Dictator

Dictator, term originally used in the ancient Roman Republic as the title of a magistrate appointed by the Senate in a time of emergency. The first such appointment, according to Roman historians, was made in 501 bc; the last responsible dictator was appointed during the Second Punic War, in 216 bc. The dictator held office for six months, and served as chief magistrate, with limited power over life and death. Civil jurisdiction was retained by regular magistrates, who were subordinate to him, and his military jurisdiction was limited to Italian territory. According to Cicero, the office was originally created to cope with civil disturbances. In the last years of the Republic, politicians occasionally assumed the office with extralegal powers. The dictatorship of the general and statesman Lucius Cornelius Sulla lasted from 82 to 79 bc, and Julius Caesar became dictator for life in 45 bc, but the office was abolished following his death a year later. After the fall of the Roman Empire the title was not in use, and individuals who exercised total power, necessarily limited but always arbitrary, were called despots or tyrants (see Tyranny). They had acquired their power by war or unconstitutional means. The Mongol “hordes” that swept across Asia were first commanded by Genghis Khan, who ultimately controlled a larger area of territory than any other individual in history, but he was never known as a dictator. Nor was his descendant Tamerlane.

In 19th-century South America, in the aftermath of the Wars of Independence, authoritarian figures such as Juan Manuel de Rosas, “caudillo” (leader) of Argentina between 1845 and 1852, and José Gaspar Rodriquez Francia, ruler of Paraguay between 1814 and 1840, established ruthless and tightly controlled polities centred on their personal authority. The tradition was continued into the 20th century by, to cite only a couple of the many possible examples, Juan Vicente Gómez, ruler of Venezuela between 1908 and 1935, and Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay. Stroessner’s rule was particularly notable for its longevity; he took power in an army coup in 1954 and was exiled to Brazil in 1989, after 35 years of dictatorship. It was not until the 20th century that the rule of dictators, who had risen to power by a variety of means, began to be described as “dictatorships”, and during the 1930s, a troubled decade between two world wars, the idea of a struggle between “dictatorships” and “democracies” was advanced not only by journalists employed by the media but by active politicians.

One of the first European dictators was Józef Piłsudski of Poland, who founded the Polish Socialist Party in 1892 and who became chief of state when Poland was declared independent in 1919. He led a Polish attack on the communist Soviet Union in 1920 (see Soviet (Russo)-Polish War). He retired in 1923, but in 1926 led a military coup that established a dictatorship which lasted until his death. Piłsudski had little in common with Benito Mussolini, except that Mussolini too had begun his political career as a socialist. Elected to power as leader of the Fascist movement in Italy, which he founded, he became prime minister in a coalition government in 1922, but in 1925 he assumed dictatorial powers and a year later all opposition parties were banned. Supported by his Black Shirts, the “Duce” (leader), as he was called, remodelled his country’s political, legal and educational systems, and, recalling the glories of ancient Rome, created what proved to be a short-lived new empire.

After 1936 Mussolini was allied with a new and more powerful German dictator, Adolf Hitler, a corporal during World War I but now acknowledged as German “Führer” (leader). Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1934 and head of state from 1934, Hitler, backed by an impressive propaganda machine, created a new totalitarian National Socialist (Nazi) Germany. Ready and willing to use force, the Nazis successfully went to war against Poland in 1939, and in 1940 conquered the Netherlands, Belgium and France. The Soviet Union came next in 1941. It too was then under the control of a dictator, Joseph Stalin who claimed to be in charge of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Communists and Nazis now confronted each other on the battlefield, and the Nazis lost. So, too, did two dictators. Mussolini had been rescued by German parachutists after the collapse of the Fascist regime in 1943, but after setting up a new Fascist region of his own was murdered by Italian partisans in April 1945. Hitler, with Soviet, American, and British armies converging on Berlin, committed suicide in his bunker in June 1945. Only Stalin survived World War II as a great leader, but his reputation did not last and the Soviet Union was under anti-Stalinist leadership when it was dissolved in 1991 (see Collapse of Communism).

Communists and Nazis had earlier confronted each other in the Spanish Civil War which began in 1936. General Francisco Franco became the unchallenged leader of the rebels and in 1937 leader of the Falange (Fascist) party. In the same year he proclaimed himself Caudillo of Spain. Unlike Mussolini and Hitler, Franco was strongly supported by the Roman Catholic Church, and he was skilful in keeping Spain out of World War II. In neighbouring Portugal another dictator, António de Oliveira Salazar was a Roman Catholic professor of economics who remained in power for 36 years, proclaiming throughout the philosophy of a corporate state. Neither he nor Franco modelled themselves on Hitler, whose views were set out in a political testament, Mein Kampf, dictated while in prison in 1923, ten years before he became chancellor. His anti-Semitism was always an essential part of his political programme.

Dictators continue to thrive, but their regimes do not usually last, not even as long as those of “war lords”. In China Mao Zedong embodied his thoughts in a “Little Red Book”, but the Communist Party that survived him followed different policies and turned to new leaders. In Iraq Saddam Hussein used the Baath Party as his agent, but his life ended in military defeat, capture, trial, and punishment by death.