death. He was imprisoned in 1931 on income tax charges, became a model prisoner and was released in 1939.
Lee Harvey Oswald, 1940-1963
In 1963 the world was shaken by the news that President Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas, Texas, while driving from the airport. The man arrested for this terrible crime was Lee Harvey Oswald. After service in the U.S. Marine Corps, Oswald went to the Soviet Union for a time and married a Russian girl. On returning to the United States he was for a time involved with Cuban revolutionary elements. On 22nd November 1963 he is said to have taken a rifle into the Texas Book Depository in Dallas, where he worked, and shot President Kennedy and Governor Conally of Texas as they were driving past. Conally survived, but the President died soon afterwards. Oswald tried to escape, shooting a policeman who tried to stop him. He was caught, but was later shot dead before he could be brought to trial by the night-club owner Jack Ruby, who had got into the police station. The Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination, stated that Oswald had acted alone, but many people do not agree, and there are still a great many questions concerning the killing left unanswered.
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Joseph Stalin (Joseph Vissarionovich Djugashvili), 1879-1953
The 20th century generated an outgrowth of state terrorism which implies the systematic use of terror by the state against its own people to attain a political objective. It was exceedingly developed in Russia under the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin who during the quarter of a century preceding his death in 1953 allegedly exercised greater political power than any other figure in history. Stalin industrialized the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, forcibly collectivized its agriculture, consolidated his position by intensive police terror, and extended Soviet controls to include a belt of eastern European states. Nevertheless it was he who led the Red Army to defeat the Nazi in World War II.
Chief architect of Soviet totalitarianism and a skilled but phenomenally ruthless organizer, he destroyed the remnants of individual freedom and failed to promote individual prosperity, yet he created a mighty military-industrial complex and led the Soviet Union into the nuclear age. Stalin’s biography was long obscured by a mendacious Soviet-propagated ‘legend’ exaggerating his prowess as a heroic Bolshevik conspirator and faithful follower of Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union. In his prime, Stalin was hailed as a universal genius, as a ‘shining sun’, or the ‘staff of life’, and also as a ‘great teacher and friend’ (especially of those communities he most savagely persecuted); once he was even publicly invoked as ‘Our Father’ by a Metropolitan of the Russian Orthodox Church. Achieving wide visual promotion through busts, statues, and icons of him, the dictator became the object of a fanatical cult that was overturned after his death.
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Benito Mussolini, 1883-1945
Benito Mussolini was not always a great dictator, but he always knew what it took to become one. He had the ability to use people and make himself appear like a God in a hectic society. His father was a blacksmith and his mother a schoolteacher. He did not grow up in a rich home and was rejected most of his young adult life. When he came to power, Mussolini threatened to make Italy ungovernable through violence unless he was promoted Prime Minister.
Mussolini made Italy a fascist state that stood totally behind him. He knew how to use the media to promote fascism and himself. Like Hitler, he used propaganda to gradually build himself up as a legend who was always right and could solve of Italy’s problems. He took control of everything from what was written in newspapers to what children learnt in school. Mussolini made Italy dependent on him. And anyone who didn’t feel this way about him was killed. He became known as “Il Duce” (the leader).
On April 28, 1945, Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci, were arrested by Italian partisans. Realizing he was going to be killed, Mussolini opened up his shirt and asked to be shot in the chest. But for some reason the attempts to shoot him failed – the gun would not fire. Eventually he was shot and his body was strung upside down the next day for all to see.
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