Joseph Stalin was the
leader of Soviet Russia from the mid-1920s to his death in 1953. Though Hitler
and Stalin never met or even spoke on the telephone, their lives and fates were
inextricably linked. Though each loathed and feared the other, there was much
Hitler and Stalin had in common. Both were born into humble backgrounds, their
early lives shaped by destitution and impoverishment. As young men, both were
drawn to radical political movements. Both became revolutionaries and unlikely
national leaders, rising to power in the tumultuous years between the two world
wars. Both promised progress, modernisation and better lives for their
countrymen – but both were more concerned with consolidating and expanding
their own power, rather than pleasing the people. Where the fates of Hitler and
Stalin intersected, there would be little but war, conquest and misery for
millions of Europeans.Joseph Stalin was born Iosif Vissarionovitch Dzhugashvili
in 1879 in the Russian province of Georgia. The infant Dzhugashvili contracted
smallpox, a disease that left him with permanent facial scarring. At the behest
of his mother, Dzhugashvili entered a seminary to train for the priesthood –
but he was soon expelled for behavioural problems and not paying his school
fees. In 1903 he took a liking to the communist theories of Lenin and joined
the fledgling Bolshevik movement. Dzughashvili was tasked with raising funds
for the party through criminal means: he organised and led bank robberies,
initiated kidnaps and ransom demands, and used threats and violence to extort
money. Dzhugashvili soon became a wanted man: he was arrested several times and
sent to Siberian labour camps, though he invariably escaped. In 1912 he adopted
the revolutionary name Stalin, meaning ‘man of steel’.
