Adolf Hitler was born in 1889 on the border between Austria and Germany. His father, Alois Schickelgruber Hitler, was a customs official and his mother, Klara Poelzl, a peasant girl. As a child, Hitler appeared to posses no striking qualities and indeed lived quite an unremarkable life until his moving to Munich in 1913. The life of Joseph Stalin begun not too dissimilarly, born in the Russian province of Georgia, in 1879 unto his mother Yekaterina, and her husband Vissarion Djugashvili, his childhood too, was difficult and at the age of nine he was enrolled in the elementary clerical school in Gori.

These men have since become recognised as two of the most brutal leaders of the most horrifying dictatorships in recent history and when comparing both of their individual roads to power, it can be said that, although their lives may have some notable differences, as would be expected given...