Not that I’m suggesting that being polite and/or personable excuses one from being a mass-murdering fuckhead. BUT, do we have any anecdotal evidence on what these guys (or others; please insert any mass-murdering fuckhead that you can provide information about) are/were like in person?
IOW, in a private conversation between associates, was Pol Pot known to be friendly and personable, despite his insatiable thirst for death?
Well, I don’t know if polite would be the word to use for a megalo maniac. If you think you’re the most important person on the face of the earth, occasionally deigning to be civil to an underling is about as close to polite as you’re going to get.
You will now probubly get buried with Hitler trivia, so I’ll be the first.
I read that Adolph used to require that his secretaries at Bertesgarden sit around and munch little tea cakes and listen to hours and hours of historical rants and polemic. He foisted his vegatarian diet on all meals at his compounds and his flunkies were required to sneak more substantial food after hours. Doesn’t sound very polite to me.
Well, I didn’t know any of them personally, but my guess would be that you couldn’t rise to power if you were a gibbering raving lunatic, frothing at the mouth. These people must have had enough manners and political savvy to get to the top of their country, and to have loyal followers. Hitler, for instance, was able to act as a diplomat well enough for Chamberlain to sign deals trying to appease him. That takes a great deal of diplomatic ability, good manners, etc.
Played golf over the summer with an older guy and his son who were from Pakistan. The old guy was an engineer, and he said ge was one of a number of Pakistani engineers Idi Amin hired.
He acknowledged Amin’s murderous legacy, but was very grateful for the employment opportunity he got from him, and said he appeared quite personable and pleasant on the several occasions when they met.
I just saw a documentary about Idi Amin. He tried desperately to really nice, but if you look at the people around him, you could just see them expecting to be executed in the very near future. Nice - but insane.
No specific cites, but from what I’ve heard about Saddam Hussein on NPR, he was extremely polite, kind, and compassionate during the 60’s, 70’s as he rose from a local administrator to dictator.
Families and individuals which fell upon fard time never hesitated to contact him or his underlings to try to get help with their problems.
These are just too funny to be real–similar to the “Marion Barry” quotes that circulated a few years ago–but like any apocryphal (if indeed they are) story, they’re too good to let die.
Too funny to be real and it makes fun of “dem funny black men”. Just he was a genocidal lunatic doesn’t excuse racial stereotyping. Actually, he was very well spoken and quite eloquent. The insanity was what he actually said - For instance his masterplan to liberate the Golan Heights using his crack paratroop regiment (Uganda didn’t have an airforce). Oh, did I mention the genocide?
i don’t think that anyone can become powerful unless he has charm out the wazoo. of course, consider the viet cong…they were probably wondering if anybody on earth thought that eisenhower/kennedy/johnson/nixon were polite. i think that that’s about how it goes in politics. howsomever, in john toland’s ‘adolf hitler’ and other history on the nazis, it is pointed out that most of the high circle were charmers and, contrary to popular opinion, of a fairly high quality.
Nicely done, mangeorge. I was about to question that inclusion myself.
However, regarding the esteemed C K Dexter Haven’s assertion:
“Well, I didn’t know any of them personally, but my guess would be that you couldn’t rise to power if you were a gibbering raving lunatic, frothing at the mouth.”
…well, you probably don’t want to know who I was going to prop up as an exception to THAT rule…
I’ve heard the exact opposite. According to his daughter, “in little things he wasn’t hard to please. On the contrary, he was courteous, unassuming and direct with those who waited on him.” Albanian prime minister Enver Hoxha wrote that Stalin was “modest and very kindly and considerate towards people, the cadres and his colleagues.” German writer Lion Feuchtwanger wrote, “It is manifestly irksome to Stalin to be worshipped as he is, and from time to time he makes fun of it. Of all the men I know who have power, Stalin is the most unpretentious.” (Cited in “Stalin and the Personality Cult”, http://www.geocities.com/redcomrades/pers-cult.html)