Dictators

Mao Zedong

(1893-1976) Leader of the Communist Party in China that overthrew Jiang Jieshi and the Nationalists. Established China as the People's Republic of China and ruled from 1949 until 1976.

Ferdinand Marcos

(1917-1989) Philippine politician; he was elected president of the Philippines in 1965, but soon became an authoritarian dictator. He imposed martial law, arrested his political opponents, and stole millions from his country's treasury.

Juvenal Habyarimana

Hutu president whose plane was shot done and caused the wave of violence in the next three months

Than Shwe

In power since 1992, lives in Burma (Myanmar)

Hun Sen

Prime Minister of Cambodia

Suharto

(1921-) President of Indonesia from 1967 to 1998; he seized power in Indonesia from Sukarno in a coup d'état. His authoritarian and corrupt rule eventually led to his ouster.

Pervez Musharraf

(1943-) Pakistani general; he overthrew the elected government of Pakistan in 1999 and became president.

Anastasio Somoza Garcia

1896-1956 president of Nicaragua he outlawed the communist party and allied with the U.S.

Ho Chi Minh

1950s and 60s; communist leader of North Vietnam; used geurilla warfare to fight anti-comunist, American-funded attacks under the Truman Doctrine; brilliant strategy drew out war and made it unwinnable

Gustavo Rojas Pinilla

19th President of Colombia from June 1953 to May 1957. An Army General, he mounted a successful coup d'état against the incumbent President, Laureano Gómez Castro (1889—1965), imposing martial law and establishing a dictatorship-style government in Colombia.

Park Chung-Hee

A South Korean military general, president, and dictator, he was supported by various administrations in the United States

Nikita Khrushchev

A Soviet leader during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Also famous for denouncing Stalin and allowed criticism of Stalin within Russia.

Ion Antonescu

A fascist Prime Minister in Romania in WWII. He was born on June 15, 1882 in Pitesti, Romania. He joined the Romanian army in 1904 and was the Chief of Staff in the army in WWI. He then became Prime Minister of Romania in 1940. He became dictator during the war and began an alliance with the Axis. He enforced policies responsible for more than 400,000 deaths in Romania consisting of Jews, Ukranians, and Bessarabians. In May, 1946, he was put on trail and was found guilty of war crimes, treason, and crimes against the peace. He was executed on June 1, 1946.

Pedro Eugenio Aramburu

Argentine Army general. He was a major figure behind the Revolución Libertadora, the military coup against Juan Perón in 1955. He became 31st President of Argentina from November 13, 1955 to May 1, 1958. He was kidnapped by the radical organization Montoneros on May 29, 1970 and murdered, allegedly in retaliation for the June 1956 execution of General Juan José Valle, an army officer associated with the Peronist movement, and 26 Peronist militants after a botched attempt to overthrow his regime.

Leopoldo Galtieri

Argentine general and President of Argentina from 22 December 1981 to 18 June 1982, during the last military dictatorship (known officially as the National Reorganization Process). The death squad, 601 Intelligence Battalion, directly reported to him. He was removed from power soon after the Argentine defeat in the Falklands War, whose invasion he had ordered.

Adolf Hitler

Austrian born Dictator of Germany, implemented Fascism and caused WWII and Holocoust.

Josef Stalin

Bolshevik revolutionary, head of the Soviet Communist Party after 1924, and dictator of the Soviet Union from 1928-1953. He led the Soviet Union with an iron fist, using Five-Year Plans to increase industrial production and terror to crush all opposition.

Hissene Habre

Chadian politician who served as the President of Chad from 1982 until he was deposed in 1990. He was brought to power with the support of France and the United States, who provided training, arms and financing.

Augusto Pinochet

Chilean militar leader who in a coup deposed Salvador Allende - communist, elected leader - created one party rule dictatorship - ruled w/ iron fist - human rights abuses

Hu Jintao

China's paramount leader from 2002 to 2012

Kim Il-Sung

Communist leader of North Korea; his attack on South Korea in 1950 started the Korean War. He remained in power until 1994.

Ante Pavelic

Croatian general and military dictator who founded and headed the fascist ultranationalist organization known as the Ustaše in 1929 and governed the Independent State of Croatia, a fascist Nazi puppet state built out of Yugoslavia by the authorities of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, from 1941 to 1945.

Fidel Castro

Cuban socialist leader who overthrew a dictator in 1959 and established a Marxist socialist state in Cuba (born in 1927)

Kim Jong-Un

Current leader of North Korea

Getulio Vargas

Dictator of Brazil from 1930 to 1945 and from 1951 to 1954. Defeated in the presidential election of 1930, he overthrew the government and created Estado Novo ('New State'), a dictatorship that emphasized industrialization.

Alberto Fujimori

Elected president of Peru in 1990. promised to make reforms, but suspended the consititution and congress, became a dictator, and led a campaign against Shining Path.

Mengistu Haile Mariam

Ethiopian soldier and politician who was the leader of Ethiopia from 1977 to 1991. He was the chairman of the Derg, the military junta that governed Ethiopia, from 1977-87, and the President of the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (PDRE) from 1987-91.

Benito Mussolini

Fascist dictator of Italy (1922-1943). He led Italy to conquer Ethiopia (1935), joined Germany in the Axis pact (1936), and allied Italy with Germany in World War II. He was overthrown in 1943 when the Allies invaded Italy.

Chiang Kai-shek

General and leader of Nationalist China after 1925. Although he succeeded Sun Yat-sen as head of the Guomindang, he became a military dictator whose major goal was to crush the communist movement led by Mao Zedong.

Lenoid Brezhnev

General secretary of the CPSU, 1964-82; largely responsible for the stagnation of the USSR.

Ionnis Metaxas

Greek military officer and politician, serving as Prime Minister of Greece from 1936 until his death in 1941. He governed constitutionally for the first four months of his tenure, and thereafter as the strongman of the authoritarian 4th of August Regime. On 28 October 1940, he denied an ultimatum imposed by the Italians to surrender Greece to the Axis powers, thus bringing Greece into World War II.

Mobutu Sese Seko

He overthrew Lumumba, the leader of the Congo, and turned him over to his enemy. He renamed the country Zaire, and ruled for 32 years. He used a combination of force, one party rule, and gifts to supporters to run his country.

Fulgencio Batista

He was a pro-American dictator of Cuba before Castro. His overthrow led to Castro and communists taking over Cuba, who was now friendly to the Soviets.

Ayatolah Khomeini

Iranian politician and cleric. He was the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which saw the overthrow of the last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and the end of the 2,500 year old Persian monarchy.

Jean-Claude Duvalier

Leader of Haiti who succeeded his father as dictator in 1971 but was forced into exile in 1986

Sukarno

Leader of Indonesian independence movement; first president of Indonesia

Bashar al-Assad

Leader of Syria who has crushed minority groups. Is fighting a civil war against rebels and ISIL

Emilio Aguinaldo

Leader of the Filipino independence movement against Spain (1895-1898). He proclaimed the independence of the Philippines in 1899, but his movement was crushed and he was captured by the United States Army in 1901.

Pol Pot

Leader of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, who terrorized the people of Cambodia throughout the 1970's

Muammar al-Qaddafi

Libyan leader that supported international terrorism

Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz

Mauritanian politician who is currently the President of Mauritania, in office since 2009.

Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna

Mexican president who led an army against Texas

Thanom Kittikachorn

Military dictator of Thailand. A staunch anti-communist, Thanom oversaw a decade of military rule in Thailand from 1963 to 1973, during which he staged a self-coup, until public protests which exploded into violence forced him to step down. His return from exile in 1976 sparked protests which led to a massacre of demonstrators, followed by a military coup.

Sani Abacha

Oppressive Nigerian military dictator from 1993 to 1998 who came to power in a military coup

Manuel Noriega

Panama leader who was overthrown in a 1989 US invasion; Tried and imprisoned for drug trafficking

Wojceich Jaruzelski

Polish military officer and politician. He was First Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party from 1981 to 1989, and as such was the last leader of the People's Republic of Poland. He also served as Prime Minister from 1981 to 1985 and the country's head of state from 1985 to 1990.

Hafez al-Assad

President in Syria from 1971-2000 (also known to have eliminated competition), where he created sectarian divides, giving Sunni political leadership and Alawites control over the military and intelligence. Succeeded by Abdul Halim Khaddam, who was then succeeded by the current president, Bashar Al-Assad a month later.

Juan Peron

President of Argentina (1946-1955, 1973-1974). As a military officer, he championed the rights of labor. Aided by his wife Eva Duarte Peron, he was elected president in 1946. He built up Argentinean industry, became very popular among the urban poor.

Jorge Rafael Vidella

President of Argentina following Peron; ordered the government to take out Montoneros group and everyone who supported that radical group; used similar justification as Robespierre

Ziaur Rahman

President of Bangladesh. He was an army officer turned politician who, as a serving major, declared the Independence of Bangladesh on behalf of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman the following day on 27 March 1971. He became President of Bangladesh on 21 April 1977. He was assassinated on 30 May 1981 in Chittagong in an army coup d'état.

Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

President of Equatorial Guinea since 1979. He ousted his uncle, Francisco Macías Nguema, in an August 1979 military coup and has overseen Equatorial Guinea's emergence as an important oil producer, beginning in the 1990s. Obiang was Chairperson of the African Union from 31 January 2011 to 29 January 2012. He is the longest consecutively serving current non-royal national leader in the world.

Francois Duvalier

President of Haiti from 1957 to 1971. He was elected president in 1957 on a populist and black nationalist platform. After thwarting a military coup d'état in 1958, his regime rapidly became totalitarian and despotic.

Anastasio Somoza Debayle

President of Nicaragua from 1967 to 1979. Family took power in 1957 owned ¼ of land by 1967. 1978- civil war challenging Somoza led by "Sandinistas".

Slobodan Milosevic

President of Serbia from 1989 to 1997 and of Yugoslavia 1997 to 2000. A key figure in the ethnic conflicts in the Balkans in the 1900's.

Omar al-Bashir

President of Sudan's government. Responsibility for the government killings in Dafur and the arming and recruitment of the Islamic militia the Janjaweed killings

Robert Mugabe

President of Zimbabwe since 1980, very corrupt leading to massive inflation

Alejandro Agustin Lanusse

President of the Argentine Republic between March 22, 1971, and May 25, 1973, during the Argentine Revolution.

Mahathir Mohamad

Prime Minister of Malaysia. He was appointed Prime Minister in 1981, retired in 2003, and returned to the office in 2018. He is the chairman of the Pakatan Harapan coalition, as well as a member of the Parliament of Malaysia for the Langkawi constituency in the state of Kedah. Mahathir's political career has spanned more than 70 years starting with his participation in protests against non-Malays gaining Malaysian citizenship during the Malayan Union through to forming his own party, the Malaysian United Indigenous Party (PPBM), in 2016.

Nicolae Ceausescu

Romania's communist dictator who ordered the army to fire on demonstrators in the city of Timosaura, killing and wounding hundreds of people

Ne Win

Ruled 1974 - 1981. Militant nationalist that wanted to free burma from british rule. Military training from japan. Policies turned burma into one of the world's poorest nations. Placed under house arrest in march of 2002

Antonio de Oliveira Salzar

Served as the Prime Minister and dictator of Portugal from 1932 to 1968. He founded and led the Estado Novo ("New State"), the authoritarian, right-wing government that presided over and controlled Portugal from 1932 to 1974.

Francsico Franco

Spanish general and politician who ruled over Spain as Head of State and dictator under the title Caudillo from 1939, after the nationalist victory in the Spanish Civil War, until his death in 1975.

Anand Panyarachun

Thailand's Prime Minister twice: once between 1991-1992 and again during the latter half of 1992. He was effective in initiating economic and political reforms, one of which was the drafting of Thailand's "Peoples' Constitution", which was promulgated in 1997 and abrogated in 2006. Anand received a Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service in 1997.

Georgios Papadopoulos

The head of the military coup d'état that took place in Greece on 21 April 1967, and leader of the junta that ruled the country from 1967 to 1974. He held his dictatorial power until 1973, when he was himself overthrown by his co-conspirator Dimitrios Ioannidis.

Islam Karimov

The leader of Uzbekistan and its predecessor state, the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic, from 1989 until his death in 2016.

Ayub Khan

The second president of Pakistan, from 1958 to 1974. Khan seized control of the government in 1958 and then staged elections. He was the first of Pakistan's many military leaders.

Plaek Phibunsongkhram

The third and longest serving Prime Minister of Thailand and dictator of Thailand from 1938 to 1944 and 1948 to 1957.

Yahya Khan

Third President of Pakistan, serving in this post from 25 March 1969 until turning over his presidency in December 1971.

Sadam Hussein

This former leader of Iraq that invaded Kuwait in 1990 to gain popularity amoung Iraqi citizens. He was ousted by the United States and executed after being put on trial for genocide and other crimes.

Hideki Tojo

This general was premier of Japan during World War II while this man was dictator of the country. He gave his approval for the attack on Pearl Harbor and played a major role in Japan's military decisions until he resigned in 1944

Kim Jong-Il

Took power after Kim Il Sung. He developed serious Nuclear Powers and had serious economic powers.

Saparmurat Niyazov

Turkmen politician who served as the leader of Turkmenistan from 1985 until his death in 2006.

Idi Amin

Ugandan military leader/president - responsible for hundreds of thousands of Christian/tribal deaths

Jean Kambanda

Was the Prime Minister in the caretaker government of Rwanda from the start of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide