Titans of History

Back home, as Elvis’ music and high-energy stage act grew ever more popular, conservative America became more disgusted and worried that its offspring were being irrevocably corrupted. His habits of shaking his legs, rolling his tightly leather-clad hips, thrusting and throwing himself about in front of the microphone were considered the height of obscenity. As a result, there were many who saw Elvis’ draft into the US Army, and subsequent posting to Germany in 1958, as something of a relief. When he returned to America in 1960, he was a more subdued character, and during the 1960s, as the era of the pop groups burgeoned, he chose to concentrate on a lackluster film career rather than return to music. But he reinvented himself for a musical comeback in 1968, adopting some of the influences of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, the very stars who had re-interpreted his kind of music and sold it back to America.

Elvis’s popularity remained huge throughout the 1970s, and he sold out enormous venues across the United States, particularly in Las Vegas, albeit in a new persona where he was now encased in the outré outfits of the cabaret scene. He still made it into the charts, for example with “Always on My Mind” (1973). But his health and state of mind declined alarmingly. He grew fat, gorging himself on fast food. He also became addicted to prescription drugs. He slept for most of the day and cut a bloated figure on stage—although that voice remained mesmerizing.

Elvis died on August 16, 1977. He suffered heart failure at Graceland, his mansion in Memphis, Tennessee. His funeral was a massive event, watched by millions. He ranks with the American singers Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan and Michael Jackson, those English bands the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and the French singer Edith Piaf as musical giants who have moved beyond the realm of music into the conscious identity of nations.

SADDAM HUSSEIN

1937–2006

What has befallen us of defeat, shame and humiliation, Saddam, is the result of your follies, your miscalculations and your irresponsible actions.

Shia Iraqi army commander in 1991, inaugurating

the uprising against Saddam’s rule that was subsequently

crushed by the dictator’s forces

Saddam Hussein, the dictator of Iraq, aspired to be an Arab hero and conqueror, but his long reign of ruthless oppression, sadistic cruelty, gangsterish corruption, unnecessary wars, mass murder and a ludicrous personality cult led to a series of political miscalculations that brought about the destruction of his regime and his own death on the scaffold.

Saddam was born in a small Sunni village close to the town of Tikrit. His father died before he was born so he was brought up in his stepfather’s house—repeatedly beaten and spending much of his youth as a street kid. In 1947 he went to live with his mother’s brother, from whom, at the age of ten, he received his first schooling.

In the early 1950s Saddam moved with his uncle to Baghdad and tried to get into military college but failed the exams. Meanwhile, he imbibed from his uncle a hatred of British influence in the kingdom of Iraq, became a regular participant in anti-government demonstrations, and formed his own street gang to attack political opponents. In time he became drawn toward the Ba’ath Party, which combined socialism with anti-Western, pan-Arab nationalism, and in 1958 he participated in the army coup led by Brigadier Abdel Karim Kassem that overthrew and murdered King Faisal II. Many, especially the Ba’athists, were disappointed that Kassem failed to lead Iraq into a union with neighboring Arab countries, and in 1959 Saddam was involved in a failed attempt to assassinate Kassem, after which he went into exile in Syria and Egypt.

A Ba’athist-dominated coup in 1963 induced Saddam to return, but the new ruler of Iraq, Abdul Salam Arif, soon fell out with his Ba’athist allies, and Saddam was imprisoned for several years before escaping in 1967. He went on to become the right-hand man of the Ba’ath Party leader, Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr, and after the party seized power in 1968, he emerged as the strong man of the regime, becoming vice-president, as well as head of Iraq’s security apparatus and general secretary of the Ba’ath Party. He deliberately fashioned his regime on that of Stalin, whom he studied.