“You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” Most of us are probably familiar with this quote from ‘The Dark Knight’ movie. Two-Face, aka Harvey Dent, says it to Batman and it has become one of the most iconic lines in cinema history. But have you ever wondered if it has any real-life examples?
Well, people in this online thread debated and shared some popular figures that started out as good guys and became pretty evil in the end. From presidents to inventors, it seems that power and fame corrupted these people in some pretty nasty ways. It just goes to show that those you might respect right now, might become people you’d want to avoid in the future.
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#1
The guy who invented the orbital lobotomy. He preformed tens of thousands of them and was thought to be a hero for the mentally ill. Turned out later that literally aimlessly scrambling people’s brains with an ice pick was a bad idea.
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#2
Maximilien Robespierre of the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror.
Helped to overthrow the monarchy and execute the king, then went on the execute a wack ton of people, mostly political enemies, by guillotine during the Terror as a part of the aptly named Committee of Public Safety. He was then later arrested and guillotined for executing a member of his own Committee.
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#3
Fritz Haber invented the process of making fertilizer from the atmosphere, alleviating food shortages in Europe in the early 20th century, and winning a Nobel Prize in chemistry for it. Later, during WWI he invented chemical warfare for the Germans. He developed a method of dispatching chlorine gas to enemy trenches. He is now know as the father of chemical warfare.
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#4
Mao ZeDong of China. He helped in ridding China of foreign influence, gave women equal rights as men, allowed all children to attend school, had massive social and industrial reforms to modernize China. Too bad he is not very good at running the place long term and ended up killing millions as a result of being forced to side with USSR during cold war, acting like an expert when he isn’t, and kept worrying the revolutionary zeal will die.
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#5
A more modern example I can think about is Porfirio Diaz, in Mexico. He was a renowned general that fought in many wars in Mexico for the liberals. He was even part of the commanders who fought under general Zaragoza’s command to fight off the French in the 5 de mayo battle at Puebla. At first he was quite appraised and had a chance to win the presidency, but had to win it from Juarez, the president who implemented all the reforms in Mexico which had caused quite many wars. A couple of years after Juarez finally died, ending 17 years of government, Diaz assumed the presidency. At first his government was characterised by a lot of industrial progress and a huge increase in railway tracks. However, he designed the country to be dependent on his rule, and felt no one was capapble of handling Mexico. So naturally, he decided to stay in the presidency 30 years. Ironic because he had fought Juarez because he was becoming a dictator. He was thebone who came up with the no reelection campaign. Aftter living so much and reelecting himself many periods, he ended up becoming a villain, sparkling a civil war after the imprisonment of one of his adversaries, Madero. He quickly quitted when he realised the US supported the revolutionaries and went in exile to France. The civil war continued, so called Mexican Revolution for many years, and the only scapegoat fot such a bloodshed was the “overthrow” of a dictator, thus official history textbooks now only see him as a villain, completely ignoring the things he did for our nation.
Sorry for any mistakes, english is not my native language, and I wrote this on my phone.
Hope you found this interesting.
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#6
Philippe Petain. He was a renowned Commander who helped lead the defense of Verdun, becoming a national hero. When France surrendered in WWII, the Germans saw this as an opportunity to increase the public image of Vichy France and convinced him to lead the collaborationist regime. Nowadays, Petain is regarded as a traitor, not a hero.
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#7
Richard Nixon for a more recent example. Everyone kind of forgets that he was generally considered to be a pretty good president and diplomat before Watergate.
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#8
Kwame Nkrumah led the independence movement in Ghana in the 1950s and was universally loved when Ghana became a nation in 1957. He began work on hundreds of essential infrastructure projects which would help bring Ghana up to the level of developed nations quickly. He promised a powerful and prosperous country, which could be independent of the Cold War struggle between East and West and even serve as an intermediary.
He then decided it was better if he would become a dictator. He suppressed Ghanaian traditional culture, began imprisoning people without charges, almost immediately violated his own constitution, removed checks and balances in government, inspected and censored all media outlets, instated and removed judges erratically and at will based on whether their rulings suited him, rigged elections, and declared himself “president for life”.
Ghana was driven into deep and lasting debt. Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown and banned from the country for life, ostensibly for creating a cult of personality and making himself the oppressive dictator of Ghana. After the coup, Ghana was ruled by politically unstable military dictatorships, and wracked by constant coups, for thirty years.
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#9
Boris Yeltsin.
He did Russia a heroic service as the USSR failed, but became mired in corruption and ineffectiveness.
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#10
Benedict Arnold might be a good example. Initially a high ranking military officer who is responsible for an American victory at Saratoga during the revolutionary war. Despite his military success due to many reason ( including the promotion of lower ranking officers instead of himself) he eventually made a deal with the British to betray the Americans
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#11
Fidel Castro. Worked to overthrow a brutal dictator and put power back in the hands of the people- wound up becoming a near-dictator himself: starving the country of economic and social growth, allying with Russia, and flirting for decades with nuclear war.
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#12
Nero. His first few years in office were rather prosperous overall (thanks in part to good advice from Seneca and Burrus). After having his mother killed, things went downhill fast.
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#13
Aaron Burr. Made it to the office of Vice President, yet somehow still had it out for Alexander Hamilton and blamed him for his short comings which led to his killing of Hamilton via duel. This ultimately ruined his political career and after some unrelated legal troubles on the western frontier forced him to escape to Europe to hide from creditors.
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#14
Napoleon is arguably a good example of this. Whilst he is undoubtley a great commander and influential man, he does not exactly have a ‘Hero’ reputation, and certainly some would argue he was a war mongering despot, which is surprising considering his exploits.
Particularly his return from Elba was a huge waste of life in a war (the Hundred days campaign) that was always doomed to failure. Interesting, it is almost like some people see Napoleon as not part of the national story, but its own part of history. Like the Nazis and German History.
However, let say Napoleon died of natural causes before his disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812, I believe he would be the go to symbol of France most influential man and national hero, almost a George Washington style figure rather than the reputation he has today.
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#15
Nicolae Ceausescu is a textbook example of this. His fall from grace from Cold War good guy to being executed with his wife in the backyard of a random building is fascinating.
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#16
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, played central role in independence of my country from one of the most powerful army of that time, Pakistan. Even more impressing because, Pakistan was strongly backed by USA whole time. Genuinely cared about people, was a great orator, few people in the history I think had as much popularity as him around 1971.
Then he became our president, country suffered from serious unemployment, poverty, lawlessness. There was a famine in 1974, a paramilitary force kind of like stasi, rampant corruption etc. And lastly, four years after independence, decided democracy isn’t the right way, tried to establish one party socialist rule, got killed with almost entire family in 1975 by some army officers.
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#17
Field Marshall Haig in WWI. He was a very respected military commander in WWI, but later came to be called [“The Butcher Of The Somme”]
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#18
You may be interested in reading about Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick, aka the “Kingmaker”. A popular and talented military leader, he initially supported the Lancastrians in the Wars of the Roses but then spent years promoting the Yorkist cause. Helped Edward the IV (house of York) become king but gradually became dissatisfied with him and finally joined with Margaret of Anjou, the wife of the former king and a longtime bitter enemy of Warwick’s, in a coup attempt. Of course lots of people switched sides back in those days but he always stood out to me.
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#19
I think Lord Kelvin is a really excellent example. The man was considered a genius to rival Newton during his heyday and managed to create/capitalize on the slowly growing popularity of scientists (seen later extensively with Einstein).
His work on thermodynamics and the definition of “heat” in general was really extraordinary at the time. Unfortunately he had some very stubborn views about the age of the Earth and the existence of the ether, so he went from an incredible genius to a backwards loon because the world changed too much around him.
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#20
Alcibiades is a good example. Athenian statesman who switched sides to Sparta, then Persia.
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#21
Case could be made for George Patton. Stories of the famous slapping incidents were suppressed in Europe during the war since it would have damaged morale just as the Allies were beginning to threaten mainland Europe.
However, news of Patton’s behavior circulated far and wide back on the homefront, and Patton became reviled for it. Then, just like that, a war hero became a villain.
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#22
Philippe Petain, French hero of the First World War and the last surviving Marshal. Backstabbed his way into the French government during the German invasion then became leader of Vichy France.
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