Saddam and Stalin

Saddam Hussein openly admired Stalin and, whether intentionally or not, he copied many of his methods, both in obtaining as well as holding onto power. But Saddam’s links with Stalin go deeper than tactics or policies for his formative life experiences, those that helped to shape his character, show a number of similarities too. So, this short piece is going to take a look at those similarities, similarities shared with Hitler too.

Saddam’s childhood actually has a lot of important similarities to those of both Stalin and Hitler. He was born in a small village in north-central Iraq. Saddam’s father was a poor landless peasant, and it is thought that his father died before he was born. Stalin was born into a peasant family, his parents either illiterate or at best only semi-literate. They had been born before the emancipation of serfs in Tsarist Russia and so were born serfs without any rights. Hitler was born into a comfortable lower middle-class family. Though he was to later know poverty when, after his parents had died, he lived as a failed artist in Vienna.

Saddam was also born a Sunni Muslim, in a country in which Shiite Muslims were in a distinct majority. Stalin was a Georgian, spoke with a strong Georgian accent, but went on to lead the Soviet Union. Hitler was a German but born in Austria in the Habsburg empire, and went on to lead Germany. Is it a coincidence that all three men became extreme nationalists?

Saddam’s mother remarried and his stepfather was a violent bully and as a child, Saddam was to suffer from his bullying. His stepfather refused to send him to school (he didn’t begin to learn to read and write until he was ten years old). Instead Saddam was involved in petty criminal activity and became a social outcast. He was saved by his mother’s brother who effectively became his foster father. Stalin’s father was a heavy drinker and Stalin was bullied and beaten by him as a child. As a result of his peasant family background, Stalin was poorly educated, though his mother made great sacrifices to ensure he went to school and, indeed, onto seminary school, but he was no intellect (though he would try to make himself recognised as a great scholar of Lenin). Hitler’s father was not the bully Hitler later portrayed him to be (but it’s interesting that Hitler did that). He was authoritarian though (not unusual for the time) and showed little love for his wife or children. Hitler didn’t show the necessary self-discipline to do well at school and, as already noted, was a failed artist who lived very roughly for a time in Vienna. So, all three men had suffered from uncaring fathers and had known poverty.

Saddam used similar methods to Stalin and Hitler in his rise to power. When Saddam returned to Iraq following the overthrow of General Qassem’s regime Saddam quickly made himself indispensable to the Baath Party. Stalin also made himself indispensable to Lenin’s regime and in the post-Lenin Communist Party, and Hitler did the same when he first joined the Nazi Party. Saddam was then arrested and jailed for two years for plotting a coup against the President. Stalin had been arrested and exiled three times for revolutionary activities in Tsarist Russia (mixing with criminals whom he liked). Whilst Hitler, more famously, had been arrested and imprisoned (though it was hardly the experience of Saddam or Stalin) for leading the Munich Beer Hall Putsch.

With Bakr as President, Saddam became his right-hand man, Deputy Chairman (to Bakr) of the Revolutionary Command Council. He was a central figure in the new government (just as Stalin had tried to become in Lenin’s government). From 1972 Saddam was probably as important as Bakr, but moved cautiously, lest he be singled out as over-ambitious, and it took 11 years before Bakr was persuade (or bullied) into resigning the presidency. Stalin has operated in similar fashion following the death of Lenin, quietly scheming to discredit his rivals whilst not trying to appear to have ambitions for power himself. Hitler, it has to be said, was not a shrinking violet when it came to drawing attention to himself as a potential leader of Germany though he did have to accept a coalition government when he first became Chancellor.

Saddam made sure to control the key positions in the Baath Party, in the government and in the army (just as Stalin had done before obtaining power for himself and as Hitler would quickly do once in power). Membership of the Baath Party determined who was appointed to government posts and many of Saddam’s closest advisers came from the same Takrit clan as he did. Several important members of his close family, including his two sons, held important posts in the government. Having control of the party’s security services also helped him uncover or invent plots to oust him. He used these plots – real or invented – to target potential rivals, either civilian or military. Neither Stalin nor Hitler used clan or family, but they did ensure their followers held all key posts.

Once Saddam had replaced Bakr as president, he immediately set out to deal with those who questioned his power. His presidency started with the “trial” of Muhie Abdul-Hussein Mashhadi, the RCCs Secretary-General who had questioned the validity of Saddam’s presidency and had called for a vote on the issue. After being subjected to brutal intimidation Mashhadi was paraded before a meeting of the top leaders of the Baath Party where he read out a prepared confession in which he admitted plotting to overthrow the Baathist regime. He named another sixty-six “co-conspirators” in the fabricated plot. Of these, twenty-two were executed, thirty-three imprisoned and eleven acquitted. There followed a purge of the Baath Party and the army with hundreds of Party members and military officers removed, many of whom were executed. Baath Party members were threatened with the death penalty should they join another party. False accusations, followed by arrests, torture and then summary trials, followed by executions or else lengthy prison sentences became a regular feature of Saddam’s rule.

Stalin came to power by exploiting rivalries and once firmly in power, purged tens of thousands from his own party, using “show trials” to get rid of those at the top, and from the military. Whilst in the Great Terror he purged hundreds of thousands from society at large, anyone in fact whom he expected of opposing or undermining him. Many were sent to their deaths, many more to the gulag. Hitler sacked some generals but generally allowed those he knew to be non-Nazis to continue in important positions in the economy, the civil service or the judiciary, so long as they did his bidding. Though on coming to power, and in order to appease the non-Nazi elite, he purged opposition in his own party (as well as settling a few old scores) in the Night of the Long Knives and he did apply a degree of terror (though nothing like the scale of Stalin) through the work of the Gestapo.

And finally, we should consider the fate of specific groups in each of the regimes: the Kurds in Iraq, the Kulaks in the Soviet Union and the Jews in Nazi Germany. In each case, they were treated without any compassion, any sense of morality. They were seen as too different or a threat to the kind of society that was to be built, or both. And they were ruthlessly attacked with the intent of getting rid of them once and for all.

So, we see there were indeed similarities between the three leaders: in the upbringing as their character was being formed, in later experiences, and in their outlooks as leaders. This exercise has not been a fabrication. The similarities are real and are important. This short piece stands as an insight into what “makes” a dictator and an authoritarian regime, and why checks and balances are important for good government to be preserved. Even though you might not study Stalin’s Soviet Union or Hitler’s Nazi Germany, I hope you can make good use of this analysis.