Unholy Trinity: The Parallel History of Three Dictators - Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin

Despite appearances, Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin have a few things in common. Each of them belonged to aminority from the country he tyrannized: Napoleon was Corsican (“I could recognize Corsica with closedeyes, only by her perfume”), Hitler was an Austrian born in the Habsburg Empire, and Stalin was Georgian.Historiography was generous with them, not to mention some sophisticated medical and psychiatric analyses.Yet it often went unnoticed that they suffered from the minority syndrome, characterized by the wish to actfor the “good” of the greater majority (French, German, Russian). Thus, they imposed authoritarian regimeson their peoples, whom they attempted to endow with new territories, through violent expansionist politics.