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If you consider how many people Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot killed,

Fidel Castro's small potatoes. Yet, he merits

a vaunted position in the 20th century's Hall of Evil. Here's why. He imprisoned the entire

nation of Cuba. He destroyed its economy, impoverishing millions while enriching himself.

He arrested, tortured, and murdered political opponents.

He energetically exported his Marxist ideology throughout Central America, South America, and parts of

Africa, spreading death and suffering well beyond the borders of his own country. And he almost

precipitated a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union

during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Had he succeeded in that ambition, he would have even

surpassed the grim body count of Stalin, Hitler, and Mao. Thankfully, even dictators don't always get what

they want. Born on August 13, 1926, Fidel Castro grew up in comfort and privilege.

His father, an immigrant from Spain, was a prosperous sugarcane farmer. Always in a hurry, Castro was

only 27 when he made his first stab at revolution. In 1953, he attempted to overthrow the

government of Cuban president Fulgencio Batista. The badly

underman, poorly executed rebellion was easily thwarted. For his troubles, Castro got a 15-year prison

sentence, but served less than two. Throughout much of the 1950s, his defenders portrayed him

less as a Marxist-Leninist than a garden variety populist and anti-imperialist.

According to one of his biographers, as if leading a consumer revolt, Castro protested

high electric bills and inadequate telephone service. In any case, his rebel movement languished

in the Cuban hills, hanging on by the thinnest of threads. To say he had

...