Titans of History

Yet he was no buffoon, rather a skillful and ruthless manipulator. His acquisition of a nuclear device in 2006 allowed him to force the Americans into negotiations for food aid in order to save his regime. He ended the talks when he had extracted maximum concessions and supplies from his enemy, only to restart them again later when his authority looked to be under threat. By 2004, the dictator started to suffer strokes or coronaries and in 2010 he chose his youngest son Kim Jong Un as heir apparent. In December 2011, the Dear Leader died of a heart attack on his train. He was hailed as Great Saint Born of Heaven and his son, at just twenty-seven years old and with no political experience, was chosen as the Great Successor and appointed supreme commander and general secretary of the party.

Kim Il Sung and his successors are among a mere handful of dictators who have managed to transform socialistic republican autocracies into hereditary monarchies in the 20th and 21st centuries. It is the dream of every dictator to die in his bed, having chosen his successor. In Syria, the dictator Hafez al-Assad, who came to power in 1969, managed to achieve the succession of his son Bashar in 2000; in Azerbaijan, Gaidar Aliev was succeeded by his son Ilhan in 2003; in the Congo, Laurent Kabila was succeeded by his son Joseph. In the autonomous Russian republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov succeeded his father as premier and then as president. Fidel Castro, who had ruled Cuba since 1959, was succeeded by his brother Raul in 2008.

It is often the case that the son proves to be weaker than the father, and his reign is shorter. Only in North Korea has the dynasty reached the third generation. It is astonishing that the Kim family and their henchmen, many of them related, have twice managed to achieve smooth hereditary successions. At the time of his succession, Kim Jong Un was the world’s youngest head of state.

ODETTE SANSOM

1912–1995

I am a very ordinary woman to whom a chance was given to see human beings at their best and at their worst

Odette Sansom, reflecting on her experiences

Odette Sansom represents the courage of ordinary—yet extraordinary—people during the Second World War. Although she was awarded the George Cross and the Légion d’honneur for her work behind enemy lines during the Second World War, Odette Sansom described her occupation in Who’s Who as “housewife.” Known simply as Odette, she never viewed her unflinching bravery in Nazi-occupied France as anything out of the ordinary.

Born in France, in 1931 Odette Brailly, as she then was, married an English hotelier, Roy Sansom, whom she had met when he stayed at her Picardy home to improve his French. The couple subsequently settled in England and had three children together. Almost a decade later Odette, living a quiet life as a London housewife, responded to a War Office request for all French-born residents to provide any photographs they might have of their homeland. When Odette sent in her holiday albums, the War Office called her in to see whether she might be able to help them with more than snapshots. She was asked to join the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, where she received her basic training, but this was a really a cover for her recruitment into the Special Operations Executive (SOE), the covert British organization that sent agents to occupied Europe to work as spies and saboteurs.

Although her recruiters had been impressed by her vivacity, her intelligence and her desire to redeem France from the disgrace of its capitulation in 1940, her trainers at SOE were at first doubtful that Odette had what it took to be a secret agent. But eventually, noting her steely determination, they selected her for work in occupied France.

She was landed by boat in Antibes in October 1942, where she met her group leader, Peter Churchill. Odette was meant to join a new circuit in Burgundy, but Churchill, with whom she would fall in love and eventually marry, instead secured permission for her to stay with his circle. Using the code name Lise, Odette worked as Churchill’s courier for over a year, helping him to transmit vital information to and from England.

In April 1943 Odette and Churchill were betrayed by a double agent. Odette had been suspicious of “Colonel Henri” as soon as she met the German officer who claimed that he wanted to defect to the Allies. Churchill, when he returned by parachute from London where he had been receiving instructions, was equally suspicious. But by then it was too late. A more indiscreet member of their circle had already confided in Sergeant Bleicher of the Abwehr (German military intelligence), and Odette and Churchill were arrested.