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Winston Churchill  was a leader who led Britain to victory in World War ll

He established the Royal Naval Air Service, updated the British fleet and helped invent one of the earliest tanks.

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Winston Churchill was one of the best-known, and some say one of the greatest, statesmen of the 20th century. Though he was born into a life of privilege, he dedicated himself to public service. His legacy is a complicated one: He was an idealist and a pragmatist; an orator and a soldier; an advocate of progressive social reforms and an unapologetic elitist; a defender of democracy - especially during World War II - as well as of Britain's fading empire. But for many people in Great Britain and elsewhere, Winston Churchill is simply a hero.

Early Life

Winston Churchill came from a long line of English aristocrat-politicians. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was descended from the First Duke of Marlborough and was himself a well-known figure in Tory politics in the 1870s and 1880s.

His mother, born Jennie Jerome, was an American heiress whose father was a stock speculator and part-owner of The New York Times. (Rich American girls like Jerome who married European noblemen were known as "dollar princesses.")

Did you know? Sir Winston Churchill won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953 for his six-volume history of World War II.

Churchill was born at the family's estate near Oxford on November 30, 1874. He was educated at the Harrow prep school, where he performed so poorly that he did not even bother to apply to Oxford or Cambridge. Instead, in 1893 young Winston Churchill headed off to military school at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.

Battles and Books

After he left Sandhurst, Churchill traveled all around the British Empire as a soldier and as a journalist. In 1896, he went to India; his first book, published in 1898, was an account of his experiences in India's Northwest Frontier Province.

In 1899, the London Morning Post sent him to cover the Boer War in South Africa, but he was captured by enemy soldiers almost as soon as he arrived. (News of Churchill's daring escape through a bathroom window made him a minor celebrity back home in Britain.)

By the time he returned to England in 1900, the 26-year-old Churchill had published five books.

Churchill: "Crossing the Chamber"

That same year, Winston Churchill joined the House of Commons as a Conservative. Four years later, he "crossed the chamber" and became a Liberal.

His work on behalf of progressive social reforms such as an eight-hour workday, a government-mandated minimum wage, a state-run labor exchange for unemployed workers and a system of public health insurance infuriated his Conservative colleagues, who complained that this new Churchill was a traitor to his class.

Churchill and Gallipoli

In 1911, Churchill turned his attention away from domestic politics when he became the First Lord of the Admiralty (akin to the Secretary of the Navy in the U.S.). Noting that Germany was growing more and more bellicose, Churchill began to prepare Great Britain for war: He established the Royal Naval Air Service, modernized the British fleet and helped invent one of the earliest tanks.

Despite Churchill's prescience and preparation, World War I was a stalemate from the start. In an attempt to shake things up, Churchill proposed a military campaign that soon dissolved into disaster: the 1915 invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey.

Churchill hoped that this offensive would drive Turkey out of the war and encourage the Balkan states to join the Allies, but Turkish resistance was much stiffer than he had anticipated. After nine months and 250,000 casualties, the Allies withdrew in disgrace.

After the debacle at Gallipoli, Churchill left the Admiralty.

Churchill Between the Wars

During the 1920s and 1930s, Churchill bounced from government job to government job, and in 1924 he rejoined the Conservatives. Especially after the Nazis came to power in 1933, Churchill spent a great deal of time warning his countrymen about the perils of German nationalism, but Britons were weary of war and reluctant to get involved in international affairs again.

Likewise, the British government ignored Churchill's warnings and did all it could to stay out of Hitler's way. In 1938, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain even signed an agreement giving Germany a chunk of Czechoslovakia - "throwing a small state to the wolves," Churchill scolded - in exchange for a promise of peace.

A year later, however, Hitler broke his promise and invaded Poland. Britain and France declared war. Chamberlain was pushed out of office, and Winston Churchill took his place as prime minister in May 1940.

Churchill: The "British Bulldog"

"I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat," Churchill told the House of Commons in his first speech as prime minister.

"We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival."

Just as Churchill predicted, the road to victory in World War II was long and difficult: France fell to the Nazis in June 1940. In July, German fighter planes began three months of devastating air raids on Britain herself.

Though the future looked grim, Churchill did all he could to keep British spirits high. He gave stirring speeches in Parliament and on the radio. He persuaded U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to provide war supplies - ammunition, guns, tanks, planes - to the Allies, a program known as Lend-Lease, before the Americans even entered the war.

Though Churchill was one of the chief architects of the Allied victory, war-weary British voters ousted the Conservatives and their prime minister from office just two months after Germany's surrender in 1945.

The Iron Curtain

The now-former prime minister spent the next several years warning Britons and Americans about the dangers of Soviet expansionism.

In a speech in Fulton, Missouri, in 1946, for example, Churchill declared that an anti-democratic "Iron Curtain," "a growing challenge and peril to Christian civilization," had descended across Europe. Churchill's speech was the first time anyone had used that now-common phrase to describe the Communist threat.

In 1951, 77-year-old Winston Churchill became prime minister for the second time. He spent most of this term working (unsuccessfully) to build a sustainable détente between the East and the West. He retired from the post in 1955.

In 1953, Queen Elizabeth made Winston Churchill a knight of the Order of the Garter. He died in 1965, one year after retiring from Parliament.

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Winston Churchill, prime minister of Great Britain from 1940 to 1945, he led the country through World War II, and from 1951 to 1955. He is considered one of the best-known, and some say one of the greatest, statesmen of the 20th century.

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Franklin D Roosevelt led the United States from isolationism to victory over Nazi Germany and its allies in World War ll.

FDR helped lay the groundwork for the post-war peace organization that would become the United Nations.

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Contents

1. Franklin D. Roosevelt's Early Life and Career

2. FDR's Polio and Election as Governor

3. Roosevelt Enters the White House

4. Roosevelt and the New Deal

5. Roosevelt's Reelection and "Court-Packing"

6. FDR and World War II

7. Yalta Conference and Franklin D. Roosevelt's Death

Franklin D. Roosevelt was in his second term as governor of New York when he was elected as the nation's 32nd president in 1932. With the country mired in the depths of the Great Depression, Roosevelt immediately acted to restore public confidence, proclaiming a bank holiday and speaking directly to the public in a series of radio broadcasts or "fireside chats." His ambitious slate of New Deal programs and reforms redefined the role of the federal government in the lives of Americans.

Reelected by comfortable margins in 1936, 1940 and 1944, FDR led the United States from isolationism to victory over Nazi Germany and its allies in World War II. He spearheaded the successful wartime alliance between Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States and helped lay the groundwork for the post-war peace organization that would become the United Nations. The only American president in history to be elected four times, Roosevelt died in office in April 1945.

Franklin D. Roosevelt's Early Life and Career

Born on January 30, 1882, on a large estate near the village of Hyde Park, New York, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the only child of his wealthy parents, James and Sara Delano Roosevelt. He was educated by private tutors and elite schools (Groton and Harvard), and early on began to admire and emulate his fifth cousin, Theodore Roosevelt, elected president in 1901. While in college, Franklin fell in love with Theodore's niece (and his own distant cousin), Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, and they married in 1905. The couple had a daughter, Anna Roosevelt, and four sons who survived into adulthood: James Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., Elliott Roosevelt, and Jr., John A. Roosevelt. A fifth son named Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr. died in infancy.

Did you know? Encouraged by his wife, Eleanor, FDR appointed more women to federal posts than any previous president; he also included Black Americans in federal job programs (though they remained largely segregated).

Roosevelt attended law school at Columbia University and worked for several years as a clerk in a Wall Street law firm. In 1910, he entered politics, winning a state senate seat as a Democrat in the heavily Republican Dutchess County. In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson named Roosevelt assistant secretary of the U.S. Navy. He would hold that post for the next seven years, traveling to Europe in 1918 to tour naval bases and battlefields after the U.S. entrance into World War I.

FDR's Polio and Election as Governor

In 1921, Roosevelt was diagnosed with polio when he was 39 years old. Unable to walk, he temporarily removed himself from public life and focused on rehabilitation at his home in Hyde Park, where he'd swim three times a week in the Astor pool, slowly regaining strength. By the spring of 1922, he was able to stand again with braces. In 1924, he traveled to Warm Springs, Georgia, hoping to be healed by the spring's mineral waters. He ended up purchasing the resort and turning it into a rehabilitation center for Polio patients.

With the support of his wife and his longtime supporter, the journalist Louis Howe, Roosevelt began to return to public life, issuing statements on issues of the day and keeping up a correspondence with Democratic leaders. Eleanor Roosevelt spoke publicly throughout New York State, keeping her husband's reputation strong despite his illness; she also organized the women's division of the Democratic Party. In 1924, Franklin made a triumphant public appearance at the Democratic National Convention to nominate New York's Governor Alfred E. Smith for president (though Smith lost the nomination and the Democrats lost the general election).

He nominated Smith again in 1928, this time successfully, and at Smith's urgings agreed to run for governor of New York. Smith lost to Herbert Hoover, but Roosevelt won. Governor Roosevelt grew more liberal in his policies as New York (and the nation) sank deeper into economic depression after the stock market crash of 1929. In particular, he set up the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration (TERA), which aimed at finding jobs for the unemployed, and by 1932 TERA was helping nearly one out of every 10 families in New York.

Roosevelt Enters the White House

Re-elected as governor in 1930, Roosevelt emerged as a front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination two years later. He broke tradition and appeared in person in Chicago to accept the nomination, famously pledging himself to "a new deal for the American people." In the general election, a confident and exuberant Roosevelt triumphed by an overwhelming margin over the incumbent Hoover, who had become a symbol for many people of the ongoing Great Depression.

In addition, Democrats won sizeable majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. By the time Roosevelt was inaugurated on March 4, 1933, the Depression had reached desperate levels, including 13 million unemployed. In the first inaugural address to be widely broadcast on the radio, Roosevelt boldly declared that "This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and prosper...[T]he only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

Roosevelt began the momentous first 100 days of his presidency by closing all banks for several days until Congress could pass reform legislation. He also began holding open press conferences and giving regular national radio addresses in which he spoke directly to the American people. The first of these "fireside chats," about the banking crisis, was broadcast to a radio audience of some 60 million, and would go a long way toward restoring public confidence and preventing harmful bank runs. After passage of the Emergency Banking Relief Act, three out of every four banks were open within a week.

Roosevelt and the New Deal

Other key pieces of legislation during FDR's first "Hundred Days" created some of the most important programs and institutions of Roosevelt's New Deal, including the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), the Public Works Administration (PWA), the Civilian Conservations Corps (CCC) and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). In addition to programs aimed at providing economic relief for workers and farmers and creating jobs for the unemployed, Roosevelt also initiated a slate of reforms of the financial system, notably the creation of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to protect depositors' accounts and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to regulate the stock market and prevent abuses of the kind that led to the 1929 crash.

In 1935, after the economy had begun to show signs of recovery, Roosevelt asked Congress to pass a new wave of reforms, known as "Second New Deal." These included the Social Security Act (which for the first time provided Americans with unemployment, disability, and pensions for old age) and the Works Progress Administration. The Democratic-led Congress also raised taxes on large corporations and wealthy individuals, a hike that was derisively known as the "soak-the-rich" tax.

Roosevelt's Reelection and "Court-Packing"

Controversial but extremely popular with voters, Roosevelt won re-election by a huge margin in 1936 over Governor Alfred M. Landon of Kansas. He faced opposition from the Supreme Court over his New Deal programs, and proposed an expansion of the court that would allow him to appoint one new justice for every sitting justice 70 or older. After heated debate, Congress rejected this "court-packing" scheme, handing FDR the biggest setback of his career. Nonetheless, the Court abruptly changed direction, upholding both the Social Security Act and the Wagner Act (officially the National Labor Relations Act).

Labor unrest and another economic downturn in 1937 hurt Roosevelt's approval ratings, but the crisis had largely passed by the following year. Republicans gained ground in the midterm congressional elections, however, and soon formed an alliance with conservative Democrats that would block further reform legislation. By the end of 1938, as support for the New Deal was waning, Roosevelt faced a new looming challenge, this time on the international stage.

FDR and World War II

As early as 1937, FDR warned the American public about the dangers posed by hard-line regimes in Germany, Italy and Japan, though he stopped short of suggesting America should abandon its isolationist policy. After World War II broke out in September 1939, however, Roosevelt called a special session of Congress in order to revise the country's existing neutrality acts and allow Britain and France to purchase American arms on a "cash-and-carry" basis. Germany captured France by the end of June 1940, and Roosevelt persuaded Congress to provide more support for Britain, now left to combat the Nazi menace on its own. Despite the two-term tradition for presidents in place since the time of George Washington, Roosevelt decided to run for reelection again in 1940; he defeated Wendell L. Wilkie by nearly 5 million votes.

Roosevelt increased his support of Great Britain with passage of the Lend-Lease Act in March 1941 and met with Prime Minister Winston Churchill in August aboard a battleship anchored off Canada. In the resulting Atlantic Charter, the two leaders declared the " Four Freedoms " on which the post-war world should be founded: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of religion, freedom from want and freedom from fear.

On December 8, 1941, the day after Japan bombed the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt appeared before a joint session of Congress, which declared war on Japan. The first president to leave the country during wartime, Roosevelt spearheaded the alliance between countries combating the Axis, meeting frequently with Churchill and seeking to establish friendly relations with the Soviet Union and its leader, Joseph Stalin. Meanwhile, he spoke constantly on the radio, reporting war events and rallying the American people in support of the war effort (as he had for the New Deal).

Yalta Conference and Franklin D. Roosevelt's Death

In 1944, as the tide of war turned toward the Allies, a weary and ailing Roosevelt managed to win election to a fourth term in the White House. The following February, he met with Churchill and Stalin in the Yalta Conference, where Roosevelt got Stalin's commitment to enter the war against Japan after Germany's impending surrender. (The Soviet leader kept that promise, but failed to honor his pledge to establish democratic governments in the eastern European nations then under Soviet control.) The "Big Three" also worked to build foundations for the post-war international peace organization that would become the United Nations.

After Roosevelt returned from Yalta, he was so weak that he was forced to sit down while addressing Congress for the first time in his presidency. In early April 1945, he left Washington and traveled to his cottage in Warm Springs, Georgia, where he had long before established a nonprofit foundation to aid polio patients. Roosevelt suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage and died on April 12, 1945. He was succeeded in office by his vice president, Harry S. Truman.

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Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected as the nation's 32nd president in 1932. With the country mired in the Great Depression, Roosevelt immediately acted to restore public confidence, speaking directly to the public in a series of radio broadcasts or "fireside chats," and implementing his New Deal programs and reforms. The only American president in history to be elected four times, Roosevelt died in office in April 1945.

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Joseph Stalin annexed eastern Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and parts of Romania.

Stalin also attacked Finland and extorted territorial concessions.

He expanded the powers of the secret police, encouraged citizens to spy on one another and had many people killed or sent to the Gulag system of forced labor camps

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Young Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin was born Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvili on December 18, 1878, or December 6, 1878, according to the Old Style Julian calendar (although he later invented a new birth date for himself: December 21, 1879). He grew up in the small town of Gori, Georgia, then part of the Russian empire. When he was in his 30s, he took the name Stalin, from the Russian for "man of steel."

Did you know? In 1925, the Russian city of Tsaritsyn was renamed Stalingrad. In 1961, as part of the de-Stalinization process, the city, located along Europe's longest river, the Volga, became known as Volgograd. Today, it is one of Russia's largest cities and a key industrial center.

Stalin grew up poor and an only child. His father was a shoemaker and an alcoholic who beat his son, and his mother was a laundress. As a boy, Stalin contracted smallpox, which left him with lifelong facial scars. As a teen, he earned a scholarship to attend a seminary in the nearby city of Tblisi and study for the priesthood in the Georgian Orthodox Church.

While there he began secretly reading the work of German social philosopher and Communist Manifesto author Karl Marx, becoming interested in the revolutionary movement against the Russian monarchy. In 1899, Stalin was expelled from the seminary for missing exams, although he claimed it was for Marxist propaganda.

After leaving school, Stalin became an underground political agitator, taking part in labor demonstrations and strikes. He adopted the name Koba, after a fictional Georgian outlaw-hero, and joined the more militant wing of the Marxist Social Democratic movement, the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin.

Stalin also became involved in various criminal activities, including bank heists, the proceeds from which were used to help fund the Bolshevik Party. He was arrested multiple times between 1902 and 1913, and subjected to imprisonment and exile in Siberia.

Children

In 1906, Stalin married Ekaterina "Kato" Svanidze, a seamstress. The couple had one son, Yakov, who died as a prisoner in Germany during World War II. Ekaterina perished from typhus when her son was an infant.

In 1918 (some sources cite 1919), Stalin married his second wife, Nadezhda "Nadya" Alliluyeva, the daughter of a Russian revolutionary. They had two children, a boy and a girl (Stalin's only daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, caused an international scandal when she defected to the United States in 1967). Nadezhda committed suicide in her early 30s. Stalin also fathered several children out of wedlock.

Rise to Power

In 1912, Lenin, who was then in exile in Switzerland, appointed Stalin to serve on the first Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party. Three years later, in November 1917, the Bolsheviks seized power during the Russian Revolution. The Soviet Union was founded in 1922, with Lenin as its first leader.

During these years, Stalin had continued to move up the party ladder, and in 1922 he became secretary general of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, a role that enabled him to appoint his allies to government jobs and grow a base of political support.

After Lenin died in 1924, Stalin eventually outmaneuvered his rivals and won the power struggle for control of the Communist Party. By the late 1920s, he had become dictator of the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union Under Stalin

Starting in the late 1920s, Joseph Stalin launched a series of five-year plans intended to transform the Soviet Union from a peasant society into an industrial superpower. His development plan was centered on government control of the economy and included the forced collectivization of Soviet agriculture, in which the government took control of farms.

Millions of farmers refused to cooperate with Stalin's orders and were shot or exiled as punishment, particularly the kulaks, the more-prosperous farmers who owned land and hired paid workers. The forced collectivization soon led to widespread famine across the Soviet Union that killed millions.

Stalin ruled by terror, with a totalitarian grip in order to eliminate anyone who might oppose him. He expanded the powers of the secret police, encouraged citizens to spy on one another and had millions of people killed or sent to the Gulag system of forced labor camps.

During the second half of the 1930s, Stalin instituted the Great Purge, a series of campaigns designed to rid the Communist Party, the military and other parts of Soviet society from those he considered a threat.

Additionally, Stalin built a cult of personality around himself in the Soviet Union. Cities were renamed in his honor. Soviet history books were rewritten to give him a more prominent role in the revolution and mythologize other aspects of his life.

Stalin was the subject of flattering artwork, literature and music, and his name became part of the Soviet national anthem. He censored photographs in an attempt to rewrite history, removing former associates executed during his many purges. His government also controlled the Soviet media.

Joseph Stalin and World War II

In 1939, on the eve of World War II, Joseph Stalin and Germany's Nazi Party dictator Adolf Hitler signed the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact. Stalin then proceeded to annex parts of Poland and Romania, as well as the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. He also launched an invasion of Finland.

Then, in June 1941, Germany broke the Nazi-Soviet pact and invaded the USSR, making significant early inroads. (Stalin had ignored warnings from the Americans and the British, as well as his own intelligence agents, about a potential invasion, and the Soviets were not prepared for war.)

As German troops approached the Soviet capital of Moscow, Stalin remained there and directed a scorched earth defensive policy, destroying any supplies or infrastructure that might benefit the enemy. The tide turned for the Soviets with the Battle of Stalingrad from August 1942 to February 1943, during which the Red Army defeated the Germans and eventually drove them from Russia.

As the war progressed, Stalin participated in the major Allied conferences, including the Tehran Conference (1943) and the Yalta Conference (1945). His iron will and deft political skills enabled him to play the loyal ally while never abandoning his vision of an expanded postwar Soviet empire.

Later Years

Joseph Stalin did not mellow with age: He initiated a reign of terror, purges, executions, exiles to labor camps and persecution in the postwar USSR, suppressing all dissent and anything that smacked of foreign-especially Western-influence.

He established communist governments throughout Eastern Europe, and in 1949 led the Soviets into the nuclear age by exploding an atomic bomb. In 1950, he gave North Korea's communist leader Kim Il Sung permission to invade United States-supported South Korea, an event that triggered the Korean War.

How Did Joseph Stalin Die?

Stalin, who grew increasingly paranoid in his later years, died on March 5, 1953, at age 74, after suffering a stroke. His body was embalmed and preserved in Lenin's mausoleum in Moscow's Red Square until 1961, when it was removed and buried near the Kremlin walls as part of the de-Stalinization process initiated by Stalin's successor Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971).

How Many People Did Joseph Stalin Kill?

By some estimates, Joseph Stalin was responsible for the deaths of 6 million to 20 million people during his brutal rule, either though political executions or indirectly as a result of Stalin's policies. The killings first began in the 1930s, as a wave of executions swept the Soviet Union during Stalin's Great Purge.

"In some cases, a quota was established for the number to be executed, the number to be arrested," said Stanford University history professor Norman Naimark in a 2010 interview. "Some officials overfulfilled as a way of showing their exuberance."

Millions more were killed in the horrific famine that struck Ukraine in 1932-1933 and the Kazakh region from 1930 to 1933, as a of Stalin's cruel efforts to impose collectivism of agriculture and tamp down Ukrainian nationalism. Estimates vary, but about 4 million men, women and children are believed to have starved to death during the Holodomor (a combination of the Ukrainian words for "starvation" and "to inflict death").

Sources

Joseph Stalin (1879-1953). PBS.
Joseph Stalin: National hero or cold-blooded murderer? BBC.
Stalin killed millions. A Stanford historian answers the question, was it genocide? Stanford News.

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Joseph Stalin: Death, Quotes & Facts - HISTORY

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Joseph Stalin was the dictator of the Soviet Union from 1929 to 1953. Through terror, murder, brutality and mass imprisonment, he modernized the Soviet economy.

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Benito Mussolini signed the Pact of Steel with Adolf Hitler.

At first, Mussolini didn't approve of Adolf Hitlers intentions, but later sided with him.

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Childhood

Born on July 29, 1883, in Verano di Costa, Italy, Mussolini was the son of blacksmith and ardent socialist Alessandro Mussolini and a devout Catholic mother, Rosa Maltoni. By most accounts, Mussolini's family lived in simple, small quarters.

Young Mussolini was expelled from his first boarding school at age 10 for stabbing a fellow student. At 14, he stabbed another student but was only suspended.

Socialist Activism

Much of Mussolini's early adulthood was spent traveling around Switzerland, getting involved with that country's Socialist Party and clashing with police. In 1909, he moved to Austria-Hungary to become editor of a socialist newspaper, but was deported back to Italy after being accused of violating laws meant to regulate press freedom.

In 1910, Mussolini became the editor for another Italian socialist newspaper, but soon spent six months in jail for inciting violence. During his incarceration, he began to write his autobiography-though still in his twenties-detailing his troubled school years and his many romantic conquests.

Mussolini split from the Socialist Party in 1914. Starting his own newspaper, he encouraged violence from his supporters as unrest spread across the country.

Italian Facism

In 1915, Mussolini joined the Italian army in World War I. He fought on the front lines and obtained the rank of corporal before being discharged for a war wound. Mussolini returned to newspapers and by 1918 called for a dictator to seize control of Italy. Pressure from Mussolini and his followers forced the government to order the internment of foreigners they considered enemies.

After the Treaty of Versailles in 1919-and his dissatisfaction with it-Mussolini gathered the various fascist groups into a national organization called Fasci Italiani di Combattimento. The Italian Fascists courted war veterans and encouraged violence against socialists. Mussolini stockpiled weapons and explosives in his newspaper offices.

Children and Marriages

Mussolini was married twice: to Ida Dalser in 1914, and to his longtime mistress Rachele Guidi one year later. Additionally, Mussolini had a number of other mistresses and liaisons.

His first marriage produced a son, Benito Albino Mussolini. Following Mussolini's second marriage, records of his first marriage and son were destroyed or suppressed, and both wife and son were kept under constant surveillance. Italian authorities sent Ida to an island near Venice, where she died in 1937. Her son was forced into an asylum near Milan, where he died in 1942 at age 26.

Mussolini's marriage to Rachele lasted until his death. The couple had five children: three sons, Vittorio, Bruno and Romano, and two daughters, Edda and Anna Maria. Rachele died in 1979 at age 89.

Rise to Power

By the end of 1919, Mussolini stood in a general election as the Fascist candidate but lost in a Socialist sweep. Two days later, Mussolini was arrested for allegedly collecting arms to overthrow the government. He was released without charges the next day.

In 1921, the Italian King Victor Emmanuel III dissolved Parliament amidst growing violence and chaos. Elections brought a huge win for the Fascists, with Mussolini taking a seat as a deputy in Parliament. The party changed its name to Partito Nazionale Fascista.

Fascists Seize Control of Italy

In 1922, Fascists were instructed to wear uniforms, including black shirts, in squads that were modeled after Roman army groups. All party members were considered squad members.

Soon after, several Italian cities were seized by Fascist squads, who also burned down communist and socialist offices.

In October 1922, Mussolini threatened to march on Rome to take control of the government through violent force if it was not handed over. King Victor Emmanuel and the government were slow to act, eventually dispatching troops, though Fascists had already seized control of some local governments.

Refusing to pass martial law, Victor Emmanuel watched as thousands of armed Fascists entered Rome. He dissolved the government and asked Mussolini to form a new one.

Prime Minister Mussolini

Mussolini became Prime Minister, as well as Minister of the Interior and Minister for Foreign Affairs. Mussolini did not become a dictator overnight, but a speech he gave to the Italian parliament on January 3, 1925, asserting his right to supreme power is generally seen as the effective date that Mussolini declared himself dictator of Italy.

Mussolini's first act as prime minister was to demand special emergency powers allowing him to rig elections in the Fascists' favor. Soon after, the Italian parliament made suspicion of being anti-Fascist punishable by imprisonment without trial.

The next year police rounded-up Socialists, and the government restricted their publishing activities. A Socialist deputy plotted to assassinate Mussolini, but the betrayal of a friend led to his arrest just before the attempt. Several other assassination attempts followed.

Italy Under Fascism

In 1926, Fascists created a youth group called the Opera Nazionale Balilla, pressuring children to join. The Catholic Boy Scouts were dissolved and the formation of other youth groups became illegal.

The same year, all communist members of Parliament were arrested, and all Socialist Party members expelled. Anyone who could not be prosecuted for a crime was detained for up to five years and placed in island internment camps.

Cinemas were required to screen government propaganda in the form of newsreels. Fascists owned 66 percent of the newspapers and controlled reporting, issuing daily editorial guidelines and threatening editors with arrest.

The Order of Journalists was created and membership was mandatory. Newspapers were allowed to criticize the government as long as they generally expressed support.
READ MORE: How Mussolini Seized Power in Italy
Mussolini and Hitler

At first, Mussolini disapproved of Germany's Adolf Hitler, but over time their partnership grew and Mussolini embraced Hitler's anti-Semitic measures.

Following Italy's 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, Germany was the second country to recognize Italy's legitimacy there. Both Hitler and Mussolini sided with Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War in 1936, with Mussolini providing 50,000 troops.

In 1937, Italy left the League of Nations in solidarity with Germany, and in March of 1938, Hitler invaded Austria with Mussolini's support.

Mussolini wrote an article in 1938 that aligned Italians with the German concept of the Aryan race. When anti-Jewish laws began to appear in Italy, Germany felt they were weak, but Mussolini was prepared to increase their severity as needed. Soon after, Mussolini called for the expulsion of foreign Jews from Italy.
WATCH VIDEO: American Women in World War II
Axis Powers

Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939 immediately caused Britain and France to declare war against Germany, but Mussolini, for the moment, remained neutral.

Germany's invasion of Denmark and Norway convinced Mussolini that Hitler would win the war. Soon Holland and Belgium also fell to Hitler. On May 22, 1939, Italy and Germany signed the " Pact of Steel" officially creating the Axis powers. ( Japan would join in September of 1940 with the signing of the Tripartite Pact.)

As the Germans plowed through France in June 1940, Mussolini announced Italy's entrance into the war. Italy declared war on France and Great Britain on June 10, 1940.

The Plot Against Mussolini

By 1943, after years of fighting in World War II, Italy was viewed by its own citizens as losing the war.

On July 25, 1943, Mussolini was voted out of power by his own Grand Council, arrested after a visit with the king and sent to the island of La Maddalena.

When Italy accepted the terms of secret peace talks with the Allies, Hitler ordered German forces into Italy, which resulted in two Italian nations, one occupied by Germans.

Mussolini, fearful of being handed over, was instead rescued by Hitler's forces. Transported to German-occupied northern Italy, he was installed as Hitler's puppet leader, creating the Italian Social Republic and leading to the extermination of thousands of Italian Jews.

Allied forces began barreling through Italy in June 1944, and Mussolini attempted to flee to Spain in April 1945 with his lover, Claretta Petacci, but was discovered and arrested by partisans searching troop transport trucks.

How Did Mussolini Die?

There are conflicting stories about how Mussolini died, but autopsy reports state the dictator was executed by firing squad on April 28, 1945, shot by soldiers firing several bullets-with four of them near the heart-causing immediate death.

The bodies of both Mussolini and Petacci were hung upside down at the Piazzale Loreto in Milan and displayed for crowds to kick and spit on. One day later, Hitler committed suicide and the following week, Germany surrendered.

Mussolini's Body

Mussolini's body was buried in an unmarked grave, which was unearthed in 1946 by Fascist supporters, who took the body to a convent in Lombardy. The government recovered it and interred it in a monastery near Milan.

Mussolini's wife petitioned to have the body moved from a grave in Milan to a family mausoleum in Predappio in 1957.

In 1966, she was given an envelope containing a piece of her husband's brain. The American diplomat who handed it to her claimed that the Americans had taken the brain in order to study what makes a dictator. She had the relic placed in his tomb, which receives 100,000 visitors a year.

Mussolini Quotes

"It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep."

"Democracy is a kingless regime infested by many kings who are sometimes more exclusive, tyrannical and destructive than one, even if he be a tyrant."

"Many think, and I myself am one of them, that capitalism is scarcely at the beginning of its story."

Sources

Mussolini: The Last 600 Days of Il Duce. Ray Moseley.
Mussolini. Jasper Ridley.
Mussolini. Rupert Colley.
Benito Mussolini (1883-1945). BBC.

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Benito Mussolini: Children, Death & World War II - HISTORY

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Benito Mussolini, an Italian political leader who allied himself with Adolf Hitler during World War II, became the fascist dictator of Italy from 1925-1945.

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Trying to get political power, Hitler built up the Nazi army among the Germans.

In 1932 he ran for president and received 36.8% of the votes.

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Early Life

Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, in Braunau am Inn, a small Austrian town near the Austro-German frontier. After his father, Alois, retired as a state customs official, young Adolf spent most of his childhood in Linz, the capital of Upper Austria.

Not wanting to follow in his father's footsteps as a civil servant, he began struggling in secondary school and eventually dropped out. Alois died in 1903, and Adolf pursued his dream of being an artist, though he was rejected from Vienna's Academy of Fine Arts.

After his mother, Klara, died in 1908, Hitler moved to Vienna, where he pieced together a living painting scenery and monuments and selling the images. Lonely, isolated and a voracious reader, Hitler became interested in politics during his years in Vienna, and developed many of the ideas that would shape Nazi ideology.

Military Career of Adolf Hitler

In 1913, Hitler moved to Munich, in the German state of Bavaria. When World War I broke out the following summer, he successfully petitioned the Bavarian king to be allowed to volunteer in a reserve infantry regiment.

Deployed in October 1914 to Belgium, Hitler served throughout the Great War and won two decorations for bravery, including the rare Iron Cross First Class, which he wore to the end of his life.

Hitler was wounded twice during the conflict: He was hit in the leg during the Battle of the Somme in 1916, and temporarily blinded by a British gas attack near Ypres in 1918. A month later, he was recuperating in a hospital at Pasewalk, northeast of Berlin, when news arrived of the armistice and Germany's defeat in World War I.

Like many Germans, Hitler came to believe the country's devastating defeat could be attributed not to the Allies, but to insufficiently patriotic "traitors" at home-a myth that would undermine the post-war Weimar Republic and set the stage for Hitler's rise.

Nazi Party

After Hitler returned to Munich in late 1918, he joined the small German Workers' Party, which aimed to unite the interests of the working class with a strong German nationalism. His skilled oratory and charismatic energy helped propel him in the party's ranks, and in 1920 he left the army and took charge of its propaganda efforts.

In one of Hitler's strokes of propaganda genius, the newly renamed National Socialist German Workers Party, or Nazi Party, adopted a version of the swastika-an ancient sacred symbol of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism -as its emblem. Printed in a white circle on a red background, Hitler's swastika would take on terrifying symbolic power in the years to come.

By the end of 1921, Hitler led the growing Nazi Party, capitalizing on widespread discontent with the Weimar Republic and the punishing terms of the Versailles Treaty. Many dissatisfied former army officers in Munich would join the Nazis, notably Ernst Röhm, who recruited the "strong arm" squads-known as the Sturmabteilung (SA)-which Hitler used to protect party meetings and attack opponents.

Beer Hall Putsch

On the evening of November 8, 1923, members of the SA and others forced their way into a large beer hall where another right-wing leader was addressing the crowd. Wielding a revolver, Hitler proclaimed the beginning of a national revolution and led marchers to the center of Munich, where they got into a gun battle with police.

Hitler fled quickly, but he and other rebel leaders were later arrested. Even though it failed spectacularly, the Beer Hall Putsch established Hitler as a national figure, and (in the eyes of many) a hero of right-wing nationalism.

'Mein Kampf'

Tried for treason, Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison, but would serve only nine months in the relative comfort of Landsberg Castle. During this period, he began to dictate the book that would become " Mein Kampf" ("My Struggle"), the first volume of which was published in 1925.

In it, Hitler expanded on the nationalistic, anti-Semitic views he had begun to develop in Vienna in his early twenties, and laid out plans for the Germany-and the world-he sought to create when he came to power.

Hitler would finish the second volume of "Mein Kampf" after his release, while relaxing in the mountain village of Berchtesgaden. It sold modestly at first, but with Hitler's rise it became Germany's best-selling book after the Bible. By 1940, it had sold some 6 million copies there.

Hitler's second book, "The Zweites Buch," was written in 1928 and contained his thoughts on foreign policy. It was not published in his lifetime due to the poor initial sales of "Mein Kampf." The first English translations of "The Zweites Buch" did not appear until 1962 and was published under the title "Hitler's Secret Book."

Obsessed with race and the idea of ethnic "purity," Hitler saw a natural order that placed the so-called "Aryan race" at the top.

For him, the unity of the Volk (the German people) would find its truest incarnation not in democratic or parliamentary government, but in one supreme leader, or Führer.

"Mein Kampf" also addressed the need for Lebensraum (or living space): In order to fulfill its destiny, Germany should take over lands to the east that were now occupied by "inferior" Slavic peoples-including Austria, the Sudetenland (Czechoslovakia), Poland and Russia.

The Schutzstaffel (SS)

By the time Hitler left prison, economic recovery had restored some popular support for the Weimar Republic, and support for right-wing causes like Nazism appeared to be waning.

Over the next few years, Hitler laid low and worked on reorganizing and reshaping the Nazi Party. He established the Hitler Youth to organize youngsters, and created the Schutzstaffel (SS) as a more reliable alternative to the SA.

Members of the SS wore black uniforms and swore a personal oath of loyalty to Hitler. (After 1929, under the leadership of Heinrich Himmler, the SS would develop from a group of some 200 men into a force that would dominate Germany and terrorize the rest of occupied Europe during World War II.)

Eva Braun

Hitler spent much of his time at Berchtesgaden during these years, and his half-sister, Angela Raubal, and her two daughters often joined him. After Hitler became infatuated with his beautiful blonde niece, Geli Raubal, his possessive jealousy apparently led her to commit suicide in 1931.

Devastated by the loss, Hitler would consider Geli the only true love affair of his life. He soon began a long relationship with Eva Braun, a shop assistant from Munich, but refused to marry her.

The worldwide Great Depression that began in 1929 again threatened the stability of the Weimar Republic. Determined to achieve political power in order to affect his revolution, Hitler built up Nazi support among German conservatives, including army, business and industrial leaders.

The Third Reich

In 1932, Hitler ran against the war hero Paul von Hindenburg for president, and received 36.8 percent of the vote. With the government in chaos, three successive chancellors failed to maintain control, and in late January 1933 Hindenburg named the 43-year-old Hitler as chancellor, capping the stunning rise of an unlikely leader.

January 30, 1933 marked the birth of the Third Reich, or as the Nazis called it, the "Thousand-Year Reich" (after Hitler's boast that it would endure for a millennium).

Reichstag Fire

Though the Nazis never attained more than 37 percent of the vote at the height of their popularity in 1932, Hitler was able to grab absolute power in Germany largely due to divisions and inaction among the majority who opposed Nazism.

After a devastating fire at Germany's parliament building, the Reichstag, in February 1933-possibly the work of a Dutch communist, though later evidence suggested Nazis set the Reichstag fire themselves-Hitler had an excuse to step up the political oppression and violence against his opponents.

On March 23, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, giving full powers to Hitler and celebrating the union of National Socialism with the old German establishment (i.e., Hindenburg).

That July, the government passed a law stating that the Nazi Party "constitutes the only political party in Germany," and within months all non-Nazi parties, trade unions and other organizations had ceased to exist.

His autocratic power now secure within Germany, Hitler turned his eyes toward the rest of Europe.

In 1933, Germany was diplomatically isolated, with a weak military and hostile neighbors (France and Poland). In a famous speech in May 1933, Hitler struck a surprisingly conciliatory tone, claiming Germany supported disarmament and peace.

But behind this appeasement strategy, the domination and expansion of the Volk remained Hitler's overriding aim.

By early the following year, he had withdrawn Germany from the League of Nations and begun to militarize the nation in anticipation of his plans for territorial conquest.

Night of the Long Knives

On June 29, 1934, the infamous Night of the Long Knives, Hitler had Röhm, former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and hundreds of other problematic members of his own party murdered, in particular troublesome members of the SA.

When the 86-year-old Hindenburg died on August 2, military leaders agreed to combine the presidency and chancellorship into one position, meaning Hitler would command all the armed forces of the Reich.

Persecution of Jews

On September 15, 1935, passage of the Nuremberg Laws deprived Jews of German citizenship, and barred them from marrying or having relations with persons of "German or related blood."

Though the Nazis attempted to downplay its persecution of Jews in order to placate the international community during the 1936 Berlin Olympics (in which German-Jewish athletes were not allowed to compete), additional decrees over the next few years disenfranchised Jews and took away their political and civil rights.

In addition to its pervasive anti-Semitism, Hitler's government also sought to establish the cultural dominance of Nazism by burning books, forcing newspapers out of business, using radio and movies for propaganda purposes and forcing teachers throughout Germany's educational system to join the party.

Much of the Nazi persecution of Jews and other targets occurred at the hands of the Geheime Staatspolizei (GESTAPO), or Secret State Police, an arm of the SS that expanded during this period.

Outbreak of World War II

In March 1936, against the advice of his generals, Hitler ordered German troops to reoccupy the demilitarized left bank of the Rhine.

Over the next two years, Germany concluded alliances with Italy and Japan, annexed Austria and moved against Czechoslovakia-all essentially without resistance from Great Britain, France or the rest of the international community.

Once he confirmed the alliance with Italy in the so-called "Pact of Steel" in May 1939, Hitler then signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union. On September 1, 1939, Nazi troops invaded Poland, finally prompting Britain and France to declare war on Germany.

Blitzkrieg

After ordering the occupation of Norway and Denmark in April 1940, Hitler adopted a plan proposed by one of his generals to attack France through the Ardennes Forest. The blitzkrieg ("lightning war") attack began on May 10; Holland quickly surrendered, followed by Belgium.

German troops made it all the way to the English Channel, forcing British and French forces to evacuate en masse from Dunkirk in late May. On June 22, France was forced to sign an armistice with Germany.

Hitler had hoped to force Britain to seek peace as well, but when that failed he went ahead with his attacks on that country, followed by an invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor that December, the United States declared war on Japan, and Germany's alliance with Japan demanded that Hitler declare war on the United States as well.

At that point in the conflict, Hitler shifted his central strategy to focus on breaking the alliance of his main opponents (Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union) by forcing one of them to make peace with him.

Concentration Camps

Beginning in 1933, the SS had operated a network of concentration camps, including a notorious camp at Dachau, near Munich, to hold Jews and other targets of the Nazi regime.

After war broke out, the Nazis shifted from expelling Jews from German-controlled territories to exterminating them. Einsatzgruppen, or mobile death squads, executed entire Jewish communities during the Soviet invasion, while the existing concentration-camp network expanded to include death camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau in occupied Poland.

In addition to forced labor and mass execution, certain Jews at Auschwitz were targeted as the subjects of horrific medical experiments carried out by eugenicist Josef Mengele, known as the "Angel of Death." Mengele's experiments focused on twins and exposed 3,000 child prisoners to disease, disfigurement and torture under the guise of medical research.

Though the Nazis also imprisoned and killed Catholics, homosexuals, political dissidents, Roma (gypsies) and the disabled, above all they targeted Jews-some 6 million of whom were killed in German-occupied Europe by war's end.

End of World War II

With defeats at El-Alamein and Stalingrad, as well as the landing of U.S. troops in North Africa by the end of 1942, the tide of the war turned against Germany.

As the conflict continued, Hitler became increasingly unwell, isolated and dependent on medications administered by his personal physician.

Several attempts were made on his life, including one that came close to succeeding in July 1944, when Col. Claus von Stauffenberg planted a bomb that exploded during a conference at Hitler's headquarters in East Prussia.

Within a few months of the successful Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944, the Allies had begun liberating cities across Europe. That December, Hitler attempted to direct another offensive through the Ardennes, trying to split British and American forces.

But after January 1945, he holed up in a bunker beneath the Chancellery in Berlin. With Soviet forces closing in, Hitler made plans for a last-ditch resistance before finally abandoning that plan.

How Did Adolf Hitler Die?

At midnight on the night of April 28-29, Hitler married Eva Braun in the Berlin bunker. After dictating his political testament, Hitler shot himself in his suite on April 30; Braun took poison. Their bodies were burned according to Hitler's instructions.

With Soviet troops occupying Berlin, Germany surrendered unconditionally on all fronts on May 7, 1945, bringing the war in Europe to a close.

In the end, Hitler's planned "Thousand-Year Reich" lasted just over 12 years, but wreaked unfathomable destruction and devastation during that time, forever transforming the history of Germany, Europe and the world.

Sources

William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
iWonder - Adolf Hitler: Man and Monster, BBC.
The Holocaust: A Learning Site for Students, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

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Adolf Hiter: Rise to Power, Impact & Death

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Adolf Hitler was leader of the Nazi Party who rose to become dictator of Germany. Hitler used his power to orchestrate the deaths of 6 million Jews and millions of others during World War II.

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Hideki Tojo was a general of the Imperial Japanese Army, the leader of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, and the 40th Prime Minister of Japan during most of World War ll.

He was responsible for the attack on Pearl Harbor even though planning for it had begun before he entered office.

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Hideki Tojo (December 30, 1884 - December 23, 1948) was a general of the Imperial Japanese Army, the leader of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, and the 40th Prime Minister of Japan during most of World War II, from October 17, 1941 to July 22, 1944. As Prime Minister, he was directly responsible for the attack on Pearl Harbor, which initiated war between Japan and the United States, although planning for it had begun before he entered office. After the end of the war, Tojo was arrested, sentenced to death for Japanese war crimes by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, and was hanged on December 23, 1948, a week before his 64th birthday. This study of Japan's wartime Prime Minister is divided into three main parts: an introductory section on Tojo's early life and prewar career, a second part concerned with the critical period before Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, and four concluding chapters dealing with Japan's defeat and the war crimes trials in Tokyo. The Times-Literary Supplement said, "A model both of readability and scholarship...An excellent book."

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Hideki Tojo (December 30, 1884 - December 23, 1948) was a general of the Imperial Japanese Army, the leader of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, and the 40th Prime Minister of Japan during most of World War II, from October 17, 1941 to July 22, 1944.