It is the defining relationship in life: the bond – or lack of it – between mother and child.

As revealed in the Mail at the weekend, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin‘s barbaric world view was influenced by the horrifying experience of his mother, who narrowly escaped starvation during the Siege of Leningrad.

Although little is known about what kind of relationship Putin had with her, we do know about the mother-son bond in the lives of some of history’s most notorious dictators. 

Adolf Hitler

Given his murderous brutality and unhinged hatred of Jews, it is jarring to think of Hitler as a defenceless child.

But that is, of course, what he once was. When growing up in his native Austria, Hitler was very close to his mother, Klara. 

He found solace in her embrace after regular beatings handed out by his brutal father Alois, who even turned his fists on the family dog.

Klara’s death with breast cancer when Hitler was 18 in 1907 left the future dictator distraught.

In his infamous memoir, Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote that his mother’s passing ‘hardened’ him.

He said: ‘I am thankful for that period in my life because it hardened me and enabled me to be as tough as I now am. 

‘And I am even more thankful because I appreciate the fact that I was thus saved from the emptiness of a life of ease and that a mother’s darling was taken from tender arms and handed over to Adversity as to a new mother. 

‘Though I then rebelled against it as too hard a fate, I am grateful that I was thrown into a world of misery and poverty and thus came to know the people for whom I was afterwards to fight.’

Joseph Stalin

Like Hitler, Joseph Stalin was savagely beaten by his father, who was an alcoholic.

His mother Ekaterine – known as Keke – worked as a laundress and was also handy with her son.

Hoping that he would become a priest, she sent him to a small Greek Orthodox school and then to the theological seminary in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital.

Stalin – who was born Joseph Dzhugashvili – repeatedly clashed with the institution’s spartan regime and was eventually expelled for being ‘politically undesirable.’

The dictator would later credit his experience at the seminary as the reason he took up the mantle of Communism.

He said: ‘I became a Marxist because of my social position, but also because of the harsh discipline which crushed me at the seminary.’ 

Stalin, who was known as ‘Soso’ to his mother, grew distant from Keke during his rise to power.

In one letter home, he wrote: ‘I know you’re disappointed in me but what can I do? I’m busy and can’t write often.’

While visiting his mother in 1935, two years before her death, Stalin allegedly demanded: ‘Why did you beat me so hard?’

According to a doctor who was treating her and heard the conversation, she replied: ‘That’s why you turned out so well. Joseph – who exactly are you now?’

Stalin told her he was ‘like the tsar’, prompting his mother to allegedly tell him: ‘You’d have done better to become a priest’. 

Saddam Hussein

As the brutal ruler of Iraq for more than two decades, Saddam Hussein was responsible for much misery.

But, had his mother Subha Tulfah Al-Mussallat succeeded in getting an abortion when she was pregnant with him, history would have been very different.

She tried and failed to end her pregnancy after the death of Saddam’s father.

Subha also attempted to take her own life. When Saddam was born, his mother did not want anything to do with him and so sent him to live with an uncle.

In 2004, American psychiatrist Jerrold M Post said that Hussein’s background was ‘assuredly the most traumatic’ of leaders he had profiled.

When he was three, Hussein was reunited with his mother after she got married.

But the youngster was then abused by his new stepfather. He returned to live with his uncle when he was eight or nine.

Dr Post claimed: ‘Most people with that kind of background would be highly ineffective as adults and be faltering, insecure human beings.’

But Hussein instead developed what he called ‘malignant narcissism’, the personality disorder that the academic claimed fuelled his rise to power.

Hussein was finally toppled in 2003, when American and British forces invaded Iraq. 

Jean-Claude Duvalier

For more than 30 years, Haiti suffered under the Duvalier regimes.

First it was voodoo-obsessed Francois – so-called ‘Papa Doc’ – and then it was his son, ‘Baby Doc’ Jean-Claude.

The matriarch was Jean-Claude’s wife Simone Ovide, the daughter of a merchant.

Like her husband, Simone was also into voodoo and was a major power behind the throne. 

When Francois died in 1971, Jean-Claude was still a teenager, and so Simone continued to wield much influence.

Baby Doc often left his mother in charge as he closed off public roads to race his high-performance cars, drank booze and cavorted with women. 

In 1986, when he son was ousted from power, Simone joined her son in exile.

They were said to be living in virtual poverty in her final years. 

Slobodan Milosevic

Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic, who presided over mass murder in the 1990s, had a traumatic early life.

Milosevic’s mother, Stanislava, hanged herself at the family home in 1974, a decade after his father had taken his own life. 

Stanislava had been a devout Communist activist and Milosevic was said to have been her favourite. 

The dictator reportedly later said that his mother ‘never forgave’ him for his romance with his future wife, Mira Markovic, who she did not get on with.

Milosevic died suddenly in 2006, when he was on trial for war crimes.  

Kaiser Wilhelm II

Although he did not have the powers of a dictator, Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II did wield significant power over the direction of his country.

But the son of Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter also had a virulent hatred of Britain, an attitude that contributed to the outbreak and continuance of the First World War.

Wilhelm’s life was defined by his relationship with his mother, who was also called Victoria, and her reaction to his disability.

Born with a withered arm after a traumatic birth, Wilhelm was subjected by his mother to cruel treatments to try to cure him of his embarrassing disability.

One involved the Kaiser having his damaged arm thrust twice a week into a freshly slaughtered hare in the hope that its blood would have a healing effect.

The young royal also had his good arm tied behind his back to try to force him to use the withered one. 

And for two years he was regularly strapped to an appliance featuring a metal rod to straighten his back and a screw to keep his head upright.   

The young Wilhelm was desperate for his mother’s attention. 

He wrote strange – almost sexually charged – letters to his mother Princess Victoria in which he described dreams of kissing her hands and caressing her.

‘Promise to do to me as I did in my dream to you. I love you so much,’ the future German monarch wrote in one.

But when she replied speaking only of art and politics, the already tortured relationship continued to worsen.

Victoria died in August 1901, just months after her mother the Queen.

The Kaiser was forced to abdicate in November 1918 amid his country’s defeat in the war.