The 'Great Dictators' Trivia Quiz

Answer: Karl Doenitz

Karl Dönitz (1891-1980) was a German naval commander during World War I and II. He was sentenced to ten years in prison for war crimes. He died of a heart attack on Christmas Eve 1980.

Answer: SS

SS stands for Schutzstaffel. This name, which means 'protective squad', dates from the time which the SS was Hilter's personal boydyguard. After the assassination of Roehm in 1934, the SS expanded to include the entire Nazi terror apparatus, including the Gestapo.

The Waffen-SS was added in the late 1930s. Heinrich Himmler was appointed head of the SS in 1929, and held the post till 1945.

Answer: Clara Petacci

Mussolini and Clara Petacci were captured by Communist partisans. Clara Petacci refused an offer to escape. She is admired in Italy as a woman who remained faithful to her man in times of trouble. They were shot on April 28. One day later their bodies were hung upside down at the front of a gas station in Milan.

Answer: El Caudillo

General Francisco Franco Bahamonde was nicknamed el Caudillo (Leader) or el Generalísimo. He led the Nationalist side during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), during which he had the support of Hitler and Mussolini. He was the Spanish head of state from April 1, 1939 until his death on November 20, 1975.

Answer: Dzhugashvili

Josef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili was General Secretary of the Communist party from 1922 until his death in 1953. He helped the allied forces defeat Germany in World War II. He was notorious for his political oppression, and responsible for the death of at least 20 million people.

Answer: Yuri Andropov

The position was created in 1922 for Joseph Stalin. Krushchev followed in 1953, Andropov in 1982, Chernenko in 1984, and Gorbachev in 1985. Lenin was officially "Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars".

Answer: Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia was an independent kingdom from 1918 to 1941 (name "Yugoslavia" in 1929). It was occupied by Germany from 1941 to 1944-45. Tito led the Yugoslavian resistance during World War II. In 1945 he led a coup d'état, and became Prime Minister. He was the founder of Cominform (Communist Information Bureau) in 1947, an international forum for communist countries.

He had several conflicts with the Soviet Union and Stalin and in effect took the country out of the Eastern Bloc.

Answer: Elena

He was General Secretary of Romania's communist party from 1965 until 1989. They were convicted in a two-hour court martial of crimes against the state, genocide, and "undermining the national economy"(Wikipedia). They were shot on Christmas Day, 1989. Ceausescu's wife was born Elena Petrescu.

Answer: Slobodan Milosevic

Milosevic was President of Serbia from 1989 to 1997, and President of Yugoslavia from 1997 to 2000. He was indicted by the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for crimes against humanity in Kosovo and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Answer: Eduard Shevardnadze

He was Minister of Foreign Affairs in the USSR from 1985 to 1990. He was appointed acting chairman of the Georgian state council after the coup in 1992. He won the presidential elections in 1995 and 2000, but was accused of electoral fraud. He fell on November 23, 2003, during the Rose Revolution led by Saakashvili.

Answer: Raul

He has served as the acting president of Cuba since July 31, 2006, because the illness of his brother, Fidel. He's the youngest of three brothers. They also have four sisters.

Answer: Jorge Videla

President Isabel Perón appointed him Commander-in-Chief of the army in 1974 and on March 24, 1976 he led a coup against her. Two days later he assumed the post of President of Argentina.

Answer: Francois Duvalier

Francois Duvalier was elected President in 1957, but became "President for Life" in 1964. His son Jean-Claude ("Baby Doc") succeeded him in 1971, until an uprising in 1986. The Tonton Macoute was his private band of thugs.

Answer: September 11

Salvador Allende had been President of Chile since 1970. He led a coalition of socialists and communists. Isabel Allende, the daughter of his cousin, based her novel "The House of the Spirits" (1982) on this. She went into exile in Venezuela after the coup.

Answer: Panama

He was never the official President of Panama. He fell in 1989 when the USA invaded Panama. After that he was imprisoned in Miami. The Federal Bureau of Prisons has listed September 9, 2007 as his release date.

Answer: Pakistan

He was forced to hold general elections in 2002. A pro-Musharraf party obtained a simple majority, but the other parties opposed him. He has survived several assassination attempts.

Answer: Pol Pot

"Pol Pot" is short for "Politique Potentielle" (Potential Politics). He renamed Cambodia "Democratic Kampuchea". He was a Communist, and is said to be responsible for millions of deaths in the "Killing Fields". The Khmer Rouge government collapsed in 1979. He fled to Thailand and died in 1998.

Answer: Ferdinand Marcos

Marcos was involved in the resistance against Japan during World War II. He was elected President in 1965 and 1969, but refused to step down after protests in 1972. In 1983 opposition leader Benigno Aquino was killed. In 1986 Marcos won the elections, but he and his wife Imelda had to flee to the USA after fresh protests. Aquino's widow Corazón became the new President.

Answer: Great Leap Forward

The Long March was in 1934, when Mao and the Communists escaped from Chang Kai-Shek's troops. The Great Leap Forward was meant to industrialize China quickly. The Cultural Revolution was a campaign in 1966 against the "bourgeoisie" and against rivals within the Communist Party.

Answer: 1979

"Ayatollah" is a title for Shi'a clerics meaning "Sign of God". He was a religious fundamentalist, and said that Satan lived in the West. He died in 1989, and was succeeded by Ayatollah Khameni. The Grand Ayatollah has more power than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who won the presidential elections of 2005.

Answer: Ba'ath

The Ba'ath Arab Socialist party stood for Arab socialism and pan-Arabism, a movement for unification of the Arab peoples. "Ba'ath" means "resurrection". Hussein was captured by American troops on December 13, 2003, and executed on December 30, 2006.

Answer: Colonel

Gadaffi became Libya's de facto head of state in 1969, after leading a coup against King Idris I. He's called the Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution. He turned Libya into a socialist-Islamist state. He wrote the 'Green Book'. He also financed the Black September Movement (which was responsible for the massacre at the Munich Olympics in 1972).

In 2003 Libya started destroying its nuclear and chemical weapons.

Answer: Joseph-Desire Mobutu

General Mobutu led a coup in 1965. His party, the only one allowed, was the MPR: Mouvement Populaire de la Révolution. During the 1970s he changed the name of Congo into Zaire, and his own name into Mobutu Sese Seko. The MPR attacked schools with Belgian missionaries. He was overthrown by Laurent-Désiré Kabila in 1997, and died from prostrate cancer half a year later in Morocco.

Answer: Uganda

Idi Amin was a heavyweight boxer. He was a Muslim, and killed lots of Christians. He was "President for Life" of Uganda and General of the Ugandan Army. He was overthrown in 1979 and fled to Saudi Arabia, where he lived till his death in 2003.

Answer: Dési Bouterse

Suriname is a former Dutch colony. It became independent in 1975. Bouterse was President in 1982, and the most powerful man in Suriname in the 1980s.