I would definitely not include the Shah of Iran. Resting his inclusion on being better than the current Islamic Republic is setting the bar so low it’s being set on the floor. It’s like including the Tsars because they were better than the communists that followed; that they were so horrible and hated by the masses that communism or an Islamic republic seemed like a better idea speaks volumes. Remember that it was SAVAK that kept the Shah in power.
Are there 20th century examples of dictators who were good leaders and better than elected polticos?
I have to agree with BG, here, Spain has been a unified nation-state since the 15th Century. Countries like that rarely split up without it being forced on them by outside powers, and when they do split up, it’s always due to ethnic or religious reasons, not political ones.
Granted, the ethnic reasons do apply in Spain – there are Basque and Catalan separatists to this day – but I believe they could have been satisfied with regional autonomy within the Second Republic, as they are today – for the most part – satisfied with regional autonomy within the kingdom.
Again, I direct you to any of a number of unbiased histories of that period, or simply to look at Spain as it currently is. As you said yourself, Spain was being pulled in a number of directions. Without the firm hand of Franco , it would have continued that way. In any case, should the other side have won the civil war, at the very very least you would have had a Spain with a unstable leftist government, with many regions- then as now- clamoring for independence. Hitler would have rolled in.
Not quite: it was a personal union with separate Crowns until the 19th; we became a single State just during the period when the idea that “nation”, “state” and “culture” should be one and the same was being born, with “ancestry” sometimes thrown into the pot. Previously, the question of “are you Basque or are you a Spaniard” simply didn’t make sense: one referred to ancestry, one to geography.
Even after the Union Treaty, the Vascongadas and Navarre kept legal systems that were different from those of the rest (the Vascongadas as their due ever since they chose Castille; Navarre as her due by the Treaty): Madrid’s forgetfulness of that detail was one of the main reasons behind several of our 19th-century civil wars.
And BG, PNV and many of the Catalanists have never been regionalists but nationalists: yes, what they’ve always been after is independence, and in both cases coating it in readings of history that don’t withstand a light breeze (cf. “the Catalan Empire” or the invention of “Euskadi”).
Spain is not a “unified nation state” today. It is a collection of autonomous regions, two of which are currently going for full independence.
And, even if Spain hadn’t split, the leftist government would have been unstable. Most likely a Communist dictator would have taken over. Even if the leftist government had managed some form of democracy it would have lasted only a couple years before being invaded by Germany.
There’s no “win” without Franco. Without having a strong semi-fascist friendly but not ally of Germany, nothing could have stopped the Nazis from going thru Spain like a hot knife thru butter. The army was exhausted , the people were tired, and the rightists would have risen up to aid the invasion.
Franco was the ONLY solution for keeping Spain out of WWII. He was *just *useful and friendly enough to Hitler to keep the panzers out, without actually being part of the Axis.
That would have made him even more overextended than he was, wouldn’t it? Spaniards who could bring themselves to follow a Spanish caudillo could never have stomached a foreign dictator, as Joseph Bonaparte learned. Rebellion would have been incessant.
Including sending some 45.000 Spanish to fight on the Eastern front.
I’m no fan of Ataturk and think he was terrible for Turkey, but you’re making rather terrible assumptions about him. For starters he was actually fairly popular amongst “Armenian Turks” following the end of WWI. Remember it was only the Armenians of Eastern Anatolia who were ethnically cleansed following their failed rebellion and their own attempts at ethnic cleansing(though this obviously doesn’t excuse their version of the “Trail of Tears” where 600-800,000 died mostly by starvation).
The 100,000 Armenians of Istanbul were left largely untouched and Ataturk ensured they weren’t persecuted following WWI.
I should add the decisions of the Ottoman and later the Ataturk government to not persecute the 100,000 Armenians surrounding Istanbul was done because they were economically important.
Beyond that Ataturk was not responsible for the ethnic cleansing and persecution of the Armenians of eastern Anatolia. Moreover he prosecuted the people who were responsible if for no other reason than to prove that he and the Turks were morally superior to the Europeans who’d refused to prosecute those responsible for the more brutal ethnically cleansings of the Balkan Muslims just a few decades earlier.
BTW, your citing an activist website with an obvious axe to grind. I’d no more take them seriously than from the Turkish embassy on the Armenian ethnic cleansing.
I’m skeptical of the aura surrounding him, but I’ve heard lots of people laud Julius Nyere(sp) of Tanzania.
Just to note, the Allies briefly considered invading Spain regardless. From the History of the United States Army in World War II (the “green books”), Sicily and the Surrender of Italy:
This is not right. Spain became a unified monarchy at the beginning of the 18th century with the Decretos de Nueva Planta
Basque and Catalan nationalism and separatism are a much later thing, from the late 19th - early 20th century when nationalisms everywhere took off in combination wit the romantic view of life at the time. A lot of the nationalisms of the Balkans, Greece, Italy, Germany and other places started at that time.
The Spanish Civil War was largely a “dress rehearsal” for WWII.
Sorry, Ibn, not buying it, because there are MANY sources citing Ataturk’s involvement in the Armenian genocide.
Here’s Rational Wiki on the topic
Here’s Wikipedia on the topic:
In short, Ataturk won the battle and then wiped out the civilians.
From the Genocide Education website:
And here is theUnited Human Rights Council Peace piece on Kemal’s involvement:
I don’t know why you are embracing the Turkish line on Ataturk, no one else buys it at all.
There is some confusion here - the Armenian Genocide per se took place primarily in 1915 during WW I. The action Kemal is being criticized for took place in 1919 during the Turkish War of Independence, more specifically what is referred to as the Franco-Turkish War. The French were attempting to establish an Armenian puppet state ( or mandate territory ) in Cilicia on the southeastern coast of modern Turkey, sort of like the Hashemite state established by the British in Iraq. This is distinct from the first Republic of Armenia that was created in what we think of as Armenia today.
It is not so simple in this case to say this was Armenian vs. Turk. Rather it was French troops ( many of them North Africans ) and French-organized Armenians, including a French Armenian Foreign Legion vs. Turkish nationalists and assorted other local Muslim minorities. Though I’d hardly be disinclined to believe that Kemal turned a blind eye to the massacres following the action at Marash, in this case on the whole it looks like local sectarian slaughter, rather than deliberate government-directed genocide. Further Kemal was not the commander on the ground - he was busy elsewhere.
Ataturk was unequivocally a dictator, but I’d say he was mostly an apologist for the Armenian Genocide, rather a director or a direct participant.
Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso seems to have been an example of one. But he was assassinated of course. Also, I would say Adolf Hitler was an example of a good dictator if you define ‘good dictator’ as one who has the best interests of his country at heart and does a good job of improving it.
Ok, I think I’m going to need to resubmit this question.
When I resubmit, I’ll make the following addenda :
A good and fair leader does not murder people. If the dictator had anyone killed who was not holding a weapon or convicted of murder in a fair trial, that’s an instant dis-qualifier. If his security forces were forced to shoot when attempting to break up a protest, that’s ok, however, as long as they weren’t machine gunning entire crowds.
The dictator must be a dictator, with the power to overrule anyone he chooses for any reason at any time. Queen Victoria doesn’t count (her powers had significant limitations), Putin doesn’t count (as of right now, he still has checks on his power), and so forth.
With this proviso I’m pretty sure none of the dictators listed so far will qualify as “good leaders.” Almost certainly at one point or another all of these bastards either tacitly or directly disappeared or railroaded opponents out of existence. Sort of the nature of the beast. For example Franco may have made the trains run on time, but however large or small you want to argue it was, the White Terror sort of disqualifies him. Same for Ataturk and the nastiness around the war of independence. Tito and the Chetnik supporters post-WW II, etc.
Driving out or murdering hundreds of thousands of your most productive citizens and having your country be utterly crushed with your cities bombed out craters and millions of your young men dead and occupied by going to war against virtually every other great power is hardly having the “best interests of his country at hear” or “improving it”.
Indeed, why just look at this shot of Berlin after Adolf’s improvements.
