Lenin

Vladimir Illich Ulyanov ( Lenin) was born in Simbirsk, Russia, on 10th April, 1870. His father, Ilya Ulyanov, a local schools inspector, held conservative views and was a devout member of the Russian Orthodox Church. Lenin was deeply influenced by the revolutionary political views of his older brother, Alexander Ulyanov, who introduced him to the ideas of Karl Marx.

Joseph Stalin

He was born in Gori, Georgia on 21st December, 1879. He was his mother's fourth child to be born in less than four years. The first three died and as Joseph was prone to bad health, his mother feared on several occasions that he would also die. Understandably, given this background, Joseph's mother was very protective towards him as a child.

Adolf Hitler

He was born on 20th April, 1889, in the small Austrian town of Braunau near the German border. Both Hitler's parents had come from poor peasant families. His father Alois Hitler, the illegitimate son of a housemaid, was an intelligent and ambitious man and later became a senior customs official.

Eva Braun

She was born the middle of three sisters into a Catholic family on 6 February 1912 - three lively, pretty girls. She was educated at a lyceum, then for one year at a business school in a convent where she had average grades and a talent for athletics.