In the centre of China’s capital city, Beijing, lies a corpse that no one dares remove. It’s been 44 years since Mao Zedong’s body was laid to rest in the grandiose Chairman Mao Memorial Hall. He may be gone but he is not forgotten. To some, he’s the father of modern China. To many others, he’s a sadistic thug - a man willing to sacrifice millions of lives in pursuit of power. Mao Zedong is born in Hunan Province in 1893. Growing up on his father’s farm, he consumes books and ideas. His rise to the top of the Communist Party will be littered with violent outbursts, setting the tone for the decades to come.

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Stalin’s regime hits the rocks when Adolf Hitler launches Operation Barbarossa and invades Russia. Nazi tanks plough towards Moscow in a devastating advance. Stalin’s legacy is forged in this fight to the death. In his final years, the strongman succumbs to cardiac problems. His tools for progress have been famine, slavery and execution. Yet to this day, some of his countrymen and women lionise him as the man who turned Russia into a superpower.

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With the First World War underway, Stalin’s journey to dictatorship grinds into gear. After the War, Russia is turned upside down. Stalin thrives in the chaos, masterminding a string of elaborate takedowns of his rivals. Rising to party leader, he visits a ruthless purge on his enemies. But Stalin’s brutality does not go unchallenged. The peasants revolt, while a showdown with his own wife at a dinner party has tragic consequences.

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Joseph Stalin - the “man of steel” - was the party secretary who plotted a route to absolute power, becoming head of the Eastern Bloc and chief nemesis of the United States. But how did a man from the Georgian frontier of the Russian Empire do it? In 1917, the 300-year-old Romanov Dynasty collapses. The communist Bolsheviks storm the Winter Palace and seize power. From this band of revolutionaries, a future bloody dictator - a man with an extraordinary backstory - begins to emerge...

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Installed as dictator, Kim Jong-il builds an all-powerful state that dominates the lives and minds of its people. North Korea is wracked by famine. The people adapt to survive - we hear from one man who flouted the rules and paid a horrific price. Lurid rumours emerge about how the ‘Dear Leader’ spends his leisure time. And Kim Jong-il begins work on an arsenal of nuclear weapons that will spook the world and pave the way for his own son’s ascent to power.

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Kim Jong-il has risen to become propaganda chief under the rule of his father. Now, he hatches an audacious plan to turn North Korea into a filmmaking powerhouse. South Korea’s finest actress and leading director are kidnapped and find themselves on boats bound for the North. Elsewhere, Kim launches a charm offensive at the armed forces, readying the ground for his coronation. And his father dies, leaving the path to power seemingly clear...

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Kim Jong-il built a rogue state with nuclear missiles trained on its enemies – all while living a life of the utmost luxury. In the first episode of Real Dictators, we piece together the early life of this tyrant and that of the country he came to rule. Kim Jong-il is born during World War Two. His father – Kim Il-sung – fights the Japanese and helps found the state of North Korea. After the War, son and nation grow up together, as Kim Jong-il begins his own rise to power. Historians trace Kim’s early years, while defectors from North Korea reflect on the propaganda they grew up with.

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How does a single human being convince thousands to kill for them and millions to turn a blind eye?

Real Dictators is the new podcast series hosted by Paul McGann (Dr Who, Luther, Withnail and I) that explores the hidden lives of history’s tyrants.

We encounter the American-trained doctor, “Papa Doc” Duvalier, who used modern medicine to convince the people of Haiti that he was a Voodoo god. There’s Kim Jong-il, who developed nuclear warheads alongside blockbuster movies. There’s Mao Zedong – the peasant’s son who transformed China, presiding over the catastrophic Great Chinese Famine and the bloody Cultural Revolution. And Joseph Stalin, the man who turned Russia into a superpower and set the stage for the Cold War, while upending and destroying the lives and livelihoods of millions of his own people. 

Real Dictators fuses immersive, dramatic storytelling with interviews with world-renowned experts. The voices of historians sit alongside an array of regime insiders such as Jang Jin-sung – a former psychological warfare officer for Kim Jong-il – and François Benoit, a survivor of ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier’s reign of terror.

New episodes on Wednesdays from May 2020.

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