Stalin

On 28 July 1942, with the Wehrmacht driving on Stalingrad, Stalin issued Order No. 227: retreat without written orders, and face a penal battalion, the Gulag, or a bullet from your own side. It may have helped save the front. That is not the same as justifying it.

On 5 March 1953, Joseph Stalin died on the floor of his dacha, where he had lain unattended for the better part of a day. Nobody had dared go in to check.