It's well known that behind every great character, there's a someone behind the scenes who helped them gaining, keeping and enforcing power.
Queen Elizabeth II had Lord Dudley, Bush had Dick Cheney, Louis XIII had Richelieu.
Those characters used their influence on the leaders to forward their own agendas, cleverly acting behind the scenes.
So let's see four political figures that did just so in the XX century, from Nazi Germany to the Vatican.
Lavrentji Berija
Stalin's right hand man, who came out triumphant of the Great Purges of 1936-1938.
He rose as chief of the political police (NKVD) and was a man of great intelligence and energy, but also a sadist and serial rapist.
At the peak of his career, he held more than ten offices and single handedly oversaw the development of the Soviet atomic bomb.
When Stalin died in 1953, he was believed to be going to take his place - but he got toppled and executed by Krushev and his other colleagues, who hated and feared him.
Martin Bormann
Hitler's chief of the Party Chancellery. He rose to power after Deputy Führer's Rudolf Heß flight to Britain in 1941 in a bizarre peace proposal to the British.
In his position, he relayed orders on Hitler' stead and filtered all the mail and encounters with him - something that gave him immense power and made him hated by the other senior Nazis, including the other most powerful man of the Reich - SS chief Heinrich Himmler.
Thought to have flew to South America, he actually died trying to escape from Berlin.
Giulio Andreotti
Italy's longest serving cabinet minister.
He was implicated in a lot of shady and criminal events, such as the P2 organization plot to topple Italy's democracy, deaths of Pope John Paul I and the assassination of Democratic Christian leader Aldo Moro, but always managed to get acquitted in all trials.
It was said he had the Mafia and terrorist organizations Red Brigades and Black Order at his finger tips, and was involved in the bombing of Bologna and Banco Ambrosiano scandal. He often joked that if he wasn't accused of something, he wasn't doing his job well.
Paul Marcinkus
The American Catholic Bishop who became famous after the scandal of Banco Ambrosiano, when it was found out that the Vatican bank used foreign investors' money to corrupt political figures and gain power in Italian politics.
It was said he held absolute influence over Pope Paul VI and was involved in the death of Pope John Paul I only 33 days after his nomination.
He never properly answered those accusations and died peacefully in Sun City in 2006.
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