Titans of History

Roosevelt’s belief that the weak should be defended against the predations of the rich and powerful had been drummed into him since childhood. Although he had had a privileged upbringing in the patrician society of the East Coast, an inspirational headmaster had instilled in him a deep sense of social responsibility. This was later enhanced by his marriage to his distant cousin Eleanor. A bluestocking of progressive social ideals, she was an indefatigable campaigner on behalf of the disadvantaged right up until her death in 1962.

Roosevelt’s genius lay in his handling of people. To the millions of Americans who listened as he outlined his policies on the radio in his avuncular “fireside chats,” it seemed as though he was personally guaranteeing their well-being. “We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” he reassured them. Roosevelt’s relationship with Churchill, his ally in the darkest war years, was one of genuine affinity; he once ended a long and serious cable by telling the British prime minister: “It is fun being in the same decade as you.”

After the Big Three Allied leaders met at Yalta in February 1945, Roosevelt appeared to the press in a wheelchair, apologizing for his “unusual posture” but saying it was “a lot easier” than carrying “ten pounds of steel around the bottom of my legs.” It was his first public acknowledgment of the paralytic effects of the polio that he had contracted at the age of thirty-nine, and which he had battled and concealed by wearing leg braces and by other means. This was both a defense against public perceptions of weakness and a truly heroic personal refusal to let a debilitating ailment wreck his determination to carry out his presidential tasks.

Roosevelt’s sudden death from a massive cerebral hemorrhage in April 1945, just before the first meeting of the UN, stunned the world.

MUSSOLINI

1883–1945

… the Fascist conception of the State is all embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value.

Mussolini, The Doctrine of Fascism, 1932

Benito Mussolini, the dictator of Italy from 1922 to 1943, was the father of fascism—a domineering autocrat whose totalitarian politics paved the way for Nazism. Ruthlessly suppressing any form of dissent at home, he was also an avaricious colonialist with Roman imperial delusions, directly responsible for the death of over 30,000 Ethiopians in his infamous Abyssinian campaign as well as complicit, through his alliance with Adolf Hitler, in the atrocities of Nazi Germany.

Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was born on July 29, 1883 in Predappio, central northern Italy. His father was a blacksmith and his mother a schoolteacher, a profession he took up but then swiftly abandoned. After an unsuccessful year trying to find employment in Switzerland in 1902—during which he was imprisoned for vagrancy—he was expelled and sent back to Italy for military service.

In his twenties, following in the footsteps of his father, Mussolini was a committed socialist, editing a newspaper called La Lotta di Classe (The Class Struggle) before, in 1910, becoming secretary of the local socialist party in Forli, for which he edited the paper Avanti! (Forward!). He also wrote an unsuccessful novel called The Cardinal’s Mistress. Increasingly known to the authorities for inciting disorder, he was imprisoned in 1911 for producing pacifist propaganda after Italy declared war on Turkey. Unsurprisingly, he initially opposed Italy’s entry into the First World War, but—perhaps believing a major conflict would precipitate the overthrow of capitalism—he changed his mind, a decision that saw him expelled from the socialist party. He swiftly became captivated by militarism, founding a new paper, Il Popolo d’Italia, as well as the pro-war group Fasci d’Azione Rivoluzionaria, although his own military service was cut short in 1917 following injuries sustained after a grenade explosion in training.