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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/36086
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/36086
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Look at RL complete monsters. They exist. What makes them complete monsters? What makes them who they are?

**Hitler** wanted to see his country return to its glory days. That goal is not deviant in itself. His racism wasn't uncommon at the time either, or he wouldn't have had such a following. He crossed the line into "complete monster" when he went from not liking certain groups, to being willing to systematically massacre people. Cold-blooded, thought-through, a well-oiled murder machine. And even that wouldn't have caused fear, had he not had the means - leadership, charisma, whatever it was, to make others follow his mad vision.

**Stalin** was a completely different kind of monster. He was the man who led the USSR into an industrial revolution, changed it from a backward agrarian state with a large percent of the population illiterate, into a strong entity that, for a while, could compete scientifically and militarily with the USA. So he had skill, and his motives weren't as simple as "personal power". At the same time, he was absolutely ruthless: from giving the order to kill the Tzar and his family, to the [Holodomor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor), to the [Shtrafbat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shtrafbat) (penal battalions) and more, nothing was "too cruel" for him. The end _always_ justified any means. At the same time he was paranoid, fearing anyone who might pose a danger to his position, and taking down any person or group that were starting to get any power (before WWII, he had disposed of many high-ranking capable officers, for instance). I guess what makes him a monster is the absolute ruthlessness. (And yes, I am aware that there's more to say about him. He's a complicated character. And a monster, like you want.)

And then there's the one who gives me the shivers. **Dr. Josef Mengele**. He was a doctor - the profession that's supposed to be most humane, most about helping others. Instead, he was performing the most cruel human experiments in Auschwitz. He didn't appear like the complete monster:

> He was capable of being so kind to the children, to have them become fond of him, to bring them sugar, to think of small details in their daily lives, and to do things we would genuinely admire ... And then, next to that, ... the crematoria smoke, and these children, tomorrow or in a half-hour, he is going to send them there.

And the human experiments:

> Witness Vera Alexander described how he sewed two Romani twins together back to back in an attempt to create conjoined twins. The children died of gangrene after several days of suffering.

[Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Mengele#Human_experimentation)

To write someone like that, I guess you write the contradiction: how he's nice one moment, and killing children the next. It's this crazy contradiction that makes him frightening.

Original score: 5