How to Become a Tyrant

Episode 1Seize Power

31 min

Interested in becoming a tyrant? There are rules, and the playbook for a rise to dictatorship starts with one of history's most brutal: Adolf Hitler.

Episode 2Crush Your Rivals

27 min

You've secured your place at the top, but maintaining power means watching your back. Nobody did that better or more ruthlessly than Saddam Hussein.

Episode 3Reign Through Terror

28 min

When keeping your population under control, is it better to be loved or feared? Idi Amin certainly thought he knew the right answer to that question.

Episode 4Control the Truth

27 min

Through public relations spin, revisionist history and censorship. Soviet autocrat Joseph Stalin found a certain flexibility with the truth useful.

Episode 5Create a New Society

26 min

Free speech? Right to assembly? Rebel-turned-dictator Muammar Gaddafi realized that civil liberties had to go when reshaping society. But he got soft.

Episode 6Rule Forever

30 min

Seizing power is hard, but keeping it is harder. In North Korea, the Kim dynasty unlocked the secret to ruling forever: They declared themselves gods.