10 WAGS of the bloodiest dictators of the 20th Century

1. EvaBraun &Adolf Hitler

Eva was a friend of Hitler’s niece Geli. When Geli was found murdered in 1931, the budding dictator began spending more time with the 17-year-old Braun. Love blossomed between the unlikely pair. They remained inseparable, although Hitler refused to appear with Eva as a couple as he felt it would harm his sex appeal to female Nazis. Eva finally got her murderous dictator and they were married less than 40 hours before they both committed suicide as Berlin fell to the Red Army in April 1945.

2. Nadezhda Alliluyeva & Joseph Stalin

The family of Stalin’s second wife helped the future Soviet leader suring his period of exile in 1911. After the revolution in 1917 Nadezhda worked as a confidential clerk for V Lenin. She married the 40-year-old Stalin in 1919. It was not a happy marriage, and Nadezhda probably suffered from bipolar disorder. After a public argument in 1932 at a dinner party, Nadezdha shot herself, she was 31. Stalin had the cause of death announced as appendicitis.

3. Khieu Ponnary & Pol Pot

The first wife of the Cambodian dictator was born in 1920, and attended school with her future husband. There is little information as to the role she played in the hideous events in Cambodia in the 1960s and 1970s, but after developing paranoid schizophrenia, she was divorced by Pol Pot. In 1996 she was granted immunity from prosecution for the crimes of her former husband’s regime, and she died in 2003.

4. Jiang Qing & Mao Zedong

Jiang was Mao’s fourth and final wife. She married the dictator in 1938. She served as her husband secretary in the 1940’s and was considered to be hugely influential during the disastrous Cultural Revolution and gained a seat on the Politburo. After Mao’s death she was arrested and charged with crimes against the state. She was sentenced to death, but her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Released for medical treatment in 1991, Jiang committed suicide that May.

5. Sarah Kyolaba & Idi Amin

Sarah met Armin in 1975 when she was working as a go-go dancer. They married that year, and it is said that she was the favourite of his 6 wives (many of whom were married to him at the same time). After Armin was ousted in 1979, Sarah followed him into exile in Saudi Arabia but she left him in 1982. She moved to London and in the nineties, ran a restaurant in West Ham called Krishna’s Restaurant. It was, apparently, well known for its roasted goat. Sarah died of of cancer in 2015 at the age of 59.

6. Sajida Talfah & Saddam Hussein

Sajida is Saddam’s cousin and widow. She is also the mother of the late unlamented Uday and Qusay. Saddam and Sajida were married in 1958. Despite being the mother of 5 of his children, Saddam rarely allowed Sajida to been seen in public. After the US-led invasion in 2003, Sajida fled to Qatar where it is believed she still lives alone. There were rumors that she had died in 2015, but these have been denied.

7. Elena Ceaușescu & Nicolae Ceausescu

The Ceausescus married in in 1947 and after Nicolae seized power in Romania Elena engineered a role for herself in the government of the communist state. She eventually became deputy prime minister. She became the subject of a cult of personality every bit as pervasive as her husbands. Called ‘the Mother of the Nation’, this didn’t save her when freedom came in 1989. Elena was executed next to her husband after a short trial.

8. Lucía Hiriart & Augusto Pinochet

Lucía married Pinochet in 1943, and was by his side throughout his rise to power. She remained with him during his brutal rule, and after he was deposed and went into exile. When Pinochet was arrested in London in the late nineties, it is alleged that she and her son embezzled charitable funds to help pay her husband’s legal expenses.

9. Carmen Polo & Francisco Franco

Carmen’s marriage to Franco was postponed several times as the dashing future dictator went off to war in search of glory. Eventually the king of Spain stepped in and ensured that Franco has enough leave so that the wedding could take place. Nearly always appearing with her husband, Carmen became famous for her love of pearls, and was known as Doña Collares (Lady Necklaces). On the death of Franco, the recently restored king of Spain raised Carmen to the nobility asSeñora de Meirás. She died a recluse in 1988.

10. Simone Duvalier& Papa Doc Duvalier

The wife of Haitian dictator, the brutal Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier was known, unsurprisingly, as Mama Doc. She married Duvalier in 1939, and he won the presidency in an election in 1957. She was the gatekeep for her husband, controlling who met with him during his 14 year reign of terror. It was rumored that the first couple of Haiti were voodoo practitioners. After her husband’s death in 1971, Mama Doc became a power behind the throne of her son Jean-Claude, known as Baby Doc. The Duvaliers were ousted in 1986 and Simone went into exile in Paris, where she died in relative poverty in 1997.