Read: How to Be a Dictator - The Cult of Personality in the Twentieth Century

 Mussolini:

His war atrocities in Ethiopia were hid from Italians by the state-backed media, instead presenting it as a war bringing liberation, freedom, & civilizations to victims of a feudal caste system.

He was probably pretty popular for awhile, but eventually the forced enthusiasm of Italy became more and more forced as people became fed up with food shortages imposed by sanctions from the international backlash to the annexation of Ethiopia. 

His army was woefully unprepared for WW2 and they never had any success in the war. They were always more like a vassal state of Germany.

Hitler and the Nazis tried to launch a coup against the republic in November 1923, but the army didn’t join them and they were easily crushed. His sentence for high treason was incredibly short, 5 years, shortened to 13 months. He has sympathetic judges and in his trial he appeared more as the accuser of the government than a defendant. He wrote most of Mein Kampf while in prison. 

Over and over again, bread lines are what cause people to really start expressing unhappiness with their dictator. It seems people are quite content with one as long as their material needs are met. I’d be interested if there were any capitalist dictatorships in history and how they performed, since they would have likely not had the food shortages. 

Another common thing was the “if only X knew...” line. Dictators would be thought of as good and kind, while all the cruelties of the regime would be blamed on the dictator’s subordinates. Their were examples in Soviet Russia of people writing direct pleas to intervene in their case after being arrested for no real reason, not knowing that Stalin had ordered the arrest himself. Reading that over and over again made me less sympathetic to the arguments some right wing nationalists have made blaming the White House’s lack of follow through on Trump’s nationalist campaigning on the nefarious influence of the establishment people in the administration. 

Another common thread was their feigned humility. When praised by party leaders they would act bashful saying that they didn’t deserve the praise, but beforehand they had checked and edited every word. Not to mention imprisoning/killing those who wouldn’t offer praise. 

Another common trait was the prizing of loyalty over competence. Anyone with any independent thought (which would inevitably entail critique) would be removed eventually. Ultimately this resulted in the despot being surrounded by midwit sycophants.