Adolf Hitler
Hitler was the leader of Nazi Germany's Third Reich. A fascist, he came to power more or less legitimately but used the tools of totalitarianism to quash resistance, weaken institutions, diminish civil liberties, persecute "enemies," etc. Snyder uses him most frequently in the text.
Hannah Arendt
Arendt was a Jewish Hungarian political philosopher who ultimately fled to the United States due to Nazi persecution and Soviet persecution. Her most famous work was 1951's The Origins of Totalitarianism, which informs a lot of Snyder's thinking.
"A President"
This is Donald Trump, the president of the United States. He was elected in 2016, lost in 2020 and tried to overthrow the government to enforce his false narrative that the election was stolen, and ran and won again in 2025. Snyder does not name him explicitly, but provides fact after fact and quote after quote identifying him as a threat to democracy.
Vaclav Havel
Havel was a dissident Czech thinker during the days of Stalinist communism. One of his most famous works was "The Power of the Powerless," published in 1978.
Arthur Seyss-Inquart
Seyss-Inquart was a lawyer who ran the occupation of the Netherlands for Adolph Hitler.
Winston Churchill
Churchill was the prime minister of Great Britain who refused to capitulate to Hitler and thus is Snyder's example of brave resistance, of "standing out." He forced Hitler to change his plans, which was important to the course of the Second World War. Snyder says what he did seems normal and right but was very brave at the time.
Teresa Prekerowa
Prekerowa was a Polish Jewish young woman who "stood out" by bringing food and medicine to Jews in the Warsaw ghetto. She later became a historian and called her actions "normal."
Eugene Ionesco
Ionesco was a Romanian playwright who watched his friends fall to fascism and thus wrote an absurdist play in 1959 called The Rhinoceros. He wanted to show how people fell prey to propaganda.
Vladimir Putin
Putin is the current leader of Russia. He was appointed prime minister in 1999 by Boris Yeltsin and was an unknown. He then moved to take advantage of "exceptional" situations to carry out his aims, such as making war on Russian Muslims. He used many of the totalitarian techniques Snyder identifies in the book, and is currently a threat to democracy.
Hamlet
The only actual "character" mentioned in the book, Hamlet is Shakespeare's titular hero of the play Hamlet, and a young man anguished by the unstable world he now inhabits. Snyder uses him in the epilogue to comment on the nature of history and how we can use it to understand the present.
