How to Stage a Coup

The documentary displayed a lot of lesser known facts about big military leaders and dictators, and how different leaders have different styles. It also throws strong light on how the prevailing situation / timing plays an important role in the success or failure of a coup and how individuals with a strong will and ability to influence power points can have a lasting impact on the fortunes of a country, and consequently global history.

Quite an interesting documentary that in general emphasised the need to control the military, bureaucracy and media to stage a coup and hold on to power. There were interesting little titbits of information like the fact that Napoleon owned 2 newspapers and the way that Peter I's wife Catherine bribed a Turkish vizier (who was later executed by the Sultan) to release Peter, though I fail to see how that counts as a coup, how Yeltsin took advantage of Gorbachev's temporary absence from the corridors of power (he was on holiday) to send the military against him and strong arm him into surrendering power, and how Catherine the Great used her influence with the Russian imperial guard to depose, and possibly poison to death, her husband Peter the Great (who was Tsar Peter III, not Peter I). This 40 minute programme tried to deal with too many coup leaders (Julius Caesar, Mussolini, Hitler, Catherine the Great, Napoleon, Trotsky/Lenin/Stalin; also Franco, the Greek colonels and Idi Amin were very briefly mentioned) while inevitably missing some others like Castro, Mao and various Mexican figures and not touching on the financing of coups and coup leaders at all; or indeed other factors like the industrial scale espionage carried out against Chiang Kai Shek by Mao and the Soviet Union, the fact that the USSR had in fact kidnapped Chiang's son and used that against him and the way Mao sent his fellow revolutionaries to certain death in battle to reduce any internal threats to his power. I think this would be better as a series instead.

It starts with with Caesar who arguably didn't stage a coup at all. You wouldn't know this from the show cuz it doesn't tell you how he did what he did. Just he's a good general and charismatic. Then napoleon who they gave the same reasons for. Once they got to Lenin I turned it off. Uninteresting and uninformative.

'How to stage a coup' draws parallels between the rise of historical figures like Caesar, Napoleon, Mussolini, et al. The parallels are interesting but too simplistic. The target audience of such documentaries is usually history buffs. But most of the facts and theories shown here are well known, and history buffs may not find them interesting. The documentary is too short in length to cover a topic as intricate as a coup. And few of the coups referred to in the documentary are arguably not even coups.

In conclusion, if you have an hour to kill or if you just love watching montages of your favorite dictators before bed, then you can find this doc on Netflix.