With apologies to Charlie Chaplin and Adenoid Heinkel, I bring you the Great Dictators from the Roco WW2 personality set:
And what a charming bunch they are, Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin. They are just missing Tojo to complete the set. All monsters from the first part of the last century, blaming other people for their problems while promising simplistic solutions, initiating wars of aggression and leading their nations to disaster. I'm sure that wouldn't happen now.
tbh these aren't the greatest paint jobs in the world but they have been sitting in my painting box for ages looking at me accusingly, so I thought I'd get them done.
First up we have Mussolini. A surprisingly slim figure although quite squat around the middle. He does have a fairly determined looking chin and something of a bull neck. Unsurprisngly Mussolini had quite a range of uniforms, but I picked a fairly neutral mid grey one so he can stand in for a senior Italian officer if required. The colours etc are all based on photographs.
He has a black Sam Browne and jackboots, jazzy little black collar patches and an inverted chevron on the left sleeve with a design in the middle (which I did just as a tiny blob of gold). He maybe a fascist dictator, but he had very smart uniforms.
Strictly speaking the hat should be black with red piping, but I went a more neutral grey army style one with a tiny blob of gold on the front. There is one photo of Mussolini with a cap adorned with an eagle design on the front, so it can be that one.
As I'm not planning on running the Gran Sasso raid any time soon, he will no doubt see service as an Italian officer.
Next up is Uncle Joe, a genuine psychopath who systematically murdered everyone around him and lots of other people besides.
This figure is cast in a classic Stalin uniform, fairly plain and simple. He had a range of these in various shades of khaki, he also had a more dressy blue uniform which he reputedly hated. The figure itself is actually a pretty good likeness, and even has a very obvious moustache moulded on, although my clumsy brushwork doesn't do it justice.
I did him overall in VJ Russian uniform with some very light highlights and lowlights. There are various distinctions in red and gold. His cap usually had a red band but he only wore collar tabs and shoulder boards on some uniforms - I added those anyway for a splash of colour along with red stripes on his trousers.
He ended up looking fairly smart and will no doubt be employed as a senior Russian officer.
And finally we have Adolf Hitler whose evil needs no introduction. Now I've already got a Hitler from the QRF WW2 German personality set, so I needed this one to look a bit different. My old one very clearly had an armband moulded on so I did it in Nazi Party (brown) uniform colours.
During the war he didn't wear the Party uniform much and tended to just wear a fairly plain grey army style jacket. According to his secretary he also generally wore black trousers, although sometimes grey.
So, I did Hitler in a grey jacket and black trousers. Hitler and Mussolini also got white shirts and black neckties, which necessitated rather fine 'inside out' painting ie a big line of white a round the neck, a thin vertical black slash, and then painting the jacket up and flesh down to just leave a thin white collar.
Hitler had a specially adapted cap with an extra large visor to protect his eyes after being gassed in WW1. I don't know if he had them in brown and grey, but I assumed it would just be brown so that is the colour I did it. Looking at the photo I've realised I've forgotten to do his gold sleeve eagle, so I need to add that at some point.
I did manage to get a decent approximation of his toothbrush moustache on, but I had do do it twice after a flesh highlighting catastrophe.
It is hard to imagine a use for this figure in a game as it is so distinctive (my other Hitler is more nondescript) , but I can mix the other two in easily enough. Into their respective boxes they go.
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