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5 Dictators and Their Devastating Legacies | Time Travels
Aug 13, 2025
Francisco Macias Nguema, Fulgencio Batista, Jean-Bédel Bokassa, Pol Pot, Papa Doc Duvalier; these men unleashed terror and devastation in the countries they ruled, leaving behind a trail of suffering that still echoes today. Learn about the forgotten stories of their deadly reigns." Subscribe to Time Travels Here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWTZNAGQxEW1NrZHtK6aAqw?sub_confirmation=1 More Time Travels With Michael Brady: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaMfiT0fYh94DmwcZIV8CYNT3gNuL37gn PLAYLIST 2 Journey through time to uncover amazing, dramatic and bizarre stories from the past - but also ask the questions, what does it look like now? And what if things had happened differently? From ancient Rome and colonial Australia, to Victorian era London, early-settler New Zealand and beyond - come with us as we uncover the the pivotal turning points in history that changed the destiny of empires and transformed our world. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/historytimetravels/ Snapchat: https://story.snapchat.com/p/cc960ce1-9281-4450-b815-654114302d99/827084423782400 #History #TimeTravels #MikeBrady #Historylesson
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History is full of despotic dictators who ruled their subjects with an iron fist
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We know some of the most famous names, Ivan the Terrible, Adolf Hitler and Mao Zedong
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There are also dozens of horrible leaders who somehow slipped through the cracks and were forgotten to history
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They were sociopathic, insane and cruel. Here are the stories of five horrible forgotten dictators from history
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Let's go! Francisco Neguema was born in rural Spanish Guinea, now modern day Central Africa in 1924
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He was part of the dominant Fang tribe and his father was a witch doctor. After being educated in Catholic school, Neguema joined the Spanish colonial government as a civil servant
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despite having failed his civil service exam three times. Even before taking power, he displayed signs of mental instability and a profound disregard
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for fact. In a rambling speech before the colony's independence, he declared himself a Hitlerian
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Marxist and claimed that Adolf Hitler had simply wanted to save Africa
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He was a deeply paranoid man and probably schizophrenic, which was made all the worse
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by his copious consumption of hallucinogenic drugs. Despite his insanity and collaboration with the Spanish, when Equatorial Guinea achieved
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independence in 1968, he was able to win the first national election on a platform of African
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nationalism. He immediately set about cementing his power. Only a year after taking power
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he declared himself President for Life and his reign of terror properly began
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All opposition was stifled by a terrorist state using public executions, imprisonment without
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trial, torture and slavery. So few records were taken and so much violence spread through the
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country that's impossible to judge between judicial executions and murders carried out by
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militiamen and prison guards. Between 30 to 70,000 people were killed by execution, with another
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quarter of the population having fled to neighboring countries. All of this in a country with only
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around 350,000 people in it. And the Guayma was particularly hostile towards the intellectual
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class, seeing them as a threat to his power and a symbol of foreign domination. Anyone who was
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educated was seen as a threat and they were either killed or imprisoned. He ordered modern
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hospitals to be shut down and for traditional medicine to be encouraged. By the end of his
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rule, there were only two doctors remaining in the entire country, one of whom was a psychiatrist
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treating Naguema for mental illness. After taking control of the plantations across the country
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Naguema needed workers and solved this issue through slave labour. He ordered the kidnapping
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of young girls from across the country for use on plantations and as forced wives for his soldiers
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As the years wore on, his insanity only grew worse. There are stories of Naguema late in his reign
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sitting alone at a long dining table and having lengthy discussions with people who weren't there
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He inexplicably ordered the only power plant in the capital city to operate without lubricating oil
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causing the entire thing to explode and plunging the capital into darkness
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And naturally, after years of brutal oppression and psychotic rule, tens of thousands of people
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were trying to flee the country. So to stem this tide, Neguema ordered all boats be sold or destroyed
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This made existing food shortages even worse, as now people couldn't even fish
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But finally, in 1979, Neguema was deposed in a coup by his nephew
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He was executed after spending weeks hiding in a jungle. In a final act of spite, Neguema allegedly burnt the money in the treasury before being
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captured. After this, his nephew took power in the country and is ruled as dictator to this very day
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Former US ambassador to Equatorial Guinea, John Bennett, summarized the situation by saying
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there is not really a government, there is an ongoing family criminal conspiracy
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That is what runs the country. Not all terrible leaders are inherently bloodthirsty. Some can simply sacrifice
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their country's good fortune and prosperity for their own benefit. Fulgencio Batista ruled Cuba
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several times, first as a lowly sergeant behind a puppet government, and then as an elected
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president, finally through a military coup and installing himself as a strongman. His reign in
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Cuba would see the country taken over by American corporate and crime interests, while his own power
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was cemented through brutal secret police with American military backing. Fulgencio Batista was
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He was born into poverty in Banas Cuba in 1901 At the age of 14 he was forced to leave home after the death of his mother and spent his teenage years working odd jobs to keep himself fed and housed
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Even in his younger years, Batista displayed a proclivity for power climbing. As a sergeant
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in the Cuban army, he participated in the sergeant's revolt in the 1930s and became
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the true power behind the presidency in the country. He was elected president in 1940 and
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served until 1944. Ironically, with the support of the very communists he would later seek to
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destroy. After living in the United States for a few years in the late 40s, he returned to Cuba
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and in 1952 staged a coup to become president once more. During his subsequent time in office
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he would turn Cuba into a corrupt and oppressive puppet of American interests
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Havana, under Batista's rule, became a place for wealthy Americans to go and gamble with loose laws
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and easy access to alcohol, narcotics, and prostitutes. Batista allowed the casinos to
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operate freely and didn't check where the money for them was coming from in exchange for personal
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kickbacks. Some casinos gave Batista personally 30% of the profits made every night. As the Cubans
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didn't care about a paper trail, the casinos also became a gigantic money laundering operation
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for American crime syndicates. To encourage mafia investment, Batista promised to match
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dollar for dollar any mafia money invested in casinos and nightclubs from Cuba's treasury
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At a time when huge portions of Cuba lived in poverty, the government was spending millions on mafia projects marketed towards Americans
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As well as the mafia, the United States government itself was one of Batista's staunchest supporters
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Batista loosened business regulations and sold off as much of Cuba as he could to American business interests
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By the end of his reign, American companies owned 40% of Cuba's plantations
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90% of its mines and 80% of its utilities, half of its railways as well. Most famously
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Batista was gifted a gold-plated telephone by the American ITT Corporation as a special reward for
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increasing telephone rates in the country. In 1959, the unpopularity of the Batista regime grew
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to be too much. The Cuban rebels led by Castro had overwhelming popular support, and the United
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States could no longer support a regime so anti-democratic and oppressive. On New Year's
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Eve at 1958, Batista and his family put a successor in power, grabbed as much money as they could
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up to $300 million, and fled the country. A week later, Castro's forces marched into Havana
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and Batista's regime was destroyed. Batista would spend the rest of his life in exile in Portugal
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living until 1973. He would be forever remembered as the crooked man who had sold his country's soul
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to a foreign power. Jean Bédel Bocasa was born in February 1921 in the town of Beaubangui in the colony of
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French Equatorial Africa. The French ruled their colony with an iron fist. When Bocasa was young
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his father was publicly beaten to death by French officials and he lost his mother shortly after
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Strangely enough though, this didn't seem to build any sort of lasting resentment, as the boy would study in a French mission school before joining the French army
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After serving with distinction in the Second World War and in Indochina, he returned to his homeland in 1960, when the former colony became the Central African Republic
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Due to his military experience, he was made head of the new country's military
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Bokassa used his influence as head of the military to stage a coup and rose to power in 1965
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He initially tried to reform the country into a more prosperous state by nationalizing the few farms and industries that the Central African Republic had
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He hoped this would help to establish the nation's independence. Unfortunately, though, this failed through massive incompetence and corruption in management
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As an example of the sort of blatant corruption his regime engaged in, he gave one of his wife's companies the sole right to manufacture all school uniforms
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and then made it illegal to wear anything else to school. Economic blunders aside, Bokassa also engaged in widespread torture and killing of his political rivals
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He was known to cut off the ears of thieves and was even accused of cannibalism
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He outlawed unemployment and people were required to provide proof that they had jobs or risk imprisonment
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One university professor remembered the president used to scoop up beggars in his plane and
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drop them into the river. No matter how many decrees he came up with though, there was no getting around the fact
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that the Central African Republic was a poor country in desperate need of aid
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Much of the country's budget still came from France, which was providing foreign aid and
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a deal to maintain influence in the region. In 1976 Bokassa was no longer content with being merely president and he wanted more He dissolved the government and then made himself emperor In a ceremony based on the coronation of Napoleon
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he declared himself Emperor Bokassa I of the newly formed Central African Empire
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He wore a costume based on Napoleons and had soldiers dressed as 19th century French cavalrymen to form an honor guard
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The ceremony cost tens of millions of dollars in the desperately poor nation
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A crown, imperial regalia and throne were all built to order at the cost of millions of dollars
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The capital city of Bangui was also renovated to prepare for it all and for all the guests that Bokasa was certain would come
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French foreign aid ended up paying for a lot of it as they felt that keeping a Central African ally was worth the cost playing along with this delusion
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The majority of the invited guests simply declined to attend and no heads of states showed up
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When asked why, Bokassa declared that they were simply jealous because, quote, I had an empire
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and they didn't. Finally, he was overthrown in 1979 in a French-backed coup, and although the
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country became the Central African Republic once again, Bokassa was given asylum in France to live
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out his later life in a grand chateau. But then, in 1986, he returned and was immediately arrested
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and tried in court. Accounts of murder, cannibalism, treason, assault and battery all piled up in one
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particularly horrifying piece of testimony. 27 teenagers and young adults came forward to tell
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a harrowing story. They had been part of a group of 170 school children arrested for throwing rocks
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at Bokasa's passing Rolls Royce during protests over the school uniform fiasco
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They had all been thrown into prison. In their first night, Bokasa himself had led a group of
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guards in clubbing the children to death. Bicasa killed five children himself with his walking stick
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and of 170, only 27 survived. Bicasa was imprisoned in 1988 in solitary confinement
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but released just five years later as part of a wider amnesty for prisoners
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With his health waning, Bicasa proclaimed himself to be Jesus' 13th apostle and would tell anybody
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who'd listen about his supposed secret meetings with the Pope. He finally died in 1996 and left
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behind 17 wives and 50 children. Pol Pot is a name that sends a shiver down the spine of anybody familiar with the infamous
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Cambodian killing fields, and although his crimes against humanity are well-known today
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he is still less infamous than many other dictators from recent history. Pol Pot was born in May 1925 in French-ruled Cambodia
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Over the course of his life, he would lead a communist rebellion that would overthrow the Cambodian government and established one of the most brutal regimes in human history
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A full quarter of Cambodians would die in the four years of Pol Pot's rule as he attempted to
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wipe out centuries of history and return Cambodia to its pre-industrial state. In his early life
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Pol Pot had failed the entrance exams for high school and became a carpenter in the Cambodian
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capital of Phnom Penh. When he was 24, he moved to Paris to study but quickly abandoned his schooling
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when he became involved in the French communist community. His grades declining, Pol Pot was
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kicked out of school and returned home to Cambodia, determined to build a communist utopia there
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He spent a few years teaching before being forced to flee after police discovered his communist
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connections. He fled into the jungle and became part of, and eventually leader of
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the communist rebel group known as the Khmer Rouge. Rebels mostly kept to the jungle until 1975
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when, with the end of the Vietnam War, they saw their chance and overthrew the Cambodian government
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Pol Pot, as leader, could finally build his communist nation. His time in the jungle had
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changed him. He spent time with the self-sufficient villagers in the region and became convinced that
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self-sufficiency was the only way for a nation to truly succeed. Cambodia needed to be able to
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supply all of its own food, equipment, and medicine. If they couldn't make it, then they just couldn't
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have it. Under this policy, Cambodia might be the closest a country has ever come to resembling hell
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on earth. He saw urban living in particular as the antithesis of his perfect dream society
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Pol Pot emptied out the cities of Cambodia at gunpoint and forced the people into the countryside
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These so-called new people were forced to work the land under armed guards on collectivised farms
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Unsurprisingly, taking the population of a city and demanding they farm doesn't magically make
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than farmers. Starvation and death from exhaustion was rife. Pol Pot closed off the country completely shutting down schools hospitals banks factories and collectivising all property Despite the fact that Pol Pot himself had been a teacher higher education was useless to the Khmer Rouge and anyone who had received it was seen as a threat to the regime Something as simple as wearing eyeglasses was seen as too intellectual and resulted
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in execution. Anybody not able to work was killed. Anybody anti-revolutionary was killed
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And so were their families. An ysis of the Cambodian killing fields where people were executed and bodies were
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dumped finds the remains of at least 1.4 million Cambodians, though the number may be more than
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double that. Millions more died from starvation as agriculture collapsed and trade was abolished
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Pol Pot and his regime abolished money and destroyed all banking records, ensuring the
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economy would be destroyed entirely. He abolished private property and religion, and the Khmer Rouge
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declared 1975 to be year zero in an effort to separate Cambodia from its past. He was also a
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racist and ordered that minority groups and ethnic Vietnamese be wiped out in an attempt to maintain
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national purity. The Khmer Rouge was finally overthrown in a Vietnamese invasion in 1979
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but Pol Pot himself would live until 1998. François Papadoc de Valliers was born in April of 1907 in
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the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. He studied medicine at the University of Haiti and later in
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the United States. In the 1940s, he was one of Haiti's travelling doctors who would go
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out to rural areas and provide medicine and vaccinations. For much of rural Haiti, a visit
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from a doctor was unprecedented, and his miraculous ability to cure diseases through modern medicine
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helped to establish his popularity among the rural people. He earned the nickname Papa Doc
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in this period, and going from town to town, he was exposed to Haitian voodoo and its power over
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the rural provinces. They clearly made an impression on him because he would make extensive
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propaganda use of voodoo during his time as a Haitian dictator. For the next decade, De Vallier would serve in several government roles, making alliances
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with the wealthy class and military. In 1957, he was able to win the presidential election, and his reign of terror began
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He immediately formed his own dreaded militia, the Tonton Macoute, responsible for a massive
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number of murders. the first year they were responsible for the murder of more than 300 political opponents
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and for bombing hostile organizations. They also reduced the size of the army and his own private
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militia became by far the most powerful military force in the entire country. Over the course of
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Papa Doc's time in office they murdered tens of thousands of Haitians in suspicion of opposing
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the president. The Tonton Makout were famous for their denim uniforms and sunglasses and they were
16:53
given free reign to rape and murder throughout the nation. Some bodies were left in public for
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days as a warning to others. For his part, Duvalier held rigged elections before finally declaring
17:05
himself president for life. Needing a way to hold on to power, Papa Doc began to appear in a top hat
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and coattails to evoke images of Baron Semedi, a voodoo spirit. He made his own Lord's Prayer that
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was read out by children and went like this. Our Doc, who are in the National Palace for Life
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Hallowed be thy name by present and future generations. Thy will be done at Port-au-Prince
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and in the provinces. Give us this day our new Haiti, and never forgive the trespassers of the
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anti-patriots who spit every day on our country. Let them succumb to temptations, and under the
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weight of their venom, deliver them not from any evil. If that wasn't creepy enough, then
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Devalier outdid himself by keeping the head of a former political rival in a closet. He also began
17:50
to believe that another opponent could transform himself into a black dog at will, and then
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the military began to kill black dogs on sight in the capital
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He would rule in this way with a mixture of spiritualism and terror tactics until his
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death from heart disease in 1971, when his son, Jean-Claude, or Baby Dock, took over
18:08
as Haitian president. Under Baby Dock, thousands of Haitians were killed or tortured and hundreds of thousands
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more fled the country. With widespread discontent and growing anti-government sentiment, Duvaliers fled in exile to France
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After 25 years, Baby Dot returned to his home nation in 2011 and was almost immediately arrested
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He ignored many summons and appeared in court only once before dying of a heart attack in 2014
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It's a b ending for a family who are singly responsible for the suffering of tens
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if not hundreds of thousands of people. But that's the way it is sometimes
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Perpetrators of great crimes get away with it and die from natural causes, leaving a
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trail of destruction behind them. Somehow the worst of the worst are forgotten to history
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