Random Bizarre Obsessions of Dangerous Dictators (14 items)

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  (#1) Fidel Castro

  • 93

  The former dictator of Cuba was obsessed with dairy products, in particular milk and ice cream. His entire history as a revolutionary and later as the leader of Cuba is studded with stories about his obnoxious love of milk, conspicuous consumption of ice cream, and efforts to make Cuba a world leader in dairy production.

  Biographers tell stories of El Presidente eating dozens of scoops of ice cream in one sitting. His chocolate milkshake habit was such that the CIA planned to poison one with botulinium toxin. He was devoted to Howard Johnson's ice cream to the point of ordering his Canadian ambassador to ship him 28 containers of the stuff, one of each flavor. Then, unsatisfied with Cuba's products, he had a city-block sized ice cream parlor built in Havana, and kept it running from 10 until 2 AM.

  Beyond that, Castro involved himself in cheesemaking and cattle buying importing Canadian cows to create a Cuban version of the famous Holstein milking cow. Cuba's climate was terrible for the cows, who failed to make much milk. So Castro ordered genetic engineering in the form of breeding super Cuban cows. One success story made so much milk that when she died, her eggs were saved for cloning. He then tried to breed mini-cows that every Cuban family could have in their home. The effort failed.
  
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  (#2) Muammar al-Gaddafi

  • Dec. at 69 (1942-2011)

  The late Libyan strongman was obsessed with beautiful African women in general, keeping a posse of them around as bodyguards, and paying hundreds of others to attend his lectures. But his roving eye fell hard on one particular woman: Condoleezza Rice.

  "Yes, Leezza, Leezza, Leezza... I love her very much," the dictator told Al Jazeera in 2007. And he meant it. Gaddafi kept a fully updated picture book of her, and referred to her as his “darling Black African woman.” When she visited him in Tripoli, he showered her with $212,000 worth of gifts that included a lute, a massive ring, an autographed copy of his book, and a locket with his picture inside. Oh, and he commissioned a Libyan composer to write a song about her, called "‘Black Flower in the White House." Rice reportedly found the obsession a little creepy, but wasn't put off enough to not have dinner with the strongman.
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  (#3) Kim Jong-un

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  For six weeks during Autumn, 2014, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un vanished from the public eye. While the state said only that he had an "uncomfortable physical condition," a North Korean defector who'd been Kim's personal chef revealed the cause to be massive weight gain from the dictator's obsession with eating Swiss cheese, as he gorged on it daily in an effort to put on weight and look more like his father.

  Sources said Kim is so addicted that he has it imported in bulk and binges on it in everything from sandwiches to fondue. He's also said to be unhappy with the country's cheese-makers as they've struggled to make an Emmenthaller cheese as good as what he could get in Switzerland as a student. Whatever the case, Kim was thought to have gained so much weight that he'd ballooned over 300 pounds, had fractured one or both of his ankles, and was suffering from severe stomach problems and gout.

  When he returned to the public eye in October 2014, he walked with a limp and was noticeably larger.
  
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  (#4) Joseph Stalin

  • Dec. at 75 (1878-1953)

  Uncle Joe had a number of obsessions, everything from "Soviet style" film and architecture to masterminding bizarre ways for his enemies to be killed (he ordered one foe to be dispatched with "an axe wrapped in a wet, quilted jacket" for example). But he also really liked defacing classical drawings of nude men with crude notes or comments.

  Some scholars claim his schoolboy sense of humor was being demonstrated in the comments he'd leave on prints  by 19th-century artists. Others believe he disdained this style of art, and found it unacceptable for Communist eyes. All of the comments were left in pen and were on sketches of men Stalin didn't know. And they ranged from simple doodles to veiled shots at enemies he'd already purged, such as one comment written on the leg of a nude man that read "Ginger bastard Radek, if he had not pissed against the wind, if he had not been angry, he would still be alive." It's almost certain that "Radek" was Karl Radek, a compatriot of Stalin who had fallen out with the dictator, and been killed in prison.

  Others were admonitions that the drawing subject masturbated too much, needed underpants, or was too thin. A few were singled out for praise, with one being called a "Soviet David." It appears from the writing style that the defacements were made in the last year's of Stalin's life, and were secret until being sold to a private collector and shown in 2009.
  
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  (#5) Adolf Hitler

  • Dec. at 56 (1889-1945)

  Hitler had numerous obsessions, throwing himself into everything from Disney films (Snow White was a favorite, while Mickey Mouse was derided as degenerate) to lusting after young girls. But the obsession that did more to shape the Fuhrer's childhood was the western novels of hugely-popular 19th Century German writer Karl May.

  May wrote adventure stories set all over the world, from Asia to the Middle East. But he was best known for his hugely popular tales set in the American Old West, featuring the brave heroes Winnetou, a fictional Apache chief, and Old Shatterhand, Winnetou's German blood brother (who May claimed was based on himself).

  If an Austrian kid obsessing about a German's depiction of an Apache warrior's adventures in America sounds unbelievable, just listen to Hitler's own words in Mein Kampf: "The first Karl May that I read was The Ride Across the Desert. I was overwhelmed! I threw myself into him immediately which resulted in a noticeable decline in my grades."

  While May was more or less a fraud, whose purported alter ego of Old Shatterhand was a fiction (indeed, May never went west of Buffalo in America), Hitler's May obsession continued into World War II. He ordered German children to read the books, and army officers to study them in preparation to fight the Russians. He extolled Winnetou's bravery and Old Shatterhand's cunning. And even as Allied bombing made paper scarce, Hitler ordered hundreds of thousands of May books printed, even as late as 1945. Even when May's fraud was revealed, Hitler praised him, saying his imagination was boundless.

  Shockingly, May's books are STILL popular in Germany, and even had a film series made from them in the 1960s.
  
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  (#6) Nicolae Ceaușescu

  • Dec. at 71 (1918-1989)

  The Romanian strongman was typical of Cold War era Eastern Bloc dictators. He plundered his nation while ruthlessly repressing both his people and his enemies, who were usually the same. But Ceausescu was unique in the sheer level of his paranoia. He jealously protected his food supply, and the care he took in protecting his clothing bordered on total insanity.

  He feared that his enemies were trying to kill him by poisoning his clothing, which led him to wear a different suit each day. The once-worn suit would then be burned, and a new one picked out from his stockpile of suits, which was kept in a locked repository. His staff were assigned to protect his clothing from radiation and bacteria, and his family employed its own engineer just to scan clothes and food for chemical, biological, or radiological hazards. Eventually the dictator and his equally clothing-obsessed wife were brought to heel by the Romanian people and shot by a firing squad.
  
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  (#7) Idi Amin

  • Dec. at 78 (1925-2003)

  Ugandan dictator Idi Amin's obsession with Scotland went way beyond haggis and Irvine Welsh novels. Amin first learned of the country when he had Scottish commanding officers while serving in the UK's King’s African Rifles. He was said to enjoy both Scottish dancing and whiskey, and after taking absolute power over, he still sought to link Uganda and Scotland through both colonial power and derision of England. “If you go to Scotland, you will talk to the people," Amin said in recently unveiled footage. "They will welcome you to their house. With the English, if they see a Black man they see [sic] he is monkey or dog.”

  In 1974, he kindly offered to be the new king of Scotland. Then he created a "Save Britain Fund" to take food from starving Ugandans and give it to Scotland (who didn't really need it), and in1976, hired an African-American band to march in the streets of Uganda wearing full kilt regalia and playing drums and bagpipes. However, Amin's crush wasn't returned, and in 1977, he was banned from a Commonwealth event. He threatened to invade the UK, and soldiers were stationed at Glasgow and Edinburgh airports in case the deranged dictator appeared with “at least 250 of his very formidable bodyguard.” Two years later, Amin invaded Tanzania, was deposed, and fled to Saudi Arabia.
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  (#8) Mao Zedong

  • Dec. at 83 (1893-1976)

  China's history of excellence in calligraphy was taken to new heights by Chairman Mao, who was completely obsessed with the flowery script of the nation's past. An avid poet and writer, Mao often had political documents produced by ink and brush rather than by typewriter, even in the early days of the Revolution. Propaganda images of Mao often show him holding a calligrapher's pen in his hand.
   

  As leaser of China, Mao’s personal writing was considered beautiful. His distinctive style was used everywhere from the masthead of the People’s Daily newspaper and the signage of the Beijing Railway Station to mosquito nets. It even gained a name - "Mao-style."

  Not content with his own excellence, he ordered his elite Red Guards to  destroy traditional works of calligraphy, and had his own script used on the armbands of the Red Guards doing the destruction. Even after his fall from grace, Mao-style calligraphy is still given respect in modern China, and his distinctive style still appears on cigarettes, cars, in museums, and on word processor fonts.

  
  
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  (#9) Ferdinand Marcos

  • Dec. at 72 (1917-1989)

  Dictator Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines was  obsessed with numerology, particularly the number seven. When Marcos declared martial law, he wanted to make sure his seizure of power took place on days that either ended in seven or were divisible by seven.
   

  History got in the way, but then-President Marcos had an answer. On September 22, 1972, the Secretary of Defense Enrile was ambushed in an attack that was likely staged by Marcos. The next day, Marcos appeared on television to announce he was placing the Philippines under martial law by virtue of Proclamation No. 1081 - which he claimed he signed on September 21. That day became a national holiday, and much of the population actually became convinced that martial law had actually begun before the incident that sparked the martial law.

  Marcos' reign lasted, naturally, 21 years before he was deposed in 1989. Even after that, the Filipino legislature retained its superstitious nature. In 2005, Cabinet Bill No. 7 was introduced to the National Assembly, legislation allowing for snap presidential elections. The bill proposed a campaign length of 57 days and an election date of February 7.
  

  
  
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  (#10) Saparmurat Niyazov

  • Dec. at 66 (1940-2006)

  Tiny Turkmenistan's president-for-life Saparmurat Niyazov established a cult of personality that rivaled those of North Korea's Kim family or Joseph Stalin. Niyazov wanted nothing less than to remake his nation in his own image - and he did a great job.

  Most famously, he had a 50 foot gold-plated statue of himself built - and ensured that it revolved so it always faced the sun. He named cities, a theme park, theaters, various consumer products, the month of January, and even a meteorite after himself. After giving up smoking in 1997, he decried that all his ministers must also do so. He wrote a new national anthem, had statues of himself placed in every corner of the nation, and ordered the national TV stations to show only live feeds of his own meetings.

  And like any good dictator, he wrote a self-aggrandizing book on Turkmen identity and history. Naturally, he made it required reading in schools and universities. He had a copy of the book ejected out of a Russian space shuttle to say he "conquered outer space" and built a gigantic statue of the book that electronically read out passages every night. Citizens even had to pass a test on the book before being granted a driving license.

  Niyazov died in 2006, and was buried in a $100 million Kipchak mosque, a building of his own design, that he decorated with gold-leaf inscriptions of passages from his book. As a final insult, he left control of the country to his dentist. 

  
  
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  (#11) Kim Jong-il

  • Dec. at 70 (1941-2011)

  Before his son's cheese obsession derailed his health, Kim Jong-Il was reportedly obsessed with Hollywood films, having accumulated a collection of 30,000 movies, including every Oscar winner, as well as a good deal of porn, and boasted he'd seen them all. As a boy, the son of North Korea's founder regularly visited Pyongyang’s main film studio, then later became so besotted with an actress that he forced to leave her husband and child and later impregnated out of wedlock.

  Once on the throne, he had thousands of DVDs and tapes sent to Pyongyang in diplomatic pouches, and kept them in an air-conditioned vault. Kim was a big fan of the Friday the 13th, Godzilla and Rambo franchises, and was especially obsessed with James Bond.

  Kim was also something of a giant in North Korea's film industry, at least according to regime propaganda. He reportedly wrote, produced, or "consulted" on nearly 12,000 North Korean movies, none of which have ever been seen. And he was known for kidnapping Japanese and South Korean actresses and filmmakers - particularly South Korean legend Shin Sang-ok, who he abducted and forced to make the "socialist Godzilla" movie Pulgasari.
  
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  (#12) François Duvalier

  • Dec. at 64 (1907-1971)

  Haiti's former president, Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, was a paranoid voodoo-obsessive during his 14 years in power. Voodoo was Haiti's national religion, and Duvalier essentially let it run his life. He was extremely superstitious, and believed that he was guarded by voodoo spirits on the 22nd of each month. In later years, his paranoia was so overarching that he only left the presidential palace on the 22nd of each month.

  He claimed to have placed a voodoo curse on John F. Kennedy, and said Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963 was caused by his powers. As if that wasn't enough, Papa Doc sent a flunky to collect air from around Kennedy's grave to use in his own spells.

  He had a personal guard called the Tonton Macoutes - Haitian slang for "bogeymen" - and banned any civic organization that espoused values contrary to voodoo. When told a political rival had used his own voodoo to transform into a black dog, Duvalier ordered the killing of all the black dogs in Haiti. He also claimed to have used his voodoo power to obtain secrets from a dead rebel's severed head.

  Papa Doc survived at least six assassination attempts, but died of illness in 1971.

   
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  (#13) Enver Hoxha

  • Dec. at 77 (1908-1985)

  The tiny nation of Albania spent a crushing amount of money on a military project that never fired a shot - all because of its leader's obsession with defense. Albanian strongman Enver Hoxha believed his nation must be self-reliant in all things, including its own defense from NATO.

  So he ordered the building of bunkers that could be defended by civilian reservists in the event of an invasion either from the west, or from the east by the Soviets. 750,000 round concrete domes were eventually built, popping up everywhere from empty fields and farms, to tourist-friendly beaches, graveyards, and the middle of streets. They were meant to be defended by one-to-two man teams of soldiers, lookouts, and gunners. While placed strategically, they could theoretically be lifted by crane or helicopter to a hot spot where an invasion was taking place. By the end of Hoxha's building program, one bunker existed for every four Albanians - who were poorly trained, and had virtually no weapons.

  A quarter of Albania's budget went to its military, and the vast majority of that money went into the bunkers. Meanwhile, the country had a massive housing shortage, and crumbling roads, made worse by the concrete and steel the bunkers were sucking up. When Hoxha died in 1990, the bunker program was stopped - leaving the country with hundreds of thousands of useless eyesores. Since then, tourists have drowned in them, one was bombed by NATO during the Kosovo War, others have become fouled by human waste, and one even had 16 tons of chemical weapons found in it in 2004.
  
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  (#14) Saddam Hussein

  • Dec. at 69 (1937-2006)

  While Saddam had the insanely lavish tastes normal to 20th century dictators, once he was captured, he became hooked on something far more commonplace: American junk food, particularly Doritos.

  The Pennsylvania National Guard troops assigned to protect the compound where Saddam was being held describe a chatty, almost fatherly figure who could eat a family size bag of Doritos in ten minutes, and would speak of and eat virtually nothing else. He did occasionally switch things up and eat Raisin Bran for breakfast. But never Fruit Loops. He's said to have hated them.
  

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