General Franco and painting: the secret passions of dictators
Long before his rise to power Adolf Hitler was an artist who attempted to earn a living selling sketches of Vienna to tourists and was rejected twice for a place at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts.
He was also a film buff particularly enjoying Hollywood movies which he viewed in his private cinema. One of his favourites was said to be Walt Disney's Snow White, the classic animated adaptation of a German fairy tale.
In 2008 it emerged he may have combined the two passion when sketches believed to be drawn by Hitler were discovered in a folio by a Norwegian art gallery owner. The sketches were of Disney cartoon characters, including some of the Seven Dwarfs and one of Pinocchio.
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini considered himself an intellectual and a patron of the arts. He was said to be an accomplished violinist and let it be known that he started each day reading a canto of Dante. When he wasn't enforcing his own brand of fascism on Italy he penned romantic novels and translated Italian classics into German....