Children of Dictators

tips here. I didn't realize that's how we were coming at this, But okay, I feel like you can empathize 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 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. 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, 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, 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. 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 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

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 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 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, 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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, 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 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. 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 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

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 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, 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 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, 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,

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 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 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 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 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 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

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

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, 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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

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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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, 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

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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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, 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. 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

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,

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 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 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 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. 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.

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 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, 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 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. 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 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

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, 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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

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 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, 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 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. 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 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. 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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

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

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. 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 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, 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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, 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,

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 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. 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 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 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

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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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

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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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,

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 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, 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,

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. 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. 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 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 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 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.