Children of Dictators

What happens when you are raised by an evil tyrant? In Episode 19 Robert is joined by Jack O'Brien (The Daily Zeitgeist) to examine what it is like being the children of monsters.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hello everybody. I am Robert Evans, and this is Behind
the Bastards to show where we tell you everything you
don't know about the very worst people in all of history.
Today with me is my former boss at Cracked and
current boss at Stuff Media, Jack O'Brien at me, Jack O'Brien,

(00:27):
and today Jack Attack. We are talking about the children
of dictators, which I know you you just had another kid,
did um, and you're you're kind of like the podcast
equivalent of a dictator. Yeah, so there might be some
tips here. I didn't realize that's how we were coming
at this, But okay, I feel like you can empathize

(00:48):
with the fathers the father figures. Well, at least you
can give me some you know, I'm not. I don't
have kids, so I may not know if something is
actually a good parenting tactic. Well, my children are two
and two weeks old, so I have yet to be
able to funk them up totally given one of them

(01:11):
control of either a soccer team or a military unit.
Not yet. Okay, Okay, third birthday gonna be a lot
of that in this podcast. All right, I've spent most
of the last week reading about the various children of Dictators.
There's a number of sources for this podcast, which I'll
go through as we read them, but I do want
to upfront plug a book called Children of Monsters by j. Nordlinger. Uh.

(01:33):
It's a great book. I'll be referencing it regularly here.
There are a lot of players in this podcast, so
I kind of figured my best bet would be to
start with the dictator who I think was probably the
best parent out of all of them, Fidel Castro. Um.
I'm not saying Fidel was a good parent. He was
terrible by every normal measure of being a dad, but
none of his kids grew up to be mass raping,

(01:55):
mass torturing monsters, and that counts as a win on
this list. So Castro's oldest son was Fidelito. Uh. Castro
divorced Fidelito's mom, Murda early and philed to Mexico to
wage his revolution from Afar. Fidelito's mom's family was well
connected in Cuban politics, so obviously Castro hated them, and
he hated that his kid lived with them because they were,

(02:17):
you know, bougie as. When Fidelito was six, Castro asked
nicely if he could have his kid for a two
week visit. Murder said yes and sent him over, and
Castro kidnapped him. But not only did he kidnap him,
he didn't even kidnap him to raise him himself. He
kidnapped him and put him with a foster family that
he thought would do a better job than the kids.

(02:38):
Actual mom is dictatorship, like you should be over here.
These are better parents for you than your mom and
certainly better than me. Um. So Murder had to get
the Mexican government to help her re kidnap her son
three months later. But in nineteen fifty nine, when Fidelito
was nine, Castro took power. His mother sent him over

(03:02):
from New York to visit his dad again because she
thought he should know his dad, even though he had
already kidnapped him once, which is maybe a questionable call
from a mom, but I mean, so far, this is
exactly the story of my two year old so kep coming.
So yeah, Fidelito went over to Cuba to see his dad,
who was, you know, the new dictator of Cuba. They
post together on top of tanks and basically Castro treated

(03:24):
him as a prop um. Fun dictator stuff, yeah, fun
dictator stuff, and a few months after those tank photos
were taken, there was a horrible car accident Fidelito got
into um he was badly injured. He went into surgery
to have his spleen removed on the same night Fidel
Castro was set to address a bunch of reporters on TV.
The Children of Monsters book quotes a biography of Castro

(03:45):
called Guerilla Prints, which is both a solid name for
a rap album, uh, and which I'll also quote because
you know it's great. So this is the night Castro
was talking to a bunch of press people while his
son is getting surgery, and he's at least set all
this up. So all these journalists are talking to him,
but instead of asking him normal questions, they're all asking

(04:06):
him like, why aren't you leaving to go see your son?
Why aren't you leaving to go see your son? And uh.
Finally one of them says, Commandante Castro, who is it
who rules in Cuba? And Castro shouts back the people,
And then the journalist says, well, then the people want
you to go see your son. And so at this
Castro turns around and drives off to see his kid. So,
like his son gets in an accident and he's like,

(04:26):
how can I spend this for good? Um So, Fittalito
became a celebrity in Cuba, and he seems to have
hated it. Castro eventually pulled him out of the line
lime light and sent him to study nuclear physics in
the Soviet Union like you do. Um. He became the
head of Cuba's Atomic Energy Commission in eight Uh. He
was not good at the job he was. He round

(04:50):
up getting removed from the position twelve years later in
ninety two. We don't know why exactly, but it probably
had something to do with the joint Cuban Russian nuclear reactor. Uh.
There's a great article about this reactor on Gizmodo. On
the title of the article kind of tells you the
story the abandoned communist reactor that would have killed us all.
Um So, this reactor that Castro's son was presiding over. Uh.

(05:11):
They basically found that upon its operation, it would have
been at least fifteen times likelier than the US plant
to have had a catastrophic meltdown. Based on the weather patterns,
they knew it would only take twenty four hours for
radioactive materials to reach Florida, if it did melt down,
and since Cuba is not very big, Fidalito's plan was
to dump all of their nuclear waste into the ocean. Um.

(05:31):
So he was. He was not a great atomic energy commissioner. Um.
His dad fired him. Uh, he was sent to the
Cuban Academy of Sciences. And that's not really much else
to say about Fidalito. He's kind of boring, which is
basically the best case scenario for a kid on this list, Fidel.
We don't know how many kids Fidel had. We aren't
even sure if he was married for most of his
time in power or how many wives he had, but

(05:54):
we do know that he had another boy, Antonio, who
became an orthopedic surgeon. An Tonio worked as a physician
to the Cuban basketball team and seems to be better
at his job than his older brother. Wasn't building nuclear
power plants. I'm bringing him up because in two thousand eight,
something hilarious happened to him. Uh. Louis Dominiquez, pro democracy activist,
baseball fan, and Cuban American, pretended to be a twenty

(06:15):
seven year old Colombian sports journalist named Claudia to seduce Antonio.
So the Internet is not allowed in Cuba, but if
you're a Castro family member, you get a smartphone, you
get internet access, you get all of that stuff you're
not supposed to, but you know they have it anyway.
So Luis pretends to be this woman Claudia and strikes
up a romantic relationship with Castro's son via text messages

(06:38):
and Google Chat and like he's cat Fish, Yeah, he's
he Catfish's Castro son um and fishing the king fish,
the big fish. There's messages like guess where I am
and I will make love to you without stopping his
one message Antonio sent this fake woman while he was
on a diplomatic visit to Russia. I mean that's just
kind of basic love making, is that you don't stop

(07:00):
in the middle of you, and I won't just randomly stuff.
I have a desire to kiss you. I want to
kiss you, love you, and make love to you. So
that's sweet. Um. But Louis was also able to get
Antonio to share his phone number, his address, and Havana
and reveal that he had no bodyguards and give him
updates on secret trips he was taking to other countries
in Central and South America. That's sort of thing that

(07:22):
a secret admirer would ask you. Yeah, exactly. And my
favorite thing about this is that, like, by doing this,
Louise is not just throwing shade on the on Fidel Castro. Um,
but he's also like kind of sticking it to the
c I A who spent like trying to kill Castro
like five times, always trying to figure out stuff and couldn't.
And then this guy, I'll just pretend to be a girl,

(07:43):
pretend I want to fund his son. Turns out that
was the key all along. Um So that's a fun story.
Um So, Yeah, Antonio is clearly kind of dumb, but
he's he doesn't seem to be a bad person. Um So, again,
Castro's kids atty much the best case scenario here. The
worst case scenario for that, we're gonna have to roll

(08:04):
over to our old buddy, Saddam Hussein. Of all the
dictator fathers I've read about, I'm pretty sure he was
the worst. Um Ude. Hussein was born in nineteen sixty
four and Kusay in nineteen sixty six. Uh, Kusay, not
a whole lot to say about. I mean, he wasn't
a great guy, but it's Day. Who who's the real

(08:25):
kingship of Garbage Mountain? Um so Uda was originally meant
to be the heir to Saddam's power. Uh. He was tall,
handsome and athletic. But he was also so crazy that
Saddam couldn't stand him and eventually disinherited him. So in
the nineties, u Day was made the head of the
national soccer team football team, whatever term you want to use,

(08:47):
the head of the team. Yeah. Yeah, he was like
the head coach. That's like a dictator kid. Trope will
run into a couple of other kids who like, Okay,
you get to run the soccer team because your dad's
I mean, yeah, that's awesome the boss. Uh. And so
as coach of this team, he was known to show
up at halftime and promised to cut off players legs
and feed them to hungry dogs if they didn't improve. Um,

(09:10):
which is that's good motivation? Yeah, yeah, it's a solid strategy. Um.
I'm gonna quote here from a wonderful Guardian article titled
day Career of Rape, Torture and Murder. Uh. Quote. As
football oversealer, Seer, Uday kept a private torture scorecard with
written instructions on how many times each player should be
beaten on the soles of his feet after a particularly

(09:32):
poor showing. Well, you gotta stay organized. I mean, that's
the that's the first thing. I can't forget any any
beating worthy mistakes. No, no, that's like the first. I'm
pretty sure what Joe Namath said that he was always
hitting people in the foot. Yeah. Um so, in addition
to being probably not a very good coach, Day was
famous for raping basically anyone and everyone who caught his eye.

(09:54):
There were some occasions where he'd show up at weddings
and just take the bride. Yeah, that would happen, like
is a lot of those stories. So he's he's garbage.
He became obsessed with torture. It said that he had
a private torture chamber on the Tigris. I found a
quote during my research from a friend of the Hussain
family who said the day Day discovered the Internet was

(10:16):
a black day for Iraqis which, yeah, what did he
do with the Internet. Well, he found out about things
like Iron Maidens, not the band, the sarcophagus filled with spikes. Um,
we found one of those in one of his palaces.
The Americans did when when Iraq was you know, conquered

(10:36):
or whatever. Uh, And when they found it, it was
dull like like it wasn't he didn't just buy it
to put it in the corner because he was like,
I mean I think it started sharp. Yeah, you gotta
you gotta keep that thing sharp, man. I think he
was doing a lot of maiden ing with the iron maiden,
although maybe more painful if it's not sharp. Yeah. I

(10:57):
mean I assumed Huda knew what he was doing when
it came to using an iron maiden on people. He
was probably the world's leading expert on that actually, So
you know, I've only used one like once or twice.
I shouldn't. Yeah. Um. There is one mark in Uday's favor,
which is that he was the leader of the Saddam Fedain,

(11:18):
which was a violent paramilitary force dedicated to his dad. Uh.
And the mark in his favor is that he equipped
his private army with Darth Vader helmets. Yes, I've got
a picture of them, and that's that's cool. That's that's
that's pretty fly. Now did he know they were Darth
Vader helmets? Yeah? Oh yeah, yeah, no, he he knew
what he was doing. It was a conscious decision to

(11:39):
echo Darth Vader and the helmets of his private army,
which is, if you're gonna have a private army, not
a bad call. So he was just like, I'm a
bad guy, like from age one, was just like I'm
I'm gonna be evil. He didn't have acid. He's yeah, no,
he's not like one of those awful people who tries
to pretend to be good. He's like fully committed. You know,

(12:00):
it would be cool an army of Darth Vaders if
they were mine. Um. So Saddam does not seem to
have reigned in his oldest son for decades or disciplined
him much at all, But over time Uday's behavior grew
too abhorrant for even histories. Worst dad to let that
horse run? You know. Well, uh so Ude was a drunk,

(12:21):
had a little bit of a drinking problem. In a
nine eight, he got drunk at a party and bludgeoned
his father's bodyguard to death in front of a bunch
of random partiers, which is kind of a party foul.
That's where I personally, Yeah, beating your dad's bodyguard to death,
that's an important line. Yeah, Um, this was not unheard
of behavior, for he was famous for getting ship faced

(12:42):
and doing things like firing his machine gun above the
heads of musicians and dancers at parties. Sometimes he did
not shoot above their heads. Um. He would just get
drunk and shoot people at parties. That was his thing.
He was like Joe Peshy's character and Good Fellas if
he was never kidding every single time time. He was
just going to murder them. Yeah, yeah, he's he's There's

(13:04):
no kidding with Ude Hussein, um said sense of humor
notoriously bad sense of well And all of this came
to a head during a drunken brawl with his uncle
What bon see what bon? And the why? Which? Who
was a? Saddam's brother in law got into an argument
over quote, the most sought after prostitute at a party. Uh.
They went to Ude to ask him to basically King

(13:26):
Solomon the whole matter and like determine who gets the prostitute. Yeah,
this was not a good idea. Ude had shown up
at the party after three am, drunk as fun with
a crazy pump action rifle that looked like it came
from the movie Rambo. Is the only description I've I've
I can't. I have no idea what kind of gun
it was. Uh, it sounds ridiculous, So he was he
was already hammered, probably blacked out, and when they asked

(13:49):
him this, for some reason, he became convinced that what
Bond had been making fun of his speech impediment. So
Ude just starts shooting. Uh. He fires randomly into the crowd,
first killing three people and wounding god knows how many.
Then he turned the gun on his uncle and shot
him in both legs, and then also accidentally gunned down
six female dancers. So like nine people have died total

(14:09):
in this ramsay, and Saddam's brother has had his kneecaps
blown off. So this piste off Saddam Hussein Uh, and
he decided he was actually going to discipline his son.
So the story, yeah, so it's a real hardass. You know,
you gotta draw the line somewhere. So the story of
how I'm quoting from Will Barton Wharper's The Prisoner in

(14:32):
his Palace quote. As punishment, he torched U Day's prize
collection of rolls, Royce's, Bentley's, BMW's, Porsches and Ferraris, which
had been stored under guard in a garage and the
Republican Palace. Laughing wildly, the former dictator recalled how he
gleefully watched the inferno, smoking one of his famous coheba's
as the flames engulfed his son's treasured possessions. Saddam's almost

(14:53):
manacle laughter was contagious. Rogerson, who's the guy, the American
he's telling this story too, was unable to resist joining in,
succumbing to belly laughs of his own. The mental image
of the Dictator dousing hundreds of his sons luxury cars
with gasoline and setting them ablaze reminded him of a
Jerry Springer episode on steroids. Oh so, just everybody in
this story, including the guy he's telling the story too,

(15:15):
is just fucking crazy, just completely out of their mind.
I mean, that's pretty funny. You murder nine people at
a party, I'm gonna light a hundred cars on fire. Yeah,
that'll show him. And Woday was on the straight and
narrow from that point forward right the end. No, he
he actually got shot in an assassination attempt and paralyzed
from like the waist down. So he did calm down

(15:38):
after that, But I don't think it was because of
the cars. So uh. One of the weird things here
is that like, well Soddam doesn't seem to have done
much at all to his son's one way or the other. Uh,
he was actually kind of a sweet dad to his daughter's,
especially his eldest daughter, Rock had Uh. She told a
story to an interviewer who at like saw this cheap
piece of jewelry on her when she was like an

(15:59):
egg island. Jordan was like, that doesn't look like the
kind of thing you'd have, and she told him a
sweet story about when you know, before Saddan was dictator,
they've been walking in a market and she'd fallen down
and scraped her knee and broken down into power crazed general. Like,
well he was power vice president, scrappy young power crazed

(16:19):
vice president. Yeah, yeah exactly. So he like he bought
her some fancy like costume jewelry when she scraped her knee,
and she kept it her whole life. So Tom was
like a sweet And this is like another dictator trope
is their sons always are often turned out to be
like mass raping murderers and their daughters are like he
was a sweet dad. He bought me jewelry. This is

(16:41):
why it's so good that our main enemy in North
Korea has just a line of succession with just nothing
but dictators and sons of dictators all the way down. Yeah. Yeah,
And and most of them seem to be cut from
the old day cloth. Yeah. Um. So again that's a trend.
Dictator is being really close to their first daughter, and

(17:02):
that kind of brings us to Stalin because Stalin adored
his young daughter's feed Lana. Uh. And we're going to
get into Joseph Stalin as a doting father after this break,
But first we're going to break for something Stalin would
have hated, ads capitalism, songs of of products. By not
skipping these ads, you're fighting Stalin in a sense. Yes, Uh,

(17:25):
stick it to Stalin be a good American and several
of the dictators on this list by listening to these ads.
And we're back. Uh. Last we talked about Fidel Castro
and Saddam Hussein and their parenting tactics, and right now

(17:47):
we are talking about fed Lana Stalin, the daughter to
Joseph Stalin. She was born in after Stalin was already
in power, and he was kind of a doting father
at first, Uh, Lana thinks it's because he reminded her
of his mother. There um set Lana's mother and Ndesda
was a committed Bolshevik. She was not big on child rearing.
She never hugged her daughter, she never said a kind

(18:08):
word to her daughter, and she constantly gave Stalin ship
for coddling their daughter. So in this relationship, Stalin was
the cool parent, which the laid back He's the chill
dad right, um wow, Stalin's wife did not funk around her. No,
she did not. Uh yeah, she wound up killing herself
because she wasn't angry at how he wasn't Communist enough

(18:32):
for her. Basically real it seems like why we don't
even I mean, we're not gonna tell you when argument ladies.
But anyway, so Stalin and his daughter had a cute
little relationship. He would have her issue orders to him
in writing and then he would respond I obey. He
would sign notes as like the poor peasant Joseph Stalin

(18:52):
the secretary to you know my daughter. Um so that
was cute, adorable. Yeah, they had a cute little thing
it And last you know, Stalin was always busy and
a lot of what he was busy doing was disappearing people.
So regularly her classmates would just not show up at
school because their parents had been exiled or executed, and
he had her classmates killed for like not being nice

(19:14):
to his daughter. I suspect some of that might have
happened to Um. There's just a lot of her schoolmates
weren't there one day, and that kept on happening. From
time to time. Other classmates would give her notes to
pass on to her father, begging him to free their parents. UM.
Stalin hated this and told his daughter to not act
as a post office box. So that's a fun thing

(19:36):
to put on your daughter's shoulder. Um. Her relatives started
to disappear to after Stalin's wife committed suicide. Stalin got
rid of basically the mom's whole side of the family,
so all of fet Laana's aunts and uncles. Uh. She
didn't understand why this was happening and thought that it
was just like a terrible mistake until she went to
Stalin about it and he said, no, they knew too much.

(19:57):
They babbled, and it played into the hands of our enemy.
He knows how to talk to his daughter. He's a
good father. He's a good dad. He's a good dad.
That's how you explained disappearing. Yeah, someone's relatives. Um so.
In three, at the height of World War two, set
Lana fell in love with a young boy named Kapler.
They had a brief romance and then Stalin found out
He became convinced Kapler was a British spy. He also

(20:18):
wasn't wild about the fact that Kapler was Jewish. Uh.
Spet Laana said, you know, but I love him Dad.
I'm gonna quote from spet Lana's autobiography here, love, screamed
my father with a hatred of the very word I
can scarcely convey. And for the first time in his life,
he slapped me across the face twice. Take a look
at yourself. Who'd want you? You fool? He's got women
all around him. So that's what that Stalin he there's

(20:44):
an immediate drop off if she gets to be a
teenager and how sweet Stolid is. Yeah, and just the
second she shows any interest in another man, Yeah, that's she.
So she's also a first daughter. Yeah, yeah, so that's
just interesting. We were just talking on the other podcast
that I host, The Daily Zieist, Today about our president

(21:06):
and his strange relationship to his first daughter, Ivanka, just
how it doesn't seem like totally normal, like they seem
to have a very special bond. But yeah, yeah, so
he has sort of the same sort of relationship to
his daughter Stylin does that, um like Scarface has to
his sister. It's like, yeah, man, he's really protective of her. Yeah,

(21:29):
it's sweet up until another human being enters the picture,
and then it's like, oh no, this is bad. That's
interesting that dictators can like not because they they're clearly
their love for their daughter is just a function of
their narcissism, right, Yeah, but it's weird that it doesn't
translate to their sons, probably because they see their sons

(21:53):
as just like a diminished, shittier version of them. Yeah
it's me, but you know, you never had to struggle.
You didn't grow up robbing banks for a living, you know. Yeah,
whereas his daughter is just this, you know, perfect little
thing that loved him and then she becomes a person
and he's very angry about Yeah. So you know, Stalin
dies spoiler alert, uh and after his deaths ft Lana

(22:14):
flees the Soviet Union. She becomes an American citizen in
sixty seven, but then comes back to the U. S
s r. In eighty four. But then she goes back
to the US and then France and then finally England
in NU just on her my dad was Stalin tour Well. Yeah,
she wrote two very popular books and one of them
was a best seller, um and they were apparently good books,

(22:35):
like well reviewed, so you you might call her the
best case scenario for like the kid of a monster.
From her perspective, Yeah, she wound up being a relatively
successful person and you know, spoke out against her dad
the rest of her life. Like whatever happened to the
guy Kaplar that she fell in love with? He went
off to a gulag? Oh got it? Got yep yep,

(22:56):
like specifically as ordered by Stalin or just because he
was one of millions and millions of people who got
swept up. I mean, he was one of millions and
millions of people who got swept up. But Stalin, you know, like,
I don't think it was unrelated to the fact that
he was making eyes at Stalin's daughter and gulags were
nice places, right, yeah, pretty chill. Let's not examine that

(23:17):
any further, they seem nice because it's a nice name.
It sounds like a good soup. Yeah yeah, oh yeah,
I love the gulag It's eggplant, right yeah yeah. Uh.
My favorite fact about gulags is the Russian word for Russia.
Russian still has a word for this. It's called it
basically means man cow, and it's a word that was

(23:39):
created in the Gulags for when you fatten somebody up
who you're in the gulags with in order to uh
and then you plan an escape with them so that
you can eat them as you're crossing the tundra. That's yeah,
Russian hats has a single word for that. Is that

(24:00):
why you would cater all those fat about it? Okay? Um,
all right, back to uh Castro's oh yeah so um.
This kind of this kind of brings to mind Castro's
daughter Elena, who had a very similar story to fet Laana. Um. So,
she never really lived with her dad. Her mom was

(24:20):
kind of one of Castro's side flings, but she grew
up knowing knowing she was Castro's daughter. Everyone else knew
she was Castro's daughter, and likes fet Lana, people would
beg her to have her dad free their families from
you know, horrible you know, slave camps and stuff. Um,
Castro wasn't as much of a dick about it as Stalin.
I don't think he did anything when she asked him,

(24:41):
but he wasn't, like makes it kind of hard to
be like, guys, I'm not just defined by my father
when they're like, but he's killing my family, my father, right. Um.
So they didn't have a super close relationship, but Fidel
did show up at her first wedding and as he left,
he told her don't let me know when you get

(25:02):
your divorce, and her response was, don't worry. I don't
have your phone number. Um likes fet Lana. She fled
her home country. She wound up in the United States.
She wrote a book about her shitty dad, and she
started a radio show in Miami called Simply Elena where
she would talk about Castro every day. Not Castro was
my dad, it was just simply Elena. Now I think
Castro was my dad was similar to her books title.

(25:24):
But yeah, yeah, yeah, So that's that's interesting. You've got
like two older daughters of of dictators who followed basically
the same path um rejecting their father, who clearly was
into them for a weird reason. They're still hope for
you Avanca. Yeah, you can write it, but you could
have a simply Avanca. You could just interesting. I'm really

(25:46):
interested to see, like what as everybody who was associated
with Well, well we don't need to talk about politics.
Let's keep going with these crazy motherfucker's. Yeah, let's talk
about Stalin's sons. Um. So, first props to stop. Uh.
He spoiled his kids a lot less than most dictators.
This is particularly true of his son's Vassili and Yakov. Uh. So,

(26:07):
Stalin seems to have been kind of a true believer
in some ways. Uh to the stuff he was, he was,
he was, you know, thrown out there. Uh. He didn't
want his kids to get special treatment just because their
dad was Stalin. Um. When Vasili was seventeen, he joined
a flight school. His grades were terrible. Um, his dad's
employees helped him get into the school. Uh, without you know,
Stalin's knowledge, because they thought it might curry favor. Yeah.

(26:30):
They were probably disappeared for that because Stalin did not
like that. He described his son as spoiled an average
when you're helping somebody get into flight school and they're
not good enough to get into flight school. Are you
really doing them a favor or are you just sending
them off to a fiery death? Yeah? Um, or maybe
other people. So vasili Uh tried to use his famous

(26:51):
name to get privileges at flight school. Stalin found out
and ordered that his kid not get any special treatment. Um.
I think he still did get some special treatment, but
I think Stalin was pissed about it. Vassili was a
rampage and drunk In spite of that, he did manage
to graduate flight school. He had a habit of drunkenly
commandeering planes and then flying them while continuing to drink.
You would expect that story to end worse than it did,

(27:13):
but apparently he never like accidentally nine eleven anything. And
I like that nine eleven's past tenses nine to eleven
first of all, but also, yeah, so he was like
Denza Washington's character in flight. I need a couple of
pops to like get him in the World's Greatest Pilot
and then he's like flying planes upside down? Is he

(27:35):
a commercial pilot or what? Military? Military? So he is
the commander. He is a colonel in charge of an
Air Force regiment during World War Two for a little while.
Stalin actually fired him very quickly and said this, Colonel
Stalin is being removed from his post as regimental commander
for drunkenness and debauchery and because he is ruining and
perverting the regiment. So so, I mean when he's drunkenly

(27:58):
commandeering these plane means that's only a thing that is
possible if you're a Stalin's kid, because everyone else they
just fucking shoot you between the eyes. Yeah, Stalin did
predict his kids from being shot in the eyes. Yeah,
if there's one thing you could say about that guy, Yes,
millions of flaves lost. But actually Vassilly got to drunkenly

(28:18):
commandeer that plan. I should say he stopped two thirds
of his kids from being shot in. So Vassili lived
to the ripled age of forty one when he died
of rampant alcoholism. He lasted longer than his brother Yakov um.
As far as I can tell, Yakov was actually pretty
solid dude. I haven't read about any specific crimes he committed.
He did try to kill himself after a failed romance.

(28:40):
When he failed, Stalin's only comment was he can't even
shoot straight? Is the name Yakov in Russian spelled jack Off?
I mean I wrote it as white like it's written
in cyrillic. Well, it's neither because you can you spell
it either way because they use different letters. Proceed. Yeah, um.
Yakov wound up on the Eastern Front during the Nazi invasion.

(29:02):
He was captured by the Nazis. They offered to ransom
him back to Stalin in exchange for the captured German
field Marshal Paulis, but Stalin said it's not worth it
to trade a general for a lieutenant h. Stalin also
had Yakov's family locked up after he was captured because
he issued a decrease saying that the families of captured
soldiers had to be punished. Uh, and he did not
exempt his son's own family from that. So his son's

(29:25):
own family was imprisoned. But that's like his wife or
like something, just his wife and kids some side piece. No,
it's his wife. I think he's got a wife and kids.
So Yakov's family was also his family. Yeah, yeah, Saddam
Saddam's grandkids and daughter in law he throws in prison
because their dad gets captured by the Nazis. Okay, yakoffs Yeah,

(29:48):
wife and kids. Yeah. And Yakov gets killed at the
Saxon Housen concentration camp when he refuses an order from
a guard to go, you know, do something. He just
like wasn't only to take it anymore. The fact that
he died this way is actually the only thing he
ever did that Stalin approved of. Uh. So that's Stalin
the dad in a nutshell? Um? So was he shot

(30:09):
by a German officer? He's shot by a German while
an s S guard. Basically, the guys like it's time
to go inside, and Yakov's like, no funk and I'm
just ready to die. When to keep playing? Yeah and yeah.
So that's how you get Stalin's approval. Um, if you
were his son, get shot by a Nazi. Way to
go yet? Yeah, And I feel like now is the
right time to move on to another communist dictator, Nikolai Cichesco.

(30:32):
He was the dictator of Romania from nineteen sixty five
to nineteen eighty nine. As an authoritarian ruler, he ordered
troops to fire and protesters, operated a vast and repressive
secret police, and generally ran his country into the ground.
He's the whole standard bingo for a European dictator sixties seventies, eighties. Uh,
and he's kind of middle of the pack as far
as dictator dad's go. So his wife was named Alina

(30:54):
and they had two sons and one daughter. His first son, Valentine,
was initially meant to be the air Apparent, but Valentine
didn't want to follow in his dad's footsteps. He declined
the privilege of being the air and instead became a
nuclear physicist, which he still does today. Such a disappointment.
So yeah, what a bummer kid, just becomes a nuclear physicist,
not a power hungry dictator. Um. Valentine only abused his

(31:18):
position a little bit. He acquired a giant art collection,
and he had a side job helping to run the
nation's best soccer team. Um, but he was apparently pretty nice.
Nobody had any complaints with him on the soccer team. Uh. Yeah,
you know, the silly Stalin also had a soccer team
or or a hockey team or whatever. Um. All these
dictator kids get a sports team if they want him. Apparently,

(31:39):
it's a lot of fun because it's what our richest
people do. Right the second they become billionaires. They buy
a sports teams. Yeah, Zoya che Skoo was the middle daughter.
Apparently Nikolai and Elina did something right because she also
got a PhD. Hers was in mathematics. Yeah this check
out the big brand on the chichev schoose. Well, this
is actually a problem because nick Kali's wife, Elena, the

(32:01):
dictator ASTs you could say, was kind of a giant
piece of ship too. And her hobby was pretending to
be a chemist. Uh. She loved to get honors from
foreign universities for her pioneering work in chemistry. She had
done no work in chemistry, but that was just a thing.
It got her off to pretend she was a chemist,
and she hated that her daughter was an actual scientist
with actual accomplishing. So when her daughter gets a PhD

(32:26):
in mathematics, Elena kicks Zoya out of the presidential palace
and makes her live in an apartment. Um. As revenge,
Zoya starts a new mathematics department at the institute she
worked at and winds up in charge of it. She
also starts smoking because her mom hates cigarettes. Um So
this is like like a mix of normal teenage rebellion
and the kind of thing you can only do it
as a dictator's kid, like I'm gonna smoke cigarettes and

(32:48):
start a new mathematics institute. Yeah, very smart, dictator's kid. Yeah, Yeah,
she's brilliant. She starts drinking heavily and having lots of
sex with random people, like you do. A didn't care
about the sex so much, but she did order the
secret police to watch her daughter and report on the
boys she dated, which I assumed did not always end
well for the boys. Zoya became a bit of a dissident.

(33:11):
She made some friends with normal Romanians who were suffering
under her parents rule, and so she stopped using her
family name and spoke out about terrible living conditions. But
that really seems to have been more of a way
to get back at her mom than out of a
real commitment to justice. When her parents were forced from power,
Elena was arrested to The troops that searched her house
found it filled with jewels and art and cash. As
they took her away, she asked the police if they

(33:32):
had any room in the truck for her poodles, since
many Romanians were starving at this point. This did not
play well, um, but you know, Zoia and Valentine were
both functional people who like, got legitimate jobs and you know,
high level degrees their success stories. The same cannot be
said of Nikolai and Elina's youngest child, Nikko. Uh, since

(33:53):
Valentine had chosen the life of the mind and Nicko
was seen as the Czechski's best bet for establishing a
communist dynasty. I'm gonna quote Odren of Monsters again here.
From his mid teens, Nikku was an out of control
drunk and a rapist. He raped it will, and his
will was ferocious and unopposable. He had complete license. He
was the kind who could run red lights and kill
people in the process with total impunity. So that's yeah.

(34:16):
When the United Nations named International Youth here, Nikko was
picked to be the spokesperson of that whole thing. The
United Nations picked him. Yeah, he's the spokesperson of the
International Youth. Yeah yeah, I mean, you got a metal
what's more youthful than running red lights and indiscriminate rape.
He's a fun guy. Um. You know, back in Romania

(34:37):
now with a metal nik who drank, raped and regularly
got in a car accidents. His best friend was Ude Hussein.
The pair would regularly meet up in Monica, said like,
weird sound in their name, and yeah, they just seemed
like a perfect match. I bet they had fun in Monico.
In Switzerland, it seemed like it seemed like a good
crew to party with. Yeah, you must be weird to

(34:59):
get drunk with. Day when he can't machine gun people,
just I wonder, Yeah, what does he do then? Yeah,
just like goes around and pushes people under traffic or something,
shows people off of balconies. Um. At one point, Nikko
got married. His mom had to force this on him
because you know, he was happier raping people indiscriminately. But

(35:20):
at his mom's urging, he eventually married a girl named Pollyanna.
After the wedding, he told her, now, go live with
my mother. She should fuck you because she chose you.
So that's some solid that was actually in my wedding
valves as well. That's a beautiful, beautiful sentiment. Yeah. The
couple divorced not long after that. Yeah, it's a heartbreak
whenever that happens. So during the revolution that kicked their

(35:44):
parents out of power, Nikko ordered troops to massacre civilians.
In one Transylvanian town. His brother and sister didn't do
much at all. They received eight months sentences. Nikko was
given twenty years in prison. He was released after only
three because his heavy drinking had killed his liver. He
died at age forty five, which means he lived, you know,
a good four years longer than Vassili Stalin. Um. I
could probably fill two or three full podcasts with anecdotes

(36:06):
of other dictator kids. I assume we'll all follow up
at some point. You know, there's there's the story of
Kadafi's son Matassen, who hired Beyonce and Usher to play
at private parties. He would throw and spent two million
dollars a month of the government's money on his own.
It's fun, but us also sounds like some sort of
over the counter cough medicine. Yeah. Um, we're gonna actually

(36:29):
move on to another dictator's kid in a little bit,
Nikolai Lukashenko, the small child with a Golden gun. But
first we've got some advertisements to come back to. Which
advertisements that would really piss off Nikolai Chichesko because he was,
you know, Communist. So let's keep angering these dead dictators Hey,

(36:55):
we are back, and I'm going to talk about Benito Mussolini, Uh,
the lean man, and he he actually seems to have
been a decent parent, and that his kids all grew
up idolizing him even after his death. But he was
a shitty parent, and that his kids all became horrible
fascists and his family are still fascists today. Um. He
sent his son, Vittorio to Hollywood in nineteen thirty seven,

(37:18):
and Vittorio formed a company with how Roach, creator of
the Little Rascals. Uh. Their collaboration was short lived, adorable.
You can find a video online of Mussolini's son meeting
all of the Little Rascals for Yeah, he does he
have like a stiff sort of fascist demeanor about you
know what. I think he would have been any of them. No,

(37:40):
but he would have been a great member of the cast.
He's got um, he's got Rascal's charisma. Uh. Yeah, I
I really I don't see why they didn't bring him
back for the reboot in the nineties of the Little Rascals.
That would have been what that was missing. But yeah,
if you want to look that up online, you can
see Mussolini's son and the Little rascals being adorable together. Um.
Mussolini's daughter Edda loved Hitler in the Nazis. In nineteen

(38:04):
thirty three, she joined Hitler and Gebels and Gebbels family
at Lake Vance, which is where the Holocaust was planned. Uh.
Not during that meeting, but in that same location a
couple of years later, Uh planned the Holocaustter Holocaust jokes
aren't that funny, but the idea of Hitler planning it
with a ten year old is really weird. I think
she was late teens like point. Yeah. You know. She

(38:29):
called Hitler her uncle though, and was quote always struck
by his extraordinary kindness and affection towards me as well
as his patients. Unky Hitler, Unky Hitler. Um. Yeah. In
nineteen forty, she said she was ashamed and disgusted that
Italy hadn't yet entered World War Two on the side
of the Nazis. Uh. She said that she didn't force
her dad into World War Two, but she also said, quote,

(38:51):
given my germaniphile sympathies, I was, without being aware of it,
the link between the fewer and my father. I found
it normal that two dictators should be all and this
is all the more so since as soon as he
took power in nineteen thirty three, I had begun to
consider Hitler a veritable hero in the thirties. I'm just
trying to get a sense of when when Mussolini and

(39:13):
Hitler were like first on the scene, is there a
modern day corollary for like how the world viewed them.
Would Putin be like the closest thing we have, or
putin Putin might be the closest thing we have Towards
how Mussolini was viewed at the time, A lot of
people thought he was a monster, but he was very popular.
Like one of the things that's hard when you're thinking
about the thirties is that fascism was a legitimate political

(39:35):
ideology at that point. People thought yeah, people thought like,
oh no, this might be a reasonable way to run
a country. So Mussolini was like he was the senior
partner between him and Hitler for a while, Like in
the thirties, he was like the big man, and Hitler
was trying to impress him. And obviously Mussolini went to
ship and this whole country went to ship. Um Hitler thrived. No,

(39:55):
as far as I know now, I haven't read past
thirty six. But I think it pretty good that guy's
got something on the ball. I feel like we got
a lot now. Probably shouldn't make those jokes about Hitler,
but um, yeah. Edda had a husband named Siana who
wound up turning against Mussolini and being part of a
plot to sort of overthrow him and pull Italy out

(40:16):
of the war. Uh. Mussolini had him executed. He was
forced to sit in a chair with other co conspirators,
tied to the chair and then shot in the head. Uh.
His Mussolini's grandchild, Fabreezio Ciano, wrote a book in the
nineteen nineties titled When Grandpa had Dad's shot. Wow. Um,
it's taking all I have to not say any of

(40:37):
these names and like a like insulting Just there we go.
Go you feel better, get a little bit of that
pressure out. Yeah. Um. Mussolini's family is still very active
in the Italian far right, which you'd think after their
dad and his mistress being like murdered in public and
the country getting bombed, like it would have been like, oh,

(40:58):
maybe that was a mistake. But his granddaughter, Alessandra is
a member of the Italian Senate since I think two
thousand eleven uh and also a member of the European Parliament.
In two thousands six, when Libya asked for reparations for
Italy's colonization and brutal war against it, Alessandra said, quote,
if it hadn't been for my grandfather, they would still
be writing camels and wearing turbans on their heads. They

(41:19):
should be paying us compensation. So being complete ship does
not always skip a generation. Uh. The Mussolini family just
kind of seems to be garbage. Um. Or maybe it
did skip a generation and he had that generation shot
in the head. This is the shitty generation again. Yeah. Um,
so maybe the next generation will shoot the prior generation.

(41:40):
I mean, the jury is pretty much in on fascism,
isn't it. You would think so, but then everything that's
happened in the last two years. Yeah yeah. Um. So
let's talk about Cadafi. Momar freaking daffy. So you're a quman. Yeah,
I'm a human. I'm a human. Uh um. He has

(42:00):
a weird record as a parent. Um. Like most dictators,
he gave one of his sons a sport team. Sadi
Kadafi was the head of Libya's national football federation, but
he was also the captain of his home team and
the national team, so he played too, and he was
not good, but he benefited and his team benefited from
the fact that referees weren't allowed to rule against him um.

(42:21):
And also broadcasters weren't allowed to mention the names of
any other players in games he played in. UM, so
they would call out Saudi by name, but the other
players they just go ahead. They just give jersey numbers
for the other players. So if you were playing in
a game and he was anywhere on the field, no
one else's name could be mentioned, so they'd be like,
and the guy who saw it, he passed two, three passes,

(42:44):
ago passes too, they call their numbers out. Okay, everyone
but him on the field was just a number. Um. Yeah, Jesus.
He did not have a lot of a sense of
humor about his playing. There was a game in Tripoli
where Tripoli was playing against their rivals been god z
Uh and the Benghazi team dressed a donkey up in
Saudi's jersey. Uh Saudi, I mean you want to guess

(43:08):
how cool His reaction was, Uh, pretty chill. He had
the Benghazi stadium demolished and banned their team from playing.
That's that's a lot. Yeah, he was kind of a dick. Um.
Kitafi's son Mutassam was allowed to hire famous international pop
stars for his parties. Uh. He hired Beyonce and Usher
and Mariah Carey, all of whom were apparently fine with

(43:30):
taking a dictator's money to play at his birthday parties.
Wait when did the because for some reason, my brand
was still in black and white from the Muthalini stories.
When did he have that uh stadium demolished? Was that
modern days? I think that was in the early two
thousand Jesus. Yeah, I'm not on that, um, but yeah,

(43:50):
it was pretty recent, like it wasn't back in black
and white days for sure. Um. Yeah, Mutassam, you know,
had Beyonce play for him and stuff. He once counted
that his lifestyle costs the Libyan government two million a
month just for him counted that. Yeah. Yeah, that was
something he admitted freely to a friend. Yeah, so you
can imagine how expensive the whole family was. Um. Mutasam

(44:14):
attempted a coup probably once in the nineteen nineties. We
don't know for sure, but he tried to overthrow his dad.
We think his dad exiled him for a little while
and then welcomed him back as the National Security Advisory.
Uh so little, Yeah, you gotta, you gotta forgive your kids,
gotta let them get that stuff out of them. Yeah,
you know that military overthrowing exactly. Your kids are gonna

(44:35):
they're gonna crash a car or something. You know, they're
gonna gonna smoke a little weed. You can't be too
hard on him, you know, you kick him out to
Europe for a while, and then you make them your
national security advisor. Now, I see they'll never get there
because I already know my kids are plotting my overthrow,
and I just have it in the back of my mind.
Yeah that's smart. You gotta, you gotta. It's like that

(44:55):
old parenting saying. You always you know, for every kid,
you need a as in secret police. Yeah yeah, yeah.
Most of our conversations begin with you think you're stronger
than me. Yeah, yeah, that's that's that's good, that's setting
yourself up for success. Uh. Kadafi's son Hannibal, was a
sailor and so wound up in control of Libya's hornible. Well,

(45:18):
Hannibal is a big name in that part of the world.
You know, he's still a hero, fucking baller, bad guy name.
Anytime your name is Hannibal, that's frightening. Um. One of
the things that's a general rule with dictator kids is
that if you have like an interest like sailing, you'll
wind up in charge of that for the whole country.
So he was like, oh, you like being on ships, Well,

(45:39):
you're in charge of all the ports in our port nation.
You own the ocean. Yeah. Uh. The upside of it
is Hannibal was well educated and took his education seriously.
At one point, he was tutored by a European professor
from Copenhagen. The book Children of Dictators quotes writer John
byrne Is saying he was this tutor who visited and

(46:00):
was met by Chaufford cars, put up in a five
star hotel, and someone for private sessions to Hannibal's home,
where gazelles and antelopes strolled around a garden. Um. Pretty
sweet gig. If you're a tutor, I can see, Like,
I think that's more forgivable than like Beyonce because she
doesn't need the money. But a college professor, you can't
take what you can get. Yeah, I guess like, be

(46:20):
creative with who you make rich. Yeah. Yeah, at least, yeah,
college professor. I feel better about than Beyonce getting more
money to play for a dictator. We're just one of
the other Destiny's child Yeah, yeah, that would have been creative. Yeah.
We We've got a whole podcast on Children of Destiny
coming after this one, Destiny's Children. I'm sorry, I feel stupid. Uh.

(46:43):
Hannibal regularly found himself in conflict with the police. Not
Libyan police obviously, because they would never get him in
trouble or anything, but with European police. Uh. In two
thousand one, he assaulted officers at the Hilton in Rome
at three am. I'm gonna quote from Children of Dictators here,
uh quote. The officers had been guarding Hannibal's own room.
He struck them with bottles and emptied a fire extinguisher

(47:05):
on them for good measure. He then pleaded diplomatic community,
as he would habitually do. In two thousand four, Hannibal
French police on a high speed chase through the center
of Paris. He was drunk in his black Porsche, doing
ninety miles an hour down the Chansa Lise. He ran
red lights at one point he went the wrong way.
When the police finally stopped him, six of his bodyguards
arrived in other cars and attacked the police and attacked

(47:28):
them like physically. Yes, um so this is like that, uh,
that affluenza case, but just on a global scale. Yeah,
it's affluenza when you actually are immune to prosecution because
you have diplomatic credentials, so you really can just plea
diplomatic community. They're like guilty. Yeah, well, diplomatic community and

(47:50):
diplomatic community. We control one of the biggest ports in
the world, so what are you gonna do? Like you you,
you know, our trade is a not insignificant part of
your g d P. It's amazing that nobody just kills
one of these guys just like it's just like, well,
come on, you guys aren't gonna care, right, I mean
some of them did get killed, Yeah, but just Matasson

(48:12):
wound up getting killed right with alongside his dad. Yeah
yeah yeah yeah. Um so Hannibal, you know, was a
nightmare person. He beat his wife and his servants, but
also his wife poured boiling water on her servants. So
nobody's the good. Nobody's good in this story. Yeah, maybe
the servants are okay, Yeah, the servants are probably decent

(48:33):
people who are just trying not to get boiled. After
Kadafi was deposed, information came out that Hannibal had ordered
the building of a private cruise liner called the Phoenicia.
It would have been big enough for thirty passengers. Hannibal
had specified that he wanted it to include a one
ton shark tank that could hold to san tiger sharks,
two white sharks, and two black tip tip reef sharks.

(48:56):
White sharks are great white sharks, just white, just white,
just white, just white at the great ones. He wasn't
gonna he wasn't gonna splurge the company's country's money. Right,
you know, you don't want to go crazy. Um. Kadafi
did have one good kid. His name was Saif al Islam,
which literally means sort of Islam. Uh. Scife refused to
post in government and would regularly give interviews to the

(49:18):
national press where he was critical of the Libyan government
and his father Uh. He like was kind of very
popular in the world media because he was calling out
the Libyan regime. He would call for democratic elections, but
when the civil war happened, he returned home to fight
on behalf of his father, uh real godfather to situations, Yeah,

(49:38):
I guess father one. Yeah, got father one. Like he
was a good enough guy that he recognized it was
fucked up and he was willing to call it out.
But like when the chips were down, he defended his
monster dad um And in fact he was like the
last Kadafi's standing in Libya, as as children of dictators
puts it after everyone else was you know, murdered or
had fled the country to avoid getting murdered in the

(50:00):
street publicly, and he was leftover. Did he ever get murdered?
As far as I think he's still alive, I think
he might be in custody right now. Two days after
his dad was killed, he said that he was willing
to fight at the end, But I think he's in
custody right now. It's it makes you wonder, knowing what
we know about all these other children of dictators, it

(50:21):
makes you wonder if this guy was the best human
like ever because he managed to just be an all
right person. Yeah, it's rare, right, Like you've got some
of the castros who were not terrible people, right, Yeah,
that's true. As far as we know, but like Castrew

(50:41):
didn't give them, I don't know he know he gave
them Like it's it's feel like he was kind of
absentee or like a disinterested dad maybe like yeah, yeah,
and that's they were just fucked up by or like
poorly parented into not being terrible. I guess. Yeah. Like
the best thing you can hope for is an of
neglect and also that your dad doesn't give you too

(51:04):
much responsibility. Um. And if that happens, then you won't
like wind up in the worst case scenario, you could
wind up in um. Yeah. Yeah, uh no. He was
Scipe was captured trying to flee Libya. He was in
jail for five or six years. He was released in

(51:25):
June of two thousands, seventeen uh and a militia that
had arrested him chose not to transfer him to the
International Criminal Court. And it looks like he's going to Yeah,
he says he's running for president. The u N backed
Libyan government says he says he's going to. But the
u N backed government in Libya right now says that's

(51:46):
not going to happen. The i c C has a
warrant out for his arrest Uh. So, I guess we'll
see what happens if he needs somebody to run his campaign.
I mean, I think we just gave them the strategy.
Just be like, did you see how shitty might have
siblings were like, come on, I feel like Bannon can
make it. I mean that makes you wonder though, if
like the whole speaking out against his father thing was

(52:08):
all it was an act from the beginning, Like it
was like, I mean, he is the great like the
long con. Yeah, what do they call like the ship
the second Coming of Satan? Is that data Satan to
electric Stan to electric blugalooya? Uh fuck? I forgot Yeah,

(52:28):
I feel like a great deceiver or whatever. I feel
like that's what's happening here. She's just like, if I
make myself seem like a good guy to the international press,
then they won't have a big issue when I wind
up taking over from my dad. And his dad was like, well,
he's the only kid I have who's not a complete
funk up, so he'll definitely take over. And it's fine
that he's gonna critique me a little bit antichrist. Yeah yeah, yeah,

(52:52):
So I'm about to talk about my boy Nikolai Lukashenko. So, uh,
Nikolai is the son of al Xander Lukashenko, who is
known as the last dictator in Europe. He's the president
of Belarus. I should probably add that people called him
the last dictator in Europe before Putin was as clearly
a dictator as right now. Um. But yeah, we'll stray

(53:14):
away from politics here, coming back, baby, yeah. So um.
Nikolai Lukashenko started being groomed to rule Belarus when he
was six years old, which is I guess the age
when you start that training. I assumed some of this
involved a thorough education and military training and all that stuff,
but a lot of the time his dad just seems
to use him as a prop to embarrass world leaders.

(53:35):
By the age of seven, he'd posed Nikolai with the
Pope Hugo Chavez and the President of Russia. Uh Dmitri Medvedev.
The President of Russia gave him an actual golden handgun. Uh.
He apparently still wears it because when he met Chavez
again in two thousand twelve, he reached his hands up
to high five him, and his suit coat slid back
to reveal a giant, stupid golden handgun. And I gotta

(53:56):
drop you some pictures here. So these are all going
to be up on the website, all the pictures behind
the bat Stards dot Com. Here's Nikolai Lukashenko receiving his
giant golden handgun and there it is in his little suit,
just always clearly packing heat. He's still a child, He's
he's thirteen now, wow, and he still has a golden
handgun that he carries everywhere. There's the picture of him

(54:16):
with chops and this is a working handgun. Yeah, it's
a functional gold plated handgun. Jesus Chris. He's like, my man, Yeah,
what else do you give a kid? What do you
give the kid who has everything? A golden gun? I
like that he's slapping Hugo chavas a five instead of
like shaking his hand or cowering in fear. Oh he's

(54:37):
a hip you know, dictator in training. Uh, and apparently
gets to carry a gun everywhere, which golden gun. I mean,
what twelve year old wouldn't do that if they had
the chance. Nothing says mad with power like golden handguns. Yeah.
He's draw fring pretty hard in all those pictures. Um, Yeah,
you don't find a whole lot about Nikola's personality because

(54:57):
you know, Belarus is a pretty closed country. Um, but
I'm sure he's gonna turn out just great. Uh. He's
been chosen to represent Belarus at the United Nations General Assembly.
He's taking pictures of the Obama's and basically every other
world leader who winds up near him. As of right now,
he's aged thirteen. Uh, and yeah, we don't know much
about him, but I'm optimistic that he will not be

(55:18):
a drunken mass rapist. Yeah, so am I. If I've
learned anything today, it's that I want that guy to
marry my daughter if I if I ever have one. Um. So, yeah,
he seems like he's going to be well balanced. Yeah,
he seems like that seems like that's gonna go. So
what why does his dad bring him everywhere? Because he

(55:38):
thinks it's like funny to make heads of state pose
with him, or it's it's kind of impossible to tell
if it feels like some of it's that because Belarus
has been condemned by a bunch of different countries, including US,
through you know, nightmarish human rights violations jailing political opponents,
So I think it kind of tickles him to make
someone like Barack Obama pose with him and his little

(55:59):
kid who's the dictator in waiting. But I think some
of its training, like he wants to establish like a
Kim style dynasty uh in Belarus, and so he's sort
of positioning his kid. And so there's there's like two
messages and making a six year old year heir apparent.
One of them is, you know, obviously getting people ready
for this guy to be in charge, but the other
is like, well, he's six, so I'm going to be

(56:20):
around for a long time, Like you're not going to
be free of Alexander Lucaschanko anytime soon. And my kids
packing a golden gun if anybody has a problem with um.
So yeah, I wanna end this podcast by talking about
Hitler's son. UM. Now, I didn't know Hitler had a son.
He almost certainly did not. But there is one man

(56:41):
who spent most of his life believing he was Hitler's son,
even though he never met the man. So his story
is worth telling. Uh. This guy, Jean Mary Laurey, was
born right at the end of World War One. He
grew up without a dad, just knowing that his father
was a random German soldier because the Germans had occupied
his village for most of you know that war. He
lived a pretty normal life. During World War Two, he

(57:02):
fought against the Nazis is a member of the French Resistance. UM.
But then in nineteen fifty, when his mom was on
her deathbed, she told him that when she was sixteen,
she'd had an affair with Hitler. Jean Marie had been conceived.
During a quote Tipsy Night with the Future Fear in
June of nineteen seventeen. UM. This is a quote from

(57:22):
Jean Murray quoting his mother saying, I was cutting hay
with the other women when we saw a German soldier
on the other side of the street. He had a
sketch pad and seemed to be drawing checks out so far.
All the women found this soldier interesting and wanted to
know what he was drawing. They picked me to try
to approach him. They wound up starting a relationship and
Jean Maurie was born the next year. UM. It's cutting

(57:44):
head euphemism for something, or they were just legitimately cutting
they was I mean this is some like peasant ship,
the adorably peasant Yeah, yeah, so yeah. According to Jean
Maurie's mom. Uh, she and hit Or would often go
on walks while she was pregnant. The walks usually ended badly. Quote.

(58:05):
In fact, your father, inspired by nature, launched into speeches
which I did not really understand. He did not speak French,
but ranted in German, talking to an imaginary audience. So
it sounds like Hitler. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like
the one thing you would know about Hitler if you so,
when was this? This was during World War two, during
World War One? During World War World? World War one

(58:28):
is when this kid's conceived, because he fights the Nazis
as a young man. Um, because he's just like a
French kid. Um, So most reputable historians say Philip probably
wasn't Hitler's kid. A blood test didn't rule it out, though,
because they have the same blood group. UM, and his
mom had a Hitler painting, and there's another painting of

(58:49):
Hitler's that looks like it's a painting of her Hitler
and original Hitler. Maybe there's Yeah, it's not impossible. So
did we have this guy's bloodline? Snuff doubt or where
what we do? What's going on? We're getting to that um,
so you know Jean Marie grew up believing he was Hitler,
or you know, from the age thirty believed he was
Hitler's kid. And he claimed that at first he was

(59:11):
horribly depressed and he would just work all day, every
day in order to not be overwhelmed with sadness. Uh.
He says for twenty years he couldn't even go to
the movies because any time spent not productively, it would
just like grip him and and and consume him. Ah.
He didn't tell anyone for almost thirty years until in
nineteen seventy nine he walked into a lawyer's office and said, quote,

(59:33):
I am the son of Hitler. Tell me what I
should do? Which great day to be that lawyer? Why
did he think that was a legal matter? Well, he
never makes much of a point of it in the
interviews of him I read, but there's always talk about like,
well he might be entitled to the royalties from mine

(59:54):
camp um. He did wind up writing a book about
his experience as maybe Hitler's kid. Uh. And as the
years went on and the scientific battle to prove his
claims was waged, John Murie sort of leaned into being Hitler.
He changed his look to match the fewer and he
definitely looks Hitler. E h. I mean, all you need

(01:00:17):
is a mustache. So this is him posing next to
a picture of hit he keeps in his house. That
will do it. He's got the stash and that's all
you need. Yeah. He he grew the mustache and he
kept Hitler pictures around on his walls so that when
journalists came over they could catch a picture of him
looking just like Hitler. And he does also important that
you not be smiling in your picture. No, you can't

(01:00:38):
look like Hitler while smiling. No, you don't see a
lot of smiling Hitler pictures. Yeah, um so uh yeah.
He seems to have gone from ashamed and horrified of
his lineage to weirdly proud very Here's a quote from him,
Hitler is my family. It's not my fault that I
ended up as his grandson, or that all those things
happened during the war, those things I think being Holocaust.

(01:01:01):
What he did has all those things, all those things,
all that stuff, all those that that whatnot. Yeah, what
he did has nothing to do with me, which you know,
that's fair. He will always be family for me. That's weird. Yeah,
I don't think evil passes on. Of course, qualities from
your parents pass on to you, but you build your
own life and you make it what it is. Up
until the end of his days, Jean Murray Lay continued

(01:01:23):
to insist that he was proud of being Hitler's son.
So that's weird. He is wearing a smart little sweater
tie number. Yeah, he kind of gives you an idea
of what Hitler retired might have. Yeah, that's exactly right.
Uh So, this is not the end of the story
because Jean Marie had a son, Philippe, who worked as
a plumber for the French Air Force. That's apparently a

(01:01:47):
job the air Force would have wanted it, just just
like Hitler would have loved. Please, I want you to
deal with French soldier shit. Uh So. In recent years,
Philippe has opened up about his belief that he is
the grandson of Adolf Hitler. From him, we get quotes
such as, my father said Hitler was a good lover
and was gentle to my grandmother, But apparently he was

(01:02:07):
a jealous person and did not like other men giving
her the eye. As far as I know, he never
had any sexual perversions. I don't want to make him
out to be more of a monster than he is,
which is weird of all of the things, rather than
just being like, yeah, I think I'm Hitler's grandson, but
doesn't mean I'm a bad guy. You're like, I think
I'm Hitler's grandson, and my grandpa was good at sex.
What a strange Yeah, so weird to die on. It's

(01:02:30):
not like Hitler is known for not being good at
sex or being good at sex, like either way, it's
a very strange. I hear he was a gentle lover.
All right, see you guys later. That's a weird thing
you just drop on a journalist. My favorite thing about
this story is the way Genre apparently informed his kids,
including Philippe, that they might be Hitler kin. So one

(01:02:52):
evening they're all seated around the dining room table when
quote suddenly, my father said, kids, I've got something to
tell you. Your grandfather is Adolf Hitler. Wow. Really built
up to that. He had a lifetime to write that speech,
and it was just like, oh Hitler, I almost forgot, Yeah,
Hitler's your granddad. Yeah. Philip also expressed a weird sort

(01:03:16):
of pride in his possible ancestry and he too, keeps
pictures of Hitler on his wall, seemingly so photographers can
take photographs that show off the clear resemblance. It's the
same picture his dad took me. Yeah, I mean his
mustache is a little less Hitler. His mustache is just
a mustache. Um. He does have two framed photographs on

(01:03:38):
his wall, both of Hitler. One of them is a
drawing um. But this is very strange, like they they
look like, you know, they are in frames where you
would have family pictures. Yeah. Yeah, just Hitler right on
his back wall, and like like his dad seems to
be making some effort to look Hitler. E Yeah, and

(01:04:01):
with that casual, laid back Hitler vibe he has is
like one hand on his wrist, like just kind of
doing a hey, just chilling at Hitler the Third's dining room. Yeah,
I can see the resemblance. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's
not impossible that they're actually Hitler's kids. It's just weirder
to me the impact that just thinking you've got this

(01:04:22):
guy as your relative has on you. Yeah. It's also
interesting to me that like so many of those other kids,
the ones who weren't garbage like as soon as they
were old enough to realize what their dad was doing,
like fled the country. But these guys, once they think like, oh,
my dead granddad might have been Hitler, they just go
whole hog into looking like hi and like, hey, Hitler

(01:04:42):
wasn't that bad. He was a good lover. Yeah, say
what you will about all that stuff that happened during
the war. Hitler could fuck and he was my grandpa
the end. I think that's the name of his book,
Hitler could fuck my grandpa. Man. But what a romantic
that Hitler was. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, I've learned a

(01:05:06):
lot about what to do as a parent from these stories. Yeah,
any lessons you want to take back home with you,
just uh yeah, burn their belongings. Well, laughing maniacally is
kind of one of the first things that puts them
in their place. Really, uh kind of found his place
after that. It sounds like, um, Jesus man, what a nightmare. Yeah,

(01:05:31):
oh boy, that's a fun tale. Yeah yeah, I feel
I still feel like having gone over all of this,
Like my initial conclusion was right that that Fidel was
probably the least garbage of all these parents, but they
were all pretty pretty terrible, right, Yeah, Like not a
lot of good cases here. Yeah, so yeah, um being

(01:05:54):
a strong leader. That maybe that's a lesson for all
of us parents to learn, Like, uh, the tendencies that
lead to dictatorship don't lead to good parenting. Yeah, Authoritarianism
isn't a good thing to to bring out and apparently not. Yeah. Yeah,
although you know, maybe the Obama kids will wind up,

(01:06:16):
you know, carrying out a brutal uh purge campaign against
the Trump family and and murder their political enemy. So
we're not going to talk about whether how we would
feel about that. But yeah, I bet the Obama girls,
are you gonna end up just fine? Yeah? I suspect
they'll wind up better than we already know the Trump
kids have held out. I'm really curious about Baron. Yeah,

(01:06:39):
Baron could be very interesting Ivanka. I mean, come on,
she's she's an all star, She's a star. You guys,
how long do you think it isn't before Putin gives
Baron a golden gun? It's coming man, all right? Uh, well, Jack,
you've got anything to plug? I hear you have a
podcast these days? I do have a podcast these days.

(01:07:00):
Almost definitely on the day you're listening to this, unless
this weekend. We just released an episode. It's called The
Daily Zeitgeist. We talk about whatever is happening right now
on a daily basis. I hosted with my co host
Miles Gray, and we have a third comedian on end.
It's a lot of fun. You can find it wherever.

(01:07:20):
Fine podcasts are given away for free. And you should
try and get Hitler's grandson to come on. Yeah, that
would that would actually be awesome. Yeah, I'm sure you
have a fun pronunciation of the word zeitgeist. Um. Oh yeah,
And you can follow me at Jack Underscore O'Brien on Twitter. Well,
this has been Behind the Bastards and I am and
have been Robert Evans. Uh if we haven't in this

(01:07:43):
episode gotten to a dictator that you particularly wanted to
hear about in their parenting strategies, Uh, that's okay. There's
a lot of dictators who had kids. Uh they were
all terrible. We didn't even get into Papa Dock and
baby doc. H. So this is going to be a
reoccurring feature throughout the podcast, will be checking back in
with other dictator parents and their kids talking about how

(01:08:04):
that's going. And you know, uh so, so if you've
got a dictator parent you want to hear about, maybe
drop us an email uh and we'll what is there
an email? Oh so, if you've got uh so, if
you've got a dictator kid or a dictator parent, you
want to hear about, maybe you tweeted at us, and

(01:08:25):
we'll make sure that one gets into the next episode
we do on this topic. Until then, you can find
us on Twitter and Instagram and social media at at
Bastards pod. You can find us on the internet dot
com at behind the Bastards dot com, and you can
find us next Tuesday with another episode of Behind the Bastards.
Until then, I'm Robert Evans.