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Dictators with the luck of the devil

Lenin and Mussolini were chief among 20th-century leaders who owed their initial success purely to chance, says Ian Kershaw

19 November 2022

9:00 AM

19 November 2022

9:00 AM

Personality and Power: Builders and Destroyers of Modern Europe Ian Kershaw

Allen Lane, pp.496, 30

‘What brings strong personalities to power?’ asks the historian Ian Kershaw. ‘And what promotes or limits their use of that power?’ Those two questions are at the centre of this book, a study of some of the 20th century’s most important leaders. The result is partly an analysis of character, but also an attempt to gauge how much history’s main players directed world events, and how much events directed them.

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