The 5 Saddest Attempts to Take Over a Country
We tend to want to root for the underdog in our society. When we hear about a rebellion in Egypt or Libya or elsewhere, we instinctively want to root for the scrappy kids trying to fight back against The Man.
The problem is that a lot of coup attempts aren't all that inspirational. Some, in fact, border on slapstick comedy.
Like the time ...
#5. The Oufkir Coup Tried to Ram the President's Plane in Midair
The thing about being an evil dictator is that you need evil henchmen to help out. And the thing about having evil henchmen is that eventually they say, "Wait a second, why aren't I the one in charge?" The only good thing about that scenario is that sometimes, hilarity ensues.
For instance, the henchman in our story was Mohamed Oufkir, who, in the 1960s, was the adviser and right-hand man of King Hassan II of Morocco. He was doing dirty work for his king, and we're not talking about gardening. He violently suppressed protests, spied on his own people and had so many people disappear that French courts eventually tried him for murder. Mohamed Oufkir was the crony that supervillains dreamed of. Until, as you can guess, his ambition got the best of him.
Wikipedia Commons
Most top henchmen get metal teeth or a razor hat. Oufkir got off-center glasses.
In the early '70s, Oufkir got tired of being the second banana to the king and decided to have a good old-fashioned "nondemocratic change of power," complete with the backing of the Moroccan military.
AlterInfo
"With sunglasses and a uniform of indeterminate rank, anything is possible!"
In 1972, King Hassan went to a conference in France. Smelling a chance for a coup, Oufkir put his well-hatched plans in motion. When King H. was on his way back to the country, Oufkir sent not one, not two, but three fighter jets out to attack the king's plane as it flew over the Mediterranean. How hard could this be -- they had the element of surprise, and it was three fighter jets to the king's one unarmed, sitting duck 727.
What Oufkir didn't realize was that his pilots were none other than the Three Stooges. The planes were shooting at the royal jet when the pilots discovered they only had practice ammunition on board. They did as much damage as a pistol loaded with paper clips. That was when one of them had the brilliant idea to just ram the king's jet midair.
So the king himself got on the radio and, in his own voice, told the jet pilots to stop firing because the "tyrant" had been killed. Happy that this guy (who coincidentally sounded exactly like the person they were trying to assassinate) told them that the king was dead, the pilots returned home. Mission accomplished!
By the time they realized what had happened, the king was already landing in the capital of Rabat. King Hassan II immediately ordered the arrest of hundreds of disloyal officers and was ready to get his one-time buddy Oufkir. But Oufkir by this time had committed "suicide." King Hassan, unfazed, then continued to rule the country until his death by heart attack in 1999.
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"You don't need a crown to be a king. Just great, elephantine balls."
#4. Nine White Supremacists Tried to Take Over a Country
Have you ever wondered what would happen if preschoolers thought they could take over a country? Us, too. Fortunately, Operation Red Dog painted a pretty vivid picture of how that would work out -- only instead of imagining grape-juice-stained 4-year-olds storming the beach in red wagons and Big Wheels, picture white supremacists. Give them mullets and cutoff jean shorts, what do we care?
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Ubermensch. Some emphasis on the "uber."
The story starts in 1979, when racist politician David Duke introduced American Klansmen to Canadian neo-Nazis, because above everything else, Duke was a matchmaker. Obviously, their mutual love of hating brown skin meant that the two groups should hook up permanently and get some race wars going. But how? Last we checked, there wasn't much of a market for "Team Hate" merchandise.
The plan that emerged was so obscenely convoluted that you'd think it came from a Bond villain: invade a country and set up a puppet government that would be friendly to their businesses. Because God knows starting a business in Canada or the United States would have been CRAZY.
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"The demand for poorly tailored white robes just ain't what it used to be."
Their country of choice was Dominica. They had the former prime minister on their side and everything. And as if the motley crew wasn't racist enough, representatives of apartheid-era South Africa offered to provide funding for the escapade as well. By early 1981, the supergroup of invading racists was ready, but "ready" is a pretty subjective term. Enlisting people who didn't actually know anything about covert military operations was probably their first mistake. Buying only one boat was mistake numero dos. Hanging a swastika on their one and only boat as it docked in New Orleans: mistake three.
"We're ... uh, Hindu."
And that was when things just got comical.
The original hired crew of the S.S. White Power got spooked about the trip for some reason, so a new captain and crew were hired. It took the new captain about five minutes to suspect something was amiss, so he immediately tipped off the ATF about the Getalong Gang. The ATF then arrested the former Dominican prime minister, the one the whole plan revolved around. Wait, here's the best part: With the key person to their scheme in jail and their plans completely exposed, the team decided to go ahead and invade Dominica anyway.
A few days later, captainless and prime ministerless, the nine remaining team members began loading up the boat in New Orleans, when the ATF came up and arrested them all. The group then learned of their biggest failure: Of the nine people ready to invade, three of them were undercover ATF agents. The media quickly called the fiasco the "Bayou of Pigs," and all conspirators got three years of jail for never getting anywhere close to overturning a country.
Who Rules Where
Above: Apparently enough guns to pacify a nation of 70,000.
#3. A Guy Tried to Take Over France With Some Forged Documents
In 1812, former musketeer and all-around French guy Claude Francois de Malet had a great idea: He was going to topple Napoleon's government.
Never mind that he had zero support from the military, or that he was living in a sanitarium when he came up with the plan ... none of that mattered. He had support from a few royalists who wanted a king on the throne and he had something every conspirator needs: crazy eyes.
Most of world history is a clash of mental illnesses.
While Napoleon Bonaparte was off fighting the Russians, Malet managed to escape the asylum, steal a general's uniform (which he gladly wore) and forge some official-looking documents to back up his audacious plan. The plan? Tell everyone that Napoleon was dead and that he was in charge now.
So, the first person "General" Malet approached was a colonel in the French National Guard. Upon seeing the Kinkos-fresh docs, the colonel was 100 percent convinced that everything the general said was true. Did it matter that he had never seen this man before, or that the documents were ordering the arrest of several of Napoleon's officials? Non. And it didn't hurt that the papers also turned this particular colonel into a general. You've got to hand it to Malet, he was pretty smooth.
Sexy smooth.
So the new general released troops to the fake general, and the fake general marched everyone over to La Force prison to order the release of some of his old cronies. No one blinked an eye, but maybe that's because this was the part where Malet started shooting dissenters in the face. Yeah, that's probably why.
Malet was only a few master strokes away from taking over the entire Parisian military when he made a huge mistake: He actually let someone get a closer look at those fake papers. Colonel Jean Doucet wasn't a guy who could be easily placated with a new star for his jacket -- and he knew for a fact that Napoleon had written letters after the death date provided by Malet. Not to mention that he totally recognized the fake general from a previous insurrection and knew that the guy had put in some time at an insane asylum.
Basically, it'd be like if your boss called in sick to work and that temp who was fired for low-hanging jeans showed up, claiming he was totally in charge now. Come to think of it, this whole insurrection played out like an episode of The Office at one point. Except cast members of The Office weren't arrested, tried and executed like Claude de Malet and his collaborators were.
It's debatable whether Malet or the cast of The Office made out better.
The attempted Beer Hall Putsch gives the lie to the "no platform for fascists!" anti-BNP rallying cry in Britain. Hitler, an amazing orator, burst into a room full of people who were more interested in drinking and managed to win many of them over to his side. On the other hand Nick Griffin went on national TV, on a political show, watched by millions of people who were only watching it because he was on there, and looked like a moron.
ReplyAlso you missed out Yukio Mishima. He drove into a Japanese military base and took an officer hostage, before stepping out onto a balcony to address the soldiers beneath. He wanted to persaude them to join his side and overthrow the government. Instead he got laughed at so went back inside and killed himself. It was like Hitler without any successes.
Ended up like Hitler, too!
The most bizarre thing out of all of this is that Patrick John (the former Dominican prime minister from #4) is black. Not 1/8 or something like that, the guy is black as coal. I just don't get it.
Reply...low self esteem?
Read the linked wikipedia article about the guy Malet shot in the face. He actually survived and continued to serve Napolean. I don't know which is worse, getting killed by a bullet to the face or surviving a bullet to the face with 19th century medicine.
ReplyEven worse is serving to Napolean, Napoleon's retarded second cousing.
"You don't need a crown to be a king. Just great, elephantine balls."
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesDid you know that elephants do not have balls? Their testes are inside their bodies!
You just contradicted yourself. If elephants have testicles, then they have balls. They're just inside the body.
Naw... That doesn't count as having balls. It's just having internal reproductive organs.
...do you know what "elephantine" means?
In 18th century Montenegro a fella named Šćepan Mali came in and took over a country on the basis of absolute bullshit. He claimed he was Russian Tzar Peter III (who was assassinated by his wife and her lover couple of months before) everyone bought it and gave him the title of Tzar. Mind you that Russia and Montenegro are on the different part of continent with later being 1563 times smaller. And yeah, he spoke 4 different languages, and non of them was Russian. f*****g with logic and sanity he ruled successfully evading capture by Turks and Russians themselves for the next 7 years. Seven f*****g years.
ReplyAs usual, pretty funny and educational. Kudos!
ReplyNumber four should have been number one.
ReplyHitler is always number one. Always.
I had one of those cliche "spitting out the water I was drinking" moments when I read the part about 3 of the 9 clansmen being ATF agents.
ReplyIt would have been ridiculously hysterical if one of them were secretly black.
Isn't there actually a story elsewhere on Cracked about how the FBI's key insider to the KKK during the 50s was actually a black man?
"The next day somebody shouts, "We march!" and 2,000 Nazis just start kind of ambling through the streets of Munich, vaguely hoping the army and police would join them. Only instead of inspiring millions, these marchers just got shot at and arrested."
Replyi don't know why i found this so funny, but i can't stop laughing at the visual this gave me. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
Who knew Morocco has a military? We probably subsidize that one, too.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesOne thing for sure, Morocco has a fuckton of beautiful women.
Morocco also has assloads of tip-top smoke.
The sad part is he's probably right.
"Most of world history is a clash of mental illnesses."
ReplyTruest thing ever said!
Heh, I'd have added Napoleon's invasion of Russia to this list.
ReplyThat would have kinda forced the author to include Hitler twice, out of principle. You can't have Hitler twice. On anything.
It wasn't sad in the way of the article. These were all predictable failures, Napoleon came in with an imposing force he just failed miserably.
I wonder if 5 would have succeeded if the pilots hadn't been such muppets. The guy sounded like he was already the power behind the throne and just needed to bump number one off the list. Too bad for him that this part of the coup played out like a scene from Hot Shots with LLoyd Bridges as the king and CousCous, Tabouli, and Hummus as the fighter pilots.
Replytesting
ReplyYou passed!
I can't believe when the USA tried to invade Canada in the early 1800's isn't on the list. They sent a letter to Canada basically saying we're coming to invade you, please don't try stopping us. Also that Canada should be honored to be invade by 13 Colonies. They also expected a parade once they got to Canada.
Reply Hide All See All 9 RepliesYou mean the war of 1812? I think that's a bit too big for this article.
Plus the US got their asses handed to them. Americans don't like to admit defeat too often.
What? The U.S. did not "get their asses handed to them", it ended in a draw and there were major victories and defeats on both sides. Besides, the invasion of Canada was only part of the war and it wouldn't fit along with the other topics in this article because it it wasn't an attempt it a coup, it was an attempt to outright conquer by one nation to another. If he included something like that he'd have thousands others to contend with, many of which are much more interesting.
Man, I love how one American downvotes your comment DrRajah. You've earned an Upvote.
John V, you guys couldn't make it across the St Lawrence. Your Navy won some key battles against the (superior) British, so Americans paint it as a victory.
One historian or another (I can't recall the name) said something to the tune of "Americans are happy because they think they won, Canadians are happy because they know they won, and the British don't care either way."
Yeah they don't like getting their asses handed to them in Vietnam by farmers in the jungle either.
Just to point out the US military was thoroughly destroying the NVA and VC the American public just couldn't stomach the war so the US pulled out.
>The U.S. did not "get their asses handed to them", it ended in a draw
Just like Vietnam, eh?
Thors, it wasn't the public, the military doesn't give a tuppenny about the american public's opinion, it was the intellectual class who called for the war to end as it was too costly and unneccessary, no mention of moral dilemma there as the intellectual class has no concern for moral dilemma.
Yeah, these are pretty pathetic and sad.
ReplyAnd timely, since I was thinking about growing a beard and try to take over Cuba, but they would just catch me and imprison me for looking like hipster in Cuba.
Guy Fawkes should have made the list... His attempt to overthrow the UK government, assassinate parliament and implement a theocracy certainly be on the list particularly since in the UK they still, over 400 year later, have an annual party to celebrate how pathetic his attempt really was.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesHis name is enough to redeem his failure.
He was a minor member of the conspiracy, just the shmuck left to look after the explosives.
Also, since the monarch had long before been declared head of the Church Of England, it's difficult to argue it wasn't already a theocracy.
@ChrisMarshall "Also, since the monarch had long before been declared head of the Church Of England, it's difficult to argue it wasn't already a theocracy."
Actually, it was the other way around - the govt controlled the clergy, just as with respect to the military in the US the president is commander-in-chief.
And while Britain of the time wasn't free by today's standards, it was still a heck of a lot freer than Spain. In Britain non-Anglicans paid a small annual fine and couldn't hold political office; in Span non-Catholics were killed.
@richsol
yeah, but catholic spain was(is) more fun than england. just go & check articles about spain here in cracked. in a parallel universe, a boring version of cracked is named britannia.
The last one really hits home. America is on the rocks and a different Hitler could definitely take over the red states and start again. And the scary thing is the red, southern states alone have more economic and military power than most of the world. The northern states are stronger, but there conservatism is growing as well.
Reply Hide All See All 8 RepliesI don't think our country would allow someone to just waltz in and take over like that. That is why the American Presidential system is just fine. Get rid of the trash after 4 years. Also, the President might have a lot of power as one person, but America's system prevents the President from really being able to do all that much without the support of Congress. The military is mostly based in the South and the Plains States where there is more wide open land, but that doesn't mean jack. The military is composed of people from all around the country.
I just don't get your point about the Southern military and economic might. I'm a moderate conservative so I know how crazy those extreme right wingers can be (just like the left), but even I gotta say that your anti right wing rhetoric is kind of crazy tbh...
DAMN NORTHERNERS TRYINA' TAKE MAH GUNS AND SHIEEEET
YOU AINT HERD THU LASTA' MA FAM'LY
I don't even want to know what this is. In any case, a volunteer military force has made it so that a large component of the military is those of Southern Plains states. There isn't equal representation. But, as long as no one is a dirty, collectivist European, then there won't be any uprisings of the kind denoted here.
So now we've offended everyone, right? Good. Shut up and never speak of this again.
Honestly, I am a lot more worried that Pokemon are real, and that Team Rocket is just waiting for the perfect opportunity to unleash their magical animals on the rest of the world, enslaving the rest of humanity. Help us Ash, Brock, and Misty!
As if Republicans and Democrats aren't pretty much equally destructive to this country?
general smedley butler?
I think that you think that the southern states are a little more fragile of mind than we really are. If you're actually worried, and not just trying to make a point about how backward, slow, gullible or violent everyone south of Wisconsin is... rest assured that there are plenty of us with level minds that are just as well armed as the crazies.
As I read this article, my head was playing Team America's "America, f**k YEAH!" song. I don't really know why either, I mean, these things weren't in the movie.
ReplyIt's somehow comforting to know there was never a time when Hitler wasn't an inept dick.
Reply Hide All See All 9 RepliesAlthough I don't dispute the 'dick' comment, I think if he had been inept the events of the 30s and 40s would have been called 'that time Germany tried to annex Austria' instead of 'World War II'.
Not *completely* inept. He was a captivating speaker, the blitzkrieg (which he lifted from "Achtung! - Panzer") was effective in the early part of the war, he understood mobile warfare better than anyone else in Europe (or at least his generals did), but... he was an absolute f*****g moron in virtually every other regard.
His scapegoating of the Jews was dumb and short-sighted. Affronts to humanity aside, the idea behind building death camps was basically spending financial capital on a project to annihilate human capital. Perhaps most important consequence of Nazi antisemitism was the "brain drain" that occurred as Jewish scientists and intellectuals fled from the Third Reich and into Allied countries (among them Leo Szilard and Albert Einstein, whose letter to FDR essentially initiated the Manhattan Project). There's a (small) chance that if Hitler had been smart enough not to indulge his hatred for Jews, the Nazis might have developed The Bomb in time for it to actually affect the war. Coupled with their superior rocket technology that might have been a Bad Thing for England.
Stabbing Russia in the back and opening up a second front (which just so happened to be a f*****g meat grinder) was poorly timed at best. He did not know how to separate strategy from ideology.
He also sent his best general to dick around in North Africa at the behest of the Italians, who were having colonial penis envy of the rest of Western Europe.
Towards the end of the war when he had spiraled from manic to outright psychotic, he started pouring tons of cash into completely impossible or impractical "superweapons."
It's really a miracle it took him until the end of the war to kill himself. You'd think he would have tripped over his shoelaces and tumbled down a flight of stairs long before then.
EDIT: Also, sorry for the wall of text. I edited this post without realizing that Cracked's commenting system assumes that "Edit" and "DELETE ALL WHITESPACE PERMANENTLY AND NEVER ALLOW TO RETURN" mean exactly the same thing.
Taco, I agree that Hitler was a boob, but I don't think it's a good idea to underestimate how truly effective some boobs can be. Physical aptitude is no indicator of eventual success.
by all accounts he was alright in WW1
I don't think I entirely agree with you there Taco, a lot of what you said is completely on the level - except your thoughts on "opening up a second front" with the Ruskies. As it is beginning to look, it was actually a pre-emptive strike against an invasion from the Soviets. His real f**k up in the 2nd front was this:
Treating the proletariat worse than Stalin already had been doing. If the Nazis had treated the civillian Soviets as equals, they would have run to facism with open arms = larger loyal fighting force early into the operation, as welll as soldiers with experience and knowledge of the Soviet territories/Soviet winter. That along with maybe just bombing the s**t out of Stalingrad and moving on (instead of the fruitless glory of taking Stalin's namesake city), would've led him to taking Moscow and the Russian Oilfields long before the Soviet counter-invasion.
** I forgot, that also means that when the Allies did the Rubber Army trick, the Nazis would've had enough tanks to leave an ample amount in their original positions just in case it was a trick (which is what was expected in the first place), due to a rather quick victory in the USSR.
stalin will not hold his end of the bargain. sooner or later russia will attack germany. hitler took a preemptive strike.
"If the Nazis had treated the civillian Soviets as equals, they would have run to facism with open arms"
this was the case in Ukraine and Belarus.
Actually, Hitler's attack on Russia was brilliantly timed, and might have easily won him the war, had it not been for his bumbling ally Mussolini. See, right before Hitler was to begin Operation Barbarossa (codename for invasion of Russia), Mussolini effectively felt like Germany was making Italy look foolish, as the Germans were dominating the war. In order to feel like he wasn't stuck in Hitler's shadow, Mussolini ordered an invasion of Greece and Yugoslavia (both of whom had governments that favored Germany). This invasion went terribly, and Hitler had to delay his invasion of the USSR by about a month in order to clean up Mussolini's mess. And the rest is history.