Suvorov’s argument is simple. Stalin cleverly lured Hitler into war by offering to divide Poland. This act, Stalin knew, would prompt Britain and France to declare war on Germany. Stalin expected to pick up the pieces. - Eric Margolis [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese on Sep 14, 2009 - 30 comments

World Leaders Were Kids Once Too
Photos of a whole bunch of world leaders as kids up through adulthood. Hey, Reagan was Teh Buff! And proof that Joe Stalin was NOT born with that mustache!
posted by fenriq on Jul 22, 2006 - 83 comments

What unites hardliners like Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, and Rush Limbaugh -- their uncompromisingly conservative take on politics? In a provocative blog post titled Do Bush followers have a political ideology?, Glenn Greenwald persuasively argues otherwise. He believes that the conservative movement -- traditionally against big government, excessive spending, and federal intrusion into the private lives of Americans -- has been hijacked by something much more dangerous: an authoritarian cult of personality, or as Greenwald puts it, "a form of highly emotional mass theater masquerading as political debate."
posted by digaman on Feb 12, 2006 - 136 comments

Stalin vs. Hitler. A comic. With wizardry and valkyries.
posted by Wolfdog on Dec 16, 2004 - 16 comments

Dictators and their demises: a miscellany. Saddam and the Destruction of Civil Society in Iraq is the timely find, and deals with the entire history of Iraq since the Ba'ath party takeover, including a detailed ideological history of the party and the increasingly totalitarian aspects of Saddam's rule in Iraq. To ask whether democracy, even in a non-Western sense, has a chance in Iraq is to jump one step ahead of the game. The fundamental questions we need to answer first are: What was the nature of Iraqi civil society before the Ba`thist regime destroyed it? How did the Ba`th oliberate it? And can Iraqi civil society be rebuilt after Saddam has left the stage? [more inside]
posted by dhartung on Apr 9, 2003 - 19 comments