Well...there is the fake story claiming Catherine the Great died under a horse.George II had a heart attack trying to poop. It doesn't get much worse than that.
Well...there is the fake story claiming Catherine the Great died under a horse.
I am sure the Propoganda Ministry will find a way to spin it. You can't spell Akeshkenazi without Nazi? No, not catchy enough...For Hitler: Dying of a genetic disorder that is exclusively Ashkenazi.
For Hitler: Dying of a genetic disorder that is exclusively Ashkenazi.
From Robert Service's *Stalin: A Biography* (Harvard UP 2005), pp. 480-1:
"The day set aside to celebrate the triumph over Nazism was 24 June 1945. There was to be a parade on Red Square in front of tens of thousands of spectators. Victorious regiments which had returned from Germany and eastern Europe were to march in triumph before the Kremlin Wall. It was put to Stalin that he should take pride of place, riding a white horse in the traditional Russian mode. (This was how Russia's generals had headed military parades through Tbilisi.) An Arab steed was found which Stalin tried to mount. The result was humiliation. Stalin gave the stallion an inappropriate jab with his spurs. The stallion reared up. Stalin, grabbing the mane ineffectually, was thrown to the ground. He injured his
head and shoulder and was in a vile mood as he got to his feet. Spitting in anger, he declared, 'Let Zhukov lead the parade. He's an old cavalryman.'"
OK, let's say that the fall had been harder, and had actually killed Stalin. Better still, let the rehearsal go fine--and let Stalin be killed by a fall from the horse in full view of the world at the victory parade...
(I have my doubts about the story. On page 651, Service gives his source as Zhukov's *Vospominaniya i razmyshleniya*, vol. 3, p. 308, adding that Zhukov's information came from Stalin's son Vasily. Given Vasily's drinking habits, I'm not sure how reliable a source he was, even assuming Zhukov recorded what he said accurately...)
Another possibility, to quote an old post of mine (with one correction):
***
In 1943 Stalin made his only wartime "visit to the front", supposedly to monitor the progress of the campaign. Robert Service describes it as follows in his *Stalin: A Biography* (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP 2005), pp. 456-7:
"When he got to within thirty or forty miles of active hostilities, he was greeted by military commanders on the Minsk Chaussée who advised him that they could not guarantee his safety if he travelled further. Stalin must have known that they would say this. This was the nearest he approached to any point of direct action in the war. He never saw a shot fired. But he made much of the conversation with his commanders and, after due display of disappointment, returned to the Kremlin. Much was made of the journey in official propaganda. *Pravda* reported it as if Stalin really had reached the front and given much needed orders on strategy and tactics to the frontal command.
"Mikoyan told a less flattering tale of the journey. 'Stalin himself,' he wrote, 'was not the bravest of men.' Allegedly Stalin, as he talked with commanders, felt an urgent call of nature. Mikoyan speculated that it might have been mortal fear rather than the normal effects of digestion. Stalin anyway needed to go somewhere fast. He asked about the bushes by the roadside, but the generals--whose troops had not long before liberated the zone from German occupation--could not guarantee that landmines had not been left behind. 'At that point,' Mikoyan recorded with memorable precision, 'the Supreme Commander in sight of everyone dropped his trousers and did his business on the asphalt. This completed his 'reconnoitring of the front' and he went straight back to Moscow." (In a footnote, Service gives his source as Mikoyan's *Tak bylo: Razmyshleniya o minuvshem*, Moscow, 1999.)
OK, the POD here is that Stalin bolts for the bushes *before* the generals have a chance to warn him, and then...BOOM!
The next day of course *Pravda* prints a headline about how Comrade Stalin died a heroic death at the front...but what then?
Auto-erotic asphyxiation counts as an embarassing death. And both Hitler and Stalin were known to be a bit odd with their sex lives.