Fall of Icons

Once at the helm of affairs, but their fall was relatively unlikely. In this article we would like to look into few world known figures and how things went for them as they came to the end of their life. They were selected randomly. They are as following:

Vladimir Lenin

Adolf Hitler

Joseph Stalin

Vladimir Lenin

Joseph Stalin was a regular visitor to
Vladimir Lenin while recuperating

On 30 August 1918, Vladimir Lenin survived an assassination attempt. Fanny Kaplan, a Socialist Revolutionary, shot at him three times, hitting Lenin twice – in the jaw and the neck. While interrogation Kaplan said, ‘Today I shot at Lenin. I did it on my own. I will not say from whom I obtained my revolver. I will give no details.’ She was executed on 3 September. Lenin survived but was weakened by his injuries which, less than six years later, contributed to his early death. One of the bullets fired into Lenin by Kaplan was only removed in April 1922. The effect of his wounds, together with the strains of revolution, civil war, uprisings and forging a new country, took its toll on Lenin. His workload as head of state was enormous but in later years he suffered increasingly from fatigue and headaches. He suffered his first stroke in May 1922 which deprived him of speech and impeded his movement. Six months later he returned to work. A second stroke followed in December 1922, obliging Lenin to retire from politics to his dacha in the village of Gorki, six miles south of Moscow, and where Stalin became a frequent visitor (pictured). Recovering, Lenin had to learn to speak again and write with his left hand. A third stroke in March 1923 left him bedridden and took away his ability to speak. Such was the pain experienced by Lenin during his final months, that he begged Stalin to obtain a dose of potassium cyanide to put him out of his misery. He specifically asked Stalin, probably because he knew only Stalin, a man so devoid of any humanity, would be strong enough to do it. But even Stalin baulked at the thought of it and couldn’t bring himself to administer the fatal dose: ‘I do not have the strength to carry out Ilyich’s (Lenin) request and I have to decline this mission, however humane and necessary it might be.’

But, despite his apparent sickness, it was not beyond Stalin’s reach to have poisoned his former mentor, especially as his own position was at risk following Lenin’s negative accusation of him. Poisoning was one of Stalin’s favourite methods of dealing with his opponents and the suspicion has always remained. As Bukharin once described Stalin, ‘Koba (Stalin’s revolutionary nickname) is capable of anything.’ Vladimir Lenin died on 21 January 1924.

In an article published by The Telegraph, UK on 22 Oct 2009, Helen Rappaport, an acclaimed historian and author, said that books, papers and journals charting Lenin’s last years show that he contracted the sexually transmitted disease and that it ultimately claimed his life. She said Lenin showed many symptoms of syphilis and that many among the Soviet hierarchy believed he had it. But they were banned from speaking in public and threatened with death because of the embarrassment it would cause. A report written by the celebrated scientist Ivan Pavlov – famous for his Pavlov’s Dog’s theory – which claimed that the "revolution was made by a madman with syphilis of the brain." While public criticism of Lenin was banned and anyone found guilty of doing so would be often be killed, Pavlov was free to be so sarcastic because Lenin had granted him immunity in order to trade on his pre-eminence in the world’s scientific community. Blaming the strokes for his death, the Soviets made huge attempts to cover up whatever lay behind Lenin's erratic, manic behaviour, his bouts of rage and his untimely death. Miss Rappaport, an expert on Russian history, said evidence showed Lenin probably caught syphilis from a prostitute in Paris in about 1902. She said: "It was the unspoken belief of many top Kremlin doctors and scientists that Lenin died of syphilis, but a decades-long conspiracy of silence was forced on them by the authorities.”

“But through it all, none was more vocal in his assertion than Prof Pavlov.”

"Pavlov knew the eminent scientists who had been called in to examine Lenin's brain after his death in 1924 and they all concurred in this diagnosis. It was an open secret among them, but of course none stated it publicly and there are no official Soviet records documenting it.”

Adolf Hitler

Eva Braun and Adolf Hitler (June 1942)

The Red Army had advanced to the Potsdamerplatz, and all indications were that they were preparing to storm the Chancellery, this report, combined with Himmler's treachery prompted Hitler to make the last decisions of his life. After midnight on 29 April 1945, Hitler married Eva Braun in a small civil ceremony in a map room within the Führerbunker. Afterwards Hitler hosted a modest wedding breakfast with his new wife. Hitler then took secretary, Traudl Junge to another room and dictated his last will and testament. He signed these documents at 04:00 and then retired to bed (some sources say Hitler dictated the last will and testament immediately before the wedding, but all sources agree on the timing of the signing).

During the course of 29 April, Hitler learned of the death of his ally, Benito Mussolini, who had been executed by Italian partisans. Mussolini's body and that of his mistress, Clara Petacci, had been strung up by their heels. The bodies were later cut down and thrown in the gutter. It is probable that these events strengthened Hitler's resolve not to allow himself or his wife to be made "a spectacle of", as he had earlier recorded in his Testament.

Hitler and Braun lived together as husband and wife in the bunker for fewer than 40 hours. By 01:00 on 30 April General Wilhelm Keitel reported that all forces which Hitler had been depending on to come to the rescue of Berlin had either been encircled or forced onto the defensive. Late in the morning of 30 April, with the Soviets less than 500 metres from the bunker, Hitler had a meeting with General Helmuth Weidling, commander of the Berlin Defence Area, who told him that the garrison would probably run out of ammunition that night and that the fighting in Berlin would inevitably come to an end within the next 24 hours. Hitler, two secretaries, and his personal cook then had lunch, after which Hitler and Braun said farewell to members of the Führerbunker staff and fellow occupants, including Hitler’s influential secretary Martin Bormann, Joseph Goebbels and his family, the secretaries, and several military officers. At around 14:30 Adolf and Eva Hitler went into Hitler's personal study.

Hiller's valet - Heinz Linge

Several witnesses later reported hearing a loud gunshot at around 15:30. After waiting a few minutes, Hitler's valet, Heinz Linge, with Bormann at his side, opened the study door. Linge later stated he immediately noted a scent of burnt almonds, a common observation made in the presence of prussic acid, the aqueous form of hydrogen cyanide. Hitler's adjutant, SS-Sturmbannführer Otto Günsche, entered the study and found the lifeless bodies on the sofa. Eva, with her legs drawn up, was to Hitler's left and slumped away from him. Günsche stated that Hitler "... sat ... sunken over, with blood dripping out of his right temple. He had shot himself with his own pistol, a Walther PPK 7.65". According to Linge, Eva's body had no visible physical wounds, and her face showed how she had died—cyanide poisoning.

Accounts differ as to the cause of death; one states that he died by poison only and another that he died by a self-inflicted gunshot while biting down on a cyanide capsule. Contemporary historians have rejected these accounts as being either Soviet propaganda or an attempted compromise in order to reconcile the different conclusions. One eye-witness recorded that the body showed signs of having been shot through the mouth, but this has been proven unlikely. There is also controversy regarding the authenticity of skull and jaw fragments which were recovered. In 2009, American researchers performed DNA tests on a skull Soviet officials had long believed to be Hitler's. The tests revealed that the skull was actually that of a woman less than 40 years old. The jaw fragments which had been recovered were not tested.

Joseph Stalin

Stalin at the Tehran Conference in 1943

The myth of Stalin’s death is often given by people wishing to point out how Stalin seemed to escape all legal and moral punishment for his many crimes: where fellow dictator Mussolini was shot by partisans and Hitler was forced to kill himself, Stalin lived out his natural life. There’s little doubt that Stalin’s rule – his forced industrialisation, his famine causing collectivisation, his paranoid purges – killed, according to many estimates, between ten and twenty million people, and he did most probably die of natural causes, so the basic point still stands, but it isn’t strictly true to say he died peacefully, or that his death was unaffected by the brutality of his policies.

Stalin had suffered a series of minor strokes before 1953 and was generally in declining health. On the night of February 28th he watched a film at the Kremlin, then returned to his dacha, where he met with several prominent subordinates including Beria, head of the NKVD (secret police) and Khrushchev, who would eventually succeed Stalin. They left at 4:00 am, with no suggestion that Stalin was in poor health. Stalin then went to bed, but only after saying the guards could go off duty and that they weren’t to wake him. Stalin would usually alert his guards before 10:00 am and ask for tea, but no communication came. The guards grew worried, but were forbidden from waking Stalin and could only wait: there was no one in the Dacha who could counter Stalin’s orders. A light came on in the room around 18:30, but still no call. Eventually, plucking up the courage to go in and using the arrived post as an excuse, a guard entered the room at 22:00 and found Stalin lying on the floor in a pool of urine. He was helpless and unable to speak, and his broken watch showed he had fallen at 18:30.

The guards felt they didn’t have the right authority to call for a doctor – indeed many of Stalin’s doctors were the target of a new purge – so instead they called the Minister of State Security. He also felt he didn’t have the right powers and called Beria. Exactly what happened next is still not fully understood, but Beria and other leading Russians delayed acting, possibly because they wanted Stalin to die and not include them in the forthcoming purge, possibly because they were scared of seeming to infringe on Stalin’s powers should he recover. They only called for doctors sometime between 7:00 and 10:00 the next day after first travelling to the Dacha themselves.

The doctors found Stalin partially paralysed, breathing with difficulty and vomiting blood. They feared the worst but were unsure. The best doctors in Russia, those which had been treating Stalin, had recently been arrested as part of the forthcoming purge and were in prison. Representatives of the doctors who were free and had seen Stalin went to the prisons to ask for the old doctors’ opinions, who confirmed the initial, negative, diagnoses. Stalin struggled on for several days, eventually dying at 21:50 on March 5th.

Was Stalin Murdered? It is unclear whether Stalin would have been saved if medical help had arrived shortly after his stroke, partly because the autopsy report has never been found (although it is believed he suffered a brain haemorrhage which spread). This missing report, and the actions of Beria during Stalin’s fatal illness, have led some to raise the possibility that Stalin was deliberately killed by those afraid he was about to purge them (indeed, there is a report saying Beria claimed responsibility for the death). There is no concrete evidence for this theory, but enough plausibility for historians to mention it in their texts.

In our next blog we will look into 3 others – Necolae Ceausescu, Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein.