re: Who was the ultimate boogeyman before Hitler came along?

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The Kaiser.

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Was not the man you needed to fear. His minister, Otto von Bismarck, was the bad mofo. Dude could play political games like few others.

Most people in the US forget that Germany has only been a major player in European politics for about 150 years. Before that it was a large group of petty Germanic kingdoms. Prussia had a fair bit of stroke, but nothing on par with the superpowers like Britain, France, or Russia. Bismarck pulled all of them together, ramped up industrialization to be a match with Britain, and whipped France in a minor conflict over a very short period. It's astounding, really.

Alexander the Great if you were in his scope.

Not much is scarier than a gay dude that is a badass.

although the Napoleon hate was likely strong, as they would have only been 85 years past the Battle of Waterloo.

This was my first thought. The expression "he's a little Napoleon" has gradually been erased in recent years as our population has dumbed down and everyone has become a Hitler.

There are/were also whackadoos who believed Napoleon was one of the anti-Christs foretold by Nostradamus. That's pretty strong, to believe that the guy was one of three anti-Christs who would bring the world into darkness.

not very reliable summary on some of Napolean's work

"A contemporary historian, who sailed with the punitive expedition, wrote that: 'We invented another type of ship where victims of both sexes were piled up, one against the other, suffocated by sulphur.'

These were prison ships with gas chambers called etouffiers, or 'chokers', which asphyxiated the blacks, causing them terrible suffering.

Even at the time, there were French naval officers who were appalled at this savagery, claiming they would rather have braved a court martial than have forgotten the laws of humanity.

But from the Emperor's point of view, gassing was a way of cutting costs. Ships continued to transport prisoners out to sea to drown them, but corpses kept being washed up on beaches or tangled in ships' hulls."

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Napoleon is the correct answer. People truly believed he was the Antichrist.

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Nostradamus' worldwide popularity didn't kick in until well after WWII. The Antichrist/Napoleon thing didn't kick in until the paranormal craze of the 1960's. Even today, the world has a love/hate relationship with Napoleon. The worldwide hatred was never on par with Hitler.

Hell, the guy sold us the Louisiana Purchase to keep it out of British hands, and told Britain to frick off when they wanted an alliance to keep California away from the U.S.