Before Adolf Hitler was a genocidal autocrat, he was a young art student who loved his mother. Before Vladimir Lenin was a Marxist revolutionary, he was the privileged son of loving parents, radicalized by his older brother. And before Joseph Stalin was a ruthless dictator, he was an abused child who was terrified of his father. Why should we know or care about these details? In the face of the crimes these men committed, their early lives seem irrelevant. But Brandon Gauthier argues that it is important to try to have empathy for even the most hateful historical figures. Only by understanding evil, he says, can we stop it from happening again. Brandon stopped by Labyrinths to tell us about his book, Before Evil, that explores the lives of these men before they became the murderous despots we remember them as today.

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