6 Historic Villains You Didn't Know Had Incredible Careers
An old Irish proverb says:
You build a dozen roads, but do they call you Connor the road-builder? No. You sire six wonderful sons, but do they call you Connor the child-rearer? No. But you fuck one sheep...
It's true. Some men are remembered for their greatness, some men are remembered for their evil, and some men are just remembered for that one fantastic failure that taints their entire existence. Like...
#6.
General Custer
Remembered For: Getting Massacred at Little Bighorn.
Shortly before being killed, General George Custer supposedly stated: "Hurrah boys, we've got them! We'll finish them up and then go home to our station." Aside from "woops" and "bitchtits," those are pretty much the most hilariously inappropriate last words ever, because his last stand was a slaughter.
The fact that he stands as the perfect symbol for America's mindlessly violent treatment of Native Americans ensured that his name would forever associated with laughably arrogant failure.
Not Remembered For: His progressive views and battle prowess.
Custer was at West Point when the Civil War started, where he graduated bottom of his class (that's called foreshadowing, friends). Despite his apparently crippling stupidity, he nonetheless went on to participate in some of the war's most important battles, and he was promoted rapidly up the ranks. During the battle of Gettysburg he was promoted to brigadier general at the age of only 23, making him one of the youngest in the entire Union Army. He also led a team of cavalry called the "Wolverines," who we remember and honor to this day for singlehandedly turning back the Russian invasion of the United States.
History is surprisingly more Swayze-centric than we remembered.
What has been completely forgotten, however, is that Custer was also remarkably liberal for the time. During President Grant's term, Custer publicly opposed the standing government's anti-Indian policies, and his testimony to Congress about the abuses on Indian reservations almost lost him his command.
Obviously his staunch moral stance didn't extend to "not trying to kill a shitload of them pretty much by yourself," but at the time that practically made him an Indian-loving hippie.
#5.
John Wilkes Booth
Remembered For: Assassinating Lincoln.
In 1865, two weeks after the Civil War drew to a close (and it was far too late to actually affect any policy change, genius) John Wilkes Booth entered a box at Ford's Theater and shot President Lincoln. It was the first successful presidential assassination in American history. He was cornered a few days later and died in a shootout with police, because that's the retirement package for presidential assassins; there's no 401k in it for you.
Here's your retirement package, asshole
Not Remembered For: He was a hell of an actor.
NOTE: WE ARE NOT FUCKING SAYING THAT HIS BEING AN ACTOR MAKES UP FOR KILLING LINCOLN.
It's just that people don't realize if he hadn't shot the president in the head, Booth would still have had a place in history because he was a huge deal in the acting world. Maybe he wasn't at Brad Pitt's level of stardom, but he was at least equivalent to one of the Baldwin brothers. You know, like a good one. Not one of the ones you can rent for your kid's birthday party or anything (Stephen).
To get there, he taught himself Shakespeare and elocution (that means talkin' all sortsa' pretty-mouthed) on his family's rural estate before moving to the city to pursue his career. He was called "the handsomest man in America" and a "natural genius" by some reviewers, and was also noted for having an "astonishing memory."
Handsome was a, uh... it was a different thing back then.
At the age of 22, after only five years on stage, Booth was earning the equivalent of $500,000 a year, making him one of the highest paid actors of the time. And he killed the President of the United States! Can you imagine how insane that was at the time? Like if you heard tomorrow that Tom Cruise tried to stab Obama you'd hardly be able to bel- eh, maybe that's a bad example.
#4.
Herbert Hoover
Remembered For: The Great Depression.
During his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, Herbert Hoover dramatically declared that "The poorhouse is vanishing from among us." Seven months later, due to reckless mismanagement or possibly just fate's dickishly ironic sense of humor, the stock market crashed and sent America into the Great Depression. Hoover's name would become forever associated with skyrocketing unemployment, breadlines, towns of cardboard houses and those adorable hobos with bags on sticks.
Old Timey homeless people were apparently much more adorable and much less rapey.
Not Remembered For: His impressive service to his country.
Up until that great depression business, Hoover was like one of those inspirational kitten posters: Despite all the odds, he hung in there. Orphaned at the age of nine, he put himself through Stanford, built a mining empire, was a millionaire by the age of 40 and he even contributed greatly to the Allied efforts in World War I (long before his country even officially entered it!)
His entire life was nothing but financial successes in spite of severe hardship, and ultimately history only remembers him as being responsible for the worst financial disaster of all time. That's just far too cruelly ironic to be an accident. Either there is a God and Hoover used to pick on him in grade school, or else he made a wish from one of those dickhead genies that turns everything against you.
"No, listen Shazbot: I'm pretty sure you knew that when I asked for a 12-inch cock, I didn't want a smaller-than-average rooster. Asshole."
I only have two problems.
ReplyAaron Burr was still an asshole. The insult from Hamilton was actually accurate, as Hamilton was angered by Burr's constant changing of loyalties. He had no real ideals, and was only an opportunist. After the Duel, he ran away and tried to make his own country, because he was insane.
Louis XVI was negligent, and had awful advisers. He wasn't a bad man, just kind of dumb. Also the French Revolution was a horrific event. It was so brutal and senseless that even most Americans at the time were like, "Yeah, so uh, that's, uh, shit....you do that."
"He was a hell of an actor."
Reply Hide All See All 5 RepliesSo are you un-American bastards saying that his being a good actor makes up for killing Lincoln?
Seriously? Just calling someone a good actor makes them un-American? Are you f*****g high? They were just making a true observation. Being an actor has nothing to do with assassinating a president. Or vice-versa. He was an amazing actor, historical fact, who just so happened to be a president shooting asshole. If you can't handle that little bit of humor, get that huge stick out of your ass or get off Cracked.
NOW I get why they put "Note: We are not saying that being a good actor makes up for killing Lincoln" in the article! I was wondering who was stupid enough to think they thought that...
I'm pretty sure thenumbersmason was being facetious...
Don't feed the troll guys.
But we have Lincoln Park and they rock!!
I think Neville Chamberlain just wanted to avoid WW 1. I mean, the UK lost people there than in WW 2. Its not exactly a walk in the park.
ReplyYeah he was horrified at the inevitability of such casualties, additionally they were scared of the Luftwaffe after Barcelona and Guernica. That said he knew itd come to a fight in the end at latest by 1938 when he said hed declare war on the condition that the Poles resisted and he knew enough to know the Poles would fight to the last.
Wikipedia articles regardless. Chamberlain's act was what was required to post-pone all out war. We (I mean the Allies and our Russian comrades) could only muster what power we could thanks to this time. Placing Churchill in command an even huger risk (his war credits consist of the Gallipolli campaign and some of us would know how well that went) but the Nazi scum were defeated in the end, to many thats all that matters.
ReplyChamberlain also shouted down Halifax who wanted to surrender and ensured an anti-Nazi government. Also to be fair Churchill was the face and voice and the military kept him from screwing up any operations and Labour ran the home front, then again he was certainly brave.
And really, all of the Allies postponed WWII until the last possible second, so it's not really fair to single out Chamberlain for it. Germany went from "tottering impoverished hellhole" to "CONSUMER OF COUNTRIES" shockingly fast when you get down to it, it's not really surprising no one was ready to take them on the moment they started breaking treaties.
Like half of these would not be considered villains by anyone
ReplyMeh. Booth was a better actor than Abe 'war criminal who shat on the Constitution' Lincoln.
Reply Hide All See All 9 RepliesI bet I can guess what region of america you are from.
When were Abe's acting skills even brought up?
I bet I can guess what region of america srskate is from.
Yeah, that whole "a bunch of traitors who believe keeping human beings as property is not only right, but defines their entire lifestyle, are ripping apart the new nation and we are about to dissolve into a dozen petty warring states" thing should have been dealt with ideally over tea and with biscuits.
Ah more bs from racist hicks. How'd this fool even manage to use a computer?
haters gonna hate.
I dare you to come to Chicago and say that. If people in the South knew their history better they would be a little more appreciative of Lincoln and maybe not so starry-eyed about Robert E. Lee.
Someone was asleep during history in school...
Slavery was shitting on the constitution so yes it took a hell of a yankee lawyer to turn that around. Can we start giving people like Hestheone to Africa as personal slaves? Wouldn't it just be so fitting? Then he can complain about 'war criminals'.
Way to leave out Aaron Burr's two attempts to organize insurrections against the American government.
Replywhat a jerk.
It was the cool thing to do in those days.
Another thing about Louis XIV: one of the reasons why the peasants were starving was because France had the stupidest peasants in all of Europe. I am not making this up, they literally preferred starvation to eating potatoes. The last three kings of France had tried and failed to the people to accept potatoes, since they're much more resilient to things like harsh winters than most food plants.
Reply Hide All See All 6 Replies"Here peasants, grow this plant that you know nothing about...and eat it. Now."
we all know what a good idea getting a whole nation of peasants dependent on potatoes is!
Not at all the dumbest in Europe everywhere the royals were having the same trouble getting people to eat potatoes. Fredrick the Great of Prussia had to get the people to eat them at gunpoint.
It was started by the artificial reimposition of class boundaries between the upper bourgeoisie and the nobility with the revolution heating up after from there. That said it was also partially due to the French government spending money on and then losing a bunch of wars instead of food.
I don't know, man. Potatoes are members of the nightshade family, and basically every native European plant they resemble is toxic. It's not that surprising European peasants were hesitant to eat potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, etc.
If only they'd had fries...
I know he's not exactly 'historic' unless you go by recent history, but there's also Charles Manson of the Manson Family and his badass musical abilities. He was actually pretty good and could have been big at the time had he not gone meshuggah.
ReplyActually he was prtty mediocre and part of the reason he went all nutty is that his music was rejected by a music executive who had previously lived at the same house where one of his killings took place. I can't remember if it was Sharon Tate's house or the La Bianca place, but the attack was about getting revenge on a guy who passed on Manson's music. Charley just didn't know that guy wasn't living there any more.
Surprisingly reminiscent of how Hitler's art was repeatedly rejected from an art school (#5 in "6 Random Coincidences That Created the Modern World"), which is the reason he went all nutty.
I recently read Niall Ferguson's The War of the World and he shows that Germany benefitted far more militarily from the interval between Munich and the outbreak of war than Britain and France. If that was Chamberlain's rationale (and I'm not convinced it was) it backfired in a big way.
Reply Hide All See All 7 RepliesJust out of curiosity, which side won that particular war? According to your logic, it "backfired" by allowing Germany to rapidly build up their forces using men and materials that they didn't have to lose. Then it "backfired" by allowing the UK to ramp up production while bringing in aid from the US before the U-boat scourge cut supplies down to a minimum. Then it "backfired" by allowing the UK to further negotiate a backup plan with the Soviets in the event that Germany broke their non-aggression treaty. Germany burned through all of their supplies during this period. Sure, they were able to build faster than the UK, but they were building differently. Germany was trying to build a military machine that could move in fast, capture as much territory as they could before the rest of the world tried to stop them, then they would negotiate from there. It was designed for shock value, not overall strategic value. The US & UK both went about a policy of sustainment. "If we don't build faster, but instead build better and develop sustainable practices, then in the worst case scenario we just have to wait it out while that turd with the creepy mustache burns through all of his ammo." It was the strategic equivalent of that kid in Starcraft II who burns through all his resources early in an attempt to win via rush being shut down by the guy who focuses on building powerful defenses so that he can mine resources at will behind a steel curtain of death. Chamberlain was a wise man. Had he not done what he did, you would still be speaking English today. The Allies would have ultimately won either way because at the beginning of the Polish Invasion, Germany only had enough bombs to mount a limited 6 week campaign. Germany had no heavy bombers to speak of, no sustainable supply of oil (They always knew that the Soviets would push into Romania if necessary and cut them off at the pass), ultimately they had nothing that could sustain a decent-sized war. It was all a bluff. Look at it in terms of those Texas Hold 'Em tournaments you see on tv: Sitting on the couch, it's easy to know what to do because you can see everyone's cards. But back then, England didn't know Germany's true strength (4 guys, 3 slingshots and a dog named Scooter), Germany didn't know how prepared the UK was, nobody trusted the Russians, the US was being a dick and not letting anyone play with their new toys. Hell, the US was training with wooden weapons at the time. But you can't overlook the biggest factor in Chamberlain's decisions: The world had barely recovered from the Great War. Nobody wanted to fight. Hitler tried to use that sentiment to expand Germany. It worked. Without Chamberlain's vision the UK would have been screwed. He may look like a p***y now, but what he did took incredible balls. He was shaking hands on the right and sharpening knives on the left.
His music was terrible.
Britain's willingness to go on resisting Germany depended critically on the assumption that the United States would provide it with massive material aid. Being a Naval empire, Britain's land army was equivalent to Czechoslovakia's. As Europe moved ever closer towards war, the highly restrictive Neutrality Act of 1937 remained in force. Following the occupation of Prague, efforts had begun in Congress to loosen the restrictions so as to permit belligerents to purchase arms on a 'cash and carry' basis. But by the early summer these attempts at revision had been fought to a standstill by the isolationist minority both in the House and the Senate. On 18 July Roosevelt was forced to abandon the attempt until the next session. As things stood in the summer of 1939, the United States was in no position to supply either Britain or France with arms or ammunition in case of war. Britain, unlike Germany, was not bankrupt. In 1939 it was still a large international creditor with foreign assets estimated at c. $5 billion (15-20 billion Reichsmarks), enough to match an entire year of German armaments output with purchases from abroad. But to defeat Germany, Britain would clearly need far more. The premise of British strategy was therefore, that Britain would pay for as much as it could, but that 'when we can pay no more you will give us the stuff all the same'. Perhaps not surprisingly, Roosevelt did not reply to this bold statement of British dependence. The tortured politics of
World War I war debts were still fresh in the memory. Britain was to
be driven to the point of financial exhaustion before Congress opened the floodgates of lend-lease in the spring of 1941. London, therefore, had every reason to be nervous and cautious.
Ironically, the outcome of the Munich conference, which gave a boost of Hitler's standing in Germany, destroyed all plans of a military coup that German generals were making since the Blomberg–Fritsch Affair.
@BFE1127 - Hilter was sharping knives all the while too, and he was much better at it.
The German army had lots of different stuff but not enough of anything because Goering was stupid enough to arm in breadth rather than in depth, the German war machine was being armed so badly under him that Speer managed to surpass his production levels in 1943 when Germany was being flattened from the air and its armies ground to paste in the east.
I just gave a thumbs up for the Starcraft reference.
Ahehe, naw, well said mate.
The fact that the Allies won the war in the long hall does not change the fact that the Munich compromise was idiotic. Most analyses show that Germany would have gotten creamed, at far lesser cost than ultimately happened, in 1938 had the Britain. A firmer hand at the negotiating table, with the possible cooperation of Stalin, might well have dissuaded Hitler from any further shenanigans and the war could have been avoided altogether, or at least significantly postponed.
Is appeasement to some degree understandable? Sure, given how horrible the First World War had been to everyone. Is hindsight 20/20? Sure, though by fall of 1938 it should have been clear that Hitler wasn't going to be satisfied with just one more bit of territory. Did Chamberlain show steadfast leadership once the war actually broke out? Unquestionably. None of this changes the facts that you really have to stretch facts to the breaking point to argue Munich helped the Allies in any significant way. If Germany won the war quickly then this alleged "long-term" build-up by Chamberlain wouldn't have achieved anything.
Nor can we necessarily assume Chamberlain acted from the purest of motives, given how honeycombed the British upper class and political elite were with Nazi sympathizers.
An additional irritant (more in reply to Kai here) is the comment that Britain had no army to speak of. That's only true if you restrict yourself to the British Isles. Britain still directly ruled India and good swathes of Africa and could (and did) mobilize millions of troops from those regions. That's not even to mention Commonwealths like Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa who contributed heavily to the war effort. Pretending Britain had no army with which to resist the Nazis is disingenous, especially given their Naval superiority.
The fact that he was a good actor does not excuse killing lincoln you cunts.
Reply Hide All See All 7 RepliesNo kidding? I believe the article itself said that.
Way to demonstrate your awesome reading abilities. If only someone had put those same words into the article using big, bold letters that you couldn't possibly miss... Alas, what might have been... I wanted to continue with a smart-ass comment, but I seriously doubt that you've been able to read even this far. Don't breed. Not that any woman would ever let you touch her in the first place, but don't breed. It's not for you. Let your bloodline die with you.
are you like, new to the internet?
Way to read a f*****g article, you failed abortion.
Somehow, some way, sum of all fears, etc, I think the people replying just don't get that the original comment was a joke. I'd say it's astonishing, but I know better than to overestimate the intelligence of the average netizen.
Except, it was not funny RandomG. At all.
its too bad he's never going to read any of these replies.....
Despite what I just learned about Burr (he was what 50 cent likes to think he is) I'm still adamant that Dick Cheney was the biggest dick of a Vice President.
ReplyWell what do you expect. It's right there in his name.
RE: John Wilkes Booth
ReplyNot only was he famous himself, he was from the most famous American acting family at the time. His Dad & both brothers were also famous actors. When Cracked says "not Brad Pitt" they're right. More like George Clooney.
Interesting side note: JWB was engaged to Lucy Hale, daughter of Lincoln's BFF Senator John P. Hale. Considering that at the time, acting was such a disrespected profession that as an actor you couldn't even get a church funeral because your professional lying self was clearly too skeezy for God's crib, it's not shocking that Senator Hale was less than stoked about his little girl marrying JWB. Hale & Lincoln spent some time trying to persuade Lucy to become interested in Lincoln's pasty and cursed son Robert Todd Lincoln, which although sounds like the plot of a Disney movie, didn't work out.
I've always found it interesting that Lincoln was actually meddling in the personal life of JWB...considering that Booth's journal was burned and then "reconstructed" by the military, I've always wondered if there wasn't a few pages worth of rambling about "My girlfriend's a*****e father & his f*****g friend."
Another interesting fact: Booth's older brother Edwin once saved the life of that very same Robert Todd Lincoln.
So Neville turns out awesome in the end? I like that.
ReplyNeville Chamberlain's decision seems pretty good to me. Courage is being able to face your opponent, but wisdom is knowing when to fall back and regroup. Clearly, this man had both. If I were in his position, and my only options were to either try to fight a superior foe with a broken army or give up a chunk of land to buy at least a small amount of time of peace, I would go with the second option. Besides, when you look at the outcomes, you basically get:
Reply Hide All See All 4 Replies1.) Give up a small portion of land and use the downtime in fighting to rebuild your army so you at least have a chance at winning or,
2.) Fight anyways, and end up losing ALL the land.
So yeah, that was actually a pretty good decision. If they had fought and lost to the Nazis, then the Nazis could have just gone and kicked the rest of europe's ass and they would have been much more difficult to defeat later on (by either russia or the US).
Considering that our only real advantage in WWII was having a huge, technically advanced island nation to base our bombers from, the chances are good that if Neville had decided to fight, Hitler would have won the war. We probably couldn't even have safely gotten troops across the ocean.
Then there's Russia, which would have been facing the full strength of Germany. With the insane losses they had from being basically an afterthought, and Japan on the other side, chances are that America would have been facing the entire conquered Eurasian continent alone, and the whole world would be speaking German now.
What you are forgetting is tha te nazis were in no shape to fight either, the downtime gave them the time needed to build up their forces too. Had the nazis not been offered the land they were hitler planned on seizing it anyway and one of his generals resigned because the plan was so stupidly impossible with the lack of resources.
I only understand that once, during the darkest days in history, we had to rely upon FRANCE!
It was a terrible decision. Giving Hitler the Sudetenland also gave him a line of forts he was in no shape to take by conquest and which was critical to Anglo-French strategy. Had Chamberlain not appeased Hitler, Germany's military position would have been completely untenable and the war would have been over in a matter of weeks or months. And let us not forget that Chamberlain was ultimately also responsible for giving the Soviets the cold shoulder, leading to the infamous nonaggression pact. He was a good man and in many ways a good leader, but his foreign policy was an unmitigated disaster.
Wait a second...there was another Cracked article saying that before the deal in Munich, Hitler wanted to invade Czechoslovakia and take the Sudetenland by force. And Cracked also said that the German army was laughably terrible at the time, so if he had started the war then, they would have lost. So that means...if Chamberlain had started the war earlier, Germany would have lost quickly and 60 million people might not have died. Inconsistency, thy name is Cracked.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesBoth armies were laughable. Thats why Chamberlain wanted to build it up so he could take down Germany
Nazi Germany was not totally ready for another several years and the British didn't really know how powerful/pitiful the Nazi was. Might as well play it safe and get some extra time to build up their own army.
The problem wasn't Chamberlain - it was the yellow, slimy Czechs, with an enormous and very modern army and all the kit to hand Ms Poelzl's little boy a right royal arse-kicking. Hitler later boasted that his army rode into Czecho on donkeys and left in tanks. US troops were still facing Czech tanks in Normandy five years later, while the collaborating swine at Skoda were busy tendering for the shells for the V3 cannon and beavering away for Messerschmidt. Chamberlain's three biggest mistakes were (1) Letting the French let him do all the talking when they (the Frogs) had an active defence treaty (Locarno) with the Czechs (Britain, having been showered with Skoda shells and riddled with Brno machine guns all through WW1, was less keen on a nation that had been sucking up to France ever since); (2) Trusting the Czechs to fight for their new country (founded 1918) and (3) Rejecting Stalin's offers of co-operation very early on and leaving the door open for the Molotiv-Ribbentrop pact.
That he also left the door open for a warmongering, half-seppo fat drunk who let the Sovs and the Yanks give our empire to the poxy Islamists is another story.
Assesments of the Cezch military indicated they could have put up a struggle but lost in the end and if Stalin had gotten involved hed have tried to do what he did in the end anyway. Additionally Churchill wanted to keep the empire and it was freed after hed lost office but Britain was in no position at all to keep hold of it since it was losing money and took too many troops to hold. Britains ending of the empire came down to not wanting to do what the French ended up doing which is to say multiple long bloody unwinnable wars. Just thought Id rain on that little racist imperialist parade.
Re: Custer and his class rank at West Point. A Civil War history specialist told me, in defense of James Longstreet (a said-to-be incompetent Confederate general): "Longstreet graduated last in his class. But half his class flunked out before graduation, so when you loo at it that way, he actually graduated in the upper half of his class."
Reply Hide All See All 6 RepliesWait, who says Longstreet was an incompetent general? I thought it was generally believed he was second only to Lee and he actually saw situations more clearly than Lee at times (see: f*****g Gettysburg)
Least that's what I always thought about him....
I've looked over that battle a few times, and had to conclude that Lee either had a severe concussion, or deliberately tried to lose.
i always tell people this- what do you call the guy who finishes med school at the bottom of his class? you call him "doctor".
i always tell people this- what do you calla doctor who finishes med school at the bottom of his class? you call him "doctor".
Frankly at the time, West Point didn't have a whole lot in common with being a good field commander. Even in the places where it did, studying something in a class room isn't the same as applying it with cannons booming and minie balls flying past you. Also my opinion is that Lee was love drunk with his men. In the movie Gettysburg he says something about thinking his men could carry any day no matter the odds. I think that's probably the closest approximation
Didnt Custer f**k up because his brain was addled by syphilis by that point making him crazy.
Good call on the Neville Chamberlain article. I spend a lot of time arguing that he was really a top-notch bloke and did the right thing at the time. If it wasn't for him Britain probably would have been steamrolled by the Nazis
ReplyI read an article awhile back saying Chamberlain was simply too sane to understand Hitler. Churchill on the other hand, was batshit crazy (probably bipolar) and one batshit crazy person can always tell another.
Anyone whose looked in depth at Nazi policy comes to realise that its simply impossible to consider the thinking behind it in any logical manner it was just entirely insane even when ignoring the morality.
You seem to be mixing up John Wilkes and Edwin Booth. Edwin was the superstar.
ReplyJW was a pretty well-known actor, but it was Edwin who was incredibly famous.
I believe that's even pointed out here at Cracked about siblings of infamous people.
There's an awful lot of important debate and opinions in these comments, and to that I say:
Reply"or from that guy in the Che Guevara T-shirt trying to sleep with your girlfriend at every party you've ever been to"
RIGHT?!?! f**k that guy...