See What These Leaders Overcame

Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert had a checkered political career. Early in his career he was aligned with the right-wing Likud Party and, as mayor of Jerusalem, he strengthened Israel’s control over contested East Jerusalem and enforced demolition orders against Palestinian homes. Yet, his left-leaning wife, Aliza Olmert, is said to have influenced him. Olmert was subsequently the architect of Ariel Sharon’s policy of withdrawing from Israeli-held territory in Palestine. As prime minister, Olmert tried to negotiate a two-state solution and claims in his new memoir that negotiations came “within a hair’s breadth” of agreement. But Olmert resigned as prime minister when police brought charges against him, and he was later convicted of corruption.

Frederik Willem (FW) de Klerk was born into a prominent, racist pro-apartheid family in South Africa. When he succeeded PW Botha as president in 1989, de Klerk was seen as a radical right winger who would continue the apartheid regime. However, on taking power, de Klerk soon realized that apartheid was unsustainable. In a completely unprecedented move that shocked supporters, he unbanned the African National Congress (ANC) and released Nelson Mandela from jail. Despite having a fractious relationship with Mandela, de Klerk held on to the idea that negotiations with the ANC were the only solution to South Africa’s problems. De Klerk, however, never fully accepted that apartheid was a crime against humanity.

During the First World War, as political head of the Royal Navy, Winston Churchill convinced the military that attacking Turkey would end the war. They did so but the operation proved a disaster and Churchill duly resigned from his post. Devastated by his failure, he joined the army and went to fight in the trenches in France. But years later, thanks to his clear-sighted condemnation of Hitler, he was made prime minister of Britain–and in that role he managed to galvanize much of the world against the Nazis. Still, he was rejected by the British electorate: Churchill failed to win re-election at the end of the war in 1950, the first general election held following a full term of Labour government and the abolition of plural voting and university constituencies. He was re-elected in 1951 after Labour called for another general election.

Born Malcolm Little, Malcolm X had a troubled upbringing, and at 21 he went to prison for larceny. In prison he began to follow the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, head of the Black nationalist movement Nation of Islam, which considered white people inherently evil. In the early 1960s, however, X became increasingly disenchanted with the movement’s position. After making the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, X underwent a spiritual transformation, famously writing that “anger can blind human vision.” He began urging all civil rights movements to unite. In 1965, X was assassinated by members of the Nation of Islam.

As a young man, Gandhi moved from India to the colony of Natal in South Africa. Despite suffering racial discrimination there, Gandhi supported the British colonial regime and worked for the British as a stretcher bearer in both the Anglo–Boer War (1899–1902) and the 1906 Zulu Rebellion. However, while collecting the wounded in 1906, Gandhi began to see the suppression of the Zulu Rebellion as a crude man-hunt. It was this that led Gandhi to pursue satyagraha, or passive resistance, to colonialism. Taking this form of protest back to India, Gandhi shook colonial rule,but today Gandhi’s legacy is under particular scrutiny. Despite sympathising with Black anti-racist movements in South Africa, he never joined them in their struggle. He is also accused of accepting, rather than publicly rejecting, the prejudice and inequality of India’s caste system. Gandhi was assassinated in 1948 by a Hindu nationalist.

The U.S. secretary of defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, Robert McNamara led the American war in Vietnam. In the last two decades of his life, however, he reexamined the decisions he had made throughout his career. In a remarkable interview with Errol Morris in the documentary Fog of War, McNamara acknowledged that the U.S. military could well have been prosecuted for war crimes in Vietnam and the nuclear bombing of Japan. He also argued that empathizing with one’s enemy and understanding their history is vital in political decision making.

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In 1936, André Léon Blum became France’s first Socialist prime minister. More remarkably, in a time of deep anti-Semitism, he was also France’s first Jewish head of state. The leader of a coalition government known as the Popular Front, Blum supported the anti-Fascist Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. However, he refused to send them military equipment, fearing this might result in the break-up of his government and possible civil war in France. It was a decision that eventually led to his resignation. Then, during the Second World War, he was arrested for being Jewish and imprisoned with thousands of his coreligionists at the concentration camp at Buchenwald. He was later freed by American troops.

Ferhat Abbas fought for the equal rights of Muslims in French Algeria. Working in collaboration with his friend Albert Camus, the communist and French intellectual, during the Algerian War of Independence in 1956, Abbas failed to bring about a civilian truce between the Arabs and the French. Although he was always considered a moderate, Abbas joined the radical National Liberation Front (FLN) and went on to play an important diplomatic role in bringing about Algerian independence in 1962. He was then elected president of the Algerian Constituent Assembly, a seemingly great capstone to his career. Yet, he resigned in protest (and was expelled from the FLN) when the FLN drafted a new Algerian constitution without parliamentary consent. Indeed, his outspoken protest against undemocratic practices led to his 1964 house arrest by his own political party. He was released the following year after President Chadli Bendjedid succeeded Houari Boumedienne.

An electrician by trade, Lech Wałęsabecame the head of Poland’s anti-communist trade union movement, Solidarity, in the 1970s. This led to his regular arrest and jailing, as Solidarity was officially banned by the Polish communist regime. Then he triumphed: in 1990, when the country held its first free presidential election, Wałęsa won a landslide victory with 74% of the vote. His subsequent presidency, however, was wracked with economic and bureaucratic difficulties, and he was blamed for the rocky transition from Communist Party rule to liberal democracy. In 1995 he sought reelection and was narrowly defeated. Then, in the 2000 election, he won only 1% of the vote. In the wake of that defeat, Wałęsa announced that he was leaving politics and subsequently devoted much of his time to the affairs of the Lech Wałęsa Institute. In early 2006 he quit Solidarity because of its support for the right-wing Law and Justice party, which is now in power.

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