5 Horrible Dictators Who Had Totally WTF Hobbies

5

Hitler Loved Wild West Novels So Much That He Made His Generals Read Them

No weird dictator list is ever complete without an entry on Adolf Hitler. Since we've already talked about his strange obsession with Disney characters and his crazy Holocaust board game, we figure it's time to go full Vanity Fair and ask the question: What did Hitler like to read while he wasn't busy genociding?

While most non-Germans may not have heard of him, with over 200 million copies sold, Karl May is the most popular German writer to have ever lived. Surprisingly, his works weren't Germanic in the slightest, as the 19th-century novelist wrote pulpy Wild West stories about a noble Native American chief called Winnetou. Not only popular with the dime novel crowd, May also had so very distinguished fans, including Kaiser Wilhelm II, Albert Einstein, and Franz Kafka. But his most infamous fanboy must've been Hitler, who kept an entire shelf of May's Wild West stories at his bedside, where we like to imagine he read them under the covers with a big flashlight.

German Federal ArchivesRight before he put on a tiny cowboy hat and started going "BANG BANG" while shooting finger guns.

Like any obnoxious fan, Hitler wanted everyone to love May as much as he did, so he started distributing copies of the books to his soldiers, making him the first-ever military commander to give his troops homework. But the author's wartime influence did not end there. Inspired by the dime novel heroism of Winnetou, Hitler also started hating the "lack of imagination" with which his generals were fighting a world war. To correct this, he instructed these military geniuses to take ideas from these pulpy novels so they could put a creative spin on their usual raping and pillaging. Which is deeply ironic, seeing as both May and his fabled protagonist were outspoken pacifists, hating both violence and oppression. Hitler had the reading comprehension of a particularly witless kindergartner.

4

One President Of Gambia Kept Making Up Fake Titles

While lots of tyrants have their quaint little hobbies they obsess over, most of them prefer to obsess about the same thing: themselves. The current narcissist world champ is beyond doubt the former "president" of Gambia, whose official title was "His Excellency Sheikh Professor Alhaji Dr. Yahya Abdul-Aziz Jemus Junkung Jammeh," or as we like to call him, His Excellency Sheikh Professor Alhaji Dr. Yahya Abdul-Aziz Jemus Junkung Jammeh, Esquire.

SunuGambiaFor obvious reasons.

3

Saddam Hussein Had A Serious Doritos Habit

We've already told you how Saddam Hussein wrote a sappy romance novel, and we've talked about his supervillain-lair-style bunker that survived 20 cruise missiles and seven bunker-busters (but not Iraqi looters). But you can't truly know a person until you find out what their favorite snack is. Luckily for us, Hussein was very vocal about his raging hard-on for a bag of Doritos.

Darko Bandic-Pool/Getty Images“I’m all that AND a bag of chips!”

According to the soldiers who guarded Hussein during his three-year captivity, he was initially a Cheetos man, and would "get grumpy" if they ever ran out. During one such Cheeto outage, the soldiers gave him Doritos instead, and Saddam never looked back, happily coating the metaphorical blood on his hands with the actual orange residue of Doritos Nacho Cheese. In fact, much like how he used to do with dissident families, the incarcerated Hussein could make an entire family-sized bag of Doritos disappear in a mere ten minutes. "That's all he talked about, that's all he wanted to eat after that," his former guard said.

Aboriginal Peoples Television NetworkWhich, with the beard he had when was found, had to be an utter mess.

2

Colonel Gaddafi Sponsored A Failing Ice Hockey Team

During his reign, Muammar Gaddafi had so many quirks that he could've been the poster child for Obsessive Dictator Disorder. He was obsessed with Condoleezza Rice, had a cadre of female virgin bodyguards, collected celebrities like Pokemon, and kept trying to convert models to Islam. And while the people of Libya will forever have to pinch the bridges of their noses when remembering his legacy, there is another group of people on whom Gaddafi left his mark -- because his name was on their chests.

Back in 1987, the German hockey team ECD Iserlohn was bankrupt and in dire need of a sponsor. How bad off were they? So bad that they hit up Gaddafi for funds. Even more surprisingly, the desert dictator was immediately onboard to fund an ice hockey team.

US NavyHe may have mistaken the sticks as scythes used to decapitate the opposing team.

1

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov Was Abducted By The Aliens Who Invented Chess

For the uninitiated, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov might be the maddest world leader who didn't suffer from syphilis. A millionaire businessman, he was picked by Vladimir Putin to run the Russian Republic of Kalmykia for the better part of two decades, while simultaneously being the long-serving president of the World Chess Federation (FIDE). And while calling Kirsan Ilyumzhinov a "dictator" might not be technically correct, he is seen as a wildly corrupt leader who is on the U.S. sanctions list and has a chapter in his autobiography titled "It only takes two weeks to have a man killed." But gauging his validity as a political leader is a tricky sociopolitical subject that would require a lengthy debate.